Conventions of a Western

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Interesting that rufnek brought up Star Wars and other sci-fis. What do you guys think about the proposition that the space opera "replaced" the western in terms of its stance within the collective totality of genres? Or do you think it is more accurate to say that it was essentially the same genre, and that genre is much less a collection of images than a web of relations. I say this only to suggest that maybe rufnek's concept of the frontier is the key to what a western is. Is it possible that everything else---the cowboys, the indians, the vast spaces, the lonely caravans---are just imaginary projections of a fixed symbolic structure? Is the western more than just a period of time in American history? Could it be possible that this concept of the frontier is representative of some universal human experience?
If space and sci-fi are not a natural extension of the Western, would there have ever been a movie called Space Cowboys, starring Clint Eastwood and James Garner, who got their start in TV Westerns and have made many Western films, Tommy Lee Jones who played Texas Ranger Capt. McCall in the TV Western series Lonesome Dove and has also done other Western movies, and even to a certain degree Donald Sutherland, although I don't immediately think of him as a cowboy.

Any kind of a frontier will work for a Western--space, the ocean, even the arctic. Take for instance The Big Country in which Gregory Peck as a New England sailor comes West to marry a rancher's daughter who he met when she visited the East. People keep emphasizing to him just how very big the near-treeless plains are. In one of my favorite scenes, one of the locals asks Peck, "Have you ever seen anything so big?" to which Peck replies, "Yes, I have." The puzzled local asks, "What?" And Peck replies, "A couple of oceans."

Like that Westerner, we forget how big the oceans are and what landmarks and life forms they hide.



Keep on Rockin in the Free World
If your just dealing with the themes of the western and applying it to science fiction like Star Wars, then the western has been around before there were westerns. The story of Robin Hood, which had been around for centuries, has all the Star War elements also.

if you haven't already, the Power of Mythology by Joesph Campbell may be up your alley.

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the heroes journey has been a campfire tale for thousands of years.
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"The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." - Michelangelo.