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The Western and the war film have a lot in common. Both genres are concerned with the moral ramifications of using violence either in the emergence or the defense of a civilization. The Western is chronotopically at home in the North American frontier region of the nineteenth century, while the war film is concerned with the global waging of war in the twentieth century, but since both genres are thematically related, they have routinely cross-fertilized each other in various ways. Routinely, Westerns have portrayed contemporary wars in an allegorical fashion, presenting justifications or criticisms of America’s military endeavors in the guise of a mythically refracted foundational moment of the nation. Conversely, war films have routinely employed the iconography or aesthetic strategies of Westerns in order to illustrate the cultural resonance of the genre’s elements for the self-conception of the country in military disputes. This article seeks to explore the ways in which the two genres have interacted with each other over the years in order to understand their current relationship. By tracing their mutual interaction as a varied historical development it shall be shown how the evocation of Western elements in contemporary Iraq War films has the effect of contributing to a sense of moral ambiguity in the way military violence is portrayed, befitting a cultural climate of critical self-inspection. Clint Eastwood’s controversial American Sniper (2014) will serve as an illustrative example.

The Western and the War Film: Clint Eastwood’s „American Sniper” as Genre Hybrid