The Western Today

In the 1990’s, American film critics remarked upon what appeared to be an emerging wave of “new Western history” depicted in popular films such as Kevin Costner’s DANCES WITH WOLVES (1990) and Michael Mann’s THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS (1992). The central conflicts of these “new Westerns” focused on dispelling the myth of vast, open spaces that were free for the taking as well as reminding audiences of the many multicultural histories of the indigenous peoples who populated these early lands. More socially and politically conscious of its foundations, this 90’s revivalism, according to Western theorists Rick Worland and Edward Countryman, “essentially popularized history of the American west” in its treatment of the American Indian image as well as respect for the history itself. A decade after DANCES WITH WOLVES won Best Picture at the 1991 Academy Awards, Costner returned with another Western nostalgia film, OPEN SPACES (2003), which “makes no apologies for the genre or for releasing an unrepentant Western at a time when two rising generations of Americans are deep into very un-Western genre mindsets,” according to film theorist Joseph Natoli.

This dramatic change in audience reception indicates an important ideological shift within younger generations of American society who, as Natoli notes, find no personal significance in the values of the Old West or its heroes. This young generation didn’t grow up with the same mythology of nation-building and masculine order as their grandparents, but instead witnessed a nation in violent conflict with the world at large and also committing volatile violence within. Anyone who lives in the aftermath of the Iraq War, 9/11, the Columbine shootings, or any other national emergency that has occurred in the last ten years may not be likely to believe in the power of one man to protect his or her small town from harm. In the midst of growing public anxieties, Andrew Dominik’s THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD (2007) ruminates on the disintegration of Western hero archetypes in context of the genre and history that created them. Paul Thomas Anderson’s THERE WILL BE BLOOD (2007) exaggerates our fears of the capitalist greed that consumed us in the early frontier days. NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2007, directed by Ethan and Joel Coen), portrays a totally useless and confounded sheriff at a loss to help, correct, or even comprehend the crimes of the new generation. In contemporary life, the Western hero has failed to help us comprehend new forms of family and social evils. Where does this leave the Western, as a genre of film that has been so influential to American cinema? Will it forever be scorned as a genre whose only purpose can be critiquing history?