Shooting (a) Woman - Comparative Study of Gender Roles in American and Italian Western Movies

Master's Thesis from the year 2007 in the subject Sociology - Media Art Music grade: 1 University of Dalarna language: English abstract: Sergio Leone the well known Italian Western director once criticized the woman's role in the Hollywood Western as follows:[T]he woman is imposed on the action as a star and is generally destined to be 'had' by the male lead. But she does not exist as a woman. [...] Usually the woman not only holds up the story but she has no real character no reality. She is a symbol. She is there without any reason to be there simply because one must have a woman [...].(Leone quoted in Frayling 2006 : 129)This critique of women in the American Western seems to imply that the Italian Leone himself tried to depict women differently in his Western movies: either to let them completely out or to provide them with a real character with a reason to be in the film. Is his way of depicting women then prototypical for the other Italian Westerns? Is there maybe even a specific Italian way of representing gender roles in Western movies which is different from that of their American counterparts? In general Western movies have been harshly criticized for their depiction of women. Many authors have argued that the Western in general is a genre that focuses mainly on men and masculinity and leaves only small space with narrow stereotypes for women (see for example Mitchell 1996 Tompkins 1992 French 1997). The research questions are:1) Is there a difference in the gender depiction in Spaghetti Westerns and Hollywood Westerns?2) If there is a difference what are the reasons for this?To answer these questions different theories of gender in movies are addressed in order to give an overview of the approaches towards such a topic. Afterwards the Hollywood and Spaghetti Western in general as well as the gender depictions in them will be theorized. As a first approach to explain the expected differences the focus will be