Gunslingers vs Cowboys

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

For today's fun with genre, what's the difference between gunslingers & cowboys? is there any, and all they just lumped together into "Westerns"?

I have no idea why I started thinking about this, but I realized that the Clint Eastwood/Leone gunslinger is very different from the actual cowboy types(Roy Rogers), and then you had John Wayne, who played both, yet these are always refered to as cowboy movies. Where the did the blurring come from, so that certain singer/songwriters could sing about being cowboys, riding on steel horses, and being wanted dead or alive? Unless they're gunna get strung up for cattle rustlin', this would fall into the category of gunslinger, right? "Fistful of Dollars" vs "Ponderosa"/"Bonanza", etc.

This has been Kingfish's Friday Descent into Genre Pendanticism, number 34 of a 47-part series. Thank you for your patronage.

― kingfish prætor (kingfish 2.0), Friday, 6 October 2006 17:39 (nineteen years ago)

Mr. Bongiovi would like to see you in his office.

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Friday, 6 October 2006 18:29 (nineteen years ago)

but isn't the answer the move from the standard/classic western to the ironic/spaghetti and critical/revisionist?

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Friday, 6 October 2006 18:33 (nineteen years ago)

perhaps, but even with Billy the Kid, you always had him falling to the gunslinger mold.

― kingfish prætor (kingfish 2.0), Friday, 6 October 2006 18:43 (nineteen years ago)

i once read a cool book about the "real west." things i remember from it: pistols were usually concealed, most "gunfights" were of the shoot him in the back, while he's sleeping variety (watch _McCabe
& Mrs. Miller_ for good examples of this), rape was rare even among hardened criminals (it was considered worse than murder), and oh yeah, ordinary folk of the old west werent helpless peasants. they were largely civil war and indian war veterans who could hold their own.

― Squirrel_Police (Squirrel_Police), Friday, 6 October 2006 19:36 (nineteen years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.