# Would "easterns" make a good genre? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 12, 2005, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-easterns-make-a-good-genre/294227 "2005-03-12T19:51:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Askia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Askia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askia)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2005, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-easterns-make-a-good-genre/294227/21 "2005-03-13T21:03:39Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > To assert that Hollywood created the love for the Western simply by making lots of them ignores both the long fascination with the West that preceeded movies and the fact that movie makers were more likely trying to tap into an existing audience than trying to create a new market. Okay, I’m not giving Wild west Shows enough credit for possibly influencing BIRTH OF A NATION. On the other hand, a fascination can develop for a medium/genre simply because it’s EVERYWHERE. Hollywood created the love of the _cinema_ western by CHEAPLY making lots of them YEAR ROUND in the new medium, which was made even more exciting with the development of improved synchronized sound and better visual effects in the late 20s. Yes, they tapped into an existing audience but they unquestionably created a new market – as it happened later in radio serials and still later, television – again, not just because they were iconic, but because they could be made CHEAP. There ARE lots of people who are fans of western movies who simply don’t read western novels, don’t go to western shows, and are fans of the stars of the cinematic genre without being particularly knowledgeable of the actual history and personalities of the Old West. How many people think gunfighters shot each other down at high noon a block away because that’s how they’ve seen it in the movies? How many kids watched westerns because it was raining outside on a Saturday and the only thing on TV was “Maverick” “Bonanza” “The Lone Ranger” or “Wild Wild West?” There comes a saturation point where audience interest in a genre/medium occurs simply because a genre/medium is ubiquitous. Look what happened with 24 news channels after CNN proved an audience could be found there. Bringing this back to my OP – is it viable for something simliar to happen using the template of the western (a time and space based genre) but in other parts of America? I think the next best regional area is the South followed by the Mid-Atlantic east. I’m a little unsure about the time frames of each. Most Old West dramas are 19th century events – events much past the Great Train Robbery are pushing it. Most so-called “Southerns” could easily span a period that’s antebellum through the Jim Crow era. The “easterns” seem to be 19th century industrial revolution/20th century affairs, too – but perhaps not much past WWI. **ITR champion.** Oh, poppycock. There’s plenty of areas in America with breathtaking vistas that equal or surpass those in the west, too-- and far, FAR more in the rest of the world. The westerns are noted for them, but if other genres focussed on cinematography the way westerns do, people’d see that, too. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2005, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-easterns-make-a-good-genre/294227/22 "2005-03-13T21:39:37Z")
The age of an uncritical historical genre ended with WWII. The genres that have emerged since are much grimmer (like the disaster movie). Our vision of the past has gotten a lot darker, and movies that try to recreate the old historical movies (the Alamo, for example) seem forced and out of place in the modern world of movies. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-easterns-make-a-good-genre/294227/23 "2005-03-14T03:23:49Z")
**Askia** it’s been 25 years since I took that course, but key Southern authors included William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Carson MCullers and Flannery O’Connor (yes, there are more, but those were the ones I studied back then.) I only remember two titles from the course, _As I Lay Dying_ by Faulkner and _One Arm_\* by Williams, but I recall that the professor liked Flannery O’Connor the best. Much of the literature I studied had the theme of a “broken person” (poor, illiterate, physically or mentally handicapped or emotionally frail) trying to recover, or at least survive. Many of these characters were in dysfunctional families, with other family members alternately helping and hurting the process. Small towns are another staple of Southern literature. While Williams, Truman Capote and a few others set some of their stories in largers cities, most of the more memorable stories take place either in small towns or farm country. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-easterns-make-a-good-genre/294227/24 "2005-03-14T03:36:48Z")
> [@Askia](#): > > 1. **spoke-** Errant knights are an antecedent of many westerns? Huh. I hadn’t heard that. Examples? I don’t exactly see Lancelot in Gary Cooper. Cry pardon, but do not forget the Gunslinger Roland Deschain of Gilead-That-Was, say thankee! ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-easterns-make-a-good-genre/294227/25 "2005-03-14T13:34:38Z")
