“Of What Use was the Rule?:” Genre Conventions and
Subversion in Brokeback Mountain and No Country for Old Men
Tony Meyer
The Western genre in American cinema is, according to
Robert Warshow, the genre of “the last gentlemen” (Kitses
26). Starting as the ‘bread-and-butter’ genre of the early
film industry, the Western seeks out a uniquely American
myth by reinforcing the shared cultural assumptions of
Americans. Specifically, Westerns aim to extol the “selfreliant and brave, honorable and loyal” cowboy (24). These
gentlemen cowboys (gentlemen because, as Alex Cox notes,
“men make and own the Western”) have often enjoyed a
hallowed role onscreen and, as a result, hold a largerthan-life role in American culture. They are heroes, true
Americans. But what happens when a film presents cowboys as
less than the mythic heroes of our past culture? In a
recent revival of the Western genre, new films and new
directors have adopted the conventions of the genre and
purposed that the American culture rethink them.
What then makes a Western specifically Western? The
most basic commonality shared by all Westerns is setting.
The narratives take place where one is always on the brink
of nonexistence, a place where death is both ubiquitous and
imminent. The rugged landscapes of mountains and deserts,
although erupting with raw beauty, set the stage for the
drama of the Western with their desolation. It is a place
of “savage joy, offering both ecstasy and torture” (25).
The Western setting contrasts with “back East.” The West
exists outside civilization, and its heroes are often not
so civilized. According to Peter A. French, the JudeoChristian system of values, emblematic of the American
East, is antithetical to the West; the Sermon on the Mount
literally has no haven in the mountains (14). While
Easterners may look for justice in the Second Coming, the
concept is too abstract and out of place in the West where
one’s death is as close as the next drought, rattlesnake,
or rogue gunslinger.
The next commonality between Westerns is an emphasis
on morality. Although one could argue that all films, like
all of literature, are essentially political, and are thus
tales of morality, Westerns engage a specific type of
morality. John Kekes characterizes the morality of Western
films as character morality, measuring a person’s moral
worth solely on the merits of the deeds he or she has done
(French 25). This type of morality is fundamentally opposed
to what Kekes calls choice morality, “an essential
component of the popular view, held by [Immanuel] Kant,
that moral worth and moral merit can and should be
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disassociated” (25). So, the traditional moral code of the
Western is one that draws a line in the sand: either a
character is on the side of justice and egalitarianism or
one is one the side of disorder, corruption, and senseless
violence. Peter A. French suggests that the moral code of
the West essentially operates on a dichotomy of shame
versus honor; and, the path of the hero will always be the
honorable one (96). This is not to say that the heroes of
Westerns cannot enact their morality through violence. On
the contrary, since Stagecoach, the Western has found
heroes in the fictitious outlaw archetype (Coyne 25). The
noble outlaw is a ‘bad good man,’ a gunslinger with a
nobility of purpose and a sense of what is right.
Finally, all Westerns seek to define what it means to
be a hero. This hero is the archetypical Westerner—the Lone
Ranger, the Duke, the Man with No Name, or any one of his
other countless manifestations. He holds certain values to
be true regardless of who he is or what his background
might be. Around the time the Western genre was taking root
in the American cinematic lexicon, Gene Autry introduced
the “Ten Commandments of the Cowboy,” intended to be
guidelines for American youth. With some exceptions, this
moral code still holds true for Western heroes: the cowboy
must not take unfair advantage, must tell the truth, help
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people in distress, be respectful to women and his parents,
be a patriot, etc (Fenin and Everson 21). There have been
countless allusions to the cowboy as a type of contemporary
vassal who desires a chivalrous lifestyle and noble combat
as well. However, the hero in Westerns is not always as
clean-cut. The genre makes ample use of the literary
antihero; in fact, the antiheros of Westerns are usually
more well known than the vassal types. These men are
outsiders from the society which they instinctively
protect. They retain the noble aspirations of heroes, yet
they are not afraid to commit bad acts (e.g. Clint
Eastwood’s portrayal of William Munny in The Unforgiven).
Westerns revel in the notion of a ‘bad good man.’
In order to help cultivate the definition of the hero,
Westerns create the hero’s antithesis in the villains of
the genre. These antagonists essentially believe in the
opposite values of the heroes: they are not afraid to
murder for their own profit, lie, take unfair advantage,
act sadistically and unmercifully, etc. While heroes are
egalitarian, villains are greedy; heroes are sexually
virtuous, and villains are lusty. Inevitably, the hero and
the villain are drawn into conflict with each other, a
battle of the forces of good and those of evil—a conflict
that endeared itself to the American consciousness as early
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as Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (Fenin and Everson 6).
