Unforgiven (1992):
A Postmodern Iliad

Robert J. Rabel (University of Kentucky)

This paper looks at three aspects of the Clint Eastwood Western film, Unforgiven. First of all, I will demonstrate that the film contains a high coefficient of reflexivity; that is, the processes at work in the telling of stories by characters within the film mirror the processes at work in the telling of the story to the film’s external audience. Specifically, unreliable narrators within the film call into question the reliability of the narrative being transmitted to the external audience of the film. Second, I will trace this unreliability of narration – both internal and external – to problems involving the inability of language, and therefore of stories, to offer stable reference to the objects language is intended to designate. Third, I will discuss the status of Will Munny, the film’s protagonist, as an Achilles-like, problematical, and also postmodern hero, who instantiates the Homeric emotion of “wrath.” Achilles and Will Munny will be shown to exhibit an intensification of anger arising directly from their status as victims of “mimetic desire” in the sense of the term analyzed by René Girard.