"He's A Peculiar Man" Borderland Masculinities in No Country For Old Men 2011.

To the University of Wyoming:
The members of the Committee approve the thesis of Emma J. Dodds presented
on 4/8/2011.
John Dorst, Chairperson
Philip Roberts, External Department Member
Eric Sandeen
APPROVED:
Eric Sandeen, Department, Division, or Program Chair, American Studies.
B. Oliver Walter, College Dean/Provost

Dodds, Emma, J, “He’s a peculiar man”: Borderland Masculinities in No Country for Old
Men and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, MA, American
Studies, May 2011.
This thesis examines the performance of masculinities in the borderland films No
Country for Old Men and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, and considers how
gendered and geo-political boundaries intersect in these contemporary Westerns. These
films act as sites of destabilized manhood in using the conventions of the Western genre
to challenge and subvert the tropes of Western masculinity, and in this way respond to the
themes of crisis and negotiation found within the field of Masculinity Studies. In
analyzing the ways that the male protagonists are constructed and deconstructed through
character, embodiment, and plot line, I discuss how the characters that operate outside of
bounded systems are used to displace power from normative models of masculinity.
1
“HE’S A PECULIAR MAN”: BORDERLAND MASCULINITIES IN NO COUNTRY
FOR OLD MEN AND THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA
By
Emma J. Dodds
A thesis submitted to the American Studies Program
and the University of Wyoming
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
in
AMERICAN STUDIES
Laramie, Wyoming
May 2011
UMI Number: 1490980
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Copyright 2011, Emma J. Dodds
i
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Introduction ............................................................................................... 1
Chapter Two: Character ...……………………………………………………………… 26
Chapter Three: The Male Body ...……………………………………………………… 43
Chapter Four: Endings ...……………………………………………………………….. 63
Conclusion ...…………………………………………………………………………… 71
Bibliography ……...……………………………………………………………………. 84
ii
Chapter One: Introduction
This thesis examines the performance of masculinity in the films No Country for
Old Men (2007) and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005). These
contemporary western-themed films set in the Texas/Mexico borderlands offer complex
portrayals of masculinity, both in general and in relation to the discourse of gender in
Western films. This study categorizes these films as relating to the Western genre, even
though they do not neatly fit within this style of film, instead subverting or rejecting
altogether certain markers of the genre, and being centered on issues of the ‘New West’;
specifically, border patrol and drug crime. However, I recognize that these films draw on
historical and cultural narratives and icons of the Western and its brand of cowboy
masculinity. As films that operate in response to earlier Westerns but do not necessarily
follow the genre’s conventions or the expectations of Western manhood, No Country and
Three Burials are particularly interesting sites to explore the performance of masculinity.
The films’ setting in a borderlands region provides the opportunity to explore the
intersection of gendered and geo-political boundaries.
That the films undermine conventions within a genre identified by many scholars
as significant to the construction and maintenance of a dominant masculinity, points to
the theme of crises found within discussions on Masculinity Studies, which attribute the
rise of the field to “a felt crisis of white, heterosexual masculinity in the public
1
discourse.”1 As Judith Kegan Gardiner explains,
In cultural commentary, Hollywood films, and the academic marketplace,

masculinity has become ‘new’ –newly marked and newly in crisis…. …The very
emergence of masculinity as an entity to be interrogated and understood finds its
raison d’etre in the popular acknowledgement and open representational display
of masculinity as a domain seemingly beside itself: that is, internally congested,
historically discontinuous, and popularly a mess.2
Westerns can certainly be looked at in terms of this framework of crisis. For example, the
male as spectacle has the potential to feminize Western heroes,3 while the manifestation
of crisis that Sally Robinson describes as “a widely evidenced interest in the wounded
white male,” 4 can be seen in the violence and injury that serve as central themes in
Westerns. In 1981, scholarship by Martin Pumphrey added the paradoxical nature of
Western manhood, which he claimed embodied both masculine and feminine
characteristics, as representing masculinity in crisis.5 Post-Westerns or anti-Westerns
speak even more so to the idea of crisis in undoing the romantic model of manhood found
in the Western hero.
I wish to expand my study to encompass scholarship that rejects the idea of crisis
and sees instead negotiation. Barry Keith Grant suggests that rather than certain film
genres “reflecting a series of representational crises …they offer part of an ongoing
dialogue with audiences about the ceaseless challenges to and valorization of
1
Jay Mechling, ‘The Folklore of Mother-Raised Boys and Men’ in Simon J. Bronner, ed., Manly
Traditions: The Folk Roots of American Masculinities (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2005), 212.
2
Judith Kegan Gardiner ‘Introduction’ in Judith Kegan Gardiner, ed. Masculinity Studies and Feminist
Theory (New York, Columbia University Press, 2002), 32.
3
Steve Neale, ‘Prologue: Masculinity as Spectacle, Reflection on Men and Mainstream Cinema’ in Steven
Cohan, and Ina Rae Hark, eds. Screening the Male: Exploring Masculinities in Hollywood Cinema (New
York, Routledge, 1993), 9-20.
4
Sally Robinson, Marked Men: White Masculinity in Crisis (New York, Columbia University Press, 2000),
12.
5
Martin Pumphrey, “Masculinity”, in Edward Buscombe, ed. The BFI Companion to the Western (New
York, Antheneum, 1981), 181.
2
heteronormative ideals – what I call ‘negotiations’.”6 Grant goes on to reject the idea of
crisis altogether, stating, “I implicitly argue that to understand the history of American
cinema as a series of masculine crises … is both inappropriate hyperbole and a serious
misunderstanding of Hollywood cinema.”7 As Wendy Chapman Peek claims, specifically
in relation to Westerns, “where others see the contradictions within masculinity as static
paradoxes that can find no resolution, I see these conflicts as opportunities for Western
heroes to expand the confining categories of the past, thereby making themselves into
new men… to create success for the hero.”8 The male protagonists in No Country and
Three Burials transcend crisis by using variously gendered traits to their advantage.
However, while they appear to operate with the kinds of masculinity that Pumphrey sees
as paradoxical and Peek identifies in 1950s Westerns as the making of new men, they
lack both the hero status and the success that Peek attributes as the keystone holding
Western masculinity together.
My focus on manhood lies within the field of Masculinity Studies, and informs
the wider field of Gender Studies. Work on gender tells us that heterosexual males are the
hegemonic force of our society. Outside of this domain of power lie women, children and
non-whites. For example, Judith Halberstam claims that “historically it has become
difficult, if not impossible, to untangle masculinity from the oppression of women.”9
Laura McCall, using R.W. Connell’s theory on hegemonic masculinity, explains,
“hegemonic manhood is both created and reinforced by subordinating women, people of

6
Barry Keith Grant, Shadows of Doubt: Negotiations of Masculinity in American Genre Films (Detroit,
Wayne State University Press, 2010), 6.
7
Ibid, 6.
8
Wendy Chapman Peek, ‘The Romance of Competence: Rethinking Masculinity in the Western’, Journal
of Popular Film & Television. Washington, Winter 2003, Vol. 30, Issue 4, 218.
9
Judith Halberstam, Female Masculinity, (Durham, Duke University Press, 1998), 4.
3
color, and homosexuals.” 10 Connell explains of hegemonic masculinity, “at any given
time, one form of masculinity rather than others is culturally exalted,”11 and extends this
concept by arguing that the normative standards of hegemonic manhood are unattainable
by most men.12 Therefore, a large percentage of the white male population is also at
constant risk of finding themselves outside the dominant power structure.
With the vast majority of the population living under the hegemony of a white
male minority and having to constantly negotiate their identities and lives in relation to
this, the study of that hegemonic force is of extreme importance. Despite this, the field of
Masculinity Studies only came into being in the 1990s. Jay Mechling argues that, “being
male was the last ‘unmarked,’ taken-for-granted category in our study of Western
cultures.” Katie Arosteguy perfectly sums up the result of this negligence, stating, “the
figure of the white male, now left critically unexamined, becomes an invisible force
simmering beneath the surface of discussions on race, class, and gender.”13 Although pre-
revisionist scholarship and history focused almost exclusively on the experience of white
males, these texts served to construct and maintain that hegemony and power structure.
As Audre Lourde has argued, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s
house.”14 Therefore, the same critical study applied to ‘other’ genders, for instance,
10
Laura McCall, ‘Introduction’ in Basso, McCall & Garceau, eds. Across the Great Divide, Cultures of
Manhood in the American West (New York, Routledge, 2001), 6-7.
11
R.W. Connell, Masculinities (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2005), 77.
12
Ibid, 79.
13
Katie O. Arosteguy, “‘It was all a hard, fast ride that ended in the mud’: Deconstructing the Myth of the
Cowboy in Annie Proulx's Close Range: Wyoming Stories”, in Western American Literature, Vol. 45,
Number 2, Summer 2010, 120.
14
Audre Lourde, ‘The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House’ in Sister Outsider:
Essays and Speeches (New York, Crossings Press, 1984), 112.
4
Women’s Studies and Feminist Theory, is also required of males.15
A central theory to have been transplanted from Women’s Studies and Feminist
Theory and now strongly influencing the study of masculinity is that of gender
construction and fluidity. Judith Butler’s work on gender performativity looks at how the
illusion of stable or ‘true’ gender is achieved through repeated performance,
“Such acts, gestures, enactments, generally construed, are performative in the

sense that the essence or identity that they otherwise purport to express are
fabrications manufactured and sustained through corporeal signs and other
discursive means. That the gendered body is performative suggests that it has no
ontological status apart from the various acts which constitute its reality. … In
other words, acts and gestures, articulated and enacted desires create the illusion
of an interior and organizing gender core….” 16
My analysis relies on these concepts of gender as construction and performance. In not
viewing gender as biologically determined or permanent, and recognizing a spectrum of
masculinities, I view the representations of manhood in the films as being constructed
from performances of certain gendered traits. The implications of these theories for
Masculinity Studies are that they destabilize the ideas that masculinity is either natural or
a default gender. According to Gardiner,
Although dominant or hegemonic forms of masculinity work constantly to

maintain an appearance of permanence, stability, and naturalness, the numerous
masculinities in every society are contingent, fluid, socially and historically
constructed, changeable and constantly changing, variously institutionalized, and
recreated through media representations and individual and collective
performances.”17
As I will explore in this chapter, the Western hero constructed a model of hegemonic
manhood through repeated performance in Western film. If hegemonic, normative
15
Mechling, ‘The Folklore of Mother-Raised Boys and Men’, 212.
16
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York, Routledge, 1990),
173.
17
Gardiner, ‘Introduction’, 11.
5
manhood is achieved through repeated performance, then performances of masculinities
that do not follow the historically constructed model – such as those found in the films I
examine – pose the threat of deconstruction or destabilization, and as such raise important
questions.
Like gender scholar Robyn Wiegman, who points to her training in Feminist
Theory as leading her to “write a dissertation about men,”18 my own interest in
Masculinity Studies began by looking at women’s experience. Wishing to pursue an
undergraduate thesis in nineteenth century California history, I was directed by my
advisors to women’s history and studies of prostitution. In Jacqueline Baker Barnhart’s
book, The Fair But Frail: Prostitution in San Francisco 1849-1900, the claim that in
Gold Rush San Francisco, “brothel doors swung open,”19 caught my attention. This
seemed to exemplify the idea of an “invisible force” that Arosteguy mentions, and I
countered that doors do not swing without being pushed. Barnhart’s focus on the
suffering - often to the point of suicide - endured by these women, was not accompanied
by any similarly critical study of the male customers and male attitudes that contributed
to the women’s suffering. It seemed unsatisfactory to explore the West without
recognizing men’s experience through the same level of study applied to women in
revisionist scholarship.
My interest in Masculinity Studies has grown from a desire to explain the
oppression of women and is now more of an attempt to critically engage with
18
Robyn Wiegman, ‘Unmaking: Men and Masculinity in Feminist Theory’ in Judith Kegan Gardiner, ed.
Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory (New York, Columbia University Press, 2002), 36.
19
Jacqueline Baker Barnhart, The Fair but Frail: Prostitution in San Francisco 1849-1900 (Reno, The
University of Nevada Press, 1986), 43.
6
masculinities themselves. That the West requires a study of masculinity is especially true
when considering the gender ratio which, among other factors, made the frontier a
particularly male space. However, Laura McCall points out that many scholars of the
West have simply overlooked issues of manhood for that very reason, “The drama [of the
frontier] was masculine, an assumption so tacit that one social historian [Richard Bartlett]
remarked, ‘No one has ever questioned, let alone analyzed, the masculinity of the frontier
society. Since it is as obvious as the sun in the daytime, the subject has not been
discussed.’”20 The male gendering of western experience makes the region particularly
significant to gender studies, and an ideal environment to apply the study of gender
construction, deconstruction, and performativity. The masculine drama of the nineteenth
century West has continued in myth and media and can still be seen in contemporary
films, including the films examined in this study. Gardiner explains that, “current
masculinity studies focus less on men’s power over women and more on relationships
between men, as these are regulated by regimes of masculinity.”21 As Tompkins points
out, “in Westerns (which are generally written by men), the main character is always a
full-grown adult male, and almost all of the other characters are men.”22 The current field
of Masculinity Studies, then, is especially useful in the study of the male dominated genre
of Westerns.
The region, concept and myth of the West have historically been recognized as
significant to American identity. According to Slotkin, “the Myth of the Frontier is our
20
McCall, ‘Introduction’, 5-6.
21
Gardiner ‘Introduction’, 14.
22
Jane Tompkins, West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns (New York, Oxford University Press,
1992), 38.
7
oldest and most characteristic myth, expressed in a body of literature, folklore, ritual,
historiography, and polemics produced over a period of three centuries….The Frontier
Myth has been the means to our achievement of a national identity.”23 Revisionist and
post-revisionist scholars have noted the gendered nature of the project. That the West is
especially important to male identity has roots in the process of westward expansion,
which followed the typical pattern of migration where in many areas male emigrants
arrived several years before the women followed. Therefore, the earliest social landscape
of the American West at times presented what Michael S. Kimmel has branded, “a
homosocial preserve.”24 Stott’s study of the masculine ambiance of certain regions during
the nineteenth century found that, “the West’s mining and cattle towns of the 1870s and
1880s were among the last enduring male enclaves, and part of the fascination with the
‘Wild West’ stems from the popular perception that such places preserved a traditional
male outlook….”25 Stott’s points signify that not only was the populace of the West
heavily male, but that fact contributed to the continued interest in the region’s history
throughout the twentieth century.
A masculine ideology was used in the imperial project of westward expansion,
which required violence and conquest. David Clark and Joane Nagel point to the
significance of masculinity in the ideas of Manifest Destiny, claiming that “in the United
States, masculinity was tightly woven into …nationalist imperialist projects: Manifest
23
Richard Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation; The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America (New York,
Macmillan Publishing Company, 1992), 10.
24
Michael S. Kimmel, ‘Consuming Manhood; The Feminization of American Culture and the Recreation
of the Male Body, 1832 – 1920,’ in Goldstein & Laurence, ed. The Male Body: Features, Destinies,
Exposures (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2004), 61.
25
Richard Stott, Jolly Fellows: Male Milieus in Nineteenth-Century America (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2009), 4.
8
Destiny, which justified and promoted westward expansion.”26 Durwood Ball identified
the imperial ideology of the frontier as masculine in his study of public hangings in the
nineteenth century Southwest, claiming, “in Victorian America, the public identified the
American West… as a male place. Manly passions, ambitions, and aggressions – Anglo-
Saxon, specifically – were critical to subduing the savage beasts and peoples of the
wilderness and to beginning the process of civilizing the frontier.”27 Both physically and
ideologically the western frontier was a masculine region.
In the earliest days of the western frontier the experience of frontier life, including
the imbalanced gender ratio and hyper-masculine atmosphere, challenged male identity.
As McCall has pointed out, “men in frontier settlements often encountered situations that
destabilized or rendered inoperable conventional wisdoms about prototypical manhood.
In these open and often unfamiliar spaces, rigid divisions of responsibility, categories of
belonging, and terrains of exclusion softened.”28 Stoler’s study of the British Colonies
found similarities relating to the colonial frontier and borderland regions, which “were
thought to crystallize those conditions of isolation, inactivity, decadence, and intense
male comradery where heterosexual definitions of manliness could as easily be
unmade.”29 Paradoxically, the conditions that made the West such a male space also
threatened the perceived manliness of its inhabitants. McCall and Stoler’s claims
regarding lived-experience are a stark contrast to the myth of heroic masculinity that the
26
David Clark and Joane Nagel, ‘White Men, Red Masks’in McCall, Basso and Garceau, eds. Across the
Great Divide, Cultures of Manhood in the American West (New York, Routledge, 2001), 112-3.
27
Durwood Ball, ‘Cool to the End: Public Hangings and Western Manhood,’ in Basso, McCall & Garceau,
ed. Across the Great Divide, Cultures of Manhood in the American West (New York, Routledge, 2001),
105.
28
McCall, ‘Introduction’, 7.
29
Laura Ann Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault’s History of Sexuality and the Colonial
Order of Things (Durham, Duke University Press, 1995), 175.
9
frontier has come to signify. As Connell explains, “It is a striking fact that even before
this frontier closed, with military defeat of the native peoples and the spread of white
settlement across the continent, frontiersmen were being promoted as exemplars of
masculinity.” 30 As Connell continues, “popular culture tells us without prompting [that]
exemplars of masculinity, whether legendary or real …have very often been men of the
frontier,”31 with the Western being a prime site for such promotion.
Following the ‘closing of the frontier’, declared in Turner’s 1893 thesis, the
region became promoted as necessary for creating, strengthening and maintaining
American manhood. The late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries saw a supposed
crisis of masculinity attributed to rapidly changing social conditions. Issues including
industrialization, urbanization, mass immigration and gains by the Women’s Movement
were seen as threats to white (especially Anglo-American) male power. In response to the
crisis, American men turned a nostalgic gaze to the frontier to ease their anxieties. As
Kimmel argues, following the closing of the frontier, “men began to search for ways to
reconstitute gender identity, to recreate ways to feel secure and confident as men.” 32
Susan Kollin’s study on Alaska as the last frontier explores this theory, claiming, “a
beleaguered masculinity sought to reestablish itself through wilderness experiences, the
continuation of the United States’ frontier saga.”33 Through this process the frontier was
given a new meaning as the testing ground on which a unique American manhood had
been formed. Prominent figures, including Theodore Roosevelt, began promoting the
30
Connell, Masculinities, 194.
31
Ibid, 185.
32
Kimmel, ‘Consuming Manhood’, 19.
33
Susan Kollin, Nature’s State: Imagining Alaska as the Last Frontier (Chapel Hill, The University of
North Carolina Press, 2001), 63.
10
West as the landscape in which American men had proved themselves. Roosevelt’s
writings claimed that males could still rely on the West to turn them into real men by
participating in rugged outdoor activities, such as hunting trips.34 As a result, the crisis
led to the myth creation and expansion of the cowboy hero and frontiersman figure.
In 1902, in the midst of the crisis of masculinity and promotion of the Frontier
Myth, Owen Wister’s novel The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains was published to
overwhelming popularity.35 The novel was inspired by Wister’s own travels in the West,
where he took part in the camping and hunting trips that Roosevelt and others were
promoting. The Virginian was seen as the first Western - a step-up from the dime novels
of the nineteenth century - and sparked a wave of western-themed fiction. With the
growing popularity of motion pictures, the Western became a hugely successful film
genre that persisted throughout the twentieth century. Slotkin’s example of the ‘Cowboys
and Indians’ myth being applied to the Vietnam War demonstrates how far the myth of
the frontier and the familiarity and identification with the Western had penetrated
American culture and consciousness.36 Connell provides a global example from his
personal experience, “A game I played as a boy in Australia was, extraordinarily enough,
a ritual of imperial expansion in North America, shipped across the Pacific in comic-book
and Hollywood images of masculinity: a replay of frontier warfare between ‘Cowboys
and Indians.’”37That Connell was familiar with the game of ‘Cowboys and Indians’ in
Australia suggests just how wide-reaching the myth of the frontier became.
34
John F. Kasson, Houdini, Tarzan and the Perfect Man: The White Male Body and the Challenge of
Modernity in America (New York, Hill and Wang, 2001), 6.
35
Owen Wister, The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1902).
36
Richard Slotkin, ‘Myth and the Production of History’in Bercovitch, Sacvan and Jehlen, Myra, eds.
Ideology and Classic American Literature (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1986), 71.
37
Connell, Masculinities, 185-186.
11
Westerns strengthened and expanded the tradition of painting the West as the
environment that produced the white American male hero. Recent scholarship on
Westerns has noted the importance of the genre to gender studies. These scholars
recognize that the figure of the male in the West is not only a portrayal of mythic
masculinity, but is in fact a model of manhood that American men are expected to follow.
As Lee Clark Mitchell explains, “the cowboy became the instrument-body upon which
Westerns practiced their favorite tune – the construction of masculinity, the making of
men.”38 Tompkins’ study of Westerns was motivated by their significance to male gender
construction, as she explains,
What is most interesting about Westerns at this moment in history is their relation
to gender, and especially the way they created a model for men who came of age
in the twentieth century. …In a sense my engagement with the Western has been
an attempt to understand why men act the way they do.39
Karen R. Jones and John Wills contend, “The traditional Hollywood cowboy had
provided a perfect (conformist) definition of masculinity and a role model of
manhood.”40 Westerns have played a significant role in gender construction and the
shaping of gender performance of American men, and have helped to establish ideas of
what a normative form on masculinity should look like.
According to Kimmel, “nowhere could American men find a better example of
rugged outdoor masculinity than out west with the cowboy, that noble denizen of the
untamed frontier. The cowboy occupies an important place in American cultural history:
38
Lee Clark Mitchell, Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film (Chicago, The University of Chicago
Press, 1996), 27.
39
Tompkins, West of Everything, 17-18.
40
Karen R. Jones and John Wills, The American West: Competing Visions (Edinburgh, Edinburgh
12
He is American’s contribution to the world’s stock of mythic heroes.”41 Indeed, it was the
mythic cowboy figure who embodied the ideal, hegemonic manhood that Tompkins
believes told American men how to act. Kimmel’s list of expectations for what a cowboy
should be – and therefore the type of manhood that American men should emulate – is an
exhaustive and demanding set of often conflicting qualities.
As a mythic creation the cowboy was fierce and brave, willing to