These three emphases of the genre—setting, morality,
and heroism—create the ‘myth’ of the American West, to
which critics often refer, but neglect to define. Some
critics claim, however, that the Western died around the
time of the Vietnam war when Westerns became social
allegory. Howard Suber asserts that “self-reflexivity is
the death of any movement of the arts… What killed the
Western was that it became self-reflexive” (Coyne 29).
Nevertheless, there has been a recent revival in Westerns.
Films like The Unforgiven, Tombstone, The Assassination of
Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and 3:10 to Yuma (a
remake of the 1957 film) have all taken up the themes,
characterization, and aesthetic styles of the Western
genre. What is amazing, however, is that these contemporary
Westerns received esteemed critical praise and propitious
box office sales—could a dead genre really generate such a
positive public response?. Two of the most acclaimed films
of this contemporary revival are Ang Lee’s Brokeback
Mountain (2005) and Joel and Ethan Coen’s No Country for
Old Men (2007). These two films both support and challenge
the past conventions of the genre. Although they belong in
the category of Westerns, they include certain deviations
that bring the genre into question in ways the other films
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of this revival do not.
Brokeback Mountain tells the story of Jack Twist (Jake
Gylenhall) and Ennis Delmar (Heath Ledger), two men of
humble origins who happen to meet one summer when they work
together as sheep herders. During their Indian summer on
the open range, the two fall in love; and, an impassioned
affair begins after a cold night of whiskey drinking in the
mountains where Jack and Ennis “stemmed the rose.” Jack and
Ennis vow to keep their love hidden, however, amidst the
anti-gay hegemony of the West. They both marry and start
families, but manage to occasionally sneak off together on
“fishing” trips. All the while Jack entertains the notion
that he and Ennis might someday fix up a ranch of their own
until he is at last murdered by a posse of anti-gay thugs.
No County for Old Men, on the other hand, entertains a
completely different theme. When Llewelyn Moss (Josh
Brolin) comes upon the site of a post-drug deal massacre
and picks up a satchel of two million dollars, he puts the
film’s tagline into action: “There are no clean getaways.”
A psychopathic hit man, Anton Chigurgh (Javier Bardem),
chases Llewelyn and vows that the satchel will eventually
be placed at his feet. Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee
Jones) and bounty hunter Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson)
track Chigurgh and Moss to try to prevent an inevitable
6
showdown, but both fail. Ed retires, Moss dies under the
guns of Mexican drug runners, and Chigurh murders Wells and
Moss’s wife Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald). In the end, not
even an accidental car crash in which Chigurgh is t-boned
at a red light can bring resolution to the madness of the
film’s plot, as Chigurgh disappears from the scene like a
ghost.
Despite the fact that the narratives of Brokeback
Mountain and No Country for Old Men are quite different
from that of traditional Westerns, the two films make
extensive use of Western genre conventions. For example,
both films use the traditional landscape. In fact, the
opening shot in both films is a long shot of a Western
plain. In Brokeback Mountain, Jack and Ennis spend the
first forty minutes of the film herding sheep under the
peak of a fictitious Wyoming mountain. Jim Kitses claims
that the setting of Brokeback has a national dimension:
“This is the American Wilderness, the grandeur, beauty and
isolation of the setting echoing the language John Ford had
helped to shape with the buttes and mesas of Monument
Valley. It is the world of the pioneer and the nomad… the
vessel that shaped American character” (25). The landscape
of Brokeback Mountain represents for its protagonists the
unbridled freedom often associated with the West. The Coen
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brothers have likewise found a similar proficiency with
setting in No Country for Old Men. However, whereas Lee’s
film basks in the romanticism of the West, the Coen’s
landscape acts as the desolate battlefield for a showdown
between good and evil, a place where, as the title
suggests, a man’s mettle will be tested.
Secondly, according to the criteria for the Western
myth, both films deal with a system of morality unique to
the West. No Country for Old Men, for example, explores the
nature of morality most notably through the actions and
philosophy of Chigurgh. Wells says at one point that
Chigurgh is a “man of principles,” and Chigurgh himself
says that he just wants to hold Moss accountable for his
actions. The viewer looks to Bell, the sheriff, to draw a
line in the sand: to assign the roles of the good and the
bad guys, then bring the bad to justice. The moral issues
in Brokeback Mountain take a different direction. The film
questions the moral nature of the society surrounding the
gay cowboys. There is a clear allusion to the fact that the
morally sound action for Ennis is not to hide his sexual
identity, as a true cowboy has the courage to stand alone.
