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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MGibster" data-source="post: 8372656" data-attributes="member: 4534">I'm not going to try to convince you give Westerns a chance because it's cool if you've decided they're not for you.  Even in the 40s, 50s, and 60s you could find westerns where not everyone who looks like you is a racist caricature or target practice.  Modern writers?  There were people examining these tropes more than seventy years ago.  In The Searchers (1956), Ethan Edwards, as played by John Wayne, is not the good guy and the further into the movie we get the more brutish he becomes.  In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Pompey, as played by African American actor Woody Strode, was one of the few characters who could look Doniphon (Wayne) right in the eyes and not only tell him "no" but to get his naughty word together because they had work to do tomorrow.  And in Fort Apache (1948), the Apache are depicted in a sympathetic manner as they go to war because of a corrupt Indian agent and an army commander who refuses to treat them with any respect.  I had never heard of the Western becoming more popular in the US during times when movements for social justice were big.  Westerns were big in the United States for almost a century starting with books in 1860s and continuing into motion pictures though the 1960s where they started to wane in popularity.  Have they gained any popularity in recent years?  The last big budget Western was The Lone Ranger and that one flopped hard.  Nothing wrong with that.  Life is too short and you've got better ways to spend your precious time.</blockquote>

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