Jack Shaefer, a writer of westerns, elaborates on this point: The hero–or antihero–of the western is often one of minimal means caught up in a conflict where the other side has more bullets, more men, more high ground. ![]() And just last year, the best-selling video game was, of all things, a western. That’s over a century’s worth of western storytelling produced by the United States the number skyrockets when you look around the globe. Western films have been regularly produced for audiences since 1903. Type “western” into the books’ search engine on Amazon, and thousands of results pop up. (More on that later.)īut aren’t westerns just glorified propaganda for western civilization uprooting native cultures? Don’t all their shoot-outs result in a lot of powder in the air, women swooning, and men clutching their chests going, “Aaaurgh!”?Ĭountless storytellers–be they writers, filmmakers, or game developers–refuse to leave the Wild West alone. Iiiii had to sit and watch a rogue with a laser gun help out wizened old man and a snot-nosed kid who thinks he’s smart in the saddle hold out from attacks by corrupt powers….heeey…sounds, um… But I had no patience for the kind of western where women clutch their aprons while Native Americans gallop by with villainous intentions and only John Wayne with his swaggering cadence can talk a coward into being a brave man just long enough to shoot the savage and save this little refuge of civilization. It should have been decades ago, when my brothers and I watched our old recorded VHS on the making of Star Wars yet again while Mom just wanted to sit and watch John Wayne in a classic like Stagecoach or The Searchers. ![]() I wish I could tell you just when it started, this love for the western.
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