The Importance Of Non-Verbal Communication In The Stagecoach

797 Words2 Pages

The Stagecoach, a critically acclaimed film, which followed the adventures of a group of unlikely and unfortunate passengers escaping from the brutality of Geronimo’s Apache warriors, established the precedent of the classic Western movie, containing crucial Western archetypical elements such as Ringo the Kid that has not hardly changed today. Furthermore, Stagecoach espoused social issues of the time by including passengers of varied social status and standing and emphasizing on such interactions that cross the rigidly defined and impermeable social divides at the time. The iconic movie was produced during the transition between silent films and films with spoken dialogue, and the remnants of the former film style are conspicuous throughout the film. Although explicit and spoken plot was crucial for the storyline, non-verbal communication offered implicit cues to attentive
Dallas was coerced onto the stagecoach, shamed and disgraced as a prostitute, which immediately puts her underneath the likes of Ms. Mallory. This discrepancy in social status and standing is evident through most of the film as Ms. Mallory constantly and condescendingly deflects Dallas’ amiable behavior and considerations. This is seen when Ms. Mallory discovers that her husband has been dispatched to a different city and denies any assistance offered by Dallas. Moreover, Ms. Mallory’s non-verbal communications with Dallas comes off rude and inconsiderate, most likely due to Dallas’ low social standing as a

Show More
Related

  • Cowboys in Kilts: The Failure of the Scenic in Rob Roy & Braveheart

    2775 Words  | 6 Pages

    My analysis begins, as it will end, where most cowboy movies begin and end, with the landscape.Western heroes are essentially synedoches for that landscape, and are identifiable by three primary traits: first, they represent one side of an opposition between the supposed purity of the frontier and the degeneracy of the city, and so are separated even alienated from civilization; second, they insist on conducting themselves according to a personal code, to which they stubbornly cling despite all opposition or hardship to themselves or others; and third, they seek to shape their psyches and even their bodies in imitation of the leanness, sparseness, hardness, infinite calm and merciless majesty of the western landscape in which their narratives unfold.All of these three traits are present in the figures of Rob Roy and William Wallace--especially their insistence on conducting themselves according to a purely personal definition of honor--which would seem to suggest that the films built around them and their exploits could be read as transplanted westerns.However, the transplantation is the problem for, while the protagonists of these films want to be figures from a classic western, the landscape with which they are surrounded is so demonstrably not western that it forces their narratives into shapes which in fact resist and finally contradict key heroic tropes of the classic western.

    Read More

  • Analysis of "The Thematic Paradigm"

    1403 Words  | 3 Pages

    John Ford’s classic American Western film, Stagecoach (1939) shows many examples of political life and social behavior during it’s time. The plot is about nine travelers onboard a stagecoach from Tonto, Arizona to Lordsburg, New Mexico Territory. In the beginning, the passengers of the Stagecoach are unfamiliar with each other. However, their relationships grow as they get to know each other during their journey. Each character claims a different social position.

    Read More

  • Local-Color Regionalism in Tennessees Partner

    690 Words  | 2 Pages

    Such talk effectively captures the typical conversation of the Old West and the Gold Rush and gives the reader a feeling of authenticity. Tennessee’s speech is similar, though not nearly as rough. Although not one hand of poker was played throughout the entire story, Tennessee revealed, through his use of words in his every...

    Read More

  • Stagecoach Movie Conflict

    1394 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the film Stagecoach, the group of individual of differing social standings and classes convene as group of passenger in their journey, attempting to avoid Apache warriors. While each passenger had their own motivations for their journey – some with honorable circumstances such as finding their spouse, and others with less honorable circumstances, such as being forced out of town due to alcoholism or prostitution. Regardless of their backgrounds and context and their motivations, this group of passengers, through the relentless challenges they faced throughout their journey from Tonto to Lordsburg. Although they were coerced to work together under the threat of death from Apache warriors, the team that the passengers formed in Stagecoach

    Read More

  • Irreconcilable Realities, an Essay Written by Aaron M. Kenrner

    1416 Words  | 3 Pages

    Bernstein, Matthew. “The Classical Hollywood Western Par Excellence.” Film Analysis: A Norton Reader. Eds. Jeffrey Geiger and R.L. Rutsky. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2nd edition, 2013. 298-318.

