The Mystique of the "Old West"

I know...I know...it's been a while since I've posted. I've honestly been out of ideas and had little time to work on existing ones. However, I figured I'd post a little something to let everyone know that I'm still alive.

Now...onto the point of this article: the old west.

I LOVE the old west. When I was younger (my preteen days, to be exact), my father introduced me to the renowned western classics, the Man with No Name trilogy.

Badass

For those not initiated, the Man with No Name trilogy was the quintessential collection of old western/Clint Eastwood films. They included, in chronological order of release:

• A Fistful of Dollars (1964)
• For a Few Dollars More (1965)
• The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)

There were a few other films that KIND OF tie into the trilogy, like High Plains Drifter,  but those three are the essentials.

The plots of the movies vary slightly. The only part you're going to remember are that Clint Eastwood is a badass gunfighter with no legitimate name who ends up killing a lot of people with his badass gunfighting skills. This one common theme amongst the movies is normally wrapped in some semblance of a plot involving Clint Eastwood's character helping out a downtrodden town, hunting for treasure, etc. However, the core of the movies remains the same: old west gunfighting.

After my love of the old west was fostered by these three movies, I moved onto other memorable westerns. Unforgiven (1992), The Magnificent Seven (1960), Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), and other such films were included in my library. The spaghetti western became a staple of my cinematic diet.

As I grew and expanded my interests, I found there to be great deal of overlap between the western and other genres that interested me. Notably the cross between science fiction and western (in such shows like cult favored Firefly) and between steampunk and western (what is typically called the "weird west" genre).

Western...IN SPAAAAAACE!

Now, having been given a bit of my personal history with the old west as a genre, we can get into the meat and potatoes of this article.

The thing I find most fascinating about the western genre (or, at least, the film depictions of the western) is that it's essentially taking old tales of heroes and knights and putting them into a different setting. Swords are replaced by guns, knights are replaced by wandering gunslingers, and so on. Hell, one of my favorite movies of all time, Seven Samurai, was remade into a western, The Magnificent Seven, showing that even classic eastern tales can be converted into western format.

The fluidity and converting nature of the western is so encompassing, one could take any classic tale of heroism and turn it into a western (with a bit of tweaking, of course). On the other side of the coin, however, westerns themselves are easily adaptable to other genres as well, as was previously mentioned in this article. This dual-natured adaptation makes the western one of the most usable, yet still unique, genres out there.

Going back to my original comparison between westerns and tales of medieval knights, we come to the centerpiece of the western culture: the gun.

The sword of the western world

Very much like the legendary swords of yor, the old west gun has an identity all its own.Much like how well-known swords from fantasy stories/movies helped define and identify their owners, a famous gunslinger would oftentimes be identified by his firearm.

Though not a practical weapon from a certain standpoint, I still find myself drawn to the classic old west revolver. These were the guys that traversed one of the most dangerous sections of the world for its time with nothing more to protect themselves than six bullets. THAT's hardcore.

I personally find myself particularly drawn to the classic 1800s conversion revolver, like the Man With No Name's.

 

It's got a sleak look to it, the same deadly visuals of a regular revolver, and a lot more style in my opinion than your average firearm. 

Someday, maybe I can have a pair of six-shooters to call my own and I can ride off into the sunset after murdering a bunch of banditos.....*sigh* someday....