Why Do We Keep Writing Westerns?

The American Western is easily the most cited of all dead film genres. It’s a nostalgic time capsule for older audiences and a convenient punching bag for more critical and modern circles. When someone says that something has “gone the way of the Western,” we know exactly what they mean. Whenever a new Western does grace the big screen, it’s treated as a novelty, a subversion, or a rip-roaring callback padded by a modern ethos and a twenty-first century production quality.

But if we peel back a few layers, we’ll see that the Western isn’t dead. Merely reincarnated. The lone gunslingers and outlaws with hearts of gold reappear in our stories again and again. The mythic cowboy of the Wild West lives on as an archetype: the social deviant who holds to a private moral code juxtaposed against a backdrop of encroaching civilization or nefarious forces (if there’s a difference). Basically, the cowboy is the quintessential anti-hero.

But how? And why? Why are we still enamored by Westerns, and why do we keep excavating the themes and iconography of this “dead” genre?

Let’s take a look.

The Appeal of Superhero Deviance

Not all anti-heroes are cowboys in disguise, but weirdly enough, many of them are. The obvious example is the cinematic superhero. Many, especially within the Marvel vein, act alone and struggle to play well with others. While they may not inhabit the Frontier of the Old American West, they do push the frontiers of what is humanly possible and societally permissible thanks to their superhuman status. Those like Iron Man challenge the frontiers of science, and those like Captain America test the frontiers of shadow-government espionage. Metaphorical frontiers, in other words. New terrain society must navigate. Like the cowboy, the cinematic superhero stands separate from both the world they are saving as well as the villainy they are thwarting—villainy who might share their deviance (powers, abilities, wit, etc.) but not their moral backbone.

The cinematic cowboy isn’t so different: estranged from the civilized world out on the frontier, morally grey, wielding a gun rather than a magic hammer, and surrounded by outlaws who are likewise skilled gunslingers but tend to terrorize well-meaning settlers. These settlers, in turn, sometimes need saving by our idyllic cowboy.

Cowboys (and superheroes by extension) play into our fantasies about loner exceptionalism, about excelling by virtue of our otherness.

Not all superheroes fit this mold. Superman lacks anti-heroism almost entirely. In the MCU, Captain American is also lacking within his first film, but ironically his character grew in popularity the more he came to mimic the cowboy motif; by breaking ties with the institutional authorities and becoming a literal outlaw at one point, all while maintaining his golden boy persona, he becomes a modern cowboy, having traded his spurs for tights and his horse for a Vibranium shield.

Many have compared Hollywood’s current superhero craze to Westerns, largely because of their incredible abundance, but as we’ve seen, they share more in common than mere popularity. They play into our fantasies about loner exceptionalism, about excelling by virtue of our otherness, about rising above the fray and tackling new frontiers, be they metaphorical or otherwise.

At his core, the archetypal cowboy (and superhero by extension) represents the pendulum swing from communal, conformist thinking to that of the standalone individual. It’s an idyllic icon of questionable wisdom, but there’s no denying our captivation by it.

The Nomadic Ethos of Apocalypse-Survivors

The lone gunslinger might be more historical fiction than fact, but there’s a cultural longing for what he or she represents, one that didn’t die with the genre’s popularity. There’s a wide appeal in standing apart from society, in prevailing through a personal code of ethics independent of the world’s rules and constraints. It’s a cathartic breath of fresh air to break free of the box of expectations and limitations placed upon us by culture, circumstances, or even reality. Cowboy stories (and their reincarnated variants) are wish-fulfilment tales glamorizing the freedom of rugged individuals. They’re fantasies wherein deviants enjoy the safety net of hegemonic morality while not having to play by society’s stricter mandates, like taxes, the justice system, having a job, or fulfilling one’s cultural role, whatever form those might take. It’s an escape into No Man’s Land where there remains just enough humanity and cultural stitching to keep the characters from devolving into animals. This is, of course, why it’s a fantasy.

In the world of the post-apocalyptic nomad, freedom from society leads to the erosion of human pathos, not a romanticized free-for-all.

Post-apocalyptic stories actually address this issue quite often. The archetypal apocalypse-survivor is yet another cowboy wannabe in many cases. They’ve survived because they are, yes, a rugged individual. They’re separated from society, which itself has dissolved, and cling to their code of ethics. Unlike other cowboy reincarnates, however, the apocalypse-survivors frequently don’t have the luxury of any stabilizing fragment of civilization to lean upon. Other survivors have weathered codes of their own and behave more like animals than cultured human beings. In other words, separateness from civilization isn’t glamorized. There’s little delusion that the niceties and good manners we take for granted would continue once the scaffoldings of decent society are removed.