    Read More

  • Comparison of Characters in Aphra Behn’s The Fair Jilt and Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa

    2419 Words  | 5 Pages

    Superficially the characters Clarissa Harlowe and Miranda seem, not only to be extremely different, but complete opposites. Clarissa is an exemplary model of virtue and goodness. Samuel Richardson presents her as a chaste and innocent daughter. She is forced from her duty by a conniving brother into the arms of a manipulative man. She is the victim. Miranda is the villain of The Fair Jilt. Aphra Behn portrays her as a woman who knows what she wants and will do anything to get it, including murder. Miranda has no regard for family and is driven only by her desire for quality. On first reading, it seems that Miranda is manipulative and Clarissa is being manipulated. However, if one looks closely at these two characters, it becomes clear that they have a great deal in common. Both women are strong, intelligent and independent. Lack of parental control influences both of them, as do the inheritances they both receive from deceased family members. The characters of Clarissa Harlowe and Miranda, although strikingly different, are also revealingly similar.

    Read More

  • Film Analysis Of Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider

    1561 Words  | 4 Pages

    By adapting the standard Hollywood ‘road’ movie narrative (east to west), incorporating modern music as non-diegetic sound and utilizing shocking scenes – both socially and in terms of ignoring every written and unwritten filming law - Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider stands as a testament to the changes going on in the US during the late 1960s and creates a certain distance to the previous way of seeing America.

    Read More

  • Peter Taylor's The Old Forest

    3120 Words  | 7 Pages

    Instead, she is background noise in his quest for individual knowledge and self-awareness in the changing Memphis community. Nat only refers to her as “the society girl I was going to marry” (254) and puts her into an early category of the “innocent, untutored types that we generally took to dance at the Memphis Country Club and whom we eventually looked forward to marrying” (250).... ... middle of paper ... ...

    Read More

  • The Gunslinger Hero

    2224 Words  | 5 Pages

    Somewhere out in the Old West wind kicks up dust off a lone road through a lawless town, a road once dominated by men with gun belts attached at the hip, boots upon their feet and spurs that clanged as they traversed the dusty road. The gunslinger hero, a man with a violent past and present, a man who eventually would succumb to the progress of the frontier, he is the embodiment of the values of freedom and the land the he defends with his gun. Inseparable is the iconography of the West in the imagination of Americans, the figure of the gunslinger is part of this iconography, his law was through the gun and his boots with spurs signaled his arrival, commanding order by way of violent intentions. The Western also had other iconic figures that populated the Old West, the lawman, in contrast to the gunslinger, had a different weapon to yield, the law. In the frontier, his belief in law and order as well as knowledge and education, brought civility to the untamed frontier. The Western was and still is the “essential American film genre, the cornerstone of American identity.” (Holtz p. 111) There is a strong link between America’s past and the Western film genre, documenting and reflecting the nations changes through conflict in the construction of an expanding nation. Taking the genres classical conventions, such as the gunslinger, and interpret them into the ideology of America. Thus The Western’s classical gunslinger, the personification of America’s violent past to protect the freedoms of a nation, the Modernist takes the familiar convention and buries him to signify that societies attitude has change towards the use of diplomacy, by way of outmoding the gunslinger in favor of the lawman, taming the frontier with civility.

    Read More

  • The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

    811 Words  | 2 Pages

    A more modern outlook on the film recognizes the film's flaws but gives it, it’s credit as the last fully realized work of one of the most important directors in American cinema history. Ford understood that an audience's recollections of older, less complex Westerns would add a layer of expressiveness to the viewing experience. The black-and-white structure helps him achieve this. Ford’s decision to shoot the film in black and white in 1962 produced a dark, anachronistic look, while the unconcealed soundstage effects of the film’s opening scene reinforced Ford’s vision of a wilderness, interiored Western frontier. Just as Ford intended, many of the flashback scenes are masked in darkness, whereas the frame tale is immersed in light. This con...

