Blood Simple

This was originally written for my cinema class in college.

The Western has its roots from America as a genre and an American Western film is a place to reflect the American identity. With this definition of the Western film, it is normal to expect from the Westerns getting the role of identifying the current problems of American society, because problems about being an American at the contemporary time period is quite related with the American identity. In the film Blood Simple (1984), which was written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, the Coen brothers successfully emphasize several contemporary problematic issues of the American society of 1980s; especially individualism, lack of communication, money and violence.
In the opening scene of Blood Simple we hear Private Detective Visser narrating about individualism in Texas. He gives the example of Russia and actually compares the roles given to people in terms of their relationship with the other people in the society by communism in Soviet Union, in theory, and by capitalism in USA. In 1984 the Cold War between SU and USA was still going on and this comparison shows a glimpse of this contemporary problem for the American society. However, the comparison is mainly about individualism and being on your own in Texas but this can be extended to the American society since Western is about American identity although the films mostly take place in Texas. Everybody is on their own throughout the film and we can see this in the struggles of the four main characters; Ray, Abby, Marty and Visser. Visser is very greedy and tries to clean up his own mess on his own. Marty is pretty selfish and he just wants Abby for himself. He cannot accept the fact that his wife can be another man's woman which is a way of thinking in terms of private property, but in this case it is very disturbing because the property is Abby, a human being. Abby and Ray are relatively innocent in the movie because especially Ray does what he does for the woman he loves. However, in his struggle he is all alone. He has to survive alone and he cannot manage to do it in the end. In Abby's case she is the only one survives at the end of the film. In Westerns the person who manages to survive at the end of the film is usually the hero but the hero should also rescue other people with him/her; that's why we call him/her a hero. However, in this film Abby only manages to save herself. She does it on her own with nobody's help and she helps nobody for their survival.
The lack of communication is another problem which is portrayed in the film; especially between Abby and Ray. Ray tries to bury Marty because he thinks Abby shot her and after he buries Marty he goes to Abby. They both sense there is a misunderstanding about the events but none of them tells one another what he or she actually thinks right that moment and did the day before to clear things out. Because of this lack of conversation between the two, Abby will think that Ray killed Marty, Ray will die and at the end of the film although Abby manages to survive on her own she is going to have no idea about what really happened.
Money is also a very important issue for the American society. We see this in the relationship between Marty and Visser. Marty has the money and he has the luxury to spend it on stupid things. Visser is a private detective and his main interest in his job is money. Marty decides to spend his money on killing Abby and Ray. Since he has the money he can make people do anything he wants with it. At least, this is how his mind works. Luckily there are people like Visser that can do anything for money, like killing people. This aspect of the film shows us that in the contemporary society some people can make other people do anything with their money, and some people can do anything for money. This is a very controversial issue considering both Marty's and Visser's deaths just because of a large amount of money.
The Coen brothers do not afraid of showing violence throughout the film and they portray it so successfully that it emphasizes how meaningless people do it today. Ray buries Marty alive because he wants her girlfriend not to be caught. Abby thinks about killing her husband at the beginning of the film because she cannot bare his personality. Marty wants to kill both Abby and Ray since Abby cheated on him and Visser accepts Marty's offer for killing Abby and Ray for money and kills Marty instead for his money.
To sum up, since the Western is purely American and achieved the role of representing American identity it is normal to portray contemporary problems of American society through Westerns and the Coen brothers do this very successfully and sometimes very disturbingly in their film Blood Simple by mainly focusing on concepts like individualism, lack of communication, money and violence.