Ethics and professionalism in the world of absurdity: About anomie and outlaws in Sam Peckinpah's film The Wild Bunch

Abstract

Sam Peckinpah’s movie The Wild Bunch is a multilevel drama about an aging group of outlaws, trying to exist in a rapidly changing world. This paper analysis the movie from different sociological perspectives on three levels. First, it is argued that the movie provides an interesting example and an elaboration of Durkheim’s macrolevel theory of anomie. Second, at the micro level the movie describes the face to face interaction between gangmembers in terms of a symbolic interactionism in the tradition of Mead and Goffman. Third, at the individual level the gangmembers behave in many ways as existential heroes. These different levels of social science analysis come together to form a single coherent story line in Peckinpah’s complex portrayal of the Wild Bunch.