    Read More

  • Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid Analysis

    765 Words  | 2 Pages

    Frederick Jackson Turner was largely influential in determining Americans’ perceptions of the West. While tracing the history of the American frontier from white settlement to a gradual disappearance in his essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” (1893), Turner extolled the American West as a hearth for democracy and other “forces dominating American character” (3). He supports this view by hyperbolically describing the frontier’s effects on settlers, “immigrants were Americanized, liberated, and fused into a mixed race, English in neither nationality nor characteristics” (23). Notably, Turner wrote his essay as a response to the 1890 census’ declaration that the western frontier had become settled land. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is set in the late 19th century after the publication of Turner’s essay. The film shows the final stages of the romanticized West’s disappearance evidenced by the two thieves, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid, struggling to find places for themselves in the modernizing

    Read More

  • The Cowboy Image

    2208 Words  | 5 Pages

    The image of the cowboy as Jennifer Moskowitz notes in her article “The Cultural Myth of the Cowboy, or, How the West was Won” is “uniquely

    Read More

  • The Good The Bad And The Ugly

    1767 Words  | 4 Pages

    Western films are the major defining genre of the American film industry, a eulogy to the early days of the expansive American frontier. They are one of the oldest, most enduring and flexible genres and one of the most characteristically American genres in their mythic origins - they focus on the West - in North America. Western films have also been called the horse opera, the oater (quickly-made, short western films which became as common place as oats for horses), or the cowboy picture. The western film genre has portrayed much about America's past, glorifying the past-fading values and aspirations of the mythical by-gone age of the West. Over time, westerns have been re-defined, re-invented and expanded, dismissed, re-discovered, and spoofed. But, most western movies ideas derived from characteristics known to the Native Americans and Mexicans way before the American culture knew about it. What you probably know as a good old western American movie originated from a culture knows as vaqueros (cowboys for Spanish). They are many misrepresentations of cultures and races shown throughout movies from as early as 1920's with silent films. Although one could argue that silent film era was more politically correct then now a day films, the movie industry should not have the right of misrepresenting cultures of Mexicans, Indians and there life styles in films known as western films.

    Read More

  • Similarities, Differences and Connections between two Western Movies: Rio Bravo and El Dorado

    1525 Words  | 4 Pages

    Few Hollywood film makers have captured America’s Wild West history as depicted in the movies, Rio Bravo and El Dorado. Most Western movies had fairly simple but very similar plots, including personal conflicts, land rights, crimes and of course, failed romances that typically led to drinking more alcoholic beverages than could respectfully be consumed by any one person, as they attempted to drown their sorrows away. The 1958 Rio Bravo and 1967 El Dorado Western movies directed by Howard Hawks, and starring John Wayne have a similar theme and plot. They tell the story of a sheriff and three of his deputies, as they stand alone against adversity in the name of the law. Western movies like these two have forever left a memorable and lasting impressions in the memory of every viewer, with its gunfighters, action filled saloons and sardonic showdowns all in the name of masculinity, revenge and unlawful aggressive behavior. Featuring some of the most famous backdrops in the world ranging from the rustic Red Rock Mountains of Monument Valley in Utah, to the jagged snow capped Mountain tops of the Teton Range in Wyoming, gun-slinging cowboys out in search of mischief and most often at their own misfortune traveled far and wide, seeking one dangerous encounter after another, and unfortunately, ending in their own demise.

    Read More

  • Lady Audley's Identity

    1731 Words  | 4 Pages

    Apart from her own experience as lower class, Helen Maldon transforms herself as Lady Audley to accept her surroundings, since she mainly surrounds herself with upper class people. For that reason, Helen Maldon searches for a man who would provide her with a better up-bringing. She depends on society’s standard of marriage, where the man provides her income to shape her identity. Nonetheless, once she develops a relationship with George, she expects to gain some wealth, except she faces the role of staying at home. The dynamic with George illustrates society’s expectation of gender roles, Helen cannot accept. “People pitied me; and I hated them for their petty,” she explains the community’s response to her, when George leaves (Braddon 300). Therefore, she struggles to accept her identity with a role she struggles to fulfill as a woman who stays at home, now bearing a child without any help from a man. Similarly, Lady Audley only accepts her identity when she accepts her purpose her in

    Read More

More about The Importance Of Non-Verbal Communication In The Stagecoach

Open Document