venture into unknown territory…and tame it for women, children, and
emasculated civilized men. …He is a man of impeccable ethics, whose
faith in natural law and natural right is eclipsed only by the astonishing
fury with which he demands rigid adherence to them. He is a man of
action…. He moves in a world of men, in which daring, bravery, and
skill are his constant companions. He lives by physical strength and
rational calculation; his compassion is social and generalized, but he
forms no lasting bonds with any one person.42
The cowboy must be fierce and furious, but always act with rational calculation. He must
have impeccable ethics in a landscape scarred by the unethical marks of Manifest
Destiny, or “natural right.” He must be brave and daring in a land where women and
lesser men fear to tread. As McCall explains, “These perceptions [of the cowboy] have
been elaborated and defined primarily in popular fiction and movies. …Westerns have
established a coded pictorial language to measure the manliness of their characters.”43 In
this way, the types of male personality and behavior outlined by Kimmel have been
promoted to the public through the male characters of Western film.
To relate cowboy masculinity to gender theory, this model of manhood
demonstrates the concept that although there is not one masculinity and instead plural
masculinities, there is often one form of manhood portrayed by a culture at a certain time
41
Michael S. Kimmel, Manhood in America: A Cultural History (New York, The Free Press, 1996), 148.
42
Ibid, 149-150.
43
McCall, ‘Introduction’, 6.
13
as normative. Westerns have created a type of masculinity – the rugged, Western,
cowboy masculinity – and then, through repeated, often formulaic performances,
attempted to show that model as normative and therefore hegemonic. Arosteguy’s claim
that, “The white, heterosexual, macho masculinity seen in most US Westerns has long
been considered natural, stable, and permanent,” suggests that this has been achieved
with considerable success.44 The repeated performance of Western manhood was
achieved through the formulaic nature of the genre. Of the Western’s repetitive style,
Tompkins states, “the hero is the same, the storyline is the same, the settings, the values,
the actions are the same. …Within a terribly strict set of thematic and formal codes, the
same maneuvers are performed over and over. …Half the pleasure of Westerns comes
from this sense of familiarity….”45 Although there have been many examples of
‘playing’ with the Western formula and its model of manhood, the formulaic nature is
prominent enough within the American culture to be recognized by scholars of Westerns,
such as Tompkins, as a key feature of the genre. As a result of this repetition, audiences
have certain expectations based on shared cultural narratives and icons historically
constructed through the Western formula; they know how their male protagonists should
look, act, and speak, and how their stories should play out.
Scholarship that has further implications for the films I examine is Pumphrey’s
‘Masculinities’, which offers a significant challenge to the idea that Westerns create
normative manhood, by asserting that they present masculinity as in crisis. Specifically,
Pumphrey believes that Western heroes embody both masculine and feminine traits and
44
Arosteguy, “It was all a hard, fast ride,” 117.
45
Tompkins, West of Everyting, 7, 25.
14
sees the contradiction “between the two worlds usually coded as masculine and
feminine,” as creating instability and confusion.46 Although Peek recognizes the same
pattern of blurred gendered traits, she disagrees with Pumphrey’s concepts of conflict and
crisis, instead arguing that “success matters more than masculinity in the Western,” and
that “this success often demands that the Western hero negotiate between the poles of
masculine and feminine performance.”47 Success is the ultimate measure of manhood and
so as long as the male protagonist triumphs, his gendered behavior is more than justified
even if during the path to success it appeared at times more feminine than masculine.
Peek’s theory is contrary to the endings of No Country and Three Burials, which,
in differing degrees, fail to demonstrate masculine success. If the Westerns of the 1950s
were a romance of competence based on the success of their complexly gendered
protagonists, are these contemporary borderland Westerns a romance of incompetence?
These films respond in various ways to all the discourses discussed in this chapter;
rugged Western masculinity, conflicted masculinity, and performances of masculinity
that embody feminine traits. Therefore, they serve as cultural texts utilizing a form that
historically constructed a national, hegemonic and normative manhood, to present
masculinities as contested and destabilized.
Recent years have produced a substantial offering of films and TV series that
respond to the Western genre and present interesting possibilities for the study of
masculinities. These include remakes, and stories focusing on icons of Western myth and
other historical characters. Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven (1992) was seen as bringing
46
Pumphrey, “Masculinities”, 181.
47
Peek, “The Romance of Competence”, 208.
15
back the Western and was well received, winning many awards including Best Picture at
the Academy Awards. More recently Ang Lee’s adaptation of Annie Proulx’s
controversial short story Brokeback Mountain (2005) created much media hype and
commentary. To name a few others, HBO’s Deadwood ran for three seasons (2004-
2007), the remake of 3.10 to Yuma (2007) starred the well-known and award winning
actors Russell Crowe and Christian Bale, The Assassination of Jesse James by the
Coward Robert Ford (2007) attracted big names including Brad Pitt, and most recently
the Coen brother’s remake of True Grit (2010) proved a box office success and garnered
ten Academy Award nominations.
Of the many Western-themed films released in recent years, I selected for this
study No Country for Old Men (2007, based on Cormac McCarthy’s 2005 novel) and The
Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005), as these contemporary films were not only
produced within the era when Masculinity Studies has cast masculinity as “newly marked
and newly in crisis,”48 but that also use the Western genre and borderlands setting to
focus on issues of the New West. No Country is set in 1980 and Three Burials takes place
in the early twenty-first century. No Country, based on a novel by the award-winning
author McCarthy, and adapted to film by the similarly popular and award-winning Coen
brothers, was always going to be a much discussed project, receiving a great deal of
exposure. The film was big-budget, and the Coen’s, given their and McCarthy’s
reputations, had their pick of actors.49 The film has been much-written on, in popular
48
Gardiner ‘Introduction’, 32.
49
Tommy Lee Jones has stated that although he was reluctant to be typecast as a Texas law enforcement
officer, he could not turn down the opportunity to work with McCarthy’s material. Javier Bardem stated
that he had always wanted to work with the Coens. The Making of No Country for Old Men (2007).
16
culture and in academia. It received many awards, including Academy Awards for Best
Picture and Best Supporting Actor, and was widely praised by critics. Three Burials was
a smaller scale and lower key project, and as such received less attention and exposure,
with few scholarly responses despite the topical issues it addresses. However, it too
received positive reviews from critics, and the involvement of actor Tommy Lee Jones,
who was the film’s director and starred as main protagonist, added to interest in the
project.
Jones is a significant figure to both films, playing Pete Perkins in Three Burials
and Sheriff Ed Tom Bell in No Country. As Jones has stated, “a character belongs in a
place,”50 and both the characters that he plays in the films belong in the West. A Texas-
native himself, Jones brings qualities to the films that correspond closely to markers of
Western manhood. These include his weathered, rugged appearance, a calm, still and
stoic manner, and a low and steady tone. Due to past roles in other Western-themed
projects, including the TV series Lonesome Dove (1989), and the film The Missing
(2003), Jones is an actor that audiences are used to seeing embody a traditional Western
masculinity, in costume, character, and plot. As a Texan and a ranch owner, his own
knowledge of the land and lifestyle add authenticity and authority to the western
characters that he plays. Jones’ presence, then, helps to place the films in relation to the
Western genre, and adds potency to the effect that is created when his character’s
authority is undermined.
No Country begins in the west Texas desert, and then moves into the border
towns, with the run-down border town motels serving as the setting for much of the
50
Jones, The Making of No Country for Old Men (2007).
17
action. The film is narrated by Sheriff Ed Tom Bell who is tracking a ruthless hit man,
Anton Chigurh, through the West Texas desert and borderlands. Chigurh is tracking a
case of money connected to a drug deal gone wrong. Unintentionally caught in the
middle is local welder, Llewellyn Moss, a Vietnam War veteran who came across the
case of money while out hunting antelope in the desert. Moss’s decision to take the
money means that he is now hunted himself by Chigurh, among others. In an attempt to
evade his pursuers, Moss sends his wife to his mother-in-law’s home and goes on the run.
Bell hopes to save Moss, and promises Moss’s wife that he will achieve this, but is
feeling increasingly outmatched by the new levels of violence in the borderlands, a
situation he describes as “all-out war.” The taglines of No Country included, “You Can’t
Stop What’s Coming,” “There Are No Clean Getaways,” and “There Are No Laws Left.”
The taglines, narrative and plot suggest a dark and dystopian view of the West, with
strong emphasis on the escalation of meaningless yet inevitable violence, committed by
men.
Three Burials is set in a sparsely populated desert town in west Texas. The story,
told partially in flashbacks, shows the arrival of new border patrol officer, Ohio-native
Mike Norton, to the town.51 Not long after his arrival Norton shoots dead Melquiades
Estrada, an illegal immigrant working as a cowboy for local rancher Pete Perkins, and
who Perkins has developed a close friendship with. After Norton initially buries Estrada
in a shallow grave, his body is discovered and reburied by authorities in a grave marked
51
The telling of the story in flashbacks echoes the narrative style of a border corrido. According to
Américo Paredes’ study of border folklore, “the tendency to tell the story not in long, continuous, and
detailed narrative but in a series of shifting scenes – all these are stylistic devices typical of the border
corrido,” Américo Paredes, With His Pistol in His Hand: A Border Ballad and its Hero (Austin, University
of Texas Press, 1971), 87.
18
only “Melquiades, Mexico.” Incensed by the local sheriff’s refusal to bring Norton to
justice, and remembering his promise to Estrada to return his body to his wife and family
in his hometown, Perkins kidnaps Norton and forces him to dig up Estrada’s body. He
then sets out on horseback, with a handcuffed Norton, and Estrada’s corpse, on an
eventful journey across the border to Jiménez, Mexico. Norton’s wife is discovered the
next morning, tied up by Perkin’s in her trailer home, and the border patrol authorities
and local police forces begin the search for Perkins, hoping to stop him before he reaches
the border. Perkins uses his knowledge of the land to travel through the mountains and
desert of the borderland region, evading the numerous search teams. Along the way he
and Norton meet with a blind man living deep in the wilderness, a group of illegal
immigrants being smuggled north across the border, and a group of Mexican
sheepherders, all of whom offer Perkins assistance in his mission. The story serves as a
parable, highlighting the injustice of prejudice against Mexican immigrants.
No Country and Three Burials respond to the Western genre, something that those
involved in the creation of the films were conscious of. Three Burials was promoted by
its production company as a “modern-day Western,”52 and Joel Coen notes that No
Country could be considered a Western.53 The more obvious ways that the films relate to
the genre are through the setting and landscape, and in certain plot devices. Three Burials
opens with a panoramic shot of the west Texas landscape, while No Country opens with a
series of landscape shots. In terms of storyline, both films involve a chase. In Three
Burials the protagonist, Perkins, lives as a classic Western character; a gun-toting rancher
52
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. DVD. Directed by Tommy Lee Jones. Sony Pictures,
EuropaCorp and Javelina Film Company, 2005.
53
Joel Coen, The Making of No Country for Old Men (2007).
19
who prides himself on his ‘Old West’ existence and values. The film features a journey
on horseback through the desert in search of justice and redemption. The male dominated
casts and themes of violence also place the films as responding to the markers of a
Western. Stacey Peebles sees these gendered themes as of equal significance to markers
such as landscape,
By virtue of its geographical setting in west Texas and this emphasis on

masculine action devoted to both the enforcement and defiance of the law, No
Country for Old Men is a Western. The Coens draw our attention to these genetic
markers right away, as the movie opens with shots of the landscape, all open
spaces and slanting sunlight.
When we talk about Westerns… whether they are set in the Old West or
the new, we talk about the representation of masculinity and the assignation of
power, since the genre is perhaps the ultimate venue for the display of male power
as evidenced by the ability to overcome the wilderness as well as the bad guy.54
The films’ settings blend the Old West and New West. The Old West is represented in
the desert and wilderness, and the ranching lifestyle.55 The New West is seen through the
contemporary borderland region, a space often in the media for the highly charged and
polarized political discourse it generates. According to Gloria Anzaldua, the United
States/Mexico border is, “where the third world grates against the first and bleeds.”56
Both films cross the border; Three Burials’ crossing is linear, although ‘backwards’ with
an American being smuggled into Mexico, while No Country goes back and forth, with
much of the action set in border towns and one main character crossing into Mexico to
convalesce from a gunshot wound before returning to the United States.