> [@Askia](#): > > Hollywood created the love of the _cinema_ western by CHEAPLY making lots of them YEAR ROUND in the new medium, which was made even more exciting with the development of improved synchronized sound and better visual effects in the late 20s. Just which westerns rely on “visual effects”? Unless you’re calling the natural landscape a visual effect. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-easterns-make-a-good-genre/294227/26 "2005-03-14T15:03:26Z")
> [@Askia](#): > > **spoke-** Errant knights are an antecedent of many westerns? Huh. I hadn’t heard that. Examples? I don’t exactly see Lancelot in Gary Cooper. A bit of googling turned up [this article](http://claremont.org/writings/crb/summer2003/engeman.html) which discusses heroic figures in American popular culture, and their historical connection with the knights of old. In fact, the article could have been written in response to the OP: > [@](#): > > Beginning three years after the publication of Ivanhoe in 1820, James Fenimore Cooper created the first American, democratic version of the knight-hero in his five Leather-Stocking novels— a hero called variously Natty Bumppo, Deerslayer, Hawkeye, or Leather-Stocking… > > …Cooper identifies a cardinal principle of the American knight-hero: the economy of violence. Natty believes all life is divinely created and must be preserved, especially that of innocent women and children… > > …Once the western frontier moved beyond the mountains, lakes, and forests, and crossed the Mississippi, a new vision of the democratic knight-hero was needed. Thus, the mounted rider arose to defend democracy on the open plains running to the Rockies. The first serious adaptation of knighthood to the cowboy/gunfighter, undertaken by Owen Wister in The Virginian (1902), was written after the frontier had closed… > [_etc._] ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-easterns-make-a-good-genre/294227/27 "2005-03-14T15:50:46Z")
I should point out that while that article I linked in that last post has an annoying political slant, it does make valid points about the historical continuity of “heroic literature.” And **Askia** , have you ever read [Don Quixote](http://www.online-literature.com/cervantes/don_quixote/)? Synopsis: An addled old man gets it into his head that he is a knight-errant 100 years after such creatures had ceased to exist. He goes off in search of adventure and fair damsels. Don Quixote, though set in Spain, has very much the “feel” of a Western. (Man on horseback riding through dusty frontier towns, and finding adventures.) It drives home the connection between modern Westerns and earlier chivalric literature. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-easterns-make-a-good-genre/294227/28 "2005-03-14T16:28:11Z")
One of the big Western themes, and it was one of the reasons I think Westerns were so popular was “bringing civilization to the wilderness”. You had the frontier, which was raw and uncivilized; the place where there was no law. So, you know, outlaws rob stagecoaches, Indians attack. These are the forces of chaos trying to destroy the civilization that is being imposed on the wilderness. And then, order comes. The sheriff shoots the outlaws, the cavalry shows up and routs the Indians. **Birth of a Nation** , although it doesn’t take place in the west, uses those same themes and that same plot. In the climactic scene, the army of rampaging blacks are outside the cabin where our heroes are trapped. So there, you have chaos…the rampaging blacks in the wilderness of reconstruction south. Then the Klan comes, and they’re the forces of order saving civilization. They rout the blacks and save the people in the cabin. So, even though it’s in a different setting, it follows the Western pattern. I think that’s what **tomndebb** is trying to say. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-easterns-make-a-good-genre/294227/29 "2005-03-14T17:55:01Z")
Along the lines of the knights, in my literature classes Westerns were often classified as “romances,” like the Arthurian legends. I think “the west” began to be shorthand for movie makers. They didn’t have to work to establish a setting if previous movies had already established it. Which meant that those to come could either build off the previous works, or contradict them in effective ways. It’s always easier to use a setting that people think they know. As for why westerns became popular in the first place, I think the terrain made any amount of individuality believable and acceptable. “That doesn’t happen here, but it could happen there.” ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-easterns-make-a-good-genre/294227/30 "2005-03-14T18:09:20Z")
