Johnny Guitar
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Nicholas Ray's western Johnny Guitar is a film with character of heightened sensibilities and character traits. This is not a film of realism but of hyper-realism, with confrontations with life-or-death outcomes based on Western icons and images but carried to an extreme by the director. The structure of the film is such that it is difficult to ascertain who might be considered the hero, whether it would be Johnny or Vienna. The fact that the film is entitled Johnny Guitar does not settle the matter. Indeed, the film has a deliberately queer undertone that is demonstrated in a gender role reversal between the two main characters, with a particularly strong undertone of lesbianism in the conflict between Vienna and her primary enemy, Emma. Johnny is similarly paired with the gender-ambiguously named The Dancing Kid. An examination of the views of several critics will lead to an analysis of the issues to show that Vienna is the hero of the film while Johnny is a catalyst for much of the action, both deriving their positions from gender-role reversals and inviting a homosexual analysis of the film. Jennifer Peterson discusses the film in terms of its allegorical use of politics and gender, noting that this use is highly contradictory. Peterson sees the film as misogynist. When the film was released, critics were taken aback by the way the film twisted generic conventions, for it featured not only male gunfighters but female gunfighters. The film also had a strong poli
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h Johnny, and what Charney calls the film's containment operates to keep both women in their place.
Michael Wilmington also sees the film as holding forth Johnny Guitar as the hero. He notes the opening images which show Johnny riding along beside a precipice, thus being presented as the hero who both morally and psychologically is walking the edge of a cliff. The hero is threatened from above by the progress represented by the railroad whistle in the distance, and he is threatened from below by the shootings and the bandits who rise the plains. Another reason why he singles Johnny out as the hero is that the action of the film at the beginning sets Johnny up for that role by repeating images that have graced many Western films, with the hero riding into town and discovering trouble waiting for him there. Wilmington notes a feature of the film he calls striking, and this is the inaction of the hero. Johnny is a gunslinger with a big reputation, yet he does nothing but watch. His one act is to save Vienna from a lynching:
It is Vienna who makes all the decisions, including the one to resume their affair; she takes the heroic last stands, and finally kills the villainous Emma (Wilmington 22).
Wilmington agrees that on th
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1728
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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