54
Stacey Peebles, ‘“Hold Still”: Models of Masculinity in the Coens’ No Country for Old Men’, in Lynnea
Chapman King, Rick Wallach and Jim Welsh, eds. From Novel to Film: No Country for Old Men (Toronto,
The Scarecrow Press, Inc. 2009), 125 -126; Other scholars to declare the film a Western include Jim Welsh,
who argues that, “First and foremost, of course, Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men (2005) is a
Western,” 73. Sonya Topolnisky is less convinced, but does recognize that “it bears a strong family
resemblance,” to the genre, 111.
55
Tompkins, West of Everything, 4.
56
Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco, Aunt Lute Books, 1987),
25.
20
While much of the films’ content relates to the Western genre, both films offer
enough deviation from the conventions of classic or formula Westerns to draw their
‘Westernness’ into question. Their modern day setting provides one assault to the classic
conventions which place Westerns in the ‘Old West.’ Another is their storylines and the
outcomes for their male protagonists, which, as I will discuss in the coming chapters,
deviate from the expected series of events in significant ways. As a result of such
subversions the films can be considered part of the genre or sub-genre of anti-Westerns or
post-Westerns. Susan Kollin defines the anti-Western as, “an unstable and shifting form
that engages in a critical dialogue with the genre but that is also shaped by a certain
desire for and attraction to the classic features of the Western.”57 By Kollin’s definition
both films fit with the markers of anti-Westerns in still belonging to the Western genre
and shaped by classic features of Westerns, but subverting or challenging the genre in
notable ways. Kollin uses Butler’s theories on parody to explain how anti-Westerns rely
on the conventions of a classic Western, noting that “parody always relies on a prior
affiliation with the object one parodies.”58 Therefore, while these films are not easy to
neatly place within the classic genre, they can certainly be positioned in relation to
Westerns.
My analysis of the films begins in Chapter Two with an examination of character,
in particular moral character, drawing on the tradition in Westerns and other masculine
57
Susan Kollin, ‘Genre and the Geographies of Violence: Cormac McCarthy and the Contemporary
Western’, Contemporary Literature, Vol. 42, No. 3 (Autumn, 2001), 560.
58
Ibid, 561.
21
genres of film that rely heavily on the good/bad or hero/villain binary.59 In analyzing
character I look at the choices the male protagonists make, their actions, the things they
say, or do not say, and how they say them. I argue that the character traits exhibited hint
at the men’s inner codes or moral compasses. For instance, certain characters exhibit
compassion while others appear merciless. My analysis here considers gendered aspects
of character, addressing how character traits that the men perform relate to gendered
ideology, such as whether they are associated with the masculine or feminine. For
example, whether the men are directed by emotion or rational thought communicates a
gendered element to their character.
As Mechling tells us in regards to cultural studies, we should look to the body as
it functions as “a prime site for the creation of meaning.”60 This is especially true of
Western film, as Mitchell explains that “not only is the Western a genre that allows us to
gaze at men, this gaze forms such an essential aspect of the genre that it seems covertly
about just that: looking at men.”61 I begin this third chapter of the study by looking at
how the films use classic aesthetic markers of Western masculinity, especially in
clothing, including the masculine implications of a rugged appearance. Within this
discussion I consider the gun as an extension of the body, as well as a key accessory to
the Western male costume. I consider the impact of violence on the body through injury
and death, and explore how the wounded male relates to Masculinity Studies as a study of
59
Will Wright, Sixguns & Society: A Structural Study of the Western (Berkeley, University of California
Press, 1975), 59.
60
Jay Mechling, “Some New Elementary Axioms for an American Cultur[al] Studies”, in American
Studies, 38:2, (Summer 1997), 21.
61
Mitchell, Westerns, 159.
22
crises. Here I use Jill Lepore’s concept of injury to the body as a threat to identity,62 but
extend this idea to consider the threat to gendered identity. As Peebles argues in her study
of masculinity in No Country, physical injury is emasculating.63 The vulnerability caused
by injury to the body leads into the discussion of the body in states of undress, caused
most often in the films by the need to tend wounds. By engaging with Laura Mulvey’s
theory on the male gaze64 and Steve Neale’s discussion on masculinity as spectacle65 I
consider what happens to the dynamics of gendered power in these scenes. Additionally,
I question Tompkins’ claim that the Western “worships the phallus.”66 Failed sexual
performance is used in Three Burials to suggest a lack of manliness, but it is phallic
power removed from the body, as discussed in the previous section on character, that
provides the most potency in both films. For example, Chigurh may exhibit few if any
signs of male sexuality, but he is the most dominating character, and he does, as Peebles
points out, “have the biggest gun.”67
The fourth chapter addresses the ambiguity, defeat and failure seen in the endings
of the films. If Westerns celebrate men’s triumph over struggle in the West, endings can
tell us a lot about masculine success. This is particularly relevant in that both films reject
the formula of Westerns in their endings. According to Wendy Chapman Peek, ‘in
Westerns… the most important thing is to be a man. The second most important thing is
62
Jill Lepore, The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity (New York,
Vintage Books, 1998), 74.
63
Peebles, “Hold Still”, 128.
64
Laura Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, in Screen, Vol. 16, no. 3 (1975).
65
Steve Neale, ‘Masculinity as Spectacle’, 9-20.
66
67
23
to be successful,’68 while Peebles adds that, “control matters. Winning matters, and the
ability to achieve that victory becomes the Western hero’s defining characteristic….”69
That success tends to come from the triumph of good over evil, as Will Wright
highlighted when he identified the following function in classic Westerns, “the hero
defeats the villains.”70 How their stories end, then, seem to cast judgment on the success
or failure of the protagonists’ masculinity. In both No Country and Three Burials, that
victory is elusive and good deeds are not rewarded. In this chapter I examine who, if
anyone, wins, to what degree any of the male characters find success, and whether this
corresponds with certain gendered traits.
Grant, in introducing his study of masculinity in film, states, “some of the films I
consider offer important challenges to dominant representations of masculinity, while
others reveal an acceptance of or capitulation to them.”71 My study takes a similar
approach, recognizing that some conventions of Western manhood are followed, others
subverted or challenged, and others rejected altogether. In general, the films offer rich
models of masculinity as their male protagonists embody masculine and feminine coded
traits, and they use these traits to differing levels of success or failure. I consider how the
films settings’ in borderlands relate to the ideas found in Gender Studies that masculinity
is a construction, and therefore is fluid. Just as the films are set in geo-political
borderlands, with the action spilling across boundaries, so do the genders of the
protagonists appear to straddle dividing lines, and wander precariously close to areas
68
Peek, ‘The Romance of Competence”, 211.
69
70
Wright, Sixguns & Society, 46.
71
Grant, Shadows of Doubt, 7.
24
supposedly belonging to ‘others’. Lepore’s study of some of America’s earliest
borderlands found that those who became assimilated into both English and Indian
culture “placed themselves in a particularly perilous, if at the same time powerful,
position, caught between two worlds.”72 Given the borderland existence and blurred
gender performance of the protagonists in No County and Three Burials, these men face
the same issues, and their gendered identities raise similar questions; at what point do
their identities become breached and dangerous? When do the men stray too far into
feminine territory, or detrimentally limit themselves by remaining in masculine domain?
To what extent are the masculinities represented as in crisis, or in negotiation? Through
considering these questions the intention of my study is to highlight the ways that
manhood is performed in the films, and suggest what meanings these borderland
masculinities may hold.
72
Lepore, The Name of War, 27.
25
Chapter Two: Character
Many of the traditional requirements of Western manhood relate to character. As
Kimmel’s list of cowboy requirements states, he should be “fierce and brave,” “a man of
impeccable ethics,” and should act with “daring [and] bravery.”73 Tompkins lists the
Western hero’s qualities as “self-discipline,” “ingenuity, and excellent judgment.”74
Therefore I start my analysis by looking at how the male protagonists of No Country and
Three Burials are constructed through representations of character. Scene setting, where
background information on the protagonists is provided, offers early clues to the
character of the men, while the men’s decisions, actions and manner provides further
insight.
In No Country, Bell is married and has family ties to law enforcement, as his
father and grandfather had also been Texas sheriffs, and his uncle a deputy. A Texan-
native, he has been sheriff of Terrell County since he was twenty-five and is now nearing
retirement age. He and his wife own horses, which he uses for his work out in the desert,
showing a connection to the land and a familiarity with the lifestyle and landscape of the
West. Bell embodies the Western male in his stoic and reserved manner. This is shown in
contrast to the younger deputy Wendell, who is more emotional, to Bell’s calm,
73
Michael S. Kimmel, Manhood in America: A Cultural History (New York, The Free Press, 1996), 149-
150.
74
1992), 12.
26
unexcitable manner. Bell gives the impression that he has seen it all, and yet does not
want “to meet something that [he does not] understand.”
Moss is a veteran of the Vietnam War and works as a welder. His clothing,
hunting skills and familiarity with the area and the desert suggest that he is a local. He
lives in a trailer with wife, Carla Jean, and is still young enough to be referred to as a boy
by the ‘old timers.’ What we see of his marriage is mostly affectionate, with him
reassuring Carla Jean that he will return, before she leaves for Odessa and he leaves to
escape from those tracking the money. Carla Jean’s discussions with Bell demonstrate
that she is genuinely worried for her husband’s wellbeing, further suggesting a good
relationship.
Chigurh, as Peebles says, is “in many ways unknowable.”75 In the film Carson
Wells claims to know Chigurh “every which way” and soon after is the victim who
proves easiest for Chigurh to track down and kill, suggesting just how flawed his claims
were. Chigurh seems unfamiliar with the area, for instance, asking the farmer who stops
to help him fix his car which airport someone might use. He is not anchored to anything
and appears detached not just from the area, but is not connected to anything or anyone.
He has no backstory, no family, home, or past are ever mentioned, and no motives for his
conduct in the film are hinted at. As Linda Woodson states, “In an ironic twist Chigurh is
the orphan in No Country for Old Men. He exists outside of society and is of
indeterminate origin and purpose. It is never fully clear why he involves himself in the
75
Stacey Peebles, ‘“Hold Still”: Models of Masculinity in the Coens’ No Country for Old Men’, in King,
Lynnea Chapman, Wallach, Rick and Welsh, Jim, eds. From Novel to Film: No Country for Old Men
(Toronto, The Scarecrow Press, Inc. 2009), 127.
27
hunt for Llewellyn Moss. Even his name is indeterminate in origin.”76 In fact, Chigurh
does not appear to be from either side of the border, a point noted by many scholars of
the film. According to Pat Tyrer and Pat Nickell, “Chigurh himself is not a Texan, nor is
he Mexican. His origins are as cloudy as his sense of fair play,”77 and Steve Covell notes
that Joel Coen has stated of Chigurh, “His accent and origins are ‘unplaceable.’”78 Erin
Johns finds him, “rather foreign sounding and looking,”79 while Sonya Topolnisky
believes that Chigurh “defies classification, nationally and ethnically.”80 That Chigurh is
unplaceable, other than to identify that he is not from Texas or Mexico, makes him a
particularly interesting character for a story with a border setting, where the binary of Us
and Them is usually a central plot device. His unknowable nature makes him especially
interesting for a Western, a genre which created formulaic and easily recognizable
models for its male protagonists to adhere to.
In Three Burials Perkins is also somewhat unconnected. He is clearly connected
to the land and to ranching, but there is no mention of a wife or family, and his friendship
with Estrada seems to be his closest relationship. Perkins’ ranching skills, as well as his
ability to speak fluent Spanish, suggests that he is either a native of the border region, or
76
Linda Woodson, ‘“You are the battleground”: Materiality, Moral Responsibility, and Determinism in No
Country for Old Men’, in King, Lynnea Chapman, Wallach, Rick and Welsh, Jim, eds. From Novel to
Film: No Country for Old Men (Toronto, The Scarecrow Press, Inc. 2009), 6.
77
Pat Tyrer and Pat Nickell, ‘“Of what is past, or passing, or to come”: Characters as Relics in No Country
for Old Men’, in King, Lynnea Chapman, Wallach, Rick and Welsh, Jim, eds. From Novel to Film: No
Country for Old Men (Toronto, The Scarecrow Press, Inc. 2009), 92.
78
Joel Coen (‘The Making of’ 2008), in Steve Covell, ‘Devil with a Bad Haircut: Postmodern Villainy
Rides the Range in No Country Old Men’, in King, Lynnea Chapman, Wallach, Rick and Welsh, Jim, eds.
From Novel to Film: No Country for Old Men (Toronto, The Scarecrow Press, Inc. 2009), 97.
79
Erin K. Johns, ‘A Flip of the Coin: Gender Systems and Female Resistance in the Coen Brothers’ No
Country for Old Men, in King, Lynnea Chapman, Wallach, Rick and Welsh, Jim, eds. From Novel to Film:
No Country for Old Men (Toronto, The Scarecrow Press, Inc. 2009), 140.
80
Sonya Topolnisky, ‘For Every Tatter in its Mortal Dress: Costume and Character in No Country for Old
Men’, in King, Lynnea Chapman, Wallach, Rick and Welsh, Jim, eds. From Novel to Film: No Country for
Old Men (Toronto, The Scarecrow Press, Inc. 2009), 113.
28
has been there for a considerable time. Unlike Chigurh who is hard to classify, Perkins
does perform the masculinity of the Western in his appearance, his clothing, his lifestyle
and his stoic manner.
Norton is an outsider, but is instantly identified as being from Cincinnati, Ohio,
and having moved to the border region for his work with Border Patrol. He and wife Lou
Ann are portrayed as being culturally vacant and not connected to the land or nature. In
one scene Lou Ann tells Rachel that “Cincinnati is real pretty in the spring time. There’s
lots of malls.” After complaining to Norton that she is bored living in west Texas, he
offers to buy her a Nintendo. Although married, his youth is made clear. He is referred as
a “kid” by his boss, and in another scene Lou Ann talks about how popular they were in
high school, suggesting they were in school not too long ago. The couple is shown as
impoverished, living in a trailer, in a way highlighting Norton’s inability to provide for
his wife their desired standard of living. Although Moss in No Country also lives in a
trailer, and Perkins lives in a bare ranch building, the most emphasis is on Norton as his
first scene shows him being unable to afford the new trailer Lou Ann would like and
instead being shown a previously owned trailer. Both Norton and Lou Ann appear
unhappy; they are rarely shown smiling and one scene shows them sitting side-by-side on
the step of their trailer home in silence, seemingly with nothing to say to one another.
Norton perhaps best represents the residents of the New West that Kollin
discusses in her work on anti-Westerns. Using the film The Last Picture Show as an
example, Kollin identifies the theme of depicting the West as a “depraved and corrupted
space, with the characters in a small Texas town living empty, dead-end lives that barely
29
resemble the possibilities and promises dreamed up by the region's earlier white
settlers.”81 Norton’s life seems to exemplify this empty existence and contrasts to the
icons from the Old West who were represented as undertaking masculine, rugged work,
and in this way contrasts to Perkins as well. Norton’s poor work ethic and less than
physically demanding job are emphasized with some irony in a series of shots that show
him listening to the song “Workin’ Man Blues” in his truck between getting coffee and
stopping to neglect his work duties to instead spend some time with his Hustler
magazine.
Traditionally, Westerns have relied on the binaries of good/bad and hero/villain to
define the character of the male protagonists. As Pat Tyrer and Pat Nickell assert, “No
gray moral areas exist in the formula Western.”82 Will Wright identified these binaries, or
“oppositions,” in his study of the formula of classic Westerns, claiming that the good/bad
binary is one of “the basic classifications of people in the Western.”83 He also believes
that “We can reduce each story to three sets of characters: the hero, the society, and the
villains.”84 In the films No Country and Three Burials it initially seems clear that there
are good and bad characters, and there are certainly binaries and oppositions of characters
with incompatible world views, who cannot or will not see what is on the other side of
their moral boundaries. These characters are identifiable because they meet the
requirements and expectations laid out in countless earlier formula Westerns. For
example, the ‘good guys’ hold traits that scholars of Westerns have identified as being
81
Susan Kollin, ‘Genre and the Geographies of Violence: Cormac McCarthy and the Contemporary
Western’, Contemporary Literature, Vol. 42, No. 3 (Autumn, 2001), 558.
82
Tyrer and Nickell, ‘“Of what is past, or passing, or to come”’, 91.
83
Press, 1975), 59.
84
Ibid, 40.
30
part of the formula and model of cowboy manhood, such as resolve. According to
Tompkins “self-discipline, unswerving purpose …and a capacity to continue in the face
of total exhaustion and overwhelming odds,”85 are traditional cowboy markers, and these
qualities are present in many of the films’ male protagonists.
In No Country, Sheriff Bell is the most obvious force of good, a position
highlighted in his narrative in which he rails against the escalating levels of violence in
the borderlands, and in his clear separation between himself and the crimes he sees.
Chigurh, with his hyper-violent actions and merciless contempt for his victims is painted
from some of the earliest scenes as the villain. In fact, the opening narrative of Bell
cutting straight to Chigurh’s arrest and subsequent murder of the deputy seems to lay out
a straightforward moral ground.
Perkins appears to be the ‘good guy’ of Three Burials as he is shown being driven
to extreme measures in trying to get justice for a friend. His resolve is made clear and
then given immediate contrast when, early in his journey he loses a horse and with it all
his provisions. Despite the severity of the situation he does not even acknowledge the
setback, and continues anyway. In the next scene, the sheriff, Belmont, runs his truck into
a ditch, which is the last straw for him as the next we hear he has admitted defeat;
heading on vacation to SeaWorld, and saying that he wants nothing more to do with the
case.
Norton as the murderer holds the role of villain. Together with the supporting
character of Belmont, he represents the corrupt, negligent and damaging north of the
border law enforcement that finds its historical precedent in histories and folklore
85
31
identified by Américo Paredes. According to Paredes, “In all events the peaceful man
minding his own business is essential to the concept of the border hero,”86 and that
peaceful business is always disrupted by the Texas Rangers. Paredes identified the saying
in his study of border folklore “The Texas Ranger always carries a rusty old gun in his
saddlebags. This is for use when he kills an unarmed Mexican. He drops the gun beside
the body and then claims he killed the Mexican in self-defense after a furious battle.”87
Norton’s claim that Estrada shot at him first echoes this tradition. Additionally, Paredes
found historical reports in which, “some [Mexicans] actually were shot by mistake,
according to the Ranger method of shooting first and asking questions afterwards,”88
which he connected to “a long established custom, that of shooting first and looking
afterward,”89 heard in corridos, sayings and anecdotes related to the borderlands. Again,
this pattern is seen in the portrayal of Norton, when he kills Estrada before realizing he
was only shooting at a coyote to protect his herd.
Norton’s unlikable character is highlighted in a scene where he chases after a
group of illegal immigrants, punching a female immigrant in the face while ordering her
to “stay down, bitch.” His boss is used to provide contrast and reinforce Norton’s
unlikable nature. He frowns upon Norton’s violence, and refers to Norton as “the little
prick.” At the second burial of Estrada the boss makes the sign of the cross, signaling his
recognition for the gravity of the situation and the respect it calls for, while Norton looks
on unimpressed.
86
Américo Paredes, With His Pistol in His Hand: A Border Ballad and its Hero (Austin, University of
Texas Press, 1971), 111.
87
Ibid, 24.
88
Ibid, 26.
89
Ibid,72.
32
Despite the seemingly clear moral positions of the male protagonists, closer view
confuses the binaries. For instance, Bell’s failure to hinder Chigurh’s murderous mission
in any way calls into question his competence and resolve, and Chigurh operates outside
the conventions of a Western villain, perhaps making it impossible for Bell to stop him.
Perkins’ actions may at first seem justified, but as he repeatedly breaks the law and puts
Norton’s life in danger the possibility that he has gone too far and is acting recklessly and
irrationally is posed.
This blurring of the moral ground has been noted by scholars of the much written
on No Country. Tyrer and Nickell believe that “in the hands of the Coen brothers the
moral view seems to be gray and indistinct.”90 Welsh, Tyrer and Nickell have all noted
the absence of a hero figure. Welsh claims that “it is difficult to locate a ‘hero’ with
confidence here….”91 Tyrer and Nickell support this claim, stating that “Moss has no
heroic moments,”92 and add Bell to this list of unheroic characters, “there’s nothing
heroic about Ed Tom Bell, nothing uncertain about the naiveté and greed of Llewellyn
Moss….”93 Furthermore, they comment on the blurring of characters who appear to
embody elements of the Western formula males into their character, but deviate on moral
grounds,
The three central characters …seem to be remnants of the Old West. …However,
in both novel and film, these contemporary Western characters have faded into
shadows of their original forms. Gone are the recognizable characters who rode
across hundreds of movie screens coast to coast. Instead of the clear delineation
between the ‘good guy’ and the ‘bad guy,’ No Country for Old Men presents its
90
91
Jim Welsh, ‘Borderline Evil: The Dark Side of Byzantium in No Country for Old Men, Novel and Film’,
in King, Lynnea Chapman, Wallach, Rick and Welsh, Jim, eds. From Novel to Film: No Country for Old
Men (Toronto, The Scarecrow Press, Inc. 2009), 75.
92
93
Ibid, 94.
33
audience with characters who imperfectly represent both and adds a third, one
who is neither good nor evil.94
It is true that Moss embodies traits both positive and negative. His decision to take the
satchel of money is done out of greed. However, he also meets the requirements of a hero
in his resolve, which Peebles describes as his “formidable determination and
optimism,”95 and in his decision to help the injured drug worker.
Whether the men are shown as principled or not would provide clues on their
moral character, but in the films this too is blurred. The notion of being principled is used
in two different ways in the films – whether the men are principled by doing ‘the right
thing’ or whether they are what Peebles deems “coldly principled.” Additionally, whether
the men’s principles lead to rational or irrational behavior is a point that the films offer no
definitive commentary on.
Moss is initially shown as rational and patient, checking his watch while watching the
ultimo hombre, to ensure he is dead and therefore no longer a threat before approaching.
He is calm and rational in predicting the actions of other men and how to react to them.
While searching for the ultimo hombre he states, “you stopped to watch your backtrack.
…But if you stopped, you stopped in shade,” and is correct as he finds the man slumped
in the shade of a tree. He then predicts that the men who found his truck in the desert will
be calling in plate numbers at 9.00am, when the courthouse opens, and “at 9.30 they’ll
show up here.” Using this knowledge he and Carla Jean are able to leave before Chigurh
arrives. However, he betrays his own rational approach when he returns to the scene of
the drug deal in the desert to take water to the injured man. Peebles points out that here
94
Ibid, 86.
95
Peebles, 124.
34
Moss “shows himself to be principled, even though putting those principles into action
conflicts with his highly developed pragmatism.”96 Moss even acknowledges the
foolishness of his actions and the dangers they involve, telling Carla Jean, “I’m fixin’ to
do something dumber than hell, but I’m going anyway.” Perkins too is acting on
emotions to give Estrada his rightful burial. He does this even though to do so involves
breaking many laws and putting himself in danger.
By acting on emotion and compassion to help those of lower status, and from
across the border – Mexicans, drug dealers, illegal-immigrants – Moss and Perkins put
themselves in great peril. While these actions are what signal the moral superiority of the
men, they also threaten to detract from their masculinity, in their sentimental nature.
Tompkins found in her study of the genre that,
to show that your heart is not hard… is sentimental – indulging in excessive or

