Reclaiming the Old West

Growing up when I did didn’t exactly do much to instill any sort of appreciation or interest in the Western.

As a kid my preferences leaned more towards the anthropomorphic side of things; Duck Tales, Thundercats, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

As I got older, video games and Star Wars were added into the mix.

But the Western never grabbed me the way it had grabbed my dad when he was a kid.

One of the biggest factors in my total disinterest in cowboys was that most of the Westerns by dad tried pushing on me were old, black and white and not nearly as exciting as something like Ghostbusters or Hook.

Why waste time watching High Noon when I could instead be locked in another dead-end argument about how I should be allowed to rent Mortal Kombat?

In this case the blame was on me.

As much as I’m embarrassed to say so now, I had a criminally low tolerance for anything shot in black and white that didn’t involve Lucy doing something completely wacky or Curly being repeatedly bludgeoned about the face and head with a frying pan.

Screwball antics aside, old was boring.

Westerns were, for the most part, old. Which raises another point…

While Paula Cole mourned for her happy ending, I took stock of the Western landscape.

The Western had become, in the late 80s and 90s, the stuff of kitsch, Oscar bait and bizarre attempts to cash in on some of my favorite, aforementioned cartoon super heroes.

Of course this wasn’t written in stone.

Sure there were flicks like Tombstone and Unforgiven to balance out every Wild Wild West or City Slickers 2, but even the bad or grand, sweeping Oscar Westerns were few and far between.

Where had the cowboys gone?

And if the Western was no longer the people’s genre of choice, then where did my then limited understanding and expectations about Westerns come from?

Cartoons, natch.

While I was actively ignoring the likes of John Wayne, Gunsmoke and, to a lesser extent, F Troop, subversive, pro-Western agents were infiltrating my brain.

The cartoons I was so blindly gobbling up were often times crammed to the rafters with obvious homages, lampooning and reverence for Westerns.

And it wasn’t just cartoons.

The Western and the cowboy are such huge parts of American mythology that it is impossible not to wind up staring down the smoking barrel of their six-guns. Marty and Doc pulled off a train heist. Fievel went West.

Hell, it was even in our condiment commercials!

Like all things worth knowing about, the Western had a way of creeping up in the darnedest places.

And unlike, say, the intrinsic cultural awareness of things like Darth Vader being Luke’s father or knowing what all of that Rosebud nonsense was about in Citizen Kane, these references to Westerns were often broad, vague and spoiler free.

They weren’t references to a specific John Wayne movie, but rather to John Wayne to actor and John Wayne the cowboy. Even when a reference got specific, like faux-Ennio Morricone jingles that became catch-all tunes for the music of Westerns, a deeper knowledge of the subject wasn’t necessary, just a base level familiarity.

Regardless of popular trends, the Western has always been an important part of American myth and pop culture and is just as powerful a vehicle for story telling today as it was when John Ford was in his prime.

Case in point, exhibits A and B:

Calling it Grand Theft Equine is a gross understatement

Last year proved to be a good one for the Western, coming at us strong with the one-two punch of a hit video game and a remake of a classic by two of today’s best film makers.

It was a declaration: the Western is far from riding off into the sunset. As for myself, my latent curiosity in exploring the genre had finally hit a critical mass thanks in no small part to Red Dead Redemption and True Grit.

Call it jumping on the bandwagon if you need to.

Back movie posters were movie poster