The moral fortitude of humanity teeters on the brink within the rebooted Planet of the Apes trilogy, where, ironically, Caesar and his apes must uphold their own ethos amidst a collapsing, lawless world. Other films like Bird Box, A Quiet Place II, and Waterworld all portray robust protagonists who serve as tiny beacons of light while the world has crumbled and darkened around them. Unlike the typical Western and many of its modern incarnations, freedom from society leads to the erosion of human pathos, not a romanticized free-for-all.

Perhaps our post-apocalyptic cowboys represent both our longing for freedom as well as our anxieties about our world’s fragility.

To contrast, the cinematic superhero doesn’t perform his vigilante justice in a world lacking law and order. Our superhero is rarely up against a backdrop of true lawlessness. He merely wrangles with the bad guys that ordinary authorities cannot or do not. Compare that to our post-apocalyptic nomad, who must face the stark grimness of a world without order, without shape, without law, where freedom is jaded by a lack of security, stability, or purpose. And this he or she must do, often, alone.

So, perhaps our post-apocalyptic cowboys represent both our longing for freedom as well as our anxieties about our world’s fragility. The fear of freedom. This is only scratching the surface of meaning packed within our modern obsession with post-apocalyptic scenarios, but it’s a start.

The Shrinking World of Pirates  

The Western concerned itself with the paradox of the frontier. There’s a horizonless potential of opportunity as sprawling as the West’s rolling hills, but there’s also the fear of civilization catching up, of the frontier days coming to an end.  The problematic mantra of “Manifest Destiny” comes to mind. It’s an open call to adventure, but that call has an expiration date. There’s a subtle reminder that, while the lone adventurer is out there making his way on his own terms in unfamiliar territory, the banks and the bureaucrats are never far behind.

We live in a time when the frontier has closed, so to speak, and as such, our frontiersmen in fiction now inhabit either the pseudo-historical past of swashbuckling escapades or the far-flung future of planet-hopping. Jack Sparrow of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and Din Djarin of The Mandalorian are good examples respectively. The Mandalorian doesn’t shy away from its Western inspirations, and both franchises’ anti-heroes adhere to their respective codes of honor: the Pirates’ Code and the Mandalorian Way. They each differ from the fictional “explorer” archetype, where characters are less concerned about making their way in new territory and are more concerned about survival, conquest, or answer-seeking within the dangerous unknown. The difference: the explorers often have no backdrop of society breathing down their necks, but our reincarnated cowboys do.

Our frontiersmen in fiction now inhabit either the pseudo-historical past of swashbuckling escapades or the far-flung future of planet-hopping.

Jack Sparrow has British imperial forces clamping down on the seas, with fewer and fewer blank spaces on the map for pirates to hide. Similarly, Din Djarin has remnants of the Galactic Empire rising in power all around him, renewing a stranglehold on the interplanetary frontier where bounty hunters and space pirates thrive.

Unlike the apocalypse-survivor, our archetypal pirate/hunter embodies anxieties about too much civilization, about what happens when society’s heavy hand stifles its citizens. Both the apocalypse-survivor and the pirate/hunter live out fantasies about freedom and rugged individualism, but with the latter, society is not seen as a stabilizing safety net but rather a horrifying endgame.

The archetypal pirate reflects our anxieties about societal stranglehold.

We see both extremes come to a head in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End specifically, where freedom is threatened by authorities from the Old World (established society) as well as supernatural forces from the New World (the unknown frontier). So, it’s not merely law and order that frightens our beloved anti-heroes, but it’s the mysteries lurking within the frontier’s power vacuum that also terrify them—much like with our post-apocalyptic nomad.

If the nomad tickles our anxieties about societal collapse, perhaps the pirate/hunter reflects our anxieties about societal stranglehold.

Final Thoughts

While the days of the Hollywood Western are, for now, behind us, their spiritual descendants continue to wow and enamor us. Why is a weighty question. Our affinity for adventure, for robust otherness and loner exceptionalism, as well as our fascination with society’s bipolar breaking points, might have something to do with why. Either way, the legacy of the cinematic cowboy is complex and deserves more than my measly blogpost to unpack its influence, but as long as the Wild West archetype lives on, we can continue to wonder.