“…The amazing vitality of the western has always kept it springing back, more vigorous than ever, after periods of decadence. New trends and experimentation will continue to revive the genre, just as they have before.” (Excerpt from The Western)

In the 70's there were over 45 westerns produced. However, the 80's proved less fruitful. This decline might be attributed to the saturation of the market with westerns in the previous decade. Alternatively, this weakening could have occurred by way of our social progression. In the book Genre Knowledge and Disciplinary Communication : Cognition/ Culture/Power, the authors cite Carol Berkenkotter and Thomas Huckin's five broad features of genres. Specifically, one feature of genres, Community Ownership, states: “Genre conventions signal a discourse community's norms, epistemology, ideology, and social ontology. (pp.3-4)” In other words, the macho-ism (the John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Cowboys and Lone Rangers with guns) that plagued westerns throughout the 40's to the 70's signaled, not only entertainment, but a deeper ideology embedded in our culture; that women were housewives, mothers, daughters, and not independent, take charge heroines. However, in the 80's women were taking affirmative action against employers to break the glass ceiling that kept them from achieving equal pay in a “man's world”. This decade had many businesswomen seeking women's rights in the workplace, a second wave of feminism, continued from the early 19 th century. Could this be the reason why western films were not well received at the end of the 20 th century? That this kind of macho-ism would no longer be received?

However, the feminist “friendly” film “The Quick and the Dead” (1995), starring Sharon Stone as the lead “cowgirl”, did not succeed at the box-office (Gross income: $18,552,460) . Maybe it was not macho-ism that turned society off? Instead, it might be that film producers were tampering with the genre. The 1999 film “Wild, Wild West” did a modern take on the traditional western with a mix of technology and frontier life. The film had a production budget of $175,000,000, but only made a total U.S. gross of $113,805,681, the film also had top actors: Will Smith, Kevin Kline, Kenneth Branagh, and Salma Hayek.

For additional information, see Grossberg

Home | Genre Theory | Commandments and Plots | Decades | Films | References