Keep westerns popular through 70s-present

The public simply does not like historical stories that are inherently sanitized for modern political correctness.

Here is another example of an unmarketable story. Suppose the story is about the way the Third Reich built a strong German economy from 1933-1938. Only the positive developments are mentioned. What about the issue of stripping the Jews of citizenship and enacting special taxes on them? These points are ignored. Needless to say, such a story line would not be well reviewed. The viewer will not separate the swastika from the image of war, genocide, Holocaust, etc.; even though these events did not yet happen in the period of the story.

And that brings up another point: practically any story set before the civil rights movement faces the challenge of either addressing or ignoring racism.
 
The public simply does not like historical stories that are inherently sanitized for modern political correctness.

Here is another example of an unmarketable story. Suppose the story is about the way the Third Reich built a strong German economy from 1933-1938. Only the positive developments are mentioned. What about the issue of stripping the Jews of citizenship and enacting special taxes on them? These points are ignored. Needless to say, such a story line would not be well reviewed. The viewer will not separate the swastika from the image of war, genocide, Holocaust, etc.; even though these events did not yet happen in the period of the story.

And that brings up another point: practically any story set before the civil rights movement faces the challenge of either addressing or ignoring racism.

Sanitized? Would you call Deadwood sanitized? Or Rome (the tv show)? The public does not want historical stories to be sanitized of stuff they know was there, like rampant racism and sexism. The politically incorrect tv shows that only showed white people happy and content is the stuff that's sanitized. In fact, those shows are really quite boring. Mad Men will always be more interesting than the Mary Tyler Moore Show.
 
I wonder if John Wayne's death had something to do with it as well. Like him or not, Wayne pretty much defined the "western". Maybe if he hadnt made "The Conquerer" he wouldnt have contracted the cancer (as it was shot on a nuclear test site) and either gave up or never started smoking.
 
Civil rights doesn't need to kill the western in the USA, a much more aggressive movement that is viciously deamonizing the history of the USA could extend the life of the western for awhile anyways. Many people could be interested in movies that simply do a total reversal of the traditional roles (much different from the "revisionist" westerns). There were a large amount of East German westerns that featured the Indians (Always played incredibly unconvincingly by very german looking actors!) as heroes and the USA as the villians. Especially if the USA is percieved poorely on the world stage these could become popular in Europe especially, and in developing nations. Better marketing, and perhaps more exploitive content could help.

Also, I think there is great potential in the future for "westerns" that are set in places such as Afghanistan or FATA regions, there are plenty of things happening there that could translate nicely into th western style of filming, weather it is movies about cowboys vs indians (army or tribals vs Taliban), or Lone Gunfighter style movies. If you think of existing ones like The Good The Bad and The Ugly, Django, High Noon, the stories could fit nicely into that setting with very few changes.
 
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Or HEAVENS GATE is taken out of Cimino's hands at the first sign of trouble by the Execs at United Artists and given to another Director thus avoiding the massive flop it becomes:cool:

Spoke with Brad Dourif (One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest) at a Film/TV Convention and asked him what clued him in about the disaster it was going to become since he appeared in HG and he said "When it took us 3 Weeks to film a half page of the script !!!!" :eek:

You can see a documentary on the making of Heaven's Gate on youtube if you haven't seen it before. It's called "Final Cut: The making and unmaking of Heavens gate", very interesting watch. Brad Dourif is :cool: though :D
 
Well, you can't escape race in Westerns anymore than you can escape it in Flash Gordon serials (Fu Manchu, anyone?).

I think you mean Ming the Merciless.

Ever seen Jeremiah Johnson? Even by the 70s they were already trying for a nuanced view of the American Indian.

For that matter there's Clintwood's film "The Outlaw Josey Wales" (and later Kostner's "Dances with Wolves"). Both of these films portrayed the American Indians in a reasonably favourable light.

No wonder the original Star Trek failed when its starry-eyed space Western perspective was going up against a desire for revisionist depictions like this. And the Vietnam thing, of course.

Hmm. In spite of the idea of "Wagon Train to the Stars", the original Star Trek series seemed to play more with Cold War concepts (Federation=USA, Klingons=Russians, Romulans=Chinese). There wasn't so much of the "let's bring civilisation to the savages" - especially since many of the planets visited by the Enterprise were populated with beings more advanced and/or powerful than the crew.

Cheers,
Nigel.
 
Originally, the Western series Kung Fu was suppose to star Bruce Lee instead of David Carradine. If Bruce Lee had been in Kung Fu would the series be more successful? Could this help keep Westerns in general more popular?
 
Originally, the Western series Kung Fu was suppose to star Bruce Lee instead of David Carradine. If Bruce Lee had been in Kung Fu would the series be more successful? Could this help keep Westerns in general more popular?

Rather doubtful. Major dramas after the early seventies centered on crime drama, romantic conflicts and medical challenges. Justice in the old west was too often solved by a gunshot. Medical stories would not draw strong interest because the viewers would be bored over pre-modern technology. [I think there was one such series.] Romantic stories would be completely encumbered by the Victorian standards of the time.

The traditional Westerns were quite sanitized in that they depicted good-guy values, clean environments (only the smallest drops of blood an no animal turds) and proper language. They fell in the category of family shows like Ozzie and Harriet, Leave It To Beaver and the Andy Griffith Show. The MPAA rating system and tolerance for bad language (and violence) in the seventies spelled the decline of sanitized shows. Hence, new Westerns were not clean and lost the traditional appeal.

In short, westerns were so popular in the forties, fifties and sixties because competing genres were not as marketable as they were later.
 
The public simply does not like historical stories that are inherently sanitized for modern political correctness.

Here is another example of an unmarketable story. Suppose the story is about the way the Third Reich built a strong German economy from 1933-1938. Only the positive developments are mentioned. What about the issue of stripping the Jews of citizenship and enacting special taxes on them? These points are ignored. Needless to say, such a story line would not be well reviewed. The viewer will not separate the swastika from the image of war, genocide, Holocaust, etc.; even though these events did not yet happen in the period of the story.

And that brings up another point: practically any story set before the civil rights movement faces the challenge of either addressing or ignoring racism.

Political Correctness is a non-existent straw man used to complain about social issues. There's absolutely nothing PC about improving westerns; there's historical correctness. The Indians weren't all one tribe, didn't "smoke 'em peace pipe" and talk like cave men, and weren't savages. That's not sanitizing; there's making it true to life by being not racist.

And, racism and civil rights had nothing to do with the decline of Westerns. It was, by a far larger portion, creative bankruptcy. They made the same stories over and over and people got bored of them, and the only times westerns have ever made a come back is by grabbing public attention with being new and fresh.
 
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