However, there are other scripts to follow. Sam Peckinpah's 1969 groundbreaking The Wild Bunch provides an ominous reductio ad absurdum of the traditional western format. The heroes are thieves who get involved in the politics of another country simply for their own gain. The end is not safety but carnage. "Peckinpah's shrewdest insight lay in recognizing how essential to the western a form of moral self-deception has always been," writes Lee Clarke Mitchell. Cowboy ethics always leads to death.

Giles Fraser is the vicar of Putney and lecturer in philosophy at Wadham College, Oxford. giles.fraser@parishofputney.co.uk

Originally Published on Wednesday, October 23, 2002 by the Guardian/UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk
Reprinted with the author’s permission.
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002