Once Upon a Time in The Western

The Old West was pretty fucking terrible, guys. It was cold, or hot, depending on the season or the time of day. There were diseases everywhere, and wild animals, like snakes and coyotes and shit. Oh, and everybody was racist. Like, SO MANY PEOPLE. Just an astronomical amount of racism. 

But hey, westerns are fun, right? Well, they certainly used to be, back when they made money. Now I know what you're thinking, "Quentin Tarantino  makes westerns all the time! People love them, too!" Sure, they certainly do. But consider this. What if, when people pay to see Tarantino's latest foray into the fucked frontier, they aren't actually paying to see a western? What if they're paying to see a Tarantino film? 

If I told you Christopher Nolan was directing a western film, the vast majority of you would be leaping at the chance to see it. And you bet your ass I would be too, in fact I just got really excited at that prospect. A Nolan western??? Take all of my money, obviously. But why are we reacting that way? Our initial excitement at that statement is not indicative of anything other than the fact that we really like Christopher Nolan. That's it. To sell a western, independent of any other source of hype or credibility, is no easy task in this day and age, and I can't help but wonder why. Why has that particular genre fallen so far out of favor? What killed the western?

Westerns are fun, people! REALLY fun. Sergio Leone's Dollar Trilogy is my shit! I adore those movies, and so did most human beings alive at the time of their release. Just watch them again and you'll see why. The wild west we see in those films is vast and dangerous, the perfect backdrop for the story of our hero, a classic, stoic bad ass, intent on making it out of his ordeal alive, and maybe with a little more gold than he had when he started. People ate that shit up, westerns were the 20th century equivalent of YA adaptations, movie goers couldn't get enough of them, and studios had no problem pumping them out. The entries in that genre supported this fantastical view we seemed to have of our country, or what we thought our country was at the time those films take place, and for that reason, we couldn't get enough of them. 

Now earlier I'm sure you felt a little iffy about me comparing westerns to modern YA novel adaptations, but the more I think about it, the more apt that comparison becomes, so I'm going to roll with that for a hot sec.

I don't know about you, but for me personally, even when watching the YA films I hate, which is all of them, I still get a certain feeling in my tummy that I can't quite escape. I picture myself in the shoes of the hero, who, despite their more than likely grim situation, seems to have their entire life together. They have a devoted love interest, loyal sidekicks, wise and bad ass mentors, and above all, they really fucking matter. The fate of the world always seem to depend on these main characters, and as shitty as most of their movies are, I can't help but feel some deep down dumb wish in my heart being vicariously fulfilled when I see them. This, I have decided, has to be by design. It's just too perfect, and I refuse to believe that I'm the only person that feels that way when I watch those stories play out. The producers of those films know what game they're playing and they know that as long as they continue adapting those types of novels (which sell well for the same reason) people my age and younger will continue watching. Now, fortunately, I feel this trend will die out entirely, or at the very least lose any and all profitability at some point in the near future, much like westerns already have. 

I can only speak for myself and the millions of Americans who no doubt felt or feel the same way, but when I watch a western, I feel like I'm seeing one of my fantasies play out on screen. A wicked cool gunslinger, riding around on a horse and shooting bad guys with complete and total emotional detachment from the murders he commits, a hero who always seems to save the girl (sorry but westerns aren't the most progressive of movies) and beat the bad guys. That shit is so cool in a really simple, subconscious kind of way. And it just so happens that the genres and styles we see thriving now reflect the notions modern viewers want to see reinforced. 

Now, the argument could be made that superhero movies are actually the modern western, and that our market is being saturated with them, and we are continuing to pay to see them simply because they offer us escape into a world we wished we could be a part of. And you might be right about that. I have no counter argument, you could be entirely correct To be honest we really won't know until years have passed, and we can look back on this time in cinema and really discern what the fuck we were all thinking. 

Here's the conclusion I've chosen to come to for now. Fads in film are like fads in fashion. They change not only over the course of lives, but also with passing generations. We wear shit our parents never would, and our parents wear things they never would when they were kids. Tastes change because tastes are dependent on the people that have them, and people change. All the time, as it turns out. So, what killed the western? 

We did.

And that's ok. Because the wild west was pretty shitty anyways. Did you know that like everybody was racist? SO MANY PEOPLE.

Ok that's all for this one. As always, thanks for reading.