> [@Askia](#): > > **ITR champion.** Oh, poppycock. There’s plenty of areas in America with breathtaking vistas that equal or surpass those in the west, too-- and far, FAR more in the rest of the world. The westerns are noted for them, but if other genres focussed on cinematography the way westerns do, people’d see that, too. Breathtakingness is relative, but I see a lot more people traveling from Ohio to see the landscapes of Montana than the other way around. The East does have some _nice_ landscapes, but gazing at a 500-foot-tall rolling hill in Kentucky doesn’t get you thinking about the possibilities of running away to a brand new life of adventure and isolation in the same way that seeing the Grand Tetons does. And yes, the Himalayas are spectacular, but American audiences would not have related to movies or books set over there. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-easterns-make-a-good-genre/294227/31 "2005-03-14T18:41:52Z")
> [@ITR champion](#): > > And yes, the Himalayas are spectacular, but American audiences would not have related to movies or books set over there. There are quite a few Indian movies that follow Western conventions- noteably Sholay, one of the most famous ones. Most of these, as far as I can tell, take place in the plains of central India which often looks uncannily like the America West. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-easterns-make-a-good-genre/294227/32 "2005-03-14T19:06:29Z")
From George Orwell’s 1943 essay, “Mark Twain – The Licenced Jester” – : > [@](#): > > Although Mark Twain produced a surprising variety of books, ranging from a namby-pamby ‘life’ of Joan of Arc to a pamphlet so obscene that it has never been publicly printed, all that is best in his work centres about the Mississippi river and the wild mining towns of the West. Born in 1835 (he came of a Southern family, a family just rich enough to own one or perhaps two slaves), he had had his youth and early manhood in the golden age of America, the period when the great plains were opened up, when wealth and opportunity seemed limitless, and human beings felt free, indeed were free, as they had never been before and may not be again for centuries. LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI and the two other books that I have mentioned are a ragbag of anecdotes, scenic descriptions and social history both serious and burlesque, but they have a central theme which could perhaps be put into these words: ‘This is how human beings behave when they are not frightened of the sack.’ In writing these books Mark Twain is not consciously writing a hymn to liberty. Primarily he is interested in ‘character’, in the fantastic, almost lunatic variations which human nature is capable of when economic pressure and tradition are both removed from it. The raftsmen, Mississippi pilots, miners and bandits whom he describes are probably not much exaggerated, but they are as different from modern men, and from one another, as the gargoyles of a medieval cathedral. They could develop their strange and sometimes sinister individuality because of the lack of any outside pressure. The State hardly existed, the churches were weak and spoke with many voices, and land was to be had for the taking. If you disliked your job you simply hit the boss in the eye and moved further west; and moreover, money was so plentiful that the smallest coin in circulation was worth a shilling. The American pioneers were not supermen, and they were not especially courageous. Whole towns of hardy gold miners let themselves be terrorized by bandits whom they lacked the public spirit to put down. They were not even free from class distinctions. The desperado who stalked through the streets of the mining settlement, with a Derringer pistol in his waistcoat pocket and twenty corpses to his credit, was dressed in a frock coat and shiny top-hat, described himself firmly as a ‘gentleman’ and was meticulous about table manners. But at least it was NOT the case that a man’s destiny was settled from his birth. The ‘log cabin to White House’ myth was true while the free land lasted. In a way, it was for this that the Paris mob had stormed the Bastille, and when one reads Mark Twain, Bret Harte and Whitman it is hard to feel that their effort was wasted. And from his 1946 essay “Riding Down From Bangor” – [http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part44:](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part44:) > [@](#): > > HELEN’S BABIES is intended as a humorous, even a farcical book, but it is haunted all the way through by words like “tasteful” and “ladylike”, and it is funny chiefly because its tiny disasters happen against a background of conscious gentility. “Handsome, intelligent, composed, tastefully dressed, without a suspicion of the flirt or the languid woman of fashion about her, she awakened to the utmost my every admiring sentiment”—thus is the heroine described, figuring elsewhere as “erect, fresh, neat, composed, bright-eyed, fairfaced, smiling and observant”. One gets beautiful glimpses of a now-vanished world in such remarks as: “I believe you arranged the floral decorations at St Zephaniah’s Fair last winter, Mr Burton? ‘Twas the most tasteful display of the season.” But in spite of the occasional use of “‘twas” and other archaisms—“parlour” for sitting-room, “chamber” for bedroom, “real” as an adverb, and so forth—the book does not “date” very markedly, and many of its admirers imagine it to have been written round about 1900. Actually it was written in 1875, a fact which one might infer from internal evidence, since the hero, aged twenty-eight, is a veteran of the civil war. > > The book is very short and the story is a simple one. A young bachelor is prevailed on by his sister to look after her house and her two sons, aged five and three, while she and her husband go on a fortnight’s holiday. The children drive him almost mad by an endless succession of such acts as falling into ponds, swallowing poison, throwing keys down wells, cutting themselves with razors, and the like, but also facilitate his engagement to “a charming girl, whom, for about a year, I had been adoring from afar”. These events take place in an outer suburb of New York, in a society which now seems astonishingly sedate, formal, domesticated and, according to current conceptions, un-American. Every action is governed by etiquette. To pass a carriage full of ladies when your hat is crooked is an ordeal; to recognise an acquaintance in church is ill-bred; to become engaged after a ten days’ courtship is a severe social lapse. We are accustomed to thinking of American society as more crude, adventurous and, in a cultural sense, democratic than our own, and from writers like Mark Twain, Whitman and Bret Harte, not to mention the cowboy and Red Indian stories of the weekly papers, one draws a picture of a wild anarchic world peopled by eccentrics and desperadoes who have no traditions and no attachment to one place. That aspect of nineteenth-century America did of course exist, but in the more populous eastern States a society similar to Jane Austen’s seems to have survived longer than it did in England. And it is hard not to feel that it was a better kind of society than that which arose from the sudden industrialisation of the later part of the century. The people in HELEN’S BABIES or LITTLE WOMEN may be mildly ridiculous, but they are uncorrupted. They have something that is perhaps best described as integrity, or good morale, founded partly on an unthinking piety. It is a matter of course that everyone attends church on Sunday morning and says grace before meals and prayers at bedtime: to amuse the children one tells them Bible stories, and if they ask for a song it is probably “Glory, glory Hallelujah”. Perhaps it is also a sign of spiritual health in the light literature of this period that death is mentioned freely. “Baby Phil”, the brother of Budge and Toddie, has died shortly before HELEN’S BABIES opens, and there are various tear-jerking references to his “tiny coffin”. A modern writer attempting a story of this kind would have kept coffins out of it. There, I think, is a good encapsulation of the difference between the “Western” and the “Eastern” in American literature (at least, in a 19th-Century setting). ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-easterns-make-a-good-genre/294227/33 "2005-03-14T19:43:14Z")
I think you and George Orwell have hit on something there, **BrainGlutton**. Particularly this: > [@](#): > > This is how human beings behave when they are not frightened of the sack. So The West is a place of idealized perfect freedom. Similarly, I think you could say that many of the “Southerns” (and paticularly comedies set in the South) are based on an idealized small-town “simple life.” Examples: Fried Green Tomatoes, My Dog Skip, Doc Hollywood, Big Fish, parts of Forrest Gump, the Andy Griffith Show. Both genres provide escape fantasies for desk-bound city dwellers. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-easterns-make-a-good-genre/294227/34 "2005-03-14T20:46:15Z")
“Easterns” are on _television,_ folks. In as great a profusion as Westerns were in the 1950s. Unlike the movies, where big city plots tend to be either romances or crime dramas, on the toob the noncrime entrants are usually comedies – whether romantic (_Sex & The City, Will & Grace_), domestic (_Everybody Loves Raymond, King of Queens_), or “about nothing” (_Seinfeld_ - which was at heart about New York and New Yorkers). “Easterns” do not need to take place in the East. _Frasier_, despite its Seattle setting, was an Eastern. High tech, timber, shipping and grunge rock weren’t exactly the dominant themes. ---
**Author:** ![toadspittle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c0e974/32.png) [@toadspittle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/toadspittle)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-easterns-make-a-good-genre/294227/35 "2005-03-14T21:23:25Z")
I think every single cop show/movie could qualify as an “Eastern.” Ditto the gangster and mafia genres. Westerns have rolling mountains, Easterns have soaring skylines. ---
