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Setting the Stage for Justice
in the Revenge Genre Film
by Dean Hitesman
"Revenge" genre films
tend to fit into neat little schemes. The storyline will involve
the protagonist being wronged, usually in the first half of the
movie, and the rest of the film will be a portrayal of this hero,
or avenger, taking the law into their own hands to exact vengeance
on those who have crossed him. The audience undergoes a great
sense of satisfaction when vengeance is finally delivered because
the audience has been brought on board with the avenger's cause
and agree that what he had to do to exact vengeance is justified.
It is necessary for the avenger to take the law in his own hands
because the legal system in which the revenge genre film takes
place is either perfidious and corrupt, or simply ineffectual
and unable to uphold justice. An incompetent legal order is essential
to our accepting the revenge genre film.
 The 1936 Joseph Kane western film,
King of the Pecos, tells such a story of revenge. In the
beginning of the film, the antagonist trio of an exploiting capitalist
Alexander Stiles, his lawyer Brewster, and his killer Ash take
title to strategic watering holes between Texas and the Kansas
cattle markets in order to gain control of a million acre empire.
One of the key watering hole locations, that of Sweetwater, is
located on land owned by a man who has settled there with his
wife and their teenage son. When the man refuses Stiles' offer
of one thousand dollars to buy the land, the man and his wife
are shot, and the teenage son is brutally beaten up and left
for dead.
Ten years pass and the boy, John Clayborn, who of course did
not die, has become a man and a lawyer, played by John Wayne.
He ends up representing a large group of independent cattle owners
and takes on Stiles, represented by Brewster, in a civil trial
aimed at gaining access to the water holes controlled by Stiles
without having to pay the exorbitant tolls he demands. The Court
finds that, based on homestead laws, Stiles is only entitled
to one of his water hole claims, that of Sweetwater. Brewster
is fired by Stiles for losing the trial.
The setting of the film being the late nineteenth century western
frontier, law enforcement is undeveloped. Despite his losing
of the legal trial, there is inadequate legal order to prevent
Stiles from using force. No longer able to control the rancher's
cattle through the watering holes, Stiles orders Ash and his
men to gather all of their cattle by force. To escape Stiles
and his men, Clayborn organizes the ranchers into a mass cattle
drive that must stop in Sweetwater on its way to Abilene. When
Stiles refuses access to Sweetwater, Clayborn and the ranchers
kill Stiles and Ash in much the same fashion that Clayborn's
parents were murdered years before. The young lawyer's revenge
is complete, and he needed to use force beyond law in order to
extract it.
King of the Pecos is not alone among westerns in its portrayal
of justice. "Countless westerns not only from the thirties
but from every decade deal either with the struggle between frontier
anarchy and emerging social order or with the struggle between
an evolved but unjust social order and the felt need to set things
right by taking the law into one's own hands."(1)
The untamed setting of the western film is ideal for the revenge
genre as the inept legal order allows for the avenger to uphold
his own sense of justice when seeking vengeance with minimal
hampering from law enforcement.
 Such is the setting in another
story of revenge that is found in the more recent western Unforgiven
which Clint Eastwood both stars in and directed. Eastwood plays
the role of William Munny, a once ruthless killing cowboy, who
has been tamed by his wife into a domesticated rancher and father
of two. However, as the film begins we discover that Munny has
fallen on hard times as his wife has passed of smallpox, and
the life of a pig farmer has proved difficult. Munny becomes
attracted to a bounty that has been placed on the life of two
cowboys by the prostitutes in the town of Big Whisky - punishment
for their cutting the face of one of the working girls.
The sheriff of Big Whisky, Little Bill, characterizes the film's
underdeveloped and largely ineffective law enforcement. He offers
to sentence the two cowboys to being whipped, but this proves
unsatisfactory to both the whores and to owner of the brothel,
Skinny, although for different reasons. The prostitutes do not
see a mere whipping as being just punishment for something as
gruesome and permanently scaring as the cutting of one's face.
A whipping would not cause the cowboys to suffer enough for justice
to be served. For Skinny, his interest is purely economical,
and a scarred whore is of much less value to him. Thus when Little
Bill changes the punishment to the payment of ponies to Skinny,
Skinny is satisfied to have recovered his economic loss, while
the prostitutes feel the need to take the law into their own
hands by putting the bounty out on the two cowboys' lives.
While it is the prostitutes who are seeking revenge, the audience
does not get the strong feeling of this being a 'revenge' genre
film until later when Munny's good friend Ned, with whom he is
seeking the bounty, is captured and killed by Little Bill. While
we do feel some sense of justice is being inflicted on the two
cowboys by the prostitutes' bounty, and we get the sense the
Munny does too, death does seem a bit excessive for what they
have done. What makes Unforgiven a compelling movie is
that it is not a clear cut case of good vs. evil as in King
of the Pecos. The movie going audience has perhaps matured
beyond the westerns of the 1930s, demanding movies that force
them to reflect on them afterwards. Little Bill is not all bad.
He does make attempts to uphold the law, but we resent him for
his treatment of the prostitutes as property, and we find his
whipping and killing of Ned, a character who is developed in
the film and whom we like, to be unwarranted and savage. Unlike
King of the Pecos, it is an imperfect story of revenge.
This theme is perfectly portrayed through Eastwood's character
who himself is cynical of justice in the world. He says the incongruous
line of "deserves got nothing to do with it" to Little
Bill just before killing him as revenge for killing Ned, something
Munny clearly did feel he deserved. Munny has developed this
contemptuous stance towards justice through the events of his
own life. A one time ruthless killer of women and children, "the
fact that no one ever brought him to justice for his past evil
deeds, makes him think the delivery of justice purely random,
a matter of luck."(2) He sees himself
as much more deserving of an early death from smallpox than his
wife. The audience feels a sense of satisfaction when Munny shoots
Little Bill, however that satisfaction is hindered by a sense
of uneasiness that is not present in the much more simplistic
good vs. evil of King of the Pecos.
