Unforgiven BCG

I do not believe that Unforgiven is as revisionist as the time period would anticipate or expect the film to be. Although Morgan Freeman’s colored character, Ned Logan, plays a prominent role, his character, and his actions are those of an ‘other.’ Logan refuses to shoot one of the two cowboys who abused the prostitute. By passing the duty of killing the ascribed man to Clint Eastwood’s character it only enforces Logan’s lack of character in relation to the alpha-male cowboy of William Munny. Then by refusing to go after the second of the two wanted cowboys, Logan only reinforces his weaknesses as a character. William sees himself as an equal to Ned Logan. If Ned Logan and William Munny were equals as alpha-male cowboys, then he would have had the nerve to follow through on both occasions. In marrying a Native American, Ned’s character is further isolating himself, being placed along with the stereotypical silent non-character.

Clint Eastwood’s character as an alpha-male cowboy is different than alpha-male cowboys of previous films. At the beginning of the film William Munny is a single father, who isn’t interested in any other women’s touch, raising two children, withholds from drinking, and hasn’t shot in eleven years and to top it off, struggles riding a horse. His life seems very settled down, almost content in owning a small farm while raising his own children. The vastness of how radical his changes have been is new to the alpha-male. In his past, he was a drunkard, recklessly killing. With the advent of marriage, he became a changed man, no drinking, no killing, and settling down. In the present, with his wife gone, and the slaying of Ned Logan, he returns to his original habits of drinking whisky and shooting up saloons. Munny seems to find all of his violent tendency’s in killing those who stand in his way, and offer a more realistic and deeper personal consequences of killing than death in previous western films.