When did the wild west stop being cool?

[CarlZog]

The Wild West is uncool? Funny ...No one told us.


Sidewinder: Recoiled = 3 ENnie nominations Worth of uncool Wild West goodness.


(Shameless plug alert: And on sale now at RPGNow for a mere $8.25).

Whoa, Nellie! Guess I been livin' under a rock! This looks cool. Thanks.

 

[Dark Jezter]

/useless knowledge on

Interestingly enough cowboy is a translation of a spanish word, the origonal cowboys weren't american at all. Today there are still some who fill the role of Cowboys, but those are largely "non immigrant guest workers" or somesuch who are imported from south american countries with contracts lasting around 3 years (I think that's the amount of time). Also, some of them (if not lots or most) don't speak english when they arrive.

So, where as the thought of a cowboy is generally associated with white americans the origonal, and final, cowboys are hispanic.

/useless knowledge off

The spanish word you are looking for is vaquero, a term that is still used in southern and western Texas to describe cowboys or ranch hands.

Your history also seems to be a little off. While the Spaniards did start herding cattle in the new world as early as the 15th century, American ranchers in the 1850s developed a culture all their own that was a blend of victorian and frontier values, with attire and vocabulary influenced by the Mexicans. This was the birth of the American cowboy, whose traditions are still carried on to this day in the western states.

Finally, coming from a family of ranchers and cattle herders, I can assure you that cowboys do still exist, and they're not all migrant workers.

 

[JDowling]

The spanish word you are looking for is vaquero, a term that is still used in southern and western Texas to describe cowboys or ranch hands.

Your history also seems to be a little off. ...

Finally, coming from a family of ranchers and cattle herders, I can assure you that cowboys do still exist, and they're not all migrant workers.

I will bow to your superior knowledge I haven't made a concerted effort to varify the information i posted above, but I came across it somewhere that seemed reliable (not that I recall where, too much useless stuff up in the head). Of course I don't think they footnoted any of the info heh.

and yes, that's the term i'm looking for

 

[Alzrius]

The spanish word you are looking for is vaquero, a term that is still used in southern and western Texas to describe cowboys or ranch hands.

I thought it was the term "gaucho", which is what they call the cowboys of South America (who are very much still around, from what I understand).

I think I saw a d20 product where a guy dressed as a confederate outfit was riding a dinosaur and waving a gun around... which reminds me that I think someone on these boards has a homebrew that was about cowboys and dinosaurs (but I could be mistaken).

I think you're thinking of Broncosaurus Rex from Goodman Games.

 

[ErickArnell]

Re: Modern cowboys

My wife grew up on a cattle ranch in eastern Utah and western Colorado. They have a hispanic team boss and mostly college students who come down to help with the "cowboy work" twice a year. Definitely not temporary/migrant labor.

My 2 cowboy cents.

And I have lost track of how many RPG characters I have played based on Clint Eastwood. He is the man.

And I think that at least in the U.S. Sci-Fi and the 60s counter-culture did in westerns.

 

[synecdoche]

Heh heh, I am writing my MA thesis on Westerns (five Wyatt Earp films, to be exact). The Western's big decline did come in the 70's. You see several Westerns used as counter-culture films, either by dissecting the genre as an expression of American imperialism (ie Vietnam). The Western cowboy became sort of synonymous with America (not that it hadn't been before) and so this symbol of the American cowboy sherrif globo-cop was not very popular for a few years.

That said, occasionally you see little bursts when the genre seems to be "coming back" and entertainment magazines will publish articles with titles such as "THE RETURN OF THE WESTERN." The best recent one was in the early 1990s, with Unforgiven, Tombstone, and Wyatt Earp, which produced two excellent films. I do remember a few years back when there were a number of Westerns released involving current young actors (there was one about the James gang, and another called, I think, Texas Rangers). More recently we had Open Range, which was very interesting to me because it was in many ways a return to the old fashioned Western.

Anyway, to me, they are still very cool. and I hope to pick up Sidewinder (makes note of the above plug).

Side note: Alzarius, we're from the same generation, and I felt the same way until I watched Tombstone, and then Unforgiven. This led me back to some of the classics, and I haven't looked back. If you're interested at ALL in the genre, check out those two, as well as the so-called "man with no name" trilogy, and The Wild Bunch. Then, check out some of the older films. High Noon is truly an amazing piece of work. Maybe not as action-oriented as He-Man and Transformers, but they can be just as much fun. Plus they can be a great source of plots for gaming.

 

[Crass]

Side note: Alzarius, we're from the same generation, and I felt the same way until I watched Tombstone, and then Unforgiven. This led me back to some of the classics, and I haven't looked back. If you're interested at ALL in the genre, check out those two, as well as the so-called "man with no name" trilogy, and The Wild Bunch. Then, check out some of the older films. High Noon is truly an amazing piece of work. Maybe not as action-oriented as He-Man and Transformers, but they can be just as much fun. Plus they can be a great source of plots for gaming.

I, likewise, am from the same generation. Strong agreement with the High Noon and Clint Eastwood opinions. One of my DMs, the infamous Hong, actually got his inspiration for the first session of his current campaign from Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars (I'm skillfully neglecting to mention that Leone *borrowed* the story from Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo - which leads to another source of good plots for gaming...)

 

[Tonguez]

Personally I reckon it was the 'Eastern' that killed the 'Western'

Think of it the Spaghetti westerns that made Clint 'coolest-cowboy-ever' Eastwood famous were based on Samurai stories (the above Yojimbo), soon after we had 'Kung Fu' the Eastern Western, and then Golden Harvest Studios went all Eastern making Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan etc Super stars

And look at the modern 'Action Movie' (of which Westerns are a part) those that don't involve big guns or big muscles (ie Schwarzenegger, Stallone) invariably involve some form of Martial Arts.

Same in RPGs - just look at the Monk class in DnD, and the popularity of 'Eastern settings'

 

[Darrin Drader]

Brand new from Mongoose this month:

I think westerns are still cool, but it doesn't help matters that Hollywood has only produced a handful of them in the past few years. I think Wide open Plains with Robert Duval and Kevin Costner was the last.

Anyway, I count westerns among my favorite movies ever made. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, The Outlaw Jose Wales, The Unforgiven, Lonesome Dove, and the Desperado TV movies from the '80s remain some of my favorites.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Turns out that a lot of historical cowboys were black, too. Which makes it very cool that Clint Eastwood cast Morgan Freeman in Unforgiven, the ultimate Western deconstruction.