Word: frontier
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Today westerns are back, guns blazing. The immediate impetus is a series of unexpected hits: CBS's high-rated 1989 mini-series Lonesome Dove, based on Larry McMurtry's novel; the popular frontier series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman; and a pair of Oscar-winning films, Kevin Costner's Dances with Wolves and Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven. They have been more than enough to set off a modern Hollywood version of the Oklahoma land rush...
...Americans -- are more likely to be tragic heroes than whooping villains. Women and blacks, long ignored, are major participants at last. These adjustments reflect the revisionist bent of much recent historical writing about the West -- the view that America's westward expansion was not the triumphal taming of the frontier but a morally dubious enterprise in which a race of people was conquered, the environment ravaged and democratic values frequently trampled...
Hollywood's depiction of the West, of course, has always changed according to the times. In the years before and after World War II, westerns were poetic, patriotic odes to the frontier spirit. In the 1950s, westerns like High Noon served as allegories through which contemporary social issues could be played out. During the Vietnam era, the genre turned more cynical and ambiguous, reflecting doubts about America's might and the morality of violence...
...Call (Jon Voight replacing Tommy Lee Jones) makes a second trek from Texas to | Montana, this time to drive a herd of horses, while his unacknowledged son (Rick Schroder) goes to work for a powerful cattle baron. In place of the hardscrabble poetry of the original is a meandering frontier soap opera, which lopes at a pace that could put tumbleweed to sleep...
Clinton ascribed his dedication to publicservice to the Kennedy legacy. "[PresidentKennedy] inspired millions of us to take a verypersonal stake in our country's future and infreedom everywhere....He dared Americans to joinwith him on what he called the new frontier,"Clinton said...