The Wild West Genre

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The Wild West 9MGI

The Wild West was a period of great change in North America. After 1775, the American Colonies began to expand westward in search of more land. This expansion was led mostly by cattle ranchers in need of new pastures for their herds. Over time, people gradually left their homes and friends on the East coast, and moved into little townships in the west. This would be a very difficult decision for them, since they generally didn’t know whether they would be able to support themselves at their new place. Many Wild West movies are set in the latter half of the 1900s.
A “Western Film” is a film genre dedicated to this period in time, where Cowboys, Indians and Outlaws ran wild. The very first Western films showed in the 1890’s, these were; Annie Oakley, Bucking Broncho, Buffalo Bill, Buffalo Dance and Sioux Ghost Dance. They were trying to show audiences the “heroics” and the “bravery” of fake people, which I think flawed many people’s impressions of what makes a real man, as it would almost always depict the man as a hero who stands up for the weaker many, is great with a gun, can take down several men at once with just his fists, which just isn’t possible. Personally, I think this has skewed gender roles over the years, even just slightly, and only now are we “recovering” and realizing that not everyone is a macho-man.

Western Films are very standard, the protagonist is generally a handsome rogue cowboy or gunslinger. They always have some sort of antagonist or “evil” groups that take advantage of the general population, thus bring them wealth and notoriety. People that watch Western films expect to see cowboys, US Rangers, gunslingers, thieves, outlaws and trains are a common feature.
In th...

... middle of paper ...

... out of its hiatus. Otherwise the genre will grow stale and no revenue will be produced. This can be seen happening in the Call of Duty franchise of video games, as they have not innovated in many years, the games’ sales figures have been dropping exponentially. With these points made, I feel that without a break in the industry, not just a slowdown as it is now, the genre will fail.

Works Cited

(I was going to fix this up when I finished) http://www.artofmanliness.com/2013/06/04/best-western-movies/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_TV_Westerns http://www.fiftiesweb.com/western.htm http://www.westernpolicy.org/2011/07/05/why-western-movies-became-popular-in-america/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046303/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2013/11/08/activision-admits-call-of-duty-ghosts-didnt-outsell-black-ops-2-at-launch/

movies;
Shane (1953)
True Grit

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