William Ian Miller in his paper, Clint Eastwood and Equity:
Popular Culture's Theory of Revenge (3),
asserts a class-based analysis of revenge. He describes an "antihonor,
antirevenge political and moral discourse" in which revenge
has been rejected by the upper classes as being "vulgar
and unfashionable". This is not to say, according to Miller,
that the upper classes were no longer concerned with getting
even, rather "their revenges were transmuted and took place
in economic arenas and in routine social activities like gossip
and slighting rather than face-to-face confrontation." Miller
attributes much of this discourse to a distinction that developed
between revenge and retribution. While revenge came to be seen
as improper, retribution remained justifiable. The distinction
was premised on restitution being "a respectable reason
for punishment of wrongs, administered as it must by the state
in a controlled, proportional fashion", while in contrast
revenge is "portrayed as crazed, uncontrolled, subjective,
individual, admitting no reason, no rule of limitation."
Miller discredits this view and contends that in fact, there
is no difference between revenge and retribution. The proponents
of this division are attempting to set up an actual philosophical
distinction. Their goal is to legitimate state punishment as
being retribution and in order to do this it had to be distanced
from revenge. Miller claims we are repressed, and revenge continues
to live inside of us as "fantasies of getting even, of dominating,
of discomforting those we envy".
One way we live out these fantasies is through the revenge genre
film, such as the two western films previously discussed. This
observation forces one to pose the question as to why the revenge
genre film so typically involves the one seeking reprisal taking
matters into their own hands rather than relying on the law.
An easy answer for the western film is that the setting of undeveloped
law enforcement dictates that this is the only way justice can
be upheld, however I would argue that a better answer would be
that it is the revenge genre that dictates the setting. The revenge
genre is best served by a setting where legal order is either
undeveloped, incompetent, corrupt, or most commonly some combination
thereof. The reason is that this allows the hero of the film
to seek out his revenge without being judged by the audience
as being "vulgar and unfashionable", or perhaps more
appropriately, allows the audience to live out their fantasy
of revenge vicariously through the film without a sense of guilt
for their feelings of satisfaction. The film's avenger cannot
be judged for his acts of revenge, the lawless setting leaves
no alternative, and there is no state to administer 'retribution'.
 Perhaps a perfect contrasting
example to the revenge genre western is that of the film Seven.
The film is not a western, and thus does not take place amidst
a wild, untamed, and lawless setting, but rather in the present
day, legal-rule-filled modern world. The film follows a young
detective as he desperately tries to capture a ruthless killer
who is punishing each the seven deadly sins of gluttony, greed,
sloth, envy, wrath, pride, and lust by systematically murdering
those he sees as possessing them. In a dramatic conclusion, once
the killer is captured, he reveals to the detective that he has
murdered the young man's wife. The killer explains that since
he himself envied the normal life of the detective, it seemed
fair that he himself becomes the victim of envy. He then begs
the dispirited and anguished detective to give in to his anger
and desire for revenge by killing him on the spot, an obviously
illegal act by a peace officer in our justice system. The detective
tries desperately to fight his emotions, but he cannot restrain
his anger and eventually obliges by shooting the killer, becoming
the last of the victims, guilty of the sin of wrath. The final
scene shows the young detective being taken away in a police
car, certain to be disciplined by the justice system for his
act. The film Seven does not serve us as a revenge fantasy.
The audience, despite being sympathetic towards the detective,
is left with the feeling that he made a mistake by giving in
to his emotions and completing the killer's masterpiece of the
seven deadly sins, ruining his own life in the process. While
the first six sins, including that of envy by the serial killer
himself, were punished by murder, the seventh sin of wrath contained
in the young detective's revenge is punished by the law.
The modern world is no place for revenge fuelled by emotion.
We expect our anger to be repressed; we consider it a sin when
it is not. One must ask why, then, we are continuously drawn
to revenge genre films to fulfill our fantasies of vengeance.
If we consider revenge to be so vulgar and unfashionable, why
do we feel such pleasure when the avenger is finally successful
at the end of the film, instead of scorning him for his crazed
and uncontrolled conduct? I feel much of an answer can be found
in the settings of these films. We are willing to forgive vengeful
conduct that takes place amidst an undeveloped legal system,
where there is no state to administer punishment in a controlled,
proportional fashion. But not in our modern world of judges and
lawyers, laws and courts that uphold them, all apparently free
of emotion.
If one's conduct does not warrant anger or outrage, for what
are we punishing? When someone is asked whether justice was served,
do they not question whether they feel the guilty party got what
they deserved? The truth is that justice is as much an emotion
as it is a legal principle, as to inflict punishment for an act
that does not give rise in anyone a sense of anger or outrage
is the real sin.
(1)
Francis M. Nevins, "Through the Great Depression on Horseback:
Legal Themes in Western Films of the 1930s" in J. Denvir,
ed., Legal Reelism: Movies as Legal Texts (Chicago: University
of Illinois Press, 1996) 44 at 64.
(2) William I. Miller, "Clint Eastwood and Equity: Popular
Culture's Theory of Revenge", in A. Sarat and T. Kearns
eds., Law in the Domains of Culture (Ann Arbor: U. of Minnesota
Press, 2000) 161 at 195.
(3) Ibid. at 161.
Posted February 10, 2005
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