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The Western movie is one of the classic American film genres. Westerns are art works – films, literature, television shows and paintings – devoted to telling romanticized tales of the American West.While the Western has been popular throughout the history of movies, as the United States progresses farther away from the period depicted it has begun to diminish in importance. The recent (August 2003) Kevin Costner western, Open Range, is seen by some as a revival of the genre.
1 What a Western is
The fundamental plots of Westerns are simple. Life is reduced to its elements: there are no computers, no cellphones, no cars, no electricity. No twenty-first century technologyTechnology ( Gr. tau;εχνολογια < τεχνη "craftsmanship" + λογος "word, reckoning" + the suffix ια) has more than one definition., no " modern lifeModernity is a relativist term given to a type, mode, or stage of society as being more developed than another. In current contexts, "modernity" may describe the positive aspects of advanced technology, or else is often a characterization of the Western s." Technology is usually limited to that found in rural areas in the mid- 19th centuryAlternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical ( 18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801- 1900. Events The Little Ice Age ended. You have:
- The clothesSee also List of types of clothing Introduction Humans often wear articles of clothing (also known as dress garments or attire on the body (for the alternative, see nudity). In its broadest sense, clothing includes coverings for the trunk and limbs as wel on your back.
- Your gunRevolver is also a rock-and-roll album by The Beatles. In the alkali industry in England in the 19th century, a revolver was a big rotating heated reaction chamber. LeMat 9-shot Revolver A revolver is a multishot firearm, usually a handgun, in which the r, and
- Your horseThis article discusses ungulate mammals. For other meanings of horse see Horse (disambiguation). The Horse Equus caballus is a large ungulate mammal, one of the seven modern species of the genus Equus''. It has long played an important role in transportat.
And that's usually it. The horse may be optional. The high technology of the era – such as the telegraph, printing press, and railroad – do sometimes appear, occasionally as a development just arriving, and symbolizing that the idealized frontier lifestyle is transitory, soon to give way to the march of civilization.
The art of the Western takes these simple elements and uses them to tell simple morality stories, setting them against the spectacular scenery of the American West. With the best Western directors, the scenery essentially became an unpaid star of the movie.
- See also: Frederic Remington, Indian Wars, Continental Expansion of the U.S., Manifest Destiny, The West
2 Origins of the "Western idea"
The idea of the "Wild West" traces at least to Buffalo Bill's Wild West shows which began in 1883. In literature, Owen Wister's The Virginian (published in 1902) was an American start; but the German writer Karl May was writing Wild West stories as early as 1876, and he traced ideas at least to the American writer James Fenimore Cooper, who wrote Last of the Mohicans in 1826.
Thus the "western idea" has a long history. They were a distinct literary genre before the rise of motion pictures; other important writers were Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour.
