One of the many things I have my dad to thank for is my love of Westerns. This isn't anything he actively encouraged, like playing sports, and if he had, chances are I'd enjoy watching High Noon about as much as I enjoy watching the Super Bowl. He influenced me simply by watching Westerns all the time when I was growing up. It took a while for the constant exposure to the genre to develop into a full appreciation of it, but at some point over the last ten years, Westerns came to occupy an equal place with the trinity of horror, science fiction, and fantasy as one of my favorite movie genres.
Unlike the trinity, however, Westerns don't seem to have much appeal beyond professional film critics, film students, and dads over 40. After watching my DVD copy of The Hills Have Eyes for the first time, Vicki looked at me and said, "Who would own a movie like that?" Yet, she has watched it several times since then and can't seem to get enough of the horror genre. She's never had such a strong negative reaction to a Western, but she will never watch one with me. Last summer, my friends and I spent two weekends watching the entire Star Wars series, but I couldn't convince anyone to spend a few hours watching Once Upon a Time in the West. Mention Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter at a social gathering and someone will share a story about wearing a costume to a midnight showing of one of the movies, but quote Clint Eastwood asking, "Who's the fella' that owns this shit hole?" and you'll likely be shown to the door.
As frustrating as this is, I understand why the Western genre has less appeal than horror, science fiction, and fantasy: it's perceived to be boring. I used to share this perception, and I think it stems from the following misconceptions about the genre:
1. Westerns are to Dads What Soap Operas are to Moms
I'll be the first to admit that for most of my life I associated Westerns with being at home bored with my dad in the same way that I associated Soap Operas with being at home bored with my mom. If you view Westerns in this way, try an experiment: Watch an episode of The Young and the Restless and an hour of The Searchers to determine which experience is more painful. You'll realize it was far better to be at home bored with Dad. Moreover, moms eventually come to their senses and evolve out of their Soap Opera phases (at least mine did), whereas dads continue watching Westerns, indicating that something about the genre makes watching the movies a worthwhile experience. I don't remember my mom ever rewatching an episode of The Days of Our Lives, but my dad has seen The Magnificent Seven at least a dozen times.
2. All Westerns are about Cowboys Fighting Indians
At some point during my childhood when I was waiting for John Wayne to finish off the Apaches so I could go to the pool, I must have wondered, "Doesn't Dad ever get bored watching cowboys fight Indians?" The answer, of course, was no, but it was only much later that I understood why. A lot of Westerns do involve cowboys fighting Indians, but in the good ones, these fights are never simply between "good guys" and "bad guys."
A good example is John Ford's Fort Apache, in which Henry Fonda assumes command of the Fort and remains determined to use military force to convince Apaches to return to the reservation despite the protestations of John Wayne, who has direct experience working with the Apaches, understands why they have left and has negotiated a deal with them to return. The movie is clearly about a conflict between the US military and the Apaches, but it's also about internal conflicts among military officers about the best way to manage this conflict. Moreover, Wayne traces the cause of the conflict not to the Apaches' decision to leave the reservation but to the actions of the corrupt US official who runs a store that's supposed to provide the Apaches with food and supplies. This level of nuance is not limited to Fort Apache, and in later Westerns, the conflicts between cowboys and Indians become even more complex.
Of course, it's also simply not true that all Westerns are about such conflicts. It's perhaps just as common for one to portray the completion of the transcontinental railroad and its taming effects on the Wild West. Several deal with the difficulty that wandering gunslingers and outlaws face dealing with the fact that the lawlessness that has enabled them to thrive is coming to an end. Many are about honor, some are even about love, and High Noon, which shows Gary Cooper torn between his love for his new wife and his sense of duty to his town, is about both.
3. The Old West Just Isn't Very Interesting
If I were given the following choices and asked to select the character with the most interesting weapon, I have to admit that I wouldn't choose a:
a. Django: machine gun that he stores in a coffin
b. Luke Skywalker: lightsaber
c. Gandalf: staff
d. Leatherface: chainsaw
As much as I enjoy watching Django drag his machine-gun-filled coffin through the desert, it doesn't have the same ability to captivate an audience as a Jedi's lightsaber, a wizard's staff or even a chainsaw wielded by a madman in a dead skin mask. For pure entertainment that transports for you two hours to a time and place that you'll never visit in the real world, you can't beat science fiction, fantasy, and horror. However, the West in Westerns becomes much more interesting when it's recognized for the mythic setting that it is rather than simply a representation of an historical time and place. It's mythic both in the sense that the plots of some of the best Westerns bear little resemblance to what actually happened in the West, but also in that the themes explored in these movies have a significance that's not limited to one point in American history.
The example of Fort Apache illustrates this point as well. While reading the description, if you were reminded of the US involvement in Iraq or Afghanistan, you're not alone. New York Times film critic A.O. Scott examines these parallels in a commentary on Fort Apache and the enduring significance of the Western: A.O. Scott on Fort Apache.
If, like the younger me, you tend to avoid Westerns because they just don't seem very interesting, I hope I've encouraged you to give them another chance. If you're not convinced yet, but I have at least caught your attention, watch for future posts that will attempt to explain the appeal of several different Westerns. At the very least, thank your dad for boring you with cowboys robbing a train rather than with a melodrama about bored rich people having affairs.
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