unnecessary feeling in response to a negligible stimulus – in other word, soft,
womanish, emotional, the very qualities the Western hero must get rid of to be a
man.
The Western schools people to scorn the expression of sympathy for pain…. the
interdiction against sentimentality [is] needed to support the image of manhood
the genre underwrites.”97
Harry M. Benshoff and Sean Griffin, in their work on masculinity in film, also noted that
rejecting emotions was significant to constructing masculinity in the genre, stating that
“the Western promotes a masculine ideal of a strong, unemotional, aggressive hero.”98
Principles enacted on compassionate grounds, therefore, would be coded as feminine on
the basis that acting on emotion is a feminine trait and therefore has no place in the
character of a Western male.
96
Ibid, 127.
97
98
Harry M. Benshoff and Sean Griffin, America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality
at the Movies (Malden, Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2009), 261.
35
While the actions of Moss and Perkins may hint at feminine compassion, they
could also be read as masculine, and following a male honor code. Perkins’ actions not
only denote compassion, but also the cowboy requirement of loyalty, and they respond to
the theme of rightful burial familiar to the Western genre. Moss, in providing help to
someone in need, regardless of his affiliation to that person, also points to a code of honor
that would fit within the qualities of cowboy ethics. Peek proposes a model to explain her
theories on the masculinity of Westerns that suggests that gendered traits are not
necessarily oppositional, and instead masculine and feminine behaviors can be
complimentary.99 This theory is reflected in the compassionate actions of Moss and
Perkins, and suggests that their decisions to help others and act on loyalty do not
necessarily code them as feminized, and instead and point to a masculine strength within
their character.
The moral ground is further complicated when considering Chigurh as rational
and principled. Carson Wells tells Moss of Chigurh, “You can’t make a deal with him.
…He’s a peculiar man. You might even say he has principles, principles that transcend
money or drugs.” Peebles describes Chigurh as “a coldly principled – some would say
merciless – killing machine,”100 an accurate description, as his principles seem propelled
by the opposite of compassion or sentimentality. This rejection of empathy is what allows
him to follow his inner code so rigidly. As Tyrer and Nickell suggest, “[Chigurh] is cold,
calculating, and certain that those with whom he comes into contact deserve what fate he
99
of Popular Film & Television. Washington, Winter 2003, Vol. 30, Issue 4, 208.
100
Peebles, ‘“Hold Still”, 127.
36
inflicts upon them.”101 Topolnisky describes Chigurh as possessing “a sense of justice
and duty that bears no relation to established social mores and is compelled to follow
through on his word.”102 Topolnisky also recognizes the destabilizing nature of Chigurh’s
principles in relation to Western expectations of a villain, when she claims that “in the
case of Chigurh, his attire and personal philosophy work both with and against what is
expected from a Western villain. He is not greedy, rash, or lustful and adheres to a code
of ethics with a personal dedication and force of will that are conventionally the traits of a
hero.”103 To have such a cold and merciless killer carry out his crimes so effectively by
using the traits traditionally seen in a hero is a clear challenge to the moral ground laid
out through numerous earlier Westerns.
In another unsettling possibility, Chigurh’s strictly followed principles point to
rationality and therefore code him as masculine. Peebles believes that Chigurh’s character
is best described as rational, stating,
His actions are not motivated by optimism, pessimism, or indeed by any

emotionally inflected view of the world. He begins with his principles, and his
actions follow in what he considers an entirely reasonable manner….He presents
himself as strictly rational, someone who plays by the rules of the game as he sees
them. 104
She relates this rationality to gender, adding that, “despite [his] deliberately off-center
masculine tags …Chigurh is nevertheless a hypermasculine figure. The emphasis on his
rationality in all situations, his emotionless responses... make this possible.”105 Connell, in
101
102
Topolnisky, ‘For Every Tatter in its Mortal Dress’, 113.
103
Ibid, 122.
104
Peebles, ‘“Hold Still”, 124-127.
105
Ibid, 131.
37
his study of masculinities, acknowledges that in a patriarchal cultural rationality, reason,
and the rejection of emotion, are associated with the male realm.106
Whether the male protagonists are rational or irrational is a contested issue within
the storyline of both films. The possible mental instability of the characters Perkins in
Three Burials and Chigurh in No Country is a theme that runs throughout the films. After
Carla Jean finds Chigurh waiting for her in her bedroom and he refutes her argument that
he does not need to kill her and claims his killing her is a matter of fate, she tells him, “I
knowed you was crazy when I saw you sitting there.” Wells makes the same point during
a similar conversation when he is about to be assassinated by Chigurh, asking him, “Do
you have any idea how crazy you are?” Chigurh asks Wells, “You mean the nature of this
conversation?” but Wells insists, “I mean the nature of you.” The El Paso sheriff refers to
Chigurh as a “homical lunatic,” although Bell disagrees, claiming “I don’t think he’s a
lunatic.” In this statement, made late in the film and with Moss already dead, it seems
that Bell first recognizes Chigurh’s otherworldliness. He tells the El Paso sheriff that
rather than a lunatic, Chigurh appears to be some kind of a ghost. It is only after making
this recognition that he comes closest to coming face to face with Chigurh, predicting that
he will go to the crime scene of Moss’s murder.
In Three Burials Perkins has the same accusations of insanity leveled against him
throughout the film. He tells Belmont to release Estrada’s body to him after the
investigation is complete, to which Belmont replies “Hell, I can’t do that. Are you
crazy?” Although it was meant as a rhetorical question, Perkins calmly answers, “No. I’m
not.” When Belmont and the deputy investigate Norton’s abduction and find his border
106
R.W. Connell, Masculinities (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2005), 164.
38
patrol uniform left folded on the table of Estrada’s home, the following exchange takes
place,
Deputy: “What did [Perkins] leave that uniform lying there like that for?”
Belmont: “To tell us he’s crazy…. Goddamn crazy son of a bitch, Pete Perkins.”
Deputy: “What do you think?”
Belmont: “I think the son of a bitch is crazy.”
During their journey, Norton tells Perkins “You’re crazy. You’re totally fucking crazy,
man,” and after Perkins asks Rachel to come to Mexico and marry him, she responds
with, “Are you crazy?” When meeting with the border patrol agents to decide where to
start the search for Perkins, an exasperated Belmont claims, “There’s a thousand ways he
could go to Mexico, and that son of a bitch is so fucking nuts he might even be headed
north to Canada.” I argue that this statement exemplifies the issue; no-one knows which
boundaries these men will cross next, because they do not follow the rules.
The supposed craziness of Chigurh and Perkins relates to their rigid adherence to
an inner code and their unknowable and therefore unpredictable nature, reflected in their
supposedly inexplicable decisions and actions that confound and confuse others.
However, Perkins and Chigurh do appear to be the most powerful males in the films, with
Perkins successfully eluding the search teams and making it to Mexico, and Chigurh
eluding Bell. Therefore, while others deride them for what they see as lunacy, their
confounding and unpredictable actions make the men powerful and dangerous. To look at
this in gendered terms reveals that what others see as irrational and crazy is actually a
hyper-masculine inner code.
39
Early in Three Burials Perkins is ineffective in making Belmont listen to him, but
once he has decided on his own vigilante course of action he has power and carries out
his plan with rigid resolve. Those he meets on his journey answer his questions, follow
his wishes, and appear to respect him, for instance, the people smuggler who agrees to get
him across the border despite knowing that the police and border patrol are searching for
him, Mariana who agrees to save Norton despite her initial objects, the old man with the
radio who offers Perkins and Norton food although he barely has enough to feed himself,
and the sheepherders who gladly provide him with meat from a freshly killed bear
immediately after meeting him.
In the power hierarchy between Perkins and Norton, Perkins, as the hostage–taker
and the man wielding the gun, is clearly in control. An aspect of his power is seen when
he continually withholds information from Norton, for instance when Norton asks
“Where are we going?” and is met with only silence. Just as Chigurh is described as a
man you cannot make a deal with, Perkins will not make a deal with the people smuggler,
even though he is dependent on his help to cross into Mexico. “Let’s make a deal,” the
people smuggler suggests after hearing that Perkins has no money, “give me your rifle
and your horse.” Perkins replies with a straight-forward “No.” After seeing a helicopter
fly past and realizing he needs to move quickly, he agrees to give one of the horses, but
not his own horse. The people smuggler adds, “And the rifle,” but Perkins insists “Just
the horse.” The audience sees that he is successful in his resolve, as the film then cuts to
Perkins, Norton and the people smuggler about to cross the river into Mexico.
40
The scene in which Perkins and Norton cross the border is when Perkins is most
powerful and Norton most vulnerable and emasculated. Suffering from the effects of the
rattlesnake bite, Norton gains consciousness and attempts to flee from Perkins. Here
Perkins is manly in his stoic, calm and rational response, while Norton is hysterical,
possibly delusional from the bite, screaming and flailing. Without giving any sign of
panic, Perkins, using a skill associated with Westerns and ranch work, effortlessly lassoes
Norton around the neck and sets off on his horse into the river, dragging Norton behind
him. Norton is completely helpless as he is dragged across the river and into Mexico,
while Perkins offers no reaction to the events, suggesting that Norton’s attempt to escape
was little more than a passing annoyance, and one that was easily overcome. The scene
also demonstrates a significant step and success for Perkins who, through his own skill,
will power, and determination, has made it across the border without being intercepted by
the numerous authorities chasing him.
In No Country Chigurh uses a commanding manner with success. Peebles notes
that “Chigurh operates largely unopposed for much of the film,”107 and “consistently
proves formidably intimidating to the men he encounters.”108People obey Chigurh’s
commands, such as his instruction to the man he pulls over, to “hold still.” The man does
as he is told, as Chigurh executes him with his oxygen tank and air gun. Similarly, he
tells the drug exec to “give me that [flashlight],” and the exec obeys and hands him the
flashlight which Chigurh then uses to illuminate the execs while he calmly shoots them
both. Chigurh also asks questions he would never answer, for instance “you from round
107
108
Ibid, 135.
41
here?” to the farmer who stops to help him with his broken down truck. The man
immediately answers, in contrast to the earlier incident in the gas station when Chigurh
responded to the owner’s enquiry of “you all getting any weather up your way? I saw you
were from Dallas,” with “what business of yours is it where I’m from?”
The power that Perkins and Chigurh’s will and unknowableness provide returns
us to the issues of gendered coding. According to Oates, “to define the masculine, the
real subject (in a patriarchal culture) is power.”109 As Johns points out, “Chigurh adheres
to a specific code and faith that subversively aligns him with the masculine,”110 while
Peebles highlights “the impressive exertion of his will”111 as one of the factors that code
him as hyper-masculine. Within the issues of character, the films No Country and Three
Burials provide the examples of a somewhat good guy, and a ruthless killer as the most
powerful, and most masculine, male characters, and in doing so their portrayals of
manhood disrupt the long established boundaries of classic Western convention.
109
David Oates, ‘Questions about Sexless Nature Writing’ in Susan Kollin, ed. Postwestern Cultures:
Literature, Theory, Space (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 120.
110
Johns, ‘A Flip of the Coin’, 140.
111
42
Chapter Three: The Male Body
How the male protagonists are physically presented, and what happens to the
men’s bodies in the films is significant due to the cultural and, in particular, gendered
meanings that bodies convey. Jay Mechling believes that we should look to the body as it
functions as “a prime site for the creation of meaning.”112 Alexandra Howson explains
that these meanings relate to culture, as “the human body is perceived and understood
through a set of ideas and frameworks that are themselves the product of particular social
and historical contexts,”113 and Donna Haraway, in exploring gendered bodies, states that
“bodies are maps of power and identity.”114 Additionally, the male body and its cultural
meanings are significant markers of the Western genre. Mitchell traces the origins of the
focus on the male body in Westerns to Owen Wister’s The Virginian, “among numerous
possibilities Wister initiated for the Western, perhaps the most important (at least
discussed) is the male body itself.”115 He goes on to highlight just how central the body
has become to the genre, “not only is the Western a genre that allows us to gaze at men,
this gaze forms such an essential aspect of the genre that it seems covertly about just that:
looking at men.”116 Therefore, in this chapter I look at the ways male bodies in the films
are constructed, deconstructed and, in some cases, reconstructed.
112
Jay Mechling, “Some New Elementary Axioms for an American Cultur[al] Studies”, in American
Studies, 38:2, (Summer 1997), 21.
113
Alexandra Howson, The Body in Society: An Introduction (Cambridge, Polity Press, 2004), 65.
114
Donna Haraway, The Haraway Reader, (New York, Routledge, 2004), 37-38.
115
Lee Clark Mitchell, Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film (Chicago, The University of
Chicago Press, 1996), 156.
116
Ibid, Westerns, 159.
43
Another consideration relating to gendered bodies is that of bodies as bounded
systems. Jill Lepore addressed this issue through her work on the attacks that bodies
suffered during King Philip’s War, and how those attacks impacted ideas of English
identity, “nearly all the damage to the English during King Philip’s War …was
understood as attacks on bounded systems,… The concern with barriers was not limited
to physical, geographical boundaries. It extended also to violations of English bodies.”117
This theory suggests that the cultural meanings and associated identities of bodies rely on
boundaries to contain and define them. Therefore I am interested in the ways that these
boundaries are maintained or transcended in the films, and how attacks on bodies threaten
the boundaries that construct and protect gendered identity.
An instantly noticeable aspect of the protagonists’ bodies is their appearance.
Clothing serves as an essential marker of identity, especially in the formulaic genre of the
Western. According to Cawelti, “When we see a couple of characters dressed in ten-
gallon hats and riding horses, we know we are in a Western,”118 while Paul Fussell
believes that,
The difference between costume and uniform grows complicated when we

