Analogues of the Western genre in alternate timelines ?

Exactly what it says on the tin. Do you think such genres would crop up even in wildly divergent timelines ? The themes about "exploring and colonizing the unknown frontier" are certainly timeless and the romanticism and adventure of the Wild West/Wild Outback/Wild Siberia mythos of OTL provides lots of good opportunities for storytelling.

On a related note, how would it affect the works of the genre in various media, such as literature, films, theatre, even comic books and computer games ? Could we see some really bizarre forms of this ?

I am particularly reminded of EdT's Fight and Be Right TL, where the "Bongo" film genre (American colonial adventures in the Congo Free State) captivates the imagination of the early American movie industry and moviegoing audience a lot more than OTL-style Wild West movies. Ironically, the Western is seen as more of a European genre in that timeline - with an alternate version of Francisco Franco being a popular Western director, of all things !

And, IIRC, Max's Chaos TL has references to a Western-like genre of fiction, similarly linked to the OTL midwestern and western parts of the US and Canada as the Western of OTL.

So, how do you see it ?

I am asking this because all of my TLs tackle Western-related themes (1 quite a lot, the other 2 a bit less) and I'd like some advice on how to make a potential genre analogue different, yet familiar to an OTL reader.

In a TL with somewhat more organised Australian natives resisting colonisation (more so than OTL, but not as much as Jared's Lands of Red and Gold) Australia could perhaps be a setting of a similar genre.

China could do one about battling the Dzungars and settling Central Asia or bringing it under their control. A modernised Persia could do the same about expansion into western Central Asia. A modernised Ottoman Empire could do it about expansion into Sudan down to the African Great Lakes. A more internationally accepted South Africa could do it about the treks. Etc.

Thande said:

In a TL with somewhat more organised Australian natives resisting colonisation (more so than OTL, but not as much as Jared's Lands of Red and Gold) Australia could perhaps be a setting of a similar genre.

China could do one about battling the Dzungars and settling Central Asia or bringing it under their control. A modernised Persia could do the same about expansion into western Central Asia. A modernised Ottoman Empire could do it about expansion into Sudan down to the African Great Lakes. A more internationally accepted South Africa could do it about the treks. Etc.

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Yeah, those examples are actually not too far from OTL in terms of plausibility, particularly the Australian one - as I've mentioned in the first post, Aussie western movies are probably the third commonest in OTL, after the American/Mexican and European ones.

Osterns in central Asia and the Ottoman Empire are one area which I can really see taking off, much like all those Soviet RCW osterns set in modern day Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan (with basmatchs as bandits and the local settlers and nomads as Mexican and Indian analogies, etc.). I think I've actually seen one or two Boer-Westerns in my lifetime (centered on the treks, what else), but I can't remember their names...

And, as weird as it sounds, in the early years of OTL interwar Czechoslovakia, an ostern-like genre briefly thrived in domestic literature. It mostly focused on the exploits of the Czechoslovak legionnaires in Russia or on the post-WWI unrest and secessionist conflicts at home. There was even a "Carpathian Ukraine western" novel written by Czech author Ivan Olbracht, Nikola Šuhaj loupežník - named after the eponymous Rusyn highwayman that became a nigh-legendary figure in the modern day Slovak-Ukrainian borderlands during and after WWI. Granted, the novel greatly romanticized the guy and had a kind of agenda, but it does show that there was a brief "domestic western" fad in 1920s Czechoslovakia. Ľudovít Mistrik (better known under his pen name Ľudo Ondrejov) also had western-like inclinations in his earlier Jerguš Lapin novels, though those were rather late examples of the genre. The domestic western tradition had eventually died out by the 1930s.

I've tried to resurrect some of the aesthetics of the fad in my Sparrow Avengers TL, where they fit rather well, given that central Europe has had a more RCW-style fate there after the first world war than in OTL. It helps that most of OTL Slovakia, Hungary and bits of Poland were really quite backwoods and frontier-like even during the early 20th century.

Have you ever seen ex-Yu movies about the dalmatian hinterlands? Those things had potential.

A more successful Poland might spawn a genre of "Easterns" set in the Ukraine and beyond... (What would such a thing look like? Well, the foreword to my copy of With Fire And Sword suggests Sienkiewicz's writing was influenced by his American travels when it comes to his descriptions of the Ukraine during the Commonwealth era...)

Kaiphranos said:

What would such a thing look like?

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Probably close to Taras Bulba (sp).

Marko said:

Have you ever seen ex-Yu movies about the dalmatian hinterlands? Those things had potential.

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Yeah, I know. Even a lot of Yugo WWII partisan movies have a Western-esque feel.

Kaiphranos said:

A more successful Poland might spawn a genre of "Easterns" set in the Ukraine and beyond... (What would such a thing look like? Well, the foreword to my copy of With Fire And Sword suggests Sienkiewicz's writing was influenced by his American travels when it comes to his descriptions of the Ukraine during the Commonwealth era...)

