Pucker Up, Pardner

Why You Should Love (or Loathe) the Western genre

In Westerns, you were permitted to kiss your horse but never your girl. - Gary Cooper

Seen Any Good Westerns Lately?

My father-in-law spent Saturday evenings watching John Wayne and Lee Marvin on television, and I grew up with Gunsmoke, F-Troop, the Lone Ranger, and Bonanza. As far back as I can recall, my ears have been filled with sounds of six-shooters, the clatter of horse hooves, and my eyes with the sight of saloons, ranches, and the wide open plains.

I thought I outgrew Westerns in my teen years, just as my toy six-shooters in their faux-leather holster and my felt Stetson no longer fit me. John Wayne was an un-hip as Guy Lombardo, and I didn’t cotton to Clint Eastwood in his Spaghetti Westerns or to Caine in the TV drama, Kung Fu.

But then I encountered the films McCabe and Mrs. Miller and Dead Man, re-discovered the music by the Sons of the Pioneers, and Marty Robbins, and found the TV series, HBO’s Deadwood.

Nothing on TV can compare to this show.

Tim Goodman, writing for SF Gate, said of Deadwood.

This is Shakespeare in the mud, a labor-intensive aural pleasure that is gilded with excessive violence, an unholy amount of swearing and a lawless machismo that will send the faint of heart or the politically correct reeling.

And while the TV adaptation of Lonesome Dove is better known, I prefer the mini-series Broken Trail, with its gorgeous cinematography, its scintillating score by David Mansfield and VanDyke Parks, and the acting presence of Robert Duvall and Thomas Haden Church.

Shakespeare in the Mud

I recently rewatched Deadwood’s three seasons and this viewing only deepened my love for its characters, costume and set design, and dialogue.

Oh, the dialogue: Salty, and yet its iambic pentameter verse is so titillating to these ears. For the Folger Shakespeare Library, Austin Tichenor explains:

You can feel that bounce and energy in the dialogue. These folks don’t talk like laconic characters in a Western; their speech is energetic and circuitous, filled with blunt Anglo-Saxon curse words and racist and misogynistic slurs used in casual everyday speech.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been drawing the people of Deadwood in my sketchbook in anticipation of Moss Piglet’s April issue with its theme, Westerns.

Call for Submissions

I hope you’ll jump in the saddle for this theme, too, and start writing poems and stories, or producing visual art that’s inspired by it.

Krazines is seeking submissions for its Westerns-themed issue through Wednesday, March 5, 2025. Send your work to info@krazines.com. Submission guidelines are available at the Krazines website.

The Western vs the Old West

The American West wasn’t that wild. From 1870-1885, there were a total of 45 deaths by gunshot in all of the cattle towns of the United States. (Gun laws were pretty strict.) The men you’d meet on the lonesome trail didn’t resemble John Wayne or Gary Cooper either. One in five of them were Hispanic or African-American.

Until the 16th century, there weren’t even any horses in North America. In 1519, Spanish settlers brought these animals to Mexico from their homeland, and soon Native American tribes of the Southeast captured them and became avid breeders.

Westerns World-Wide

The Western isn’t just a Hollywood construct. In addition to Italy’s Spaghetti Westerns, there’s the Curry Westerns of India, the Meat Pie Westerns of Australia, the Borscht Westerns of Soviet Russia, the Ramen Westerns of Japan, China, Korea, and Thailand, and the Suomi Westerns of Finland.

Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa was inspired by the films of John Ford, and subsequently, his own motion pictures inspired the creation of Hollywood films, such as The Magnificent Seven (from Seven Samurai) and Fistful of Dollars (Yojimbo).

Filmmaker George Lucas was not only inspired by Kurosawa, basing several characters from The Hidden Fortress into the first Star Wars film, but helped Kurosawa to obtain funding for his 1980 picture, Kagemusha.

Cowboy Poets

Some time ago, I attended a concert by singer/songwriter, Tom Russell, whose album, The Man from God Knows Where, is one of my favorites. Before the show, I was seated in the front row in a small, second-story space, reading Edward Abbey’s book, Desert Solitaire, when a couple guys next to me noted my paperback and regailed me with tales of their times at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada.

During their stay, they met Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, a folk troubador who once rode with Woody Guthrie, befriended a young Bob Dylan in early 1960s New York, and has recorded 18 studio albums, been name-checked in song by Guy Clark and was the subject of the documentary, The Ballad of Ramblin’ Jack.

Until that night, I’d thought Jack Elliott got his nickname because of his ramblin’ ways, but my newfound pals said that the old cowboy just wouldn’t shut up. When he went to his hotel room to retrieve something, they made their getaway.

At the age 93, Ramblin’ Jack is still out there, on the road, making music.

The Western’s Dark Side

There’s a lot to love about Westerns. The camera shots of a vast wilderness, dramatic storytelling, its blend of traditional and orchestral music, and the work of actors from John Wayne to Jamie Foxx, and from Barbara Stanwyck to Emily Blunt.

There’s a lot to loathe about Westerns, too.

The historian Eric Hobsbawm provides a dark view of the genre. In his book, Fractured Times, he writes:

The invented cowboy tradition is part of the rise of both segregation and anti-immigrant racism; this is a dangerous heritage.

The myth of the cowboy and of the Old West was sold to the public not only through entertainment but through politics and advertising. Remember the Marlboro Man?

Jane Tompkins, writing for Artforum magazine, argues that the literary genre of the Western came about at a time “when the central values of American life were being contested.” Women were demanding a better position in society. Men were determined to push back.

Tompkins writes:

The Western represents not so much the conquest of nature, as has been thought, as a need to reassert a masculine identity, an identity increasingly threatened by the growing influence of Christian, domestic female culture of the mid 19th century.

Reimagining the Myth

Rather than dismissing Westerns as an outdated form of entertainment, filled with mores that encourage misogyny and racism, some artists are reimagining the Western myth by incorporating images and stories from an unheralded history of the American West. Check out Jori Finkel’s article from W Magazine entitled “Bucking the Myth of the American Cowboy” for more on this subject.

Until Next Time

Thanks for getting this far. I hope you enjoy these bi-monthly posts. I’ll be back on February 16th with a profile on one of our regular contributors to Moss Piglet. See you then.