considered, say, ‘cowboys,’ most of whom turn out to be Marlboro Man
impersonators. Their appearance is uniform alright – the unique boots, the
obligatory jeans, the neckerchief. …when enough people wear the same thing
over time… their costume is likely to ennoble itself into a uniform and convey
news of valuable personal qualities in its wearers.119
117
Jill Lepore, The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity (New York,
Vintage Books, 1998), 74
118
John G. Cawelti, The Six-Gun Mystique, (Bowling Green, Bowling Green University Popular Press,
1984), 34.
119
Paul Fussell, Uniforms: Why We Are What We Wear (New York, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002), 4.
44
Topolnisky argues that clothing is more relevant to identity construction in Westerns than
other film genres, due to the sparse setting of desert landscapes, where Westerns typically
take place,
In art, as in life, clothing signifies. In a meager setting such as the West, which
frequently lacks conventional social framework or architectural landmarks,
garments on the body are among the few possessions and markers of identity. As
such, it can be argued that dress signifies more in a Western than in other genres.
The wealth of tacit knowledge and assumptions that the viewer brings concerning,
for instance, what rugged work wear or a sheriff’s uniform ought to be, have been
molded and refined largely through experience with Westerns.120
In the contemporary Westerns, No Country and Three Burials, clothing serves to place
the films in relation to the Western genre and to present certain male characters as
adhering to the Western model of manhood, at least through their appearance. According
to Topolnisky “Costume is particularly relevant when considering No Country for Old
Men in light of the Western tradition, a genre steeped in iconic tropes and symbols
connected to regional identity. …Dress also functions as shorthand for understanding the
characters in ways legible to those with even a cursory experience of Western films.”121
While the way that the male protagonists dress identifies them as characters of a Western,
it also serves a role in the deconstruction of the genre, in that it adds to the unsettling
feeling when those characters do not follow traditional Western stories.
Bell and Moss in No Country and Perkins in Three Burials are outfitted in what
Stacey Peebles calls the “utilitarian shirt and jeans,” of Texas. 122 All three wear cowboy
hats, shirts, jeans and cowboy boots, embodying the cowboy manhood constructed
120
Old Men (Toronto, The Scarecrow Press, Inc. 2009),112-113.
121
Ibid,112.
122
45
through earlier Westerns, and the cowboy uniform identified by Fussell. These outfits are
also notably rugged and well worn, and together the appearance is a marker of outdoor,
masculine, western work. No Country’s Moss works as a welder and hunts in the desert
in his leisure time, while we know that Bell’s sheriff work often takes him into the desert
on horseback, and we see that his home is located in a rural area. In Three Burials
Perkins lives and works on a ranch. Perkins shows pride in his lifestyle when he and
Estrada comment on how their boss thinks he is a cowboy just because his parents bought
him a ranch, suggesting that in this lifestyle, hands-on work is important and respected.
Norton wears a uniform for his border patrol work. The all-green uniform, with a
short-sleeved shirt, slacks, and baseball cap, evokes associations with the Boy Scouts
rather than a traditional Western adult male. When first abducted by Perkins he dresses in
his uniform, as instructed, but keep on his flip flops, the unsuitability of which are
emphasized when he is digging up Estrada’s corpse, slipping and scrambling in the grave.
Before setting out on their journey Perkins makes Norton change out of his uniform and
put on Estrada’s work clothes, signifying his taking on what Perkins considers real,
worthy work.
Chigurh’s appearance in the film is especially significant as he has been referred
to as an allegory or a ghost within the film and in scholarship of the novel and film,
relating to his unknowableness and suggesting he is a representation of evil or violence
and somehow otherworldly. In the film, however, his visual embodiment makes the
character real (we see him in the flesh), yet still unknowable. Dennis Rothermel argues
46
that, “Chigurh we have to understand as a man, not merely as a symbol or cypher.”123
However, while his embodiment allows the audience to visualize him as a man, it should
not allow them to understand him. The Coen’s were faced with the challenge of creating
the otherworldliness or ghostliness of Chigurh from the novel, yet presenting this within a
male actor. While Moss and Bell had to be “of the region,”124 Chigurh needed to appear
unplaceable.
Although Chigurh does wear denim and cowboy boots, his appearance stands out
most sharply from the other characters. In contrast to Moss and Bell’s attire, his clothes
look crisp and new. His hair is well cared for and an unusual bowl-like style - described
by one critic as “alarming.”125 His nails are clean and trimmed, which can be seen when
he places his hand over the coin in the gas station. This perhaps reflects his line of work,
where he would need to be meticulous in removing blood from his person, but
differentiates him from those undertaking manual outdoor work. Peebles offers a
gendered reading of Chigurh’s appearance, stating that
[Chigurh] is not obviously coded as masculine by his physical appearance. He

