What I Learned as a New Fan of Westerns

I consider myself something of a film buff.  I’m not an expert by any means but I did watch Citizen Kane once just for kicks and giggles and I plan to do it again.  There are a few areas where my knowledge of the medium is pretty lacking.  One of those areas is Westerns, so I recently decided to brush up on the genre.  In the past month I've seen about nine Westerns, which is approximately thrice as many as I'd seen before unless you count each of the twelve times I've seen Blazing Saddles.  Actually, Blazing Saddles was part of why I avoided the genre for so long.  I thought knowledge of all the cliches was enough.  Lone gunman strolls into town, he stares down the antagonist, shoots him, then rides into the sunset.  What else is there to know?  I was only a few movies in before I realized that most of what I thought about Westerns was wrong.

I was mostly surprised by the absence of cliches, especially cowboys.  I thought cowboys would make up the majority of Western protagonists, but out of the ones I've seen there's only been one and he was just one magnificent seventh of the Magnificent Seven.  The only other movie I've seen where cowboys play a major role is Tombstone, and in that case Cowboys isn't their job but the name of their gang.  However, Tombstone has something else I  mistakenly assumed I'd see a lot of in Westerns: Sam Elliott.  Everything about Sam Elliott indicates that he should be in Westerns but in a cruel twist of fate he began his acting career just as the genre was on its way out.  His first film role was as an unnamed gambler in the classic Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in 1969.  Elliott has been in a handful of Westerns but mostly he's been relegated by the powers that be to play Marlboro Man type characters in bowling alleys with his head on fire.

Oh, they're not the same movie.  Sorry, was that not clear?

One of the biggest reasons I was hesitant to take an interest in Westerns was because they were famously racist towards Native Americans.  They were typically portrayed as violent savages.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that Native Americans play little to no role in most of the movies that I've seen.  The only exception is The Searchers, which is actually a complicated examination of racism by two of the most famous perpetrators of that racism; John Wayne and director John Ford.  Admittedly, the Comanche in the film aren't portrayed in the best light, but by the end it's clear that the hatred for them held by Wayne's character is far more dangerous than they are.  It's also mentioned that the Comanche are motivated by revenge for the deeds done by white men, indicating that violence is a vicious circle and both sides are at fault.  However, it's worth mentioning that one side hated with guns and the other hated with bows and arrows.

Another interesting side effect is that once I started watching Westerns I could see their influence everywhere.  I had heard that Quentin Tarantino took a few pages out of Sergio Leone's book, but after a single viewing of Once Upon a Time in The West I realized that Tarantino took all of the pages, the binding, the cover, and the flap.  I knew that a lot of The Walking Dead was inspired by Westerns, but during the midseason finale I was more surprised to see a scene that wasn't Western influenced.  It occurred to me that it was more of a Western with zombies than a zombie show with Western influence.  And speaking of Sergio Leone and television, a little more Western wouldn't hurt Once Upon a Time.  How about a little live-action Sheriff Woody?  It's not like they've got the guts to cast Tom Hanks as a decapitated head anyway.