The future of the western genre

For the past two decades, fans have lamented the demise of westerns while the rest of the world has gone about its business, ignoring that anyone could care about a genre relegated to a few obscure shelves at the local bookstore. Westerns were very popular for over a hundred years. Not only were they popular in the United States, but the whole world devoured them. The western was a staple of fiction, Hollywood, television, and daydreams. What happened?

Overexposure, for one thing. In 1959, there were 26 western series in prime time. On the big screen, John Wayne brandished his Winchester at countless bad guys. Paperback westerns could be found in abundance at any drug store, most of them with the name Louis L’Amour on the cover. The big names made wonderful and quality things, but the demand was so great that a lot of garbage was turned into paper and celluloid.

The common perception is that the Western genre is dying. Yet somehow Larry McMurtry, Cormac McCarthy, and countless others make a good living from Westerns. Robert B. Parker temporarily ditched private detective Spencer for a trilogy about two gunmen for hire. Parker’s Appaloosa grossed a respectable $28 million at the box office, while 3:10 to Yuma grossed more than $70 million. As recently as 1992, Unforgiven won the Oscar for Best Picture, the first western to receive such an honor. DVD sales of vintage westerns are doing well, and Louie L’Amour, Zane Grey, and even Max Brand are still selling enough books to keep their prodigy happy.

So the western isn’t dead, but it’s certainly not hot, especially for the next generation. Thrillers, fantasy, science fiction, and romance novels take up all the shelf space. Action movie soundtracks are full of revving engines, not thundering helmets. And television… well, television just broadcasts another permutation of CSI or Law & Order. In fact, the Western excesses of the late 1950s are repeated today with police shows. Perhaps tired audiences are ready for a revival of Westerns.

Maybe. But what kind of western? Probably a new breed. There have been three distinct Western eras. I call them the healthy, flawed hero and the violent eras.

The healthy era lasted until the late fifties. He was personified by Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, the Lone Ranger, Hopalong Cassidy and other cowboys in white hats. Instead of killing the bad guys, they shot the guns out of their hands. If someone died, he deserved it, and his death would be bloodless, with a hand like a promise on his chest to cover the unsightly bullet holes. As in all eras, there was overlap, and during the later stages of the healthy phase, Wayne and others made more realistic westerns, but these, of course, were quarantined in theaters and only shown at night.

The flawed hero of the sixties was not the antihero of today. He just had flaws, like Josh Randall, the bounty hunter played by Steve McQueen in Wanted Dead or Alive, or the gambling Maverick brothers who proudly proclaimed themselves cowards. Richard Boone wore black and looked badass as a gun-for-hire in Paladin. The Magnificent Seven were the reluctant saviors of a small Mexican town and they had man flaws. Again, you were overlapping. The spaghetti westerns of the late sixties took the genre into new territory.

Beginning in the 1970s, the antihero ruled a frontier filled with slow-motion violence. The violent era was started by Sergio Leone with his Man with No Name trilogy (1967) and Sam Peckinpaw with The Wild Bunch (1969). From then on, blood red dominated the color spectrum and the hero was only a step away from the bad guy. This kind of gritty realism was considered inappropriate for television until cable brought Deadwood (2004) into our living rooms.

Whats Next? Fortunately, these eras overlap, so seeing the current direction of the Western genre isn’t a guess. Larry McMurtry, Cormac McCarthy, and Robert B. Parker have, to varying degrees, turned away from the violent era. They point out that the future of westerns is historically accurate storytelling. If the story takes place in the past, we call it a historical novel, except in the case of westerns. They are relegated to a niche genre that still bears the taint of pulp fiction. But a story that takes place on the 19th-century American frontier has as much legitimacy to be called a historical novel as Ken Follett’s World Without End.

McMurtry, McCarthy and Parker found the key. Good writing, solid plots that move with confidence, and great characterization. They focus on characters who are forced to deal with hardship and human frailty at a particular moment in history. These are the basic elements of a good narrative. In fact, a Western historical novel can be action-adventure, but it can also borrow elements from detective, suspense, romance, mystery, and other genres. Lonesome Dove took from them all. The world has grown tired of prefabricated police programs and endless permutations of suspenseful tales about secret societies that are about to take over the world. Before Daniel Radcliffe can learn to spin a six-shooter, westerns will once again rule the page and screen.