In Mediamaking: Mass Media in a Popular Culture, Grossberg states there are two approaches that define genres:

First Approach:
“The Western, for example, is not merely defined by its setting in the nineteenth-century American West, but also by certain stock characters (the strong silent hero-gunfighter, the evil businessman or gang leaser, the schoolmarm, the saloon girl) and by certain events (the card game, the swindle, the gunfight, the saloon brawl). In this sense, the genre specifies both the formula that is reproduced in every western and the limits within which each new example of the genre has to find its individuality.” (Grossberg 1998: 160).

Unforgiven:
Stock Character = Silent hero-ex-gunfighter
Certain Events = Shoot out

The Quick and the Dead:
Stock Character = Silent hero-female gunfighter
Certain Events = Gun fight competition with underlying revenge tactic

The Wild, Wild West
Stock Character = Guns-a-blazing former Civil War hero and an Inventor
Certain Events = non-stop effort to abolish plans of a civil war through “getting” the “bad guy”.

Click here for the Second Approach

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