**Author:** ![sjc](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e5b9ba/32.png) [@sjc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sjc)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2005, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-easterns-make-a-good-genre/294227/36 "2005-03-15T05:02:26Z")
I have a couple things to add: Westerns were popular _worldwide_; everyone seemed to love them. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show toured Europe quite successfully I believe. Western novels were quite popular and were often written by people who had never been to America, much less the American West. The whole concept of the West as this great wild place where people were free to be themselves (and to be brave or depraved), was most definitely cultivated by people trying to lure Easterners west and by people back east trying to sell dime novels and newspapers back east. This was all going on at the time when the Wild West was supposed to be the Wild West. A whole lot of promotin’ was going on from the very beginning. In fact, if you go back to the original settling of the colonies you see a similar thing happening where the virtues of the untamed wilderness are touted to get people to sail west to the New World. Later the same sort of thing happened when people moved west towards the Mississippi. It was still happening when people went beyond the Mississippi and began to enter what we now consider the West. The “wild” west, though not completely tame, was not nearly as wild as it was made out to be, even at the time. Or perhaps it would be better to say that alongside the wildness was a fair amount of civilization and that the wildness was often of a different type than what is and was usually depicted. ---
**Author:** ![jeffh3000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/34f0e0/32.png) [@jeffh3000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jeffh3000)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2005, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-easterns-make-a-good-genre/294227/37 "2005-03-15T06:36:34Z")
Well as to why they are popular, it was the percieved adventure of the genre. It wasn’t just called the west, but rather the “wild west”. It was about people seeking out hope and glory, people fighting against odds. The other angle is the untamed nature of the towns, where laws were less common and things weren’t always quite as civilized. All this certainly creates the opportunity for stories. The west was popular story material even in its own day back east, due to this perceived adventuresome nature. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2005, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-easterns-make-a-good-genre/294227/38 "2005-03-16T16:45:20Z")
I would have to suppose it has to do with the romantic idea of this vast endless country full of Indians, cowboys, outlaws, gunfighters, horses and whatnot. I would say that “Southerns” about roughly the same time period (basically the 1800s) would basically be Civil War films like Cold Mountain, Gone With The Wind, Glory and so on. While Westerns are basically about the adventure and hardships of settling the West, “Southerns” would be about the hardships of war and societal changes. The only “Eastern” movies I can think of would be Gangs of New York and the part of Far and Away where they were holed up in an Irish slum. You don’t really find too many stories about the East in the 1800s since it was pretty industrialized by then. Pretty much you have to go back to colonial days to find the same kind of conflict that makes for interesting stories. ---
**Author:** ![1010011010](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/1/ea666f/32.png) [@1010011010](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/1010011010)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2005, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-easterns-make-a-good-genre/294227/39 "2005-03-16T17:28:30Z")
My first reading of the thread title made me think of Kung Fu movies. I guess that’d be a _Far East_ern, though. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2005, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-easterns-make-a-good-genre/294227/40 "2005-03-17T23:45:33Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > You don’t really find too many stories about the East in the 1800s since it was pretty industrialized by then. Pretty much you have to go back to colonial days to find the same kind of conflict that makes for interesting stories. But you can have stories without “conflict” in violent form. See post #32. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-easterns-make-a-good-genre/294227.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-easterns-make-a-good-genre/294227.md?page=3)