Unforgiven: Debunking The American Western

The American Western continues to be a Hollywood mainstay because of its connections to America’s cultural identity. However, Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven, released in 1992, has served to disturb the formulaic American Western by challenging the validity of its classic legendary narrative. Various elements in Unforigven, including its memorable characters and cinematography, seamlessly combine in order to achieve such an aim.

Unforgiven critically examines the issue of violence in modern society. By showcasing the destructive power of violence, Eastwood successfully captures the horror of killing a man in Unforgiven. When Davey Bunting is shot in the side, his death is not swift and painless, but protracted and miserable. Davey is completely helpless, only able to drag his dusty body behind a rock and beg for a drink of water before he dies. Ned Logan’s inability to fire the rifle coupled with Munny’s mercy in allowing Quick Mike to give Davey a drink emphasize the humanity of Davey’s death for the audience. Even when Munny guns down Dagget and his men during Unforgiven’s violent climax for the sake of Ned Logan, the result is merely a massacre. There are no cheering crowds, no smiling faces. Only the sound of falling rain can be heard as Munny rides out of town.

The character development of the Schofield Kid is representative of the dichotomy between what the West ought to have been and what the West really was in Unforgiven. Throughout the first half of the film, the Kid clings onto a glorified view of violence, epitomized by his eagerness to begin his gunslinging career. The Kid naively believes that killing a man can only bring him fame and riches. Like a child asking for a bedtime story, the Kid begs Munny to describe how he narrowly avoided capture in Jacksonville by single-handedly killing two men during one of the pivotal scenes in Unforgiven. This skewed perception of reality is further emphasized in Unforgiven by the Kid’s poor eyesight, representative of the distortive lens employed by previous film directors when portraying the West. Only when confronted with the stark reality of violence does the Kid begin to realize how far off from reality the legends he grew up with are.

However, Unforgiven is not a wholesale repudiation of the American Western. Within the film, Bill Daggett assumes the role of the metaphorical iconoclast. Daggett is a man who values order and civilization, and harbors a powerful disdain for the mythic spirit of the West. Dagget’s physical assault on English Bob and verbal diatribe of Beauchamp’s biography, “The Duke Of Death,” indicate a belief that Western values hold no place in modern society. The grandiose narrative describing how English Bob valiantly overcame “Two-Gun” Corkey in a draw is whittled down to reveal how a heavily intoxicated Bob only killed Corkey because his Walker Colt malfunctioned. However, when Munny guns down Dagget and his men with heroic finesse during the film’s climax, Unforgiven illustrates how we cannot simply forget the majestic, if flawed, heroes of old. Unforgiven’s final scenes serve as a vindication of the American Western.

Eastwood’s Unforgiven is genuinely a prototype for the new American Western. However, by breaking away from the glorification of violence and mysticism inherent in the old American Western, Unforgiven does not seek to forever discard the genre into the dust bin. Instead, Unforgiven serves as a critical reevaluation of Western values in order to produce a narrative more compatible with the values of modern society. By applying a revisionist lens in its evaluation of the American Western, Unforgiven has forever changed the genre by laying down a value system which has found its way into nearly every American Western produced since.