Both Brokeback Mountain and No Country for Old Men
attempt to define what it means to be a hero. Lee includes
a famous shot of Ennis framed in front of Independence Day
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fireworks after he beats up two foul-mouthed bikers in his
Brokeback Mountain. As mentioned, Jack is a truly
courageous hero in that he will not be stifled by forces
opposed to his identity. No Country for Old Men offers a
succession of possible heroes to oppose the antagonist,
Chigurgh. First Moss suggests that he could be the ‘ultima
hombre,’ or the last man standing. Then the viewer looks
towards Sheriff Bell as the archetypical lawman. Finally,
the Coens present Wells as a type of shady antihero, whose
insider knowledge of the evil forces at work could stop
Chigurgh.
Although Brokeback Mountain and No Country for Old Men
do engage the mythos of the Western, there are certain
deviations to the plot, characters, and themes which
suggest that the films do not entirely fall into the genre.
The Coen’s film, for instance, makes some attempts to avoid
the classification of Western by relying heavily on
conventions of the noir and crime drama genres; but, the
film based on Cormac McCarthy’s novel is as essential to
the canon of Westerns as The Searchers. Lee, on the other
hand, fervently claims that his film is not a Western; its
universality as a love story proves it otherwise (Clarke
and Gilbey). Nevertheless, the manners in which his film
deviates from traditional Westerns provides the viewer with
9
a new, provocative take on the genre. Some of these
deviations are major and some are minor, yet they all
represent the fact that these films are cognizant of the
conventions of the genre.
For example, the plotlines of No Country for Old Men
and Brokeback Mountain deviate from that of traditional
Westerns. Although notable Western theorist Jon Tuska might
classify No Country as a Lawman story (often put together
with his concept of a Justice/Revenge theme to “raise all
manner of legal and moral issues”), the plotline of the
film follows anything but the traditional paradigm. The
Coens introduce the film as though it might be a lawman
story. Bell’s opening monologue sets the tone from the
start: “I was sheriff of this country when I was twentyfive years old. Hard to believe. My grandfather was a
lawman; father too. Me and him was sheriff’s at the same
time… I think he’s pretty proud of that. I know I was.” So,
it seems that the traditional maxim of lawmen—justice even
if it costs your life—might influence the plot. However,
even in this same monologue (which functions as a microcosm
of the larger plot of the film) Bell transitions from
talking about “the oldtimers” to talking about current
crimes. Bell says that “the crime you see now, it’s hard to
even take its measure. It’s not that I’m afraid of it. I
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always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this
job. But, I don’t want to push my chips forward and go out
and meet something I don’t understand. A man would have to
put his soul at hazard. He’d have to say, ‘O.k., I’ll be
part of this world.” Here Bell implies that the world of No
Country for Old Men is not as simple as the world of the
oldtimers: in his own words, some issues are not certain.
The most notable deviation in the plot of No Country
is that no one catches the killer. Traditional Westerns
always end with justice preserved. However, No Country ends
with Chigurgh walking away from a violent car crash and
Bell retiring because he “feels overmatched.” Even in one
of the most tense scenes in the film—in which Bell returns
to the scene of Moss’s death on a classic lawman’s hunch—he
cannot find Chigurgh. Bell notices the shot-out doorknob,
Chigurgh’s calling card, and then the unscrewed air vent.
There is a shot of Chigurgh hiding, presumably in a closet,
mere feet away; yet still something prevents Bell from
finding the killer. Traditional Westerns prepare the viewer
for an inevitable final showdown between good and evil.
However, although the first half of No Country might prime
the viewer for such a showdown, it is fundamentally absent
from the plot. There is no resolution between Chigurgh and
Moss, who is eventually killed by Mexican drug runners,
11
even though both promised to kill the other at one time.
Similarly, Carson Wells joins the conflict, presumably only
to return the satchel of money to its nameless corporate
owners, yet he is killed before he can restore any order to
the plot. In the end, no hero rides off into the sunset. No
Country for Old Men denies one a standard genre plot
seemingly with every new scene transition.
In Brokeback Mountain, there are also significant
deviations from a traditional Western plot. Although there
have been attempts to make Westerns with gay heroes, such
as Andy Warhol’s underground film Lonesome Cowboys (1967),
Brokeback Mountain is the first such film with mainstream
success. Immediately following its release, B. Ruby Rich
praised the film as a gay breakthrough saying: “With utter
audacity, Ang Lee… has taken on the most sacred of American
genres, the Western, and queered it” (Clarke and Gilbey).
