Good,Bad,Ugly/ Navajo Joe Ashley

The classic western is typically harsh, focuses on justice, and consists of an alpha male cowboy. The story typically revolves around the actions the cowboy takes and aforementioned actions tend to act as a mirror to American culture. In the spaghetti western, those aspects of American culture are interpreted by European eyes. This type of western tends to have lighter emotional tones, an idea of justice and revenge, and a spin on the idea of the alpha male cowboy.
The films The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and Navajo Joe are both set in the west but are anything like the American western. Usually, the land acted as a means of compassion. The cowboy comes from the horizon and acts sublime and powerful. In the spaghetti westerns, the land is simply just a setting. It helps add to the plot, for instance, when The Ugly takes Blondie (The Good) into the desert as a means of revenge. The movie tends to have more humorous moments and less serious ones.
In America, the idea of justice and acting in accordance to moral standards echoes in every western. Yet, in the European interpretation of the western, “justice” is seen as individual revenge and a back-and-forth type of interaction between characters. The revenge was either pride based or financially funded. In Navajo Joe, when he works with the town to help kill the train robbers, he wants money for every scalp he gets. This is a type of revenge for all the Native American scalps members of the town had murdered to get. Additionally, in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, each character had his own vendetta against another character in the film at one point or another. Each character would seek their own idea of justice.
When the westerns portray a hero, it is a cowboy alpha male. In the spaghetti western the protagonist can be unclear. Joe, in Navajo Joe, would be the closest thing to an alpha male cowboy; yet, due to the fact he is a Native American who is not accepted by the town (the town initially does not even want his help), he truly cannot be the alpha male cowboy. It is ironic that his is the hero and not really accepted at the same time.
The films are used to poke fun at the perceived flaws of American society. In particular The Good, The Bad and The Ugly is used to reflect European view of America’s foreign intervention and capitalism. The film uses excessive violence and tense shoot out scenes to mimic American military strategies and reflect the Cold War Era. In fact, the scene with the grave yard was very similar to the American Cemetery in Normandy, showing the vast number of casualties. Both said film and Navajo Joe revolve around the idea of money: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly are trying to find it while Joe is trying to save it from the outlaws. The emphasis on money driving the plot is a clear perception of how Europeans view American society's capitalism. Lastly, the views of Native Americans and imperialism are clearly reflected in Navajo Joe. When Joe is talking to a man about where this man’s father was born, Joe emphasizes that only he is the true American, as he was born here and his forefathers were born here (and not in Europe). This idea of what an “American” is mixed with the scene of Joe’s abandoned village and of the hunting of Native Americans shows negative aspects of European viewed America.