Westerns and social commentary

Westerns and social commentary Throughout history Americans have had a fascination with unexplored, uncharted, anduntamed territory. Never has this been so pronounced as with the American west.Stories of bravery, new peoples, cultures, and strange new lands have enchantedAmericans for nearly two centuries. This attraction is strikingly prominent in the filmhistory of the west. Yet, despite it's early and lasting popularity, the Western has notuntil recent years attracted the attention of interpretive critics. Many critics viewedWesterns as an escapist, immature medium. "Discussions of Westerns characterized thegenre as endlessly repetitive, utterly simple in form, and naive in its attitudes (Cook 64) ."However, since the late 1960's Westerns have been recognized, "similar to other forms ofpopular culture, as a useful barometer of shifting currents in American society andculture (Etulain 3)." The development of the western film genre in American film culturehas progressed in manner, style, and ideology, and can be tracked in association with thepolitical, societal, and cultural trends of the last 90 years.View of Hollywood and Los Angeles from Griffith Pa...The first westerns were the same as many other first films, merely scientificrecordings of actual events such as wild west shows and rodeos. The first Western withany content was The Great Train Robbery (1903). While still very primitive it gave much ofthe stock form to westerns that exists today."It established the essential formula of crime, pursuit, showdown, and justice,and within its ten minute running span it included, in addition to the trainrobbery itself, elements of fisticuffs, horseback pursuit and gunplay, along withsuggestions of small child appeal, and probably the first introduction of that clichÂÆ'Â ©to be, the saloon bullies forcing a dude into a dance (Everson 15)."As train robberies and similar crimes were not uncommon in the early nineteen hundredsThe Great...