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Yeah.

The Soviets had a lot of "Easterns" about fighting in Central Asia during the Russian Civil War, right?

And we totally need a modern blockbuster about the Czech Legion. The history's already basically a cheesy action movie (complete with stealing the Czar's gold!) - let's get Michael Bay on this, man!

Alfred Szklarski was a Polish author who wrote a series of adventure novels starring Tomek, a Polish boy who travels the world in the interwar years with his father, capturing animals for zoos. Some books seemed rather western-like (in fact, one was set in Arizona or another desert U.S. state).

Mr.J said:

And we totally need a modern blockbuster about the Czech Legion. The history's already basically a cheesy action movie (complete with stealing the Czar's gold!) - let's get Michael Bay on this, man!

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Probably not enough American connection for Hollywood to spring for it, unless a gratuitous Czech-American viewpoint character is shoehorned in.

It takes a bit of an unlikely POD, but here's an idea; somehow, huge, non-anthropogenic climate change takes place in the Enlightenment Era, causing Greenland to melt and become livable, more importantly farmable. By the 19th century, floods of Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish (And likely some German) settlers come to Greenland, with less going to Canada and the United States. Another century on, and every year filmakers in Germany and the Nordic Union put out dozens of pulpy Nordern flicks about hardscrabble Norwegian gunslingers leaving old country feuds to come to Grønland, trying to carve out a living in the face of dispossessed Inuit, greedy American prospectors, nefarious Czarist Sea Captains, and of course, the chilling winters.

In a TL where the US gets Canada (at least the western part) you could see the genre be much more Jack London than Louis L'Amor. Tales of the Wild untamed North could dominate the pop culture mindset much more than the OTL Wild West - one of the best places I've seen this is Glenn's Dominion of Southern America.

I can't remember who it was but somebody posted a map in one of the Map Threads.

There was a much larger South Africa which was expanding into the Congo - the Wild North.

I'll see if I can find the map.

EDIT: Found it.

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?p=4201499&highlight=wilde#post4201499

My Afrikaner universe features a "Northern" genre about the colonization of the regions of Africa north of the Afrikaners' Cape Town base. They're much more overtly preachy and ideological than American Westerns, though.

My notes describe how they range in quality from cheap Christian direct-to-video movies to really well-done stuff equivalent to The Passion of the Christ.

MerryPrankster said:

My Afrikaner universe features a "Northern" genre about the colonization of the regions of Africa north of the Afrikaners' Cape Town base. They're much more overtly preachy and ideological than American Westerns, though.

My notes describe how they range in quality from cheap Christian direct-to-video movies to really well-done stuff equivalent to The Passion of the Christ.

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Merry, are you ever going to come visit South Africa and meet some real live Afrikaners?

Marius said:

Merry, are you ever going to come visit South Africa and meet some real live Afrikaners?

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I know some ex-South Africans here, although most of them are Jewish.

The Afrikaner Confederation is not South Africa and TTL's Afrikaners aren't the same as OTL's, so this isn't intended to trash real people.

MerryPrankster said:

I know some ex-South Africans here, although most of them are Jewish.

The Afrikaner Confederation is not South Africa and TTL's Afrikaners aren't the same as OTL's, so this isn't intended to trash real people.

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I know that.

I wasn't trying to be a dick

Seriously wondering if you would think about coming to SA. It is obviously a place that interests you. And we could finally have the inaugural AH.com Africa meet-up.

In a permanently undeveloped Britain, perhaps you could have 'Scot free' films about the lawless borderlanders.

Maponus said:

In a permanently undeveloped Britain, perhaps you could have 'Scot free' films about the lawless borderlanders.

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There's really nothing to have stopped them happening in OTL come to think of it. There were certainly a lot of comics about it in the 1940s-60s type period (often rather romanticising the Scottish reivers and painting the government forces as the baddies, much like many westerns).

Mr.J said:

The Soviets had a lot of "Easterns" about fighting in Central Asia during the Russian Civil War, right?

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Yeah, the "Osterns" as they tend to be called as well. (Though that word is often used to denote GDR-made easterns or German western movies and literature in general (Karl May, etc.), without divisions.)

Mr.J said:

And we totally need a modern blockbuster about the Czech Legion. The history's already basically a cheesy action movie (complete with stealing the Czar's gold!) - let's get Michael Bay on this, man!

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Anyone but Bay...

Almost any post-depopulation TL would have the equivalent of Westerns, as people from the civilized, safe regions move out into the dangerous, depopulated frontier. Instead of Indians, you would have savage, regressed natives from the original populations. Instead of vast natural vistas, you would have abandoned towns and cities, overgrown and taking days to trek through.