It was the western states where women in America first got the vote. The first woman in Congress was from Montana (Jeannette Rankin).
There aren’t a whole lot of movies or tv shows on any part of 19th century life The farther you get away, the less remembered something is. Quick, who were the Presidential candidates in 1888, who won and what were the main campaign issues?
Cleveland vs. Harrison. Cleveland thought he was a shoe in but Harrison said he was ‘low energy’ and took the win thanks to heavy TV advertising. The main issues were death and taxes.
Might part of it be that nowadays series are being made with an eye to international sales/syndication not just local markets? While the Western was also popular in some foreign markets (Italy & Spain, for instance) in general it’s the American Myth and I’m not sure how well it sells in e.g. China.
And thus a national mythology was created, a genocide unquestioned, sterilized and looped back as a triumph of American destiny and achievement.
Which was unravelled in the late-'60s and early-'70s, and up to the present.
Indeed, thank goodness Americans got past that rugged, individualist John Wayne nonsense.
I have always been fascinated about this period of history…there is something about the (American) myth of moving West, starting a new life, reinventing yourself.
:rolleyes:
Yeah, you wish.
That happened way before TV series were the rage, and before movies were invented. That sort of mythology goes back to the literature of the time (penny novels, etc), and much of it was perpetuated in our schools in the guise of ‘history’ classes.
Karl May was huge in Germany.
Indeed. The dominance of the Western in mid-20th-century film and TV was derived from the preexisting popularity of the print Western since back at the turn of that century. The myth was already there, the TV Westerns merely reflected it.
And a description of the natives as “the merciless Indian Savages” is in the text of the *&^% Declaration of Independence in 1776 – the notion that the Anglo settlers were annointed by either God or Destiny to take over the continent and damned be the natives was there even before there was a country.
FWIW, if you check out the John Wayne/John Ford Western Fort Apache, you will see in 1948 Native Americans portrayed as honorable nations reluctantly waging a war of resistance, and the big problem being asshat white Easterners.
Thye’ve been replaced in the culture by police procedurals. BTW, if no one else on this thread will recommend Hell on Wheels, I will! If they ever decide to do John Carter again and do it right, Anson Mount would be a lock for the lead. Hell on Wheels isn’t perfect–for one thing, we see way more of Chris Heyerdahl naked than we should–but it’s damned entertaining!
I cut out a section on the history of westerns from my overlong post. The western emerged as the dominant genre just after the Civil War, when dime novelists began mythologizing living figures like Buffalo Bill. We think that paperbacks started around WWII, but all those dime novels were cheap paperbacks that sold to the equivalent base-level audience. The dime novels were killed off the pulp magazines, and hundreds of western pulps flooded the market. (And crossovers. Western romance titles included Ranch Romances, Rodeo Romances, Cowboy Romances, Far West Romances, Real Western Romances, Romance Western, North-West Romances, Rangeland Romances, Romance Round-Up, Romantic Range, and Rangeland Love.) Then came the lines of western paperbacks post-war, an order or two of magnitude larger than science fiction, behind only mysteries. You can’t explain the loss of westerns from oversaturation. People love more of the same. You can only explain it by cutting the cultural connection.
A new Western opens today in a limited release. Diablo, starring Scott Eastwood.
I hope it gets to a theater around here.
They aren’t politically correct.
Many of the best Western stories involved brave settlers or the Cavalry fighting off the noble savages. Rescuing the women that were taken for whatever unstated purpose. Circling the wagons to defend against injun attacks. There was always at least one flaming arrow that set a wagon on fire.
Take away those key stories and you can’t make the John Ford Cavalry trilogy again. John Wayne comforting the displaced Native Americans might be PC but it doesn’t sell movie tickets.
Hitler liked his books, did he not?
Police and hospital dramas have virtually nothing to do with reality either, but they’re still popular.
My two favorite westerns of recent years are hardly traditional to the genre:
A Million Ways To Die in the West - the “hero” is acutely aware what a backwater shithole time and place he’s living in is.
Good For Nothing - a cowboy bandit with erectile dysfunction.
It’s been a mixed bag for movie westerns lately. Django Unchained and True Grit hit it big, but Cowboys and Aliens was essentially a bomb, I think, and the Lone Ranger may be one of the biggest bombs ever.
The comedy western has had it rough lately. Rango was not a hit, and I think Seth Macfarlane’s movie tanked.
You know who else liked his books?!
Oh, wait … never mind.
Well, if you think about it, if you want a story involving good vs. evil while going off into a mostly unknown frontier, most people will mostly likely think of sci-fi space operas more than westerns. The former benefits, as well, from having the Injuns being an alien race (I always wondered if the Klingons were stand ins for the Sioux) and therefore can shelter yourself from those type of concerns.