What Are The Similarities Between Shane And Pale Rider

10 Shane

A mysterious horseman appears from nowhere and befriends the decent, hard-working people of a small, remote town in the old west. On the run from an unhappy past - all we ever learn is that he's been a gunfighter and he wants to get out of the business of killing. He befriends a family; a woman, a man and a child; who take him in and offer him honest work - the new life away from his dark past that he has been longing for. He develops special bonds with each family member; the respect of the man, the adoration of the woman, the awe of the child. Further; he shares his wisdom and values with their entire community - explaining that if they stick together and stand for what they believe in; they can live the lives they want. As the
Circumstance and loyalty ultimately draw our hero back to his bad old ways. He is involved in a barroom brawl and a climactic shootout, where he overcomes the adversaries of his new friends. Having rediscovered his inner-demons and used them to save the day, our hero rides off into the sunset by his lonesome self. The films Shane and Pale Rider can both be summarised by this exact same synopsis. These classic western films, made decades apart, tell practically the same story. What is fascinating in the comparison of these two films is that the similarities between them are offset by the distinct differences; many of which are related to the times in which they were made. Having been made in 1953 (Shane) and 1985 (Pale Rider); the makers of each film used significantly different gender roles for some of the major characters in the story to appeal to different audiences, and had access to very different technologies to create
Turning Joey into a teenage girl makes the hero to child relationship extremely different. When Joey tells Shane he loves him, it is a statement of respect and admiration; a belief in Shane as a role model and an endorsement of the pure frontier values he represents. In Pale Rider, such sentiments are replayed, but in a highly sexualised tenor. Megan even goes so far as to ask Pale Rider to marry her when she turns fifteen, and to show her the ways of physical love. In this way, she seeks to learn from the Preacher in the same way as Joey does from Shane but the child-like innocence of the boy's gaze is lost amidst an adult interest in sex. In one sense, what is displayed is perhaps a comment upon the effects of the sixties, that family values and traditional sensibility has suffered because of the because of free love and rebellion. However, another reading of this would suggest that this concern with family offers a version of America that is in chaos, a place where traditional roles, whether they are gender roles or heroic models, are no longer stable. The simply mythology of the Western is now more complex, the mythology is no longer as universal, innocence is no longer a given. These specific differences in the gender roles of the characters between the films could be seen as a direct result of the era's in which each film was made. The film makers of each