So, it may be a big deal that this Western has gay heroes.
Brokeback takes a genre that has always been “a tad gay,”
with its emphasis on homosocial bonding between men, and
brings it out of the closet (Clarke and Gilbey). Indeed,
this fact incites Clarke and Gibley to label an overtly gay
cowboy film as “the last Hollywood taboo.” However, the
real triumph of the film is in its depoliticizing of the
cowboy’s love—as Jack says, “It’s nobody’s business but
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ours.” Brokeback Mountain is not an ‘issue movie.’ It seems
as if this depoliticizing is Lee’s motivation for insisting
that the film has little to do with Westerns, that it is in
fact a love story.
However, Lee’s motivation for making the film does not
reconcile the fact that he places his love story smack in
the middle of a century of genre conventions about the
American West. Also, there are in fact Western love stories
(although it is important to mention that these love
stories are usually secondary storylines amidst traditional
Western motifs). Nevertheless, Brokeback’s plot deviates
from these too. In a Western, the plot inevitably favors
the “good guys.” In a lawman story, this takes the form of
the lawman defeating the bad guy; in a love story, it is
the protagonist and his sweetheart finally being together,
despite all obstacles. Ennis and Jack, however, never end
up together. They are pushed apart; and, the emblem of
their love, Brokeback Mountain, is reduced to nothing more
than a picture on a postcard by the conclusion of the film.
The ultimate cause for their separation is the
stigmatization of homosexuality in their Western society, a
stigmatization that hits home for Ennis when he relates the
story of the gruesome mutilation of an older gay man by a
group of men among whom, he suspects, his father ranked.
13
Ennis’s fear prevents him from opening up completely to
Jack; Jack repeats in frustrated impotence that they could
have had a great life together. So, there are in a sense
two important deviations from a traditional Western plot.
First (a minor deviation, all things considered), the
heroes are gay. And second, the lovers don’t end up
together in the conclusion.
No Country for Old Men and Brokeback Mountain are
great films in part because of their ability to develop
complex characters. These characters are deviations from
traditional characterizations found in the Western genre;
but they seem to be truer to human nature. This
characterization is problematic because the viewer must
deal the baggage of expectations for such Western
characters. For instance, in No Country, there is a certain
expectation for the sheriff. He is supposed to preserve
justice. Not only should he preserve the line in the sand,
he should know what it looks like and who stands on what
side. Sheriff Ed Tom Bell can discern neither. He instead
figures out his role in the conflict as the film unfolds.
This characterization is unusual in Westerns: not often is
a sheriff alienated by the crime he is supposed to solve.
Furthermore, Bell is more than a little apprehensive about
“pushing his chips in;” he is plain scared, an emotion the
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Western hero will always overcome.
Similarly, Lewelyn Moss defies traditional
characterizations. One might equate his role to that of the
‘bad good man’ found in Westerns, the gritty antihero whose
craftiness and willingness to break some of the rules while
maintaining a nobility of purpose will eventually prove him
victorious (e.g. Ethan Edwards in John Ford’s The
Searchers). However, Moss does not fill this role. The
Coens portray him as impotent against Chigurgh’s onslaught.
The viewer wants to believe that Moss will make Chigurgh a
“special project” of his, but the viewer knows this is an
empty threat. Moss may not lack the tenacity of the ‘ultima
hombre,’ but he does not have the luck, as his abrupt death
proves.
Finally, the psychopathic killer in No Country for Old
Men—compared at one point to the bubonic plague—Anton
Chigurgh truly defies any previous villain archetypes in
Westerns. Perhaps this villain is so dangerous because he
does not operate under a traditional sense of morality. He
does not choose to be bad; he chooses a different system
entirely. Wells describes Chigurgh’s notion of morality to
Moss at one point: “You don’t understand. You can’t make a
deal with him. Even if you gave him the money he’d still
kill you just for inconveniencing him. He’s a peculiar man.
15
You could even say he has principles. Principles that
transcend money, or drugs, or anything like that. He’s not
like you. He’s not even like me.” Chigurgh’s moral code is
the antithesis of the Westerner’s code, which could be
described as one based on monetary justice, according to
Wells’s words. Whereas the viewer might expect the villain
to play within the limits of the rules of Westerns (or at
least the rules concerning the role of Western
antagonists), Chigurgh has made up his own rules, as he
tells Wells before he kills him: “If the rule you followed
brought you to this, of what use was the rule?”
