The Death of the "Anti-Western"

I hate the term "Anti-Western", or I guess I should say I hate the use of the term "Anti-Western", I mean there are things that I'm sure could be called "anti-Western", but when it is applied to Western films there is almost always a narrow snobbish view behind the comment. Even among Western fans there is an element of animosity towards one type of western and another, and it is usually caused by the inability of said fans to accept the many different facets of the Western genre, the many facets that actually make the Western one of the richest art forms of the 20th century.
To many people The Classic Western is a celebration of Christian-Anglo-Masculine-Superiority coupled with excessive violence. And, certainly many westerns will include at least some of these qualities, in particular violence, as a matter of fact I don't know if I could name a Western that does not feature a gun shot. Yet, it is interesting how many of these very themes are undermined even in classic Westerns. With closer inspection, many of the values that conservative "American's" hold dearly are questioned quite openly in the most classic of the Classics. Let's take for example John Ford's beloved Western Stagecoach. Now this film is about as Classic as you get and the characters in this film are hardly wholesome. Most of the protagonists are conventionally undesirable Dr. Boone is a drunk, Dallas is a whore, The Ringo Kid is a escaped convict, yet the righteous characters seem to have more disturbing faults, obviously the thieving banker Gatewood, the dubious gentleman Hatfield and even the pregnant Lucy Mallory seems waspish and haughty for the first half of the film.
Early in the film, Dr. Boone says to Dallas, when they are both run out of town by the ladies of the Law and Order League, "We are the victims of a foul disease called Social Prejudice, my child". This line alone seems a pretty solid indictment of American puritanical values for a film made in 1939. And, I only mention it as an example of the fact that even classic Westerns were not beyond attacking many of the injustices of modern society. As a matter of fact the Western was one of the most successful genres to challenge modern corruption. Though women were often portrayed as either the Mother or the Whore (often with the proverbial heart of gold) in Westerns, and lets be fair considering that these films are set during the 1800's there were few other roles for women during the era, there are several examples of strong women in classic and modern Westerns, in films such as Forty Guns, Rio Bravo, Rancho Notorious, Johnny Guitar, The Hired Hand, McCabe and Mrs. Miller.
Actually, to be honest even the aforementioned Whore with the heart of gold, which is as old as the hills she worked on, seems like a novelty, compared to today's films were a whore is rarely every portrayed as anything more than trash. The subject of Indians, is one that also concerns many detractors of Westerns. There have been several films that show the corruption and racism of the Whites during the Indian wars, some more heavy-handed than others. But, unfortunately considering the lack of genuine Native Americans working in the film business, Indians have too rarely been given justice on film.
Many Western fans see a righteous American dream of Manifest-Destiny in the Western genre, even when that was not the intention of the film. I believe these people are often victims of a nostalgic vision of the perceived past. I often think about comments made by John Wayne in an interview with Brian Huberman in 1974, about his character Ethan Edwards in John Ford's dark masterpiece The Searchers. Huberman praised Wayne for playing the villain. "He was no villain," Wayne responded indignantly, "He was a man living in his times. The Indians fucked his wife. What would you have done?". Now, it is interesting that Wayne claims that the Indians fucked his wife, because it was actually his sister-in-law who was raped and killed, and his niece who was kidnapped and raised as Scar's wife. Now, I consider Wayne's performance in The Searchers to be one of the greatest captured on film. So the question is raised as to whether he had forgotten the actions of the film after 20 years, or had he somehow never understood that the Ethan character was a terrifying, if complexly sympathetic figure? It is hard to tell. But I think this is a perfect example of how even a major contributor to the Western genre, such as Wayne, might not see anything outside of his preconceived vision of the genre.

During the 1960's the genre was again changing, as it had changed numerous times in the past from Edwin Porter's The Great Train Robbery to the silent "realist" films of William S. Hart, and Harry Carey to the epic Western's such as The Covered Wagon and The Iron Horse to The singing cowboys such as Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, then again after Stagecoach, western's began displaying a new maturity leading to the post WWII Westerns where you have the dark influence of Noir creeping into films such as Pursued, Canyon Passage, Rancho notorious, all of Anthony Mann's Westerns and of course The Searchers.

During the cultural shock of the sixties the Western genre was caught in a limbo, that I feel it has never fully recovered from. Not, that there was any lack of new talent, several young talents emerged during the sixties, such as Sam Pechinpah, Monte Hellman, and Sergio Leone to name only a few. But, even these filmmaker's seemed to want to keep a distance from the genre that was now considered fusty. When the Wild Bunch was released, Sam Pechinpah told Paul Schrader "I have never made a 'Western'. I have made a lot of films about men on horseback.". Now, to anyone who has seen his films, to say that Ride the High Country, Major Dundee and The Wild Bunch are not Westerns is obviously absurd, yet it shows that he wanted his films to be considered more than just merely Westerns, or that he was using the form of a Western to explore themes that were not associated with Horse-Operas and Oaters. But really that is exactly what Westerns do, and had been doing for at the time 70 years. Almost every ten years the Western would take a new form, and would be a stage to express the concerns of it's contemporary audience, like all great art forms.

Once, I was interviewed by Ted Mahar for his horrible column in the Oregonian titled "Film Freak", and after talking for about an hour or so about films that I loved, Ted asked me how I felt about Westerns, and granted, I had really only seen a handful of Westerns at the time, so I told him how wild I was for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Well, he quietly scoffed, and mumbled "That's really more of an Anti-Western". That was the end of our discussion. While it is hard to say if the Western will ever return as a major part of our culture. I hope that a renewed appreciation of the genre will emerge. And, I hope that future fans will be able to appreciate both She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and The Good, the Bad and The Ugly, and feel that they just saw "A Damn Fine Western!"