"Tombstone" Western Genre

According to Daniel Chandler’s “An introduction to Genre Theory, The Problem of definition” “the term genre is used in rhetoric, literary theory, media theory, and refer to a distinctive type of text. Genre’s can refer to a type of style of a movie. Movie genres can be considered westerns, musicals, fictions, and thrillers/horrors. One particular movie titled “Tombstone” has a western genre.
In this movie, Wyatt Earp and his brothers move to Tombstone Arizona where they fight off their enemies with the help of Earp’s best friend Doc Holliday. Earp, his brothers, and Holliday form a group called the lawmakers. The lawmakers fight the “cowboys” in an attempt to tame the west. The most memorable part of this movie, is when Holliday becomes very ill with Tuberculosis, and still manages to dress up in his best friend’s clothes to battle the cowboys who attempt to kill his friend Earp. Ironically, Holliday wins the battle, and ever since has been known as the “fasted gun’ in the west.
Tombstone meets the expectations of a western genre, because like many other western movies, the war was fought on a white civilization that was vulnerable by savages known as the cowboys, who tried to take over. Similar to several westerns, there is usually a calm/lonesome hero, who kills when it is necessary. In “Tombstone”, Holliday fulfills that role. Holliday is usually the shadow of Wyatt Earp. The one who didn’t receive much credit in the beginning. Another expectation that this movie satisfied, is the insertion of vicious enemies, that threaten their civilization. The cowboys portray these characters. The typical role of the women is also an expectation that Tombstone consisted of. Wyatt meets a young women, who is sensitive, and understanding towards his feelings, when no one else seems to care, however she moves away, with a desire to escape the disaster the land had come to. When the lawmakers finally got the land under their control, she moved back, and married Earp. The setting of this western movie also fulfills the expectation that most western have. Tombstone consisted of flat land, grassy areas, and few mountains. By allison jones