wears a denim jacket and jeans that would seem to be an attempt at Western attire,
but their newness and neatness stand out in a region where well-used boots and
broken-in clothes are more common. The oddity of his Prince Valiant haircut has,
of course, been commented upon extensively in reviews and elsewhere, but its
exacting arrangement makes sense on a man who has everything under
control….”126
123
Dennis Rothermel, Personal Communication in Jim Welsh, ‘Borderline Evil: The Dark Side of
Byzantium in No Country for Old Men, Novel and Film’, in King, Lynnea Chapman, Wallach, Rick and
Welsh, Jim, eds. From Novel to Film: No Country for Old Men (Toronto, The Scarecrow Press, Inc. 2009),
75.
124
Ethan Coen, The Making of No Country for Old Men (2007).
125
Steve Covell, ‘Devil with a Bad Haircut: Postmodern Villainy Rides the Range in No Country Old
126
47
Chigurh’s visual embodiment adds to his unknowableness. For instance, western clothes
act as an identifier of regional identity, whereas it cannot be known whether Chigurh’s
clothes look new because he is from elsewhere and only attempting to dress in the local
style, or for some other reason entirely.
Howson, in her work on gender and the body, claims that “we assume a
corresponding set of capacities, behaviours and characteristics associated with gender, or
masculinity or femininity. Sometimes these assumptions will be rewarded, yet at others
they will be challenged by some feature or other that appears to disrupt that anticipated
congruence between sex and gender.”127 Chigurh’s embodiment provides the disruption
that Howson identifies. As Covell points out, “there is something so incongruous about
his odd hair and out-of-place clothing options.”128 In a model of manhood as central to
American culture as the Western male or cowboy, Chigurh’s appearance ruptures the
bounded system. By following the coded appearance of the Western male in some ways,
and deviating from it in others, Chigurh constructs an unsettling embodiment at once
familiar and confusing.
The tools and possessions that the men carry on their bodies are other aspects of
embodiment that offer commentary on the masculinity of the characters. For example, the
girl at the Del Rio motel calls Moss “Mr sportin’ goods” based on the gym bag and
equipment he carries with him. Topolnisky claims that, “objects, including costume, help
position the narrative geographically and socially.”129 The resourcefulness of the male
characters in relation to their possessions fits into a gendered ideology, but this is not
127
Howson, The Body in Society, 39.
128
Covell, ‘Devil with a Bad Haircut’, 97
129
Topolnisky, ‘For Every Tatter in its Mortal Dress, 112.
48
stable or straightforward. Moss has masculine coded tools, going to a guns and ammo
store to outfit himself for what lies ahead. When needing to unscrew the air vent in the
motel room in order to hide the satchel he uses his pocket knife. Chigurh, in looking for
the satchel, later uses a coin for the same purpose. Therefore Chigurh is shown as being
able to achieve the same resourcefulness with whatever is at hand, regardless of whether
the tool he chooses has manly associations or signifies masculine skill.
With violence, particularly gun violence, as a central theme in both films and the
Western genre, the weapons that the men carry are some of the most obvious additions to
the Western male costume. Guns function as an extension to the body and a signifier for
masculine construction. As Cawelti explains, “many critics of the Western have
commented on the gun as a phallic symbol…. Insofar as this is the case it bears out the
emphasis on masculine potency already noted.”130 In the films weapons replace physical
strength, and are the means by which the male characters exert control and project power
and dominance. There is no hand to hand combat in either film, with Chigurh strangling
the deputy in a surprise attack from behind being the only occasion we see men come into
violent physical contact.
With the gun as an extension of the male body in the West the level of skill and
ability when using weapons is important. Peebles calls the Western “a genre built on the
fetishization of guns and their skilled use,”131 while Cawelti claims that “the hero’s
special skill at gunfighting not only symbolizes his masculine potency, but indicates that
his violence is disciplined and pure. Something like the old ideal of knightly purity and
130
Cawelti, The Six-Gun Mystique, 59.
131
49
chastity survives in the cowboy hero’s basic aversion to the grosser and dirtier forms of
violence.”132 In No Country, messy killing is frowned upon, with the drug exec referring
to the drug deal gone wrong as, “that colossal goat-fuck out in the desert,” and Wendell
responding to the scene with, “it’s a mess, aint it, Sheriff?”
The first time the audience sees Moss in No Country is when he is shown hunting
and has an antelope in the scope of his Remington 700 rifle, but only succeeds in
wounding the animal. Sheriff Bell is never seen using his gun so the audience does not
know his degree of skill. He does mention in his opening narrative that some of the ‘old
timers’ never wore a gun, suggesting that in the past a gun was not needed as a symbol of
power and authority. In Three Burials Norton ‘accidently’ shoots Estrada after becoming
panicked, and seems to not have intended to kill him, calling out the almost comically
understated “you ok, man?” as he approaches the body. Perkin’s, in contrast, is obviously
used to handling guns, which is unsurprising given his outdoor ranch work, and he is
calm and commanding when he uses his gun to abduct Norton. His gun skills are further
proven in the closing scenes when he shoots the ground all around Norton without hitting
him – a final reinforcement of his masculine competence and Western mastery.
Chigurh is by far the most effective and efficient with his killing, a point shown
through the action and the dialog, and noted by scholars. After the drug exec asks Wells,
“just how dangerous is he?” Wells responds with, “Compared to what? The bubonic
plague?” According to Covell, “in terms of weaponry, like all badass Western killers,
Chigurh is proficient with any weapon and often with whatever is available.”133 In the
132
Cawelti, The Six-Gun Mystique, 60.
133
Covell, ‘Devil with a Bad Haircut’, 105.
50
Del Rio motel he shuts the shower curtain before shooting the drug worker hiding in
there and does not look behind it before leaving the room. This seems not due to any
squeamishness on Chigurh’s part, as we are shown that he is used to seeing others
mutilated by his violence. His rationale for this action appears to be to avoid being tainted
by the blood spatter which we see hit the shower curtain, while his failure to check
whether the man is really dead is due to his confidence in his killing abilities.
While the gun may be an important extension of the Western male body, the
implements used in the films to kill or wound, in particular in No Country, suggest that
the types of weapons are changing. Chigurh’s menagerie of weapons includes an oxygen
tank and hose (resembling the bolt and air gun that butchers use to slaughter cattle), and a
shotgun enhanced with a silencer. Topolnisky notes that “the cruelly efficient pressurized
air gun is Chigurh’s most distinctive accessory.”134 Moss uses a rifle and sawn-off
Winchester Model 96, and the drug dealers use machine guns and send in dogs when
their guns fail to kill. Perkins uses the traditional Western tool of the lasso, as well as his
hand gun and a shot gun. The newer, less traditionally iconic weapons, especially
Chigurh’s, get the job done in the most effective ways, even though they detract from a
traditional Western male embodiment. As Covell points out,
The air ‘gun’ offers an inversion or subversion of the usual manly implementia
carted about by our Western villains: it suggests a subversion of the ubiquitous
cowboy and his use of a rifle to guard the vast herds of steer back in the ‘Wild
West’ days. This gun is used to kill steer – not guard them – and its usage is
promulgated not by its firepower but by its functional simplicity and
effectiveness.135
134
Sonya Topolnisky, ‘For Every Tatter in its Mortal Dress, 113.
135
Covell, ‘Devil with a Bad Haircut’, 105.
51
This pattern supports Peek’s theories on Westerns as a romance of competence, in that as
long as Chigurh’s weapons do the job competently it does not matter that they are not
fully coded or recognizable as manly and not in keeping with the classic Western
weapons of guns or fists.136
Another possibility for Chigurh’s violence is that his skill at killing and his
unusual weapons evoke the idea of the character as standing in for the Indian ‘other’ seen
in earlier Westerns. The closest that the film comes to acknowledging this connection is
toward the end of the film when Bell visits his uncle Ellis, wheelchair-bound after being
shot while working as a deputy. Ellis tells Bell the story of his Uncle Mac, who was
killed in 1909 when a group of Indians shot him through the lung while he stood in his
own doorway. Mac had been heading into the house to get his shotgun, but the Indians
were “ahead of him.” Ellis describes how the group then watched Mac die as his wife
attempted to stop the bleeding. His point in telling the story is to show Bell that, “what
you got ain’t nothing new,” referring to the violence that Bell has witnessed in his pursuit
of Chigurh. This comparison suggests that Chigurh, with his deadly and unpredictable
violence, represents the Indian ‘other,’ as an unknowable force, existing outside of the
boundaries of Anglo-American society, and operating in ways that seem completely alien
to the Anglo-American male, such as Bell.
What happens to the male body through the duration of the films is deconstruction
though injury. This is classic of the formula Western, as injury and death are key
136
of Popular Film & Television. Washington, Winter 2003, Vol. 30, Iss. 4, 45.
52
components of the genre. According to Tompkins, Westerns are “obsessed with pain.”137
No Country and Three Burials are no different, with attacks on the male body coming
from multiple sources. Bodies are seen throughout the films covered in blood or
mutilated through violence. In response to his blood-stained clothing from the injuries he
sustained in his shoot-out with Chigurh, Moss is asked repeatedly by a young man on the
bridge, “were you in a car accident?” foreshadowing later events.
The wilderness setting of Westerns offers one source of attack to the body. In the
films this source of attack is seemingly unbiased, as it targets those who are familiar with
the land and those who are not. In Three Burials, Norton, who has no knowledge of or
connection to the desert suffers the most at the hands of the wilderness. Running barefoot
from Perkins his feet are lacerated and in hiding in a cave in a cliff-wall he is bitten by a
rattlesnake. In No Country, even Moss, who survived the jungle of Vietnam and who
seems comfortable and competent hunting in the Texas desert, is injured and receives
lacerations to his feet when fleeing the drug workers.
The car crash in which Chigurh is involved in some of the final scenes of No
Country is the source of injury that Peebles believes is the biggest assault on masculinity
due to the loss of control it symbolizes. The impact of the car crash, Peebles believes, is
that “in a split second [the crash] transforms a confident assassin into something like
roadkill.”138 However, as I will discuss in the next chapter, Chigurh is still able to rise to
his feet and walk away.
137
1992), 6.
138
53
The type of injury most commonly associated with Westerns is that caused by
violence, specifically violence committed by other men. The male protagonists do have
the uncanny ability to dodge bullets, particularly fatal shots; a skill found in many
masculine film genres. After Moss flees the Eagle Hotel and climbs into a passing truck,
Chigurh manages to shoot the driver in the neck and head, and shatter every window of
the truck, but misses Moss. However, this skill is not foolproof and both Moss and
Chigurh are injured in the gun battle. Such injury leaves men vulnerable, as Peebles
points out, “Moss suffers a debilitating wound in his side that gradually slows his
movement from quick but considered action to literal unconsciousness. The wound is
emasculating.”139 The injury leaves him a ‘sitting duck,’ at a time when it is essential he
is able to flee those who are hunting him and to protect his wife, Carla Jean. “I been
immobile” he tells Carson Wells, after he is tracked down in the hospital, claiming that
this is the only reason Wells could find him so easily.
Arosteguy uses Sally Robinson’s theories on the wounded male to connect
violence on the male body to Masculinity Studies and the perceived crisis of masculinity,
stating that, “In reaction to their perceived marginalization and exclusion from identity
politics, Robinson argues, the white male made a comeback as a wounded, victimized
body – what she terms the ‘crisis’ in white masculinity.”140 However, Mitchell identifies
earlier Westerns, so those pre-Masculinity Studies, as using the wounded male body as a
key plot device,
139
Ibid, 128.
140
Cowboy in Annie Proulx's Close Range: Wyoming Stories”, Western American Literature, Vol. 45,
54
The frequency with which the body is celebrated, then physically punished, only
to convalesce, suggests something of the paradox involved in making true men
out of biological men, taking their male bodies and distorting them beyond any
apparent power of self-control, so that in the course of recuperating, an achieved
masculinity that is at once physical and based on performance can be revealed.141
This appears contradictory in suggesting that wounding symbolizes the victimization
associated with identity politics, but also that it remakes and strengthens men.
Aroesteguy’s explanation, that, “Violence is a key strategy for normalizing white
masculinity. …[The] physical marking of men as wounded, but made tough through
violence, becomes part of the cultural project of masculinity,”142 points to the testing of
masculinity as part of the Western genre. Therefore, putting male bodies in peril and
shown as destroyed allows the triumph over these injuries to strengthen and empower
manhood through reconstruction.
After being shot in the abdomen by Chigurh, Moss crosses into Mexico where he
seeks medical help. Despite Carla Jean’s claim that Moss “won’t ask for help,” the
severity of his injury forces him to pay a mariachi band to get him assistance, and he is
then nursed to health in a Mexican hospital. This act of convalescing is part of the
traditional Western formula, and one that Mitchell sees as important to the making of
men. Mitchell believes that to understand why men suffer such violence in Westerns, “we
need to see what happens after the beating, when the body convalesces.”143 He identifies
the formulaic pattern of Western protagonists being beaten, only to be nursed back to
health by a female. Additionally, “The restorative female ‘gaze’ at the male body, written
141
142
Arosteguy, ‘It was all a hard, fast ride’121.
143
Mitchell, Westerns, 177
55
into the Western text itself, forms a necessary catalyst to the re-creation of that body.”144
Mitchell attests that this scene has been repeated in countless novels and films. This is
seen in Three Burials when Norton’s life is saved by Mariana, the woman he had earlier
punched in the face during her attempted border crossing. Although we do not see Moss
nursed by females, other than seeing a nurse in the background of hospital scenes, and in
fact he awakes to find himself under the gaze of Carson Wells, his stay in hospital
represents this phase of recovery. This recovery period leaves him vulnerable as he is
immobile and quick to locate, as Wells points out when he informs Moss that it only took
him three hours to track him down. Chigurh is only prevented from tracking him to the
hospital because he too is recuperating from his injuries.
Injury leads to further issues relating to embodiment for the male protagonists and
their gendered identities. Issues of injury and dress intersect, especially in No Country
where wounds lead to the protagonists finding themselves in states of undress.
Considering the importance of clothing in Westerns and the embodiment of the Western
male, these scenes offer especially interesting commentary.
When Moss leaves the hospital he is wearing only the hospital gown, and has no
other possessions with him, having yet to retrieve the satchel of money from under the
bridge where he left it. Therefore, he has to cross the border check still wearing only the
gown and his cowboy boots, and is asked by the border officer how he came to be
“without any clothes.” As Peebles points out,
Moss is, of course, wearing clothes – he is just not wearing the utilitarian shirt and
jeans that would mark him as a proper Texas man. He wears what is effectively a
dress and an insubstantial one at that. The imposed femininity of his outfit is so
144
Ibid, 179
56
glaring in the masculine ethos of the Western that the border guard, Moss, and the
clerk all refuse to refer to it as any kind of garment at all. If you’re wearing a
dress you might as well be naked. His predicament is played for a joke, but the
implications for Moss’s masculinity are serious. …here, Moss’s attire signals a
loss of control – over his body, his clothes, and his appearance. …According to
Moss’s own way of seeing the world, he has been subtly coded as feminine in this
highly masculinized environment.145
Once across the border he visits a clothing store where he outfits himself once again in
traditional Western costume.
The locations in which Moss is wearing the gown are significant, as he is literally
in limbo, first in hospital in Mexico and then on the bridge on the border. Topolnisky
explains that “at this juncture in the plot, after leaving the hospital, Moss literally has
nothing. The scene in the store shows him putting himself back together.”146 In hospital
he was immobilized by injury and as such was emasculated. On the bridge, crossing back
into the United States, everything hangs in the balance – whether he is naked or clothed,
masculine or feminized, a United States citizen or an alien. His status as a Vietnam War
veteran allows him to reclaim his male power and gain the respect of the agent. It is only
once back on Texan soil that he seeks out clothing –jeans and a shirt – and rebuilds his
masculine identity.
Chigurh is also injured in the Eagle Pass shootout, but unlike Moss he does not
seek assistance for his gunshot wound, and instead takes what he needs to enact his own
recovery. After blowing up a car to distract the workers of a pharmacy, he walks through
the shelves stealing the medical supplies he needs. He then retires to a motel room where,
after laying a plastic sheet on the floor, he tends to his own wounds. While Moss was not
145
146
Topolnisky, ‘For Every Tatter in its Mortal Dress, 117.
57
literally naked when he left the hospital, the audience is shown that Chigurh is left
unclothed following the gun fight in Eagle Pass. Chigurh is the only No Country
character we see naked. After returning to the motel, he undresses and bathes to tend the
gunshot wound in his leg.
Peebles’ reading of the motel room scene is that it shows Chigurh in a powerful
position, as she states that “the camera lingers on [the gaping wound in his leg], making
sure that we notice its severity. Chigurh is naked and perforated, clearly experiencing
pain, and yet remains in total control.”147 However, the act of being shown naked leaves
Chigurh potentially vulnerable and feminized. Laura Mulvey’s theories on the male gaze
in cinema point to a character exposed on screen as being the feminine subject,
In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split

between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its
fantasy onto the female….
According to the principles of the ruling ideology and the psychical structures that
back it up, the male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification. Man
is reluctant to gaze at his exhibitionist like.148
The binary of the exposed, looked-at character as feminine and the viewer as masculine
would place Chigurh as feminized because he is displayed on screen for the spectators in
the audience.
Neale explored the male body as spectacle in relation to Mulvey’s theories on the
male gaze, and found that the body is displayed without being subject to the male gaze or
homoeroticized because the gaze is mediated, “we can see male bodies stylized and
fragmented by close-ups, but our look is not direct, it is heavily mediated by the looks of
147
148
Laura Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Screen, Vol. 16, no. 3 (1975), 39-41.
58
the characters involved. And those looks are marked not by desire.”149 In films that turn
the male into spectacle, then, although the male body is potentially made vulnerable by
the gaze of the audience, the gaze is mediated by the other males in the scene who do not
look on the body of the male as homoerotic, and therefore code the scene as un-erotic,
returning the displayed male body its power and agency. In the scene of Chigurh, the
gaze is mediated by the film apparatus rather than a mediating character on-screen. The
gaze in the bathroom scene is focused on injury, allowing the viewer to look at the
severity of Chigurh’s wound, rather than eroticizing or feminizing the character.
In the scene the apparatus places the focus on Chigurh’s pain and on him
overcoming his injury. The first shot in the bathroom is a close-up of Chigurh’s legs as
they are submerged into the water, showing the wound on his thigh and the amount of
blood that has covered the leg. The slow movement with which Chigurh lowers himself
into the bath suggests the pain he is experiencing. The scene then cuts to his face as he
breathes through the pain. Once out of the bath the scene cuts between Chigurh’s seated
body, now not fragmented but shown whole and framed through the bathroom doorway.
His body is contorted to allow him to tend to his injury, and this is intersected with
fragmented close-ups of the implements he is using on the wound. The camera follows
the syringe, the tweezers, and the bottle he uses to rinse and sterilize the open wound in
the foreground, with the fragmented body in the background. His body in this scene is
shown fragmented and whole, but always with the gaze focused on his wound, the blood,
and the associated pain.
149
Steve Neale, ‘Prologue: Masculinity as Spectacle, Reflection on Men and Mainstream Cinema’ in
Cohan, Steven and Hark, Ina Rae, eds. Screening the Male: Exploring Masculinities in Hollywood Cinema
(New York, Routledge, 1993), 18.
59
The sequence of the scene follows Mitchell’s theory on bathing scenes as
condensed convalescence sequences, as Chigurh gradually becomes upright. According
to Mitchell “No other genre has men bathe as often as Westerns …such scenes [require]
the man to disrobe, put his body recliningly on display, then slowly soak back into a
rejuvenated, upright condition.”150 Mitchell claims that “these [bathing] scenes actually
serve as miniature convalescence sequences in which the hero is reduced to a prone
position so that the camera can display him recovering himself. We watch, that is, men
becoming men in the principal way the Western allows, by being restored to their male
bodies.”151 This pattern is followed by Chigurh, who is first seen in the bathroom
reclining in the bath, is then seated, and in the next shot walks from the bathroom upright
and with the wound dressed. The camera pans up from the level of the wound on his
thigh to take in his full upright figure. In this way, Chigurh’s bathing scene serves a
similar purpose in the making and remaking of men as being nursed back to health by a
female. During Chigurh’s recovery, however, he is also not under the female gaze that
Mitchell identified as central to Western males’ convalescence. Instead, his survival is
entirely in his own hands. If recovering from wounds remakes men, and restores them to
their male bodies, then Chigurh in enacting his own recovery is responsible for and in
control of his own gender construction, providing him with a great deal of agency.
Three Burials is clearer in its use of male nudity as the film uses states of undress
to remove masculine power, and this is applied to the more villainous and less likable
characters. In one scene sheriff Belmont is seen naked except for a pillow, while Norton
150
151
Ibid,151.
60
is caught with his gun-belt removed when he first hears Estrada’s gunshots, and is in
sleepwear when Perkins first enters his trailer to abduct him. The more likable characters,
Perkins and Estrada, are always seen fully clothed.
In addition to nudity, failed sexual performance and the vulnerability of the penis
are used with little subtlety to humiliate the more villainous male characters and to
undermine their phallic authority. According to Tompkins, “the Western worships the
phallus,”152 but in Three Burials the phallus is used to expose the villains’ failings,
relying on a phallic vulnerability that Bordo identified and that Mechling explores
through his work on masculinity and folklore,
‘The phallus,’ writes feminist critic Susan Bordo, referring to the symbol of
masculine authority and power, ‘haunts the penis,’ creating impossible
expectations of potency. ‘Paradoxically, at the same time the penis – capable of
being soft as well as hard, helpless as well as proud… also haunts the phallic
authority, threatening its undoing. (1999, 95).153
Mechling adds that, “true male sexuality tends to require activity rather than passivity…
and the status of penetrator rather than penetrated. …Several of these qualities require an
erect penis, and therein lies some of the vulnerability of a masculine identity based on
erections, penetration, and performance.”154 In the film, Norton is shown as an unskilled
and inconsiderate husband, whose wife has no qualms about being unfaithful.
Meanwhile, Belmont is shown to be suffering impotence problems, a failure he attributes
as worse than the alternative masculinity of homosexuality, stating “I’ll turn truckstop
queer and blowjob-giver before I use [Viagra].” His married girlfriend, Rachel, seems to
be sleeping with everyone in the town, including Perkins, and so is able to spread
152
Ibid, 28.
153
Jay Mechling, ‘The Folklore of Mother-Raised Boys and Men’ in Simon J. Bronner, ed., Manly
Traditions: The Folk Roots of American Masculinities (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2005), 218.
154
Ibid, 219.
61
personal information about their failings to the other men. After Belmont claims he does
not need Viagra she tells him, “that’s what Bob (her husband) always says.” In contrast,
Perkins and Estrada sleep with Rachel and Lou Ann, respectively, and their time together
is shown to be humorous and romantic, with shots of the couples dancing and singing.
In No Country, Peebles claims that “[Moss] emphasizes his role as the phallic
indicator of the narrative when he warns [Carla Jean] ‘You keep running that mouth of
yours I’m going to take you in the back and screw you.’”155 However, her response of
“big talk” undermines his warning and disrupts the power balance. Chigurh, with no
relationships ever shown, appears asexual. Even when he tracks down Carla Jean and
waits for her in her bedroom, there is no threat of sexual assault implied. Despite his lack
of any markers of phallic power or male sexuality connected to the body, Chigurh is
ultimately the most powerful character and has the biggest, most potent gun.156 His power
is derived from removing the idea of phallic power from the body. This adds to the
concept of gender as construction and performance in that power is not inherent in the
male body. The embodiment of Chigurh demonstrates that power and competence can be
most successfully produced in a body that does not appear obviously coded as masculine.
155
Peebles, “Hold Still”, 127
156
62
Chapter Four: Endings
“Where is the last guy? Ultimo hombre, last man standing?”157
In No Country and Three Burials perhaps the most notable departures from the
Western formula are the ambiguous endings and the elusiveness of success. Endings are
especially important in the consideration of gender in Westerns because they offer the
definitive judgment on the male protagonists in their success, often in the form of the
hero’s triumph over the villains. As Wright noted in his study of formula Westerns,
endings repeatedly take on the following form; “The hero fights and defeats the
villains.”158 Gender work attributes this triumph and success as a testament to the hero’s
masculine mastery and power. Peebles claims that in the Western genre, “Control
matters. Winning matters, and the ability to achieve that victory becomes the Western
hero’s defining characteristic.”159 Peek calls the genre “a celebration of men and success.
[Westerns] virtually guarantee male success,” and goes on to argue that,
Of ultimate importance is not whether the hero is ideally masculine or ideally

