Puttin the Genre in Generic: Outland, The Road Warrior, Kill Bill vol. 1

Certain nodes or clusters of generic elements rely on the practice and awareness of the Western in Outland, The Road Warrior, and Kill Bill vol. I.. The frontier, as a place where law ends and lawlessness begins, is an essential aspect of the Western. Outland uses the frontier to highlight indifference in the face of corruption. The sheriff struggles to gather people to oppose the immoral forces governing the station, but cannot find anyone to help him. The remote distance of the space station fuels the apathy he faces. In a seemingly pointless struggle that he does not have to engage in, the sheriff opposes corrupt business interests. While set in the future, the linking of setting, narrative, and theme has its roots in the Western genre.

Setting plays an important role in the narrative of The Road Warrior. Like the opening of George P. Cosmatos’s Tombstone, an opening montage of images with a voice over sets up the world, establishing that Max is in a land dependent on gasoline. Like the Western, there are large terrains captured by many long shots. The film also has several shots from the perspective of binoculars to emphasize the vast distance and isolation of this landscape. While the establishment of society isn’t the same concept explored in the Western, the frontier functions in the narrative of The Road Warrior.

Kill Bill is a pairing of character and narrative that parallels The Man from Texas. Wanting to live a peaceful life, the protagonist goes on a hunt motivated by harm to a loved one. Often in the Western genre, a driving revenge motivates a reluctant antihero. The Cowboy cannot settle down because of his identity, he cannot escape who he is. This link of character and narrative is the backbone of Kill Bill Vol. I. This thematic aspect of character often meant the cowboy cannot stay with the female interest, but in Kill Bill the proverbial cowboy is a female whose husband is killed. While this isn’t typically of the Western, a main character cannot escape her true violent identity. Her violence conforms to an internalized moral code; she does not want to kill an assassin in front of her daughter. Like many of Clint Eastwood’s Western heroes, the Bride brings justice by killing such evil characters.

The Western-ness of these units of cinematic construction are sometimes simply adopted by other genre conventions, and sometimes mixed with other genre conventions in a genre splicing. Although not Western’s, these films often simply displace Western tropes into other genres forms. Instead of riding off into the sunset, Outland ends with a digital message of the protagonist informing his family he will join them for a year of suspended animation. Io’s fictional horizon is the back round for this shot, and it has the same effect of the cowboy riding off into the sunset to join his family. Similarly, the clan Max helps out in The Road Warrior rides off to proverbial “greener pastures” in a school bus filled with gasoline. In this action film, the threat of the savage becomes the threat of the crazy Humungus, who sport mohawks. Horses and stagecoaches become cars and buses/tanker. Like earlier Westerns, the “good guys” (the more civilized) tribe is dressed in white clothes, with blond haired leaders.

The Road Warrior also uses the traditional thematic element of water found in Westerns, but twists that convention to serve its greater theme. Three Godfathers serves as an example of a Western that places importance on water as essential to life, linking it to civilization. The Road Warrior links gasoline and oil as essential to life. In the opening scene, there are shots of the main character placing containers on the ground to save gasoline. The thrust of the plot comes from the tribe’s need to transport their large gasoline reserves. Unlike water’s value as an essential element of society, this emphasis on oil is a constant reference to civilization’s failure.
This different world also has changed people. The Road Warrior features disgusting people, characters that resemble the filthy characters in Peckinpah films. However, these people aren’t just trashy or gross, they are freaks. Humungus (who is called the “ayatollah of Rockn’Rollah”) seems to be on steroids and has absurdly thin hair. One of the children in the protagonist camp wields a murderous boomerang. The cinematic space of this post-industrial world has affected these people, changing them, and hence, creating them. This is similar to the Westerns that feature these types of characters, but The Road Warrior’s plot lays implicit blame for the creation of these bizarre characters on society’s failure. A successful society without such a driving dependence on gasoline might’ve given these characters a chance for normalcy.
Elements from other genres function in these same films without having a contradictory effect to the Western elements of the film. The Road Warrior has multiple action sequences, filled with kinetic, Kurosawa style editing, that form the thrust of the film’s action elements. From a narrative standpoint, these scenes are reminiscent of Stagecoach, in which the savages attack the good guys traveling on the frontier. Similarly, the loner character of Kill Bill uses violence that isn’t typical of the Western genre. The incredibly gory gunplay of the anime-like cartoon sequence could be said to have its precursors in Peckinpah and Spaghetti Western films, but much of the live action violence comes in the form of hand-to-hand combat and swordplay. A confluence of Samurai action and fighting effects exists alongside modern Texas in this film world. The murder takes place in El Paso, in which officers with Cowboy hats respond to the wedding massacre. Yet fighting, utilizes Eastern special effects, and defies normal laws of physics, something not normal for Western films. The excessive blood spurting of the film’s actions sequences also contributes to a fantasy effect that is not typical of the Western genre, but does not counteract the “Western elements” of the film.

