Johny Guitar & Two Mules for Sister Sarah

Both movies assigned for this week have shifted the western ideals we studied by Tompkins and Matheson and turned them practically upside-down. Tompkins statements about women being second-hand characters and not being very authoritarian with Matheson’s strong position in favor of the whole alpha-male macho man are being completely ignored by these two movies, Johnny Guitar and Two Mules for Sister Sarah.
In the film Johnny Guitar, it is more than clear that the two main characters are Emma and Vienna and surprisingly it came as a shock when I believed the main conflict between both was going to be Johnny Guitar, it was not, the problem was in a disagreement of whether more visitors was god or bad for the town. The western portrays them as two strong willed women that did not take no for an answer, “alpha-girls”. This can be clearly seen when Vienna kills Emma, and a striking moment for Johnny Guitar in the movie is that he appears to save Vienna.
In the other film, Two mules for Sister Sarah, another side of women is shown. A manipulative, word-wise and deceiving Sarah in his being shown to the audience, while she manages to achieve everything she wants. Sarah, being a non, also manages a whorehouse near the French army and the image of the innocent girl immediately leaves our thoughts. Despite all of this, she was once saved by Hogan, the alpha male, and she returns her favor to him by saving him too.