"There's something bigger than us."
There is a lot of truth in this. Most Westerns have the underlying theme of bigger issues under the surface of the story they are telling. Westerns started of course in novels and dime novels that were popular before the advent of movies and television. In these novels the story is often set against the backdrop of bigger issues that transcend the plot.
I trace the Western from the Leatherstocking Tales of James Fenimore Cooper. Hawkeye is the genesis of the heroic yet stoic frontiersman who was the precursor of the cowboy. The seminal novel "Last of the Mohicans" is the most famous but I prefer "The Pioneers" which was in fact the most popular of his novels during his lifetime. Natty Bumppo is the stoic hero who is the prototype of the cowboy played by people like the Duke, Gary Cooper and Clint Eastwood.
Movies that illustrate the thought that there are bigger issues include "Fort Apache" "The Magnificent Seven"
"High Noon" "Last of the Mohicans" "They Died With Their Boots On" and "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance."
Here is the Duke addressing it directly.
2 comments:
I trace the Western from the Leatherstocking Tales of James Fenimore Cooper. Hawkeye is the genesis of the heroic yet stoic frontiersman who was the precursor of the cowboy.
You hit a point I wanted to include, but it was long enough as it was.
Owen Wister put him on a horse and called him the Virginian.
Fran Striker gave him a cause and called him the Lone Ranger.
Jack Schaefer gave him a few neuroses and called him Shane.
But he remains the same character. William S Hart (my mom's favorite cowboy of the silents), Gary Cooper, the Duke, Mr Yates all gave him their own spin, but he's still there.
In a sense (a stretch, I know), you could say Trump is carrying on the tradition, although the closest we ever got to a luscious wife in the pantheon was given the Duke by John Ford in the person of Maureen O'Hara.
Thanks for the encouragement. I might have gotten it out earlier, but I turned it around in my mind a lot.
I think the archetype goes back at least to the days of Homer and his tales of Odysseus. I read a good translation of that poem and I'll tell you what, that ol' boy faced some mighty tough hombres out there, and he overcame them all and made it back to his good woman waiting at home. True hero stuff right there.
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