Where is my John Wayne?

Where is my prairie son?

Where is my happy ending?

Where have all the cowboys gone? – Paula Cole

There may be no genre of film more revered than the western. With protagonists seemingly descended from the traditions and honor of the knights, ronin and samurai of the past, the cowboy would usually rescue a town or damsel in distress, all within a morality tale depicting the struggles and hardships of frontier life. The cowboy was generally a loner, nomadic in nature, and always became the hero of the film.

    Throughout cinematic history, westerns and their formulaic approach to story have seeped into other genre of films and the tradition has carried on. Star Wars is essentially a western in space, Mad Max is a cowboy in a post-apocalyptic world and directing legend Akira Kurosawa cites John Ford as a major inspiration on his samurai films — which were remade into westerns on at least two occasions with The Seven Samurai becoming The Magnificent Seven and Yojimbo becoming A Fistful of Dollars.

    So as the question was stated, where have all the cowboys gone? Recent films such as 2010’s True Grit by the Coen Brothers, itself a remake of the John Wayne film of the same name, took in over $250 million at the box office and was nominated for ten Academy Awards. Quentin Tarantino will continue his love of all things genre in 2012 with Django Unchained, a reported spaghetti western along the lines of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly or the original Django itself. We also recently saw the continuation of the science fiction and western mashup with Cowboys and Aliens.

    Other notable recent releases include No Country for Old Men (2007), Sukiyaki Western: Django (2007), There Will Be Blood (2007), The Good, the Bad, the Weird (2008), Jonah Hex (2010), Bunraku (2010), Rango (2010) and the upcoming Blood Meridian (2013) and Unbound Captives (2013).

    So it seems as if the western is alive and well in contemporary society, just sometimes hidden within the confines of societal advances. The natives have become other countries, the desolate and hard life of the pioneer is still a reality for many, and the Industrial Revolution has simply been replaced by a booming technological culture that many citizens feel lost in. Add rampant governmental indiscretions and lawlessness, conflicts among other nations and rising unemployment; and you have to ask, are we really that much better off than our western forefathers?

    For more information, film reviews and news visit J.G. Hanks’ Web site www.thewatcherscouncil.com.