feminine but whether he is ideally successful. …competence finally matters more
than phallic masculinity.
In Westerns, then, the most important thing is to be a man. The second most
important thing is to be successful.160
157
Llewellyn Moss, No Country for Old Men, 2007.
158
Press, 1975), 46.
159
160
of Popular Film & Television. Washington, Winter 2003, Vol. 30, Iss. 4, 209-210.
63
Previous chapters have shown that the male protagonists embody male and female
elements in their character and embodiment. Therefore, according to Peek’s theories, they
must achieve success in order to justify their blurred genders. However, neither of the
films in this study guarantees success for their male protagonists, and the competence of
some of the male characters is debatable. Failure and defeat are present, but not
necessarily for the villains.
In Three Burials, once in Mexico and while waiting for Norton to recover enough
from his snakebite to travel on to Jiménez, Perkins phones his girlfriend, Rachel, from a
bar, asking her to come to Mexico and marry him. Rachel refuses and tells him that
Belmont has quit the case and gone on vacation. Belmont’s defeat signals a triumph for
Perkins, but Rachel’s refusal to join him, and the next scene in which he sits in the barn
talking to Estrada’s corpse, show just how alone he is. Further on they meet a group of
sheepherders and Norton joins the men watching a television show, laughing and
drinking together. This scene does suggest a hint of redemption for Norton, as it
demonstrates him finding common ground with these Mexican men and appearing
genuinely appreciative of their kindness.
After arriving in a village supposedly close to Jiménez, Perkin’s enquires after
Estrada’s wife in the village store. While two women are seen in the background
laughing at Perkin’s confusion, the store owner informs him that he knows of the woman
in the photo, but by a different name than Perkins was told. He adds that he knows of no
village called Jiménez in the area. Perkins locates the woman in the photo, Rosa, and
informs her that her husband, Estrada, is dead. However, she insists that the man in the
64
photo in not her husband, and she does not know who it is. “Please, Perkins intones,
“please… he was a good friend of mine,” a contrast to his usual steady and commanding
manner. In these scenes Perkin’s authority is fading. For the duration of the journey
Perkins has been shown as in control, but this begins to falter as Estrada’s untruths are
coming to light.
Following Rosa’s disclosure, and after consulting with a local man who is said to
know of everyone who passes through the village but has no recollection of Estrada,
Perkins is left wandering in the surrounding hills, goaded by Norton who insists “there is
no Jiménez. Your friend lied to you.” “No he didn’t” retorts Perkins, although sounding
defensive and less sure of himself. The pair comes across a ruin, which Perkins insists
must be the remains of Jiménez. As he surveys the ruins and surrounding area, the scene
is intersected with flashbacks of Estrada describing the place to Perkins, and it is obvious
that the utopian homestead he is describing is not the overgrown remnants Perkins has
found; Norton is most likely right that Estrada had simply fabricated his home life to
Perkins, for reasons that in his death we cannot know. As melancholy music plays,
Perkins seems a broken man, needing to be humored by Norton, who tells him “You
found it, Pete,” in an attempt to bring their journey to its conclusion and end his captivity.
Perkins and Norton literally have to build their own success – or, more accurately, the
illusion of their success - rebuilding the walls of the ruin with mud and making a roof
from branches and brush.
After burying Estrada for the third time Perkins instructs Norton to ask Estrada
for forgiveness, and, when he does not, shoots all around him, until Norton breaks down
65
sobbing and repents. The next morning Perkins leaves on horseback, his destination
unknown, as Norton calls after him “You ok, man?” For Perkins, doing the right thing
has not paid off. He did not get the girl, he is unable to return home due to his crimes, and
the friend he felt he was acting for has turned out not to be the man he said he was. His
success seems to be for others, rather than for himself. He has returned Estrada to
Mexico, and Norton does seem somewhat reformed, although to what extent is
questionable considering he only became repentant after being shot at and when in an
emotionally unstable condition following the mental and physical trials of the journey.
Norton’s wife, Lou Ann, perhaps sealed his fate when she proclaimed that “the son of a
bitch is beyond redemption.”
By the closing scenes of Three Burials, the question asked by No Country’s
Chigurh to Wells – “If the rule you followed brought you to this, what use was the rule?”
– could well be posed to Perkins, whose honor code and moral compass brought him
humiliation, the loss of control, and literally and figuratively to a ruin. In trying to do the
right thing he learned the truth about a friend who lied to him, becoming wanted by the
law in the process, and is now unable to return to his home life. Estrada, a character
portrayed positively and in a romantic light in flashbacks, has by the end of the film
become another unknown and unknowable man.
In No Country, Moss’s own attempt to do the right thing by a Mexican character
backfires much earlier in the plot. Upon returning to the scene of the drug deal gone
wrong to take water to the wounded man, he finds the man dead and is chased by drug
workers who have discovered his truck. To escape their machine gun fire and the
66
ferocious dog they send after him, he is forced to throw himself down a near vertical
incline and into the Rio Grande, symbolizing his first border crossing. All at once he is
injured, loses his truck, and has to leave his home.
By the final scenes of the film Moss is dead, as is his wife, Carla Jean. While
Carla Jean is murdered by Chigurh, fulfilling his promise to Moss that he would kill her,
Moss is fatally shot by drug workers who find him before Chigurh or Bell do. As Peebles
points out, “noticeably lacking from the film is the climax we might expect from a story
set in the West and employing the chase as a central element of the plot. There is no
showdown between any of these men.”161 Instead the audience learns of Moss’s demise
when he is shown lying on the floor of the El Paso motel, already dead. In this way he is
denied a satisfactory conclusion. The audience can piece together that he was shot and by
whom, but not how the events played out; for example, whether he was heroic to the end.
As Tompkins says, “to die is to lose the game,”162 and Moss has definitively lost. Carla
Jean’s vulnerability, seen when she comes face to face with Chigurh as she walks into her
home after returning from her mother’s funeral, offers a final judgment on Moss’s
masculine competence. Despite emulating the Western male in embodiment and actions,
his final and in fact posthumous act is that of failing the cowboy requirement of making
the West safe for women.163
By the conclusion, Bell has retired without defending Moss or Carla Jean, and
without defeating Chigurh or having any negative effect on his mission whatsoever. Bell
161
Ibid, 134.
162
1992), 24.
163
Michael S. Kimmel, Manhood in America: A Cultural History (New York, The Free Press, 1996), 149-
150.
67
and Chigurh never come face to face in the film, with Bell always arriving at Chigurh’s
crime scenes after the fact. We last see him seated in his kitchen with his wife. In this
final scene, in his home, Bell has left not only the traditionally masculine career of law
enforcement, but also the wilderness – the testing ground for American manhood – and
come inside.
Chigurh also has an atypical ending and perhaps the most surprising for a
Western, when he is involved in a car crash while leaving the scene of Carla Jean’s
murder. We see that he is in the right, having followed the rules of the road, as the light is
green, when he is hit from the side by another car. He climbs from the car with an arm
fracture and visibly shaken, possibly concussed. After paying two boys for one of their
shirts to use as a sling, and informing them “you did not see me,” he limps away through
the residential neighborhood. Sirens heard in the background suggest that authorities have
just missed him once again.
Peebles sees the car crash scene as a significant assault on masculine power and
control, arguing that,
Though Chigurh limps away from the scene, down the sidewalk and into an
uncertain future, he has been reduced to the object, rather than the subject, of
violent action. …Even Anton Chigurh, whose masculine will to power is so
formidable, is vulnerable in this world, and even the staunchest will is no
guarantee of lasting mastery.164
However, the plot has shown Chigurh as vulnerable before. When the audience first sees
Chigurh he is under arrest, handcuffed and being manhandled into a police car. He is later
seen limping from a gunshot wound, and then shown naked, bathing, and tending to his
wound. After the crash he is upright, mobile, and the audience knows he came out of the
164
Ibid, 131.
68
accident better than the other driver who is shown slumped backwards over his seat,
either unconscious or dead. Other scholars note that from what is seen of him in the film
it is clear that this is in no way the end for Chigurh, and that he will go on to finish what
he started. Welsh believes that “Considering what happens to him in the story, Chigurh
ought to be dead, but at the end, after being broadsided in an auto accident, he limps
away to continue his never exactly specified mission.”165 Tyrer and Nickell contend that
“by the conclusion of the film, Chigurh has walked away nursing a compound arm
fracture and a few other injuries, but he has survived worse and the audience knows he
will survive this as well. His injuries are the result of bad luck, not the work of Sheriff
Bell, who has already reached the end of his questionable usefulness.”166 Viewed this
way, Chigurh is clearly the last man standing, literally and figuratively. Although he is
not in possession of the satchel of money (unlike the novel), he has already shown that he
is confident he will be, when he told Wells “it will be brought to me and placed at my
feet.”
The concept of a ‘last man standing’ has significant implications for gender and
the Western genre. As Tompkins explains of the formula Western, “When the hero meets
his enemy face to face, someone dies and someone rides away …one prone or supine, in
the dust, one upright and mounted, on its way.”167 Mitchell also identified the importance
for men in Westerns to stay upright, explaining that “villains [are] distinguished from
165
166
Pat Tyrer and Pat Nickell, ‘“Of what is past, or passing, or to come”: Characters as Relics in No Country
for Old Men’, in King, Lynnea Chapman, Wallach, Rick and Welsh, Jim, eds. From Novel to Film: No
Country for Old Men (Toronto, The Scarecrow Press, Inc. 2009), 92-93.
167
69
heroes by being compelled to stretch out on the ground…. [There is] a strong narrative
pressure for men to remain erect…”168 In No Country these tropes have been turned
upside down, with Chigurh walking away, Bell seated, and Moss stretched out on the
ground. Mitchell claims that the violence in Westerns is a means of “knocking men down
so they can rise up again.”169 In the same way that convalescence and bathing reflect men
becoming biological men by returning from threatened bodies to male bodies, Chigurh’s
position as upright and mobile is a statement on his masculine power and contrasts
sharply to how we last see Bell and Moss. This theory also hints at a positive conclusion
for Perkins in Three Burials, as his mission may not have ended as he expected, but he
does ride away upright and on horseback.
168
Lee Clark Mitchell, Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film (Chicago, The University of
Chicago Press, 1996), 168.
169
Ibid, 168.
70
Conclusion
The films No Country for Old Men and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
offer complicated portrayals masculinity that respond in many ways to the model of
Western manhood. In embodying some markers of Western manhood and subverting or
rejecting others, the male protagonists present masculinity as complex and fluid.
Additionally, the borderland masculinities of the films demonstrate interesting
intersections between gendered and geo-political borders, highlighting the possibilities of
negotiating these boundaries through transgression. Both films fit with the pattern of anti-
Westerns in following certain conventions of classic Westerns in order to subvert them.
They achieve a Western identity even in the New West, and stretch the genre boundaries
in ways potentially liberating but more so unsettling. I argue that the ways the films
subvert the Western formula in relation to masculinity are marked by two overriding
themes; firstly, the absence of unequivocal success, rejecting the moral order that would
see victory achieved by the ‘good guys’; secondly, in this New West where success is
limited, the men who seem most powerful are those who transcend boundaries.
As Tompkins and Topolnisky have both noted, there are certain markers that let
us know we are in a Western, and almost all the male protagonists of No Country and
Three Burials embody some of these signifiers in their performances of masculinity and
their construction as men. Bell, Moss, and Perkins follow the normative model of
Western or cowboy manhood most loyally. Their lifestyle, knowledge of the land, careers
71
in ranching, law enforcement, and physical outdoor work, as well as their work ethic,
relate to Western male qualities. In terms of visual markers, their work and lifestyles are
reflected in their rugged appearances. All wear the cowboy uniform of boots, jeans, shirt,
and hat, making them instantly recognizable as Western characters. Even Chigurh wears
cowboy boots and denim. Clothing identifies regional identity and perhaps few outfits
more so than the uniform of the cowboy.
It is worth noting that the three characters of Bell, Moss, and Perkins, who
embody the normative model of Western manhood in the outward ways of lifestyle and
appearance, are also the three who fit most closely the role of the ‘good guy’ according to
classic Western standards. In terms of character, both films include some level of a
good/bad binary, even if not with anything like the same clarity as formula Westerns. For
instance, in Three Burials Norton’s character is shown to fail as a husband, to commit
violence against women, to kill Estrada as a result of cowardice and inexperience with
guns, and to disrespect the dead. In contrast, Bell and Moss in No Country are shown to
have solid marriages and good moral character.
As explored in Chapter Two, the men’s character embodies traits associated with
the cowboy or Western hero. These include loyalty, such as Perkins’ commitment to
Estrada even after his death. The quality of resolve or determination is the most notable
in the two films, being a central marker of several protagonists’ character. In No Country
Moss will not quit, and carries on in spite of his injuries, first after the chase in the desert
and later after being shot in the abdomen. Chigurh follows his mission rigidly, even when
suffering from a gunshot wound to the thigh, and continues on after being seriously
72
injured in a car crash. In Three Burials Perkins uses his determination and dogged
persistence to give Estrada his rightful burial. He follows through on his plans even when
faced with the loss of his provisions, and when Norton is bitten by a rattlesnake, seriously
diverting and delaying the journey.
The men’s stories follow traditional Western themes. The violence, injury and
death found in the films resonate with the Western genre. Even the ways in which men
recover from injury responds to sequences set out in the Western formula, and serves the
same purpose in the making and remaking of men. Moss recovers from his wound in a
hospital where he is tended to by female nurses, in a classic following of patterns found
in the genre. Chigurh also overcomes his injuries. As discussed in Chapter Three, his
motel bathroom scene follows the conventions of Western bathing scenes identified by
Mitchell in that through the act of bathing he convalesces and recovers his upright, male
body.
The Western signifiers of the male protagonists’ character and embodiment show
that the construction of masculinity is central to place the films in relation to the genre.
The types of men, and how they are portrayed through moral character, appearance, and
actions, are as key to Western conventions as markers such as landscape. This is
unsurprising given the male dominated nature of the genre and its significance to the
project of masculinity. However, in the same way that the portrayals of masculinity place
the films within the genre, they are also important to the subversion of convention that
occurs in anti-Westerns.
73
Not all the characters of No Country and Three Burials fit with the Western genre,
and even those that do tend to deviate in significant ways throughout the films. The
blurred genders of the male protagonists challenge the model of normative manhood.
Although classic Western manhood was thought to be stable,170 the male protagonists of
these borderland films demonstrate the complexities of masculinity and the fluidity of
gender in their multi-gendered performances. These characters embody masculine and
feminine traits through their principles, their bodies and their actions. At times it is
unclear which way their genders should be read, as the traits they embody can be read as
masculine or feminine; for instance, the compassion shown by Moss in taking water to
the injured man could be coded as acting on emotion and therefore feminine, or
responding to a masculine honor code.
Further examples of challenges to the gendered order are in Chigurh’s
embodiment. Not only does he use tools that are not coded as masculine, for instance a
coin instead of a screwdriver, but he achieves his hyper-masculine reputation as a killing-
machine by using his odd yet effective weapons, most notably the oxygen tank and bolt
gun. These tools and weapons, along with his lack of any signifier of male sexuality,
highlight how Chigurh’s embodiment removes masculine power from the male body in a
genre where the male body is such a central focus, and as such is a clear rejection of
conventions.
170
Cowboy in Annie Proulx's Close Range: Wyoming Stories”, Western American Literature, Vol. 45,
74
Both films offer the biggest challenges to Western conventions and to masculine
power in their endings. We would expect the hero to achieve success, and in the absence
of a hero figure it makes sense that the men with recognizably good moral codes, such as
Bell, Moss, and Perkins, would be the victors. However, the films do not meet this
expectation at all. As seen in Chapter Four, in No Country, with Bell and Moss out of the
way, Chigurh is able to continue his mission, and in Three Burials Perkins’ victory is
elusive and his ending raises more questions than answers. In fact, the endings of the
films No Country and Three Burials appear to offer a grim and pessimistic outlook for
masculinity. The male figures that earlier Westerns taught us to expect to triumph are
either dead or broken down, and in No Country the merciless killer has walked away
undefeated. Many of the male protagonists have also potentially undermined their
masculine identity by taking on feminine traits, but without achieving the success that
Peek deems as necessary to stabilize Western manhood. For films that respond to a genre
that constructed the figure of the heroic Western male and conveyed this model as
significant to American manhood, No Country and Three Burials present serious
challenges to the project of masculinity.
The films respond to themes of crisis and negotiation discussed in the
Introduction, and they do this most effectively through challenging and rejecting ideals of
phallic mastery and male power in such a jarring way; by taking these ideals on in a
genre so central to national manhood. Therefore, No Country serves as what Johns
describes as, “a post-modern film that is conscious of its own position in representing,
75
challenging, and subverting ideological apparatuses concerning gender.”171 Three Burials
offers similar commentary in its conflicted male protagonists and ambiguous ending.
With the loss of success seen in the endings, the moral order is also displaced. As
seen in the examination of character, in particular relating to the male protagonists of Bell
and Moss, positive portrayals of masculinity remain in normative, traditional models of
manhood. Both men, who embody the Western model of manhood most closely, are
shown to be good husbands and citizens. Bell’s resistance to violence, his concern for
Moss, and Moss’s principles in providing help to those in need all point to the men’s
good moral character. They are on the right side of the moral order, and in spite of this
end up defeated. The fate of Perkins in a film made two years earlier, and set in the same
location and a similar time period, shows that even to be loyal to the end does not equal
uncomplicated success. Meanwhile, Chigurh can ruthlessly murder in response to an
inner code that does not reflect in any way the outer moral code, and is able to
successfully defy the law in this way.
The settings of both films in the New West are significant as they can help to
explain the themes of crisis and disillusionment represented in the endings and the
displacement of the moral order. The films are set on a frontier in being located across a
border and in the borderlands, but this is not the nationalistic frontier of western myth and
is instead what Welsh calls “the ‘frustrated frontier’ of the twentieth century.”172 Western
and frontier myth creation really began after the ‘closing of the frontier’ and the
171
Erin K. Johns, ‘A Flip of the Coin: Gender Systems and Female Resistance in the Coen Brothers’ No
Country for Old Men, in King, Lynnea Chapman, Wallach, Rick and Welsh, Jim, eds. From Novel to Film:
No Country for Old Men (Toronto, The Scarecrow Press, Inc. 2009), 141.
172
76
destruction of the native peoples, when the project of westward expansion was
considered won, complete, and closed. Therefore, the myth was created through a
romanticized nostalgic gaze. As a controversial and ongoing issue, the contemporary
border of Mexico and the United States falls under none of the idealism of the
mythologized earlier West. Topolnisky describes the borderland of West Texas as “a wild
and treacherous landscape that has yet to fall victim to the romantic nostalgia of the Old
West.”173 The New West of No Country and Three Burials not only lacks that closure or
feeling of success but also exposes the failure of the myth, for instance in the dead-end
lives of some inhabitants, or the relative poverty of others who must make their homes in
trailers. The loss of any assurance of success and the displacement of success from a
man’s moral character could also be considered an exposure of the myth’s failure.
The contested conditions of the west Texas and Mexico borderlands are in many
ways still in the phase of frontier life that McCall and Stoler noted as destabilizing and
challenging to manhood, threatening the undoing of normative masculinity.174 Conditions
such as the escalation of violence and continued political controversy surrounding the
border leave meanings still in flux. In the New West, where the border ‘wars’ of drug
crime and illegal immigration have yet to be made into a useable past, it appears that the
moral order is unstable and the meanings of manhood undecided.
Even in the dystopian New West, where the unequivocal success of earlier
Westerns is not found, the films are not devoid of success, power, or accomplishment. As
173
174
Laura McCall, ‘Introduction’, 7; Laura Ann Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault’s
History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things (Durham, Duke University Press, 1995), 175.
77
noted throughout the previous chapters, Chigurh in No Country and Perkins’ in Three
Burials embody masculine power and celebrate partial success in their missions. They are
also two of the characters who subvert the conventions of the genre most notably;
Chigurh in almost every aspect of his gender construction and performance, and Perkin’s
in his actions and choices. Therefore, although complete success is not found, I argue that
the characters who achieve most of their goals are those who transgress borders, reject
boundaries, or operate outside of bounded systems altogether. In the New West, it seems,
to stay rigidly within the model of Western manhood is dangerous. The ability to breech
or resist borders – those both gendered and geographic – is rewarding and offers the best
chances of success. This concept is seen more generally in the complex portrayals of
masculinity in the films, which stretch the boundaries of the normative models of
Western manhood. Gendered identities that transcend boundaries are most useful for
negotiating the morally confused conditions of the new West.
Bell is the most conformist character in No Country, resisting ‘others’ and never
crossing borders. This includes geographic borders in that he remains on the United
States side of the border the whole film, and he also remains within the boundaries of the
Western model of manhood, conforming to the appearance, character, and lifestyle of a
classic Western male. Bell states in the opening narrative, “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 ‘Ok. I’ll be a part of this world.’” It is clear that in Bell’s
mind at least there is a distinct boundary separating his world and someone like
Chigurh’s. Bell’s fear of the unknown may seem bizarre, especially for someone working
78
in the murky world of law enforcement, but it is perhaps perfectly reasonable for a man
living in a world that has been formulaically coded and laid out over the past decade.
According to the formulaic nature of the genre, in a Western the characters and the
audience should be able to see what is coming.
Bell’s failure lies in his being able to see what has passed, and to cling to a
romanticized past, but not to see what is ahead. In one scene Deputy Wendell notes,
“That is very linear, Sheriff,” after Bell correctly traces Chigurh’s movements from his
arrest to the burning car, all after the fact. What is not linear or apparent to Bell is what
Chigurh will do next. Bell never has any clues or intuition that would allow him to
predict Chigurh’s next move and to intercept him, except once it is too late. This may be
not be unintentional, for to come face to face with Chigurh could mean meeting that
something he does not understand, and this is a prospect he has made clear from the onset
he is not willing to go through with. His fear of what is outside the bounded system
prevents him from achieving any notable success.
Moss, with some Spanish and a willingness to cross the geographical border, is
able to get help for his gunshot wound and stay in the game a little longer. However,
instead of continuing into Mexico he is drawn back to the United States side of the border
and straight back to the familiarity of Western costume and lifestyle. Johns claims that,
“Llewellyn is a man caught in between – one who attempts to straddle the old and new
worlds. Regardless of his straddling position, Llewellyn also relies on a system in much
the same way that Ed Tom attempts to conform to an outdated law.”175 Topolnisky
175
Johns, ‘A Flip of the Coin’, 144.
79
believes that Moss is “fatally bound to the familiar.”176 The irony of this is that Moss has
shown that he is aware that to stick with the familiar is to be predictable. His ability to
predict the actions of other men, be it the ultimo hombre stopping in shade to watch his
backtrack, knowing exactly when the drug workers will show up at his home, or how
soon Chigurh will turn up at his hotel, is what allows him to remain alive for as long as
he does. In this case, he must also recognize that by being predictable himself others will
be able to second-guess his own moves. In spite of this, Moss is compelled to follow
conventions of the Western male in his clothing, his tools, his skills, and his actions.
Ultimately, this compliance seems to be his downfall.
Chigurh is a man outside of the system. With no origin story, an indistinct accent,
and an incongruous appearance, he is unplaceable. As Javier Bardem notes, “We do not
need to know everything about Anton Chigurh, because that is his power; you cannot
understand him completely.”177 Chigurh’s character and embodiment do not adhere fully
to masculine codes, with a partial attempt at Western dress that proves unsettling and a
haircut seen by many as so odd that it has been described as alarming. His masculine
power is not dependent on a male embodiment, in the same way that he is able to master
masculine competence without male coded tools or weapons. Both Chigurh and Perkins
take on the cowboy requirement of following an honor code, but they follow their inner
codes so rigidly that their choices and actions become unfamiliar and confound those
trying to understand them. Covell’s point, that “on the popular cultural landscape and
among his Western brethren, Anton Chigurh holds the title for terrors both familiar and
176
Topolnisky, ‘For Every Tatter in its Mortal Dress’, 122.
177
Javier Bardem, The Making of No Country for Old Men (2007).
80
new,”178 is an apt statement on how Chigurh’s blurred and fractured identity bewilders
those within the film and the audience.
Perkins is potentially even more threatening to those tied to the familiar, as he
outwardly appears to fully follow the Western code. His lifestyle, career, competences,
appearance, and even his loyalty, adhere to the code of the Western male. Perkins is a
‘good guy’ who breaks the law and is not on the side he could be expected to be on
(fighting illegal immigration and the encroachment of ‘others’ across the border). He
chooses to smuggle himself and others south of the border, and the further south he
travels into Mexico, the further he seems to move from his Western ranching life and
identity. In the kidnap of Norton and in exhuming Estrada’s body he crosses the border of
logic as his townsfolk see it, and can only be described by them as “crazy”.
As seen through their subversions of, and deviation from, Western convention,
what Chigurh and Perkins have in common is an unknowable nature resulting from their
refusal to be contained within a bounded system. They do not simply straddle two worlds
– for instance, masculine/feminine, United States/Mexico, normative/alternative – but
resist the dualism that borders would suggest and move outside of these boundaries
altogether. Donna Haraway attempted to explore the possibilities of rejecting the binaries
of gendered identities by using the concept of a cyborg. As she explains, her “cyborg
myth is about transgressed boundaries, potent fusions, and dangerous possibilities. [A]
cyborg might be about lived social and bodily realities in which people are not afraid of
178
Steve Covell, ‘Devil with a Bad Haircut: Postmodern Villainy Rides the Range in No Country Old
81
…permanently partial identities and contradictory standpoints.”179 Haraway also believes
that, “Cyborg imagery can suggest a way out of the maze of dualisms in which we have
explained our bodies and our tools to ourselves.”180 Perkins and Chigurh represent the
same “transgressed boundaries, potent fusions, and dangerous possibilities” but within
male characters in a genre seen as obsessed with masculinity and historically significant
in the construction of normative, hegemonic models of manhood. I argue that this makes
these characters even more powerful, stronger and dangerous statements on the
possibilities of transgressing boundaries.
The borderland films No Country and Three Burials, and particularly the
characters Chigurh and Perkins, reject the same ideas that Masculinity Studies
challenges; that manhood is inherently knowable, simplistic, and easy to understand.181
These men are unreadable in a space meant to define, and where identity is especially
important. In a world where bounded systems and binaries are so endemic to how we
understand culture and read meanings, these are characters that others do not know how
to react to. We see in the films that those hunting them are unable to stop them, and
others obey or accommodate them, and all the while they continue their missions, mostly
unhindered. Both men are hyper-masculine but reject the bounded system that would
contain them within the masculine realm or Western model of manhood, and as a result
both find degrees of success and demonstrate levels of competence in films where
179
Donna Haraway, The Haraway Reader, (New York, Routledge, 2004), 12-13.
180
Ibid, 39.
181
Steve Neale, ‘Prologue: Masculinity as Spectacle, Reflection on Men and Mainstream Cinema’ in
Cohan, Steven and Hark, Ina Rae, eds. Screening the Male: Exploring Masculinities in Hollywood Cinema
(New York, Routledge, 1993), 19; Jay Mechling, ‘The Folklore of Mother-Raised Boys and Men’ in Simon
J. Bronner, ed., Manly Traditions: The Folk Roots of American Masculinities (Bloomington, Indiana
82
masculine competence is fading and any assurance of success is gone.
As Peek noted in her study of post-WWII Westerns, embracing blurred gendered
identities allowed heroes to break from the restrictive models of manhood that had been
earlier laid out for them, and to explore new possibilities.182 The boundary transgressions
and rejections found in No Country and Three Burials act as an extension of these
theories and, as seen in the previous chapters, help men to achieve some degree of
success. However, the displacement of success from the moral order, when considered
alongside the partial victories of Chigurh and Perkins – two men of very different moral
character and intention – brings into question the implications of such boundary
crossings; for instance, whether they are positive or negative, liberating or destructive.
These transgressions appear beneficial for individuals such as Chigurh, who can use the
resulting power to their advantage, but unsettling for the wider moral order. In the New
West, the boundary transgressions needed to negotiate the morally gray conditions of the
borderlands create possibilities both powerful and dangerous.
182
Wendy Chapman Peek, ‘The Romance of Competence: Rethinking Masculinity in the Western’, in
Journal of Popular Film & Television, Washington, Winter 2003, Vol. 30, Issue 4, 218.
83
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No Country for Old Men. DVD. Directed by Ethan Coen and Joel Coen. Miramax Films
and Paramount Vantage, 2007.
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. DVD. Directed by Tommy Lee Jones. Sony
Pictures, EuropaCorp and Javelina Film Company, 2005.
87

