Word: frontierment
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...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...
...western's resurgence? Industry watchers point to a general revival of interest in Western clothing and memorabilia, the boom in country music and the appeal of a rural life-style at a time when urban problems seem more oppressive than ever. The old-fashioned moral values of the frontier also seem especially inviting today. "In westerns," says CBS Entertainment chief Jeff Sagansky, "the bad guys are bad not because they were abused kids or temporarily insane. They are bad, and they meet their end. There's a catharsis the audience is allowed to feel that they...
...also given the format new room to roam. Patricia Limerick, a professor at the University of Colorado and a leading revisionist historian, sees the end of the cold war as liberating. "We don't have to create an image and an ideology of ourselves as heroic expanders of the frontier and innocents who fight evil," she says. "All of that cold war fervor that drove the old westerns has lifted, so you can do more complex and interesting westerns." At a time when gritty urban realism and literal-minded docudramas hold sway, westerns are a refreshing departure. They provide escape...