The characterization of the cowboys in Brokeback
Mountain is likewise deviant from traditional expectations
of Westerners. The cowboy is a character able to control
his fear; he will not let his fear overtake him. Brokeback
presents Ennis as very susceptible to his emotions. The
shot of Ennis bent over in pain after he has to leave Jack
and reenter the Western world demonstrates this. Throughout
the film Ennis desires to hide his sexual identity. He
almost acquiesces to his society’s beliefs about gay men.
However, the traditional expectation for the cowboy is
quite the contrary. The viewer expects Ennis to be countercultural. A cowboy must always fight for justice in the
world. Jack is a true cowboy (even if he is merely a rodeo
16
cowboy in real life—and a bad one at that). He has the
courage to live without shame, even if it eventually costs
him his life.
There is something remarkable about these
characterizations. As mentioned, the characters are much
more human than archetypical Western heroes. Although the
viewer might expect Bell to have the villain figured out
and be willing to “put his soul at hazard,” Tommy Lee Jones
portrays Bell as a normal man. Jones gives the viewer the
hero from The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, not The
Fugitive. This comes through when Bell is talking to his
uncle Ellis. Bell is afraid of his own mortality. He feels
alienated by the landscape and “overmatched” by the
villain. The characterization of Ennis is likewise
humanistic. It is natural to be afraid and aware of one’s
own mortal nature. What is truly remarkable about these two
characterizations is that instead of giving the viewer the
traditional Western hero, who inevitably wins, the viewer
sees his own fallible self in the characters on screen.
Finally, the themes of No Country for Old Men and
Brokeback Mountain deviate from those of the Western genre.
It is as though the themes of these films are the exact
inverse of what one might expect. For instance, if the
traditional theme is justice, No Country’s theme is a lack
17
thereof. If the Western theme is courage, then the theme
presented in Brokeback is fear. Whereas once there was a
last man standing, now there are no men standing. If
traditional Westerns emphasize the grandeur and freedom of
the landscape, Brokeback brings out its emptiness, with
Ennis’s trailer standing as its
emblem. If traditional
Westerns seek to define heroes, these films wish to portray
regular men.
Because of the deviations in their plots,
characterizations, and themes, Brokeback Mountain and No
Country for Old Men are cognizant of the conventions of
their genre and are therefore possible examples of a type
of postmodern Western. The postmodern Western is one that
recognizes that the audience of Westerns has certain
expectations for the film. These expectations cover
literally every aspect of the film: in addition to those
previously mentioned these include sound and score, miseen-scène, camera work, thematics, and many more. The
expectations are all based on previous movies of the genre.
Although they are often subversive, it may be more apt to
define the postmodern Western as a film in conversation
with the expectations of its genre. These films do not
merely choose to reject or defend the conventions of the
genre. Instead they ask viewers to reconsider the myth of
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the West. An interesting two-way relationship exists: the
films of the past determine what deviations these postWesterns will make, and the post-Westerns affect how the
viewer will in turn view the old classics. For example,
does the heroism of John Wayne look too theatrical or
contrived when one considers Tommy Lee Jones’s portrayal of
Ed Tom Bell?
Lee’s Brokeback Mountain and the Coen Brothers’ No
Country for Old Men share a similar agenda—to move past the
traditional motifs of the Western genre and in doing so
create a type of post-Western film. They bring the
expectations of the genre into question. This type of
questioning seems not unrelated to Anton Chigurgh’s cryptic
question to Carson Wells: “If the rule you followed brought
you to this, of what use was the rule?” Could he have been
referring to the Western genre itself?
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Works Cited
Clarke, Roger and Ryan Gilbey. “Lonesome Cowboys.” Sight
and Sound. 16.1 (2006):
28-42, 50-51.
Coyne, Michael. The Crowded Prairie. London: I.B. Tauris &
Co Ltd., 1997.
Everson, William K. and George N. Fenin. The Western: from
Silents to Seventies. New
York: Grossman P, 1973.
French, Peter A. Cowboy Metaphysics: Ethics and Death in
Westerns. Lanham: Rowman
& Littlefield, Inc., 1997.
Kitses, Jim. “All that Brokeback Allows.” Film Quarterly.
60.3 (2007): 22-27.
Tuska, Jon. The American West in Film: Critical Approaches
to the Western. Westport:
Greenwood P, 1985.
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