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To the University of Wyoming:

John Dorst, Chairperson

Philip Roberts, External Department Member

Eric Sandeen, Department, Division, or Program Chair, American Studies.

B. Oliver Walter, College Dean/Provost

This thesis examines the performance of masculinities in the borderland films No

gendered and geo-political boundaries intersect in these contemporary Westerns. These

A thesis submitted to the American Studies Program

and the University of Wyoming

in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of

All rights reserved

INFORMATION TO ALL USERS

Chapter One: Introduction ............................................................................................... 1

Chapter Two: Character ...……………………………………………………………… 26

Chapter Three: The Male Body ...……………………………………………………… 43

Chapter Four: Endings ...……………………………………………………………….. 63

contemporary western-themed films set in the Texas/Mexico borderlands offer complex

portrayals of masculinity, both in general and in relation to the discourse of gender in

intersection of gendered and geo-political boundaries.

as significant to the construction and maintenance of a dominant masculinity, points to

In cultural commentary, Hollywood films, and the academic marketplace,

Westerns. In 1981, scholarship by Martin Pumphrey added the paradoxical nature of

Western manhood, which he claimed embodied both masculine and feminine

characteristics, as representing masculinity in crisis.5 Post-Westerns or anti-Westerns

in the Western hero.

genres “reflecting a series of representational crises …they offer part of an ongoing

dialogue with audiences about the ceaseless challenges to and valorization of

cinema as a series of masculine crises … is both inappropriate hyperbole and a serious

misunderstanding of Hollywood cinema.”7 As Wendy Chapman Peek claims, specifically

Western masculinity together.

difficult, if not impossible, to untangle masculinity from the oppression of women.”9

Laura McCall, using R.W. Connell’s theory on hegemonic masculinity, explains,

“hegemonic manhood is both created and reinforced by subordinating women, people of

constant risk of finding themselves outside the dominant power structure.

illusion of stable or ‘true’ gender is achieved through repeated performance,

“Such acts, gestures, enactments, generally construed, are performative in the

My analysis relies on these concepts of gender as construction and performance. In not

viewing gender as biologically determined or permanent, and recognizing a spectrum of

masculinities, I view the representations of manhood in the films as being constructed

a default gender. According to Gardiner,

Although dominant or hegemonic forms of masculinity work constantly to

manhood through repeated performance in Western film. If hegemonic, normative

Theory as leading her to “write a dissertation about men,”18 my own interest in

Masculinity Studies began by looking at women’s experience. Wishing to pursue an

undergraduate thesis in nineteenth century California history, I was directed by my

advisors to women’s history and studies of prostitution. In Jacqueline Baker Barnhart’s

to the women’s suffering. It seemed unsatisfactory to explore the West without

My interest in Masculinity Studies has grown from a desire to explain the

oppression of women and is now more of an attempt to critically engage with

construction, deconstruction, and performativity. The masculine drama of the nineteenth

between men, as these are regulated by regimes of masculinity.”21 As Tompkins points

historiography, and polemics produced over a period of three centuries….The Frontier

throughout the twentieth century.

A masculine ideology was used in the imperial project of westward expansion,

ideologically the western frontier was a masculine region.

destabilized or rendered inoperable conventional wisdoms about prototypical manhood.

thought to crystallize those conditions of isolation, inactivity, decadence, and intense

male comradery where heterosexual definitions of manliness could as easily be

settlement across the continent, frontiersmen were being promoted as exemplars of

masculinity.” 30 As Connell continues, “popular culture tells us without prompting [that]

region became promoted as necessary for creating, strengthening and maintaining

American manhood. The late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries saw a supposed