Similarly, Outland has elements of the Western film that work with standard science fiction conventions. In a future with so much advanced technology the sheriff uses a standard Western looking shotgun. However, he uses his environment’s lack of gravity to combat his main enemies. Technology not present in the film makes itself very apparent in Outland. There are many shots of digital screens; one shot of inexplicable wires signifies the protagonists tap of the antagonist’s communications. A spying sheriff is not an element of Westerns, but this sheriff uses technology to gather information.

Many elements of the Western do make themselves apparent in Outland. Like High Noon, the main character cannot find anyone to support him in opposing corrupt figures. Since it is a science fiction film, a digital timer is superimposed on the outer space horizon. Like many Western outpost towns, a supply ship comes infrequently, and the terrain is hazardous. In Outland, the environment will literally kill a person because of its lack of oxygen. This results in a lot of confined spaces, shots of the closed living quarters (workers living in stacked beds), and shots of long hallways. This inverts the typical Western tendency to shot a wide horizon. Ultimately though, it is a movie about a man on the frontier trying to do the right thing.
Commentaries on capitalism are not limited to the Western, but have a large history in Westerns. Outland and The Road Warrior appropriate the Western’s narrative and ideology because many of the social themes of the Western still resonate with modern audiences, and are not limited to one genre.

The Western takes place on the frontier, where law ends and lawlessness begins. In depicting a bygone era, films glorify a past time and space. This reflects an audience desire for the frontier struggle, intertwined with a yearning to experience a sense of expansion and adventure. The Road Warrior cynically builds on this by recognizing that the proverbial frontier has been settled, and has failed. Similar to the capitalist aversion found in Stagecoach, capitalists are responsible for the flaws in The Road Warrior and Outland. In The Road Warrior, a post-industrial society, the settled industry (the East of the Western) has led to society’s failure. The governing business in Outland is responsible for the antagonist Shepard’s drug dealing because he is only interested in the bottom line. This same self-centeredness is also responsible for everyone’s desire to not help the sheriff.

Rather than appropriate the Western’s narrative ideology to make a large social statement, Kill Bill Vol. I makes a statement about the individual. Like the Western, violence is an integral aspect of the protagonist. She is not peaceful and she cannot escape her past. She cannot deny a basic part of her nature, a theme common to many Western heroes.

The Western is not necessarily a mode particular to the United States, and films that use generic elements of the Western may strip those elements of their American identity. The notion of the frontier may have started its film origin in the American Western, but Outland is a future where businesses are the ruling parties, not nations. The characters pine for Earth, not the East or an untamed frontier. The main character and his wife speak with British accents. While the Aussie accents present in The Road Warrior are probably a result of production means, it certainly acts to strip the film of any American identity it has. As the opening montage makes clear, capitalism has failed all over. The frontier is a world frontier, not one of a particular nation-state.

Kill Bill employs the dotted-line-along-the-map device, which has the effect of making the world smaller. Frederick Turner Jackson’s thesis no longer applies. The frontier does not even matter in Kill Bill because characters are being explored.

Conventional notions of American ideology and identity are critiqued, and in some sense, maintained by such evocations of this most “American” of genres. The Road Warrior condemns society by setting its story, with constant references to gas, in a post apocalypse. The futures of Outland and The Road Warrior critique the present times of their production. They condemn world capitalism, not America. Even so, it is logical to posit that The Road Warrior is condemning America because America is the world’s largest capitalist nation, and uses elements of an American genre to do so.

Even if one considers this critique a criticism of America, it is still recognition of these elements as part of the Western. This moot point is the result of the covert nature of the Western elements in these films. This is significant because overt borrowings of the Western genre would transform traditional notions of American ideology and identity.

However, the borrowings of these three films are not overt. Because the Western genre has such depth and history, it is possible to use formal, narrative, and thematic conventions of the Western without overt references. Stripping the American-ness of Western conventions is both praise and condemnation of American ideology. The notion of the lone figure in the Road Warrior; the man trying to do the right thing because its right in Outland; and a person being unable to escape their basic nature in Kill Bill vol. I are all aspects of the Western genre.
Covert borrowings from the Western are possible because people have seen them so much; the formal, narrative, and thematic conventions of the Western have become so common to pop-culture that they can function in other films without the aid of other Western elements. This can be interpreted as admission, if not respect, for these Western elements. These elements are individual facets of the whole genre.