{"id":70,"date":"2015-01-29T19:52:45","date_gmt":"2015-01-30T00:52:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/americanicons\/?p=70"},"modified":"2015-01-29T19:54:40","modified_gmt":"2015-01-30T00:54:40","slug":"the-american-west-glorified-capable-and-adaptable-by-nicole-thomas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/americanicons\/2015\/01\/29\/the-american-west-glorified-capable-and-adaptable-by-nicole-thomas\/","title":{"rendered":"The American West: Glorified, Capable, and Adaptable by Nicole Thomas"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Western Film I chose to watch was Once Upon a Time in the West.<\/em>\u00a0 This\u00a0\"A13galZ0-yL._SL1500_\"movie was made in 1968, and\u00a0it is set\u00a0in a\u00a0made up-town somewhere in Utah called \u201cFlagstone.\u201d It was filmed in a studio in Italy and in the Spanish desert. The overall\u00a0theme of this film adheres to what most, if not all of America, believes to be stereotypical of the American West.\u00a0We drew many of these same\u00a0themes on the\u00a0back of our maps in class on Monday. The\u00a0idea of the American West was created to glorify the American people, especially white American men. \u00a0And most of these ideas have made their way into popular icons and themes created by the media through film.<\/p>\n

First, I want to discuss the setting. The movie poster really does say it all. The movie is set in the frontier. The land is barren, harsh, and the town of Flagstone is very much isolated. It is equipped with all of the fantastic structures and furnishings\u00a0that popular culture believes the west should have such as saloons, train stations, and old dusty wooden houses. The setting describes the life of the American Frontier. There are horses, railroads, covered wagons, and dirt roads. Everything that we believe to be “the west.” \u00a0The American West is dirty and wild, and in order to survive Americans had to adapt to the wilderness, or die, which makes us a strong and powerful people (maybe\/maybe not).<\/p>\n

Next, I want to discuss the characters. The characters of this western exhibit certain roles and icons of the \u201cAmerican West\u201d including the role of men, women, and Indians.\u00a0There are four main characters: three men and one woman. First, there’s Frank, played by Henry Fonda. Frank is a notorious murdering, gang-leading cowboy. Frank is the villain. Then there are the two hero figures, Cheyenne (Jason Robards) and Harmonica (Charles Bronson). Cheyenne is a bandit who has been wrongly accused of\u00a0committing Frank’s crimes, and of course, he wants Frank dead. Harmonica is a mysterious, sharp shooting, stranger who speaks little and frequently plays sad songs on the harmonica. He also wants Frank dead. The lives of the men in this movie are quite glorified and fantastic.<\/p>\n

Then there’s Jill or Mrs. McBain (Claudia Cardinale) who is the only female role in the film. Unsurprisingly, she is a beautiful buxom ex-prostitute who married one of her clients for his money. She plays a helpless role in the film. She ends up getting taken advantage of by\u00a0Frank, and the only reason she’s alive is because Cheyenne and Harmonica protect her from harm. Remarkably, throughout the movie there are also\u00a0African American and Native American slaves as well.<\/p>\n

This brings me to my point of\u00a0the idea of the American West being the ideal world for white American men. The idea of the American West avoids all of the contradictory parts of history\u00a0such as Native American\u00a0enslavement (driving them out of their lands) and Women\u2019s rights. In this film, and many other western films, the Native Americans\u00a0and the women are more than\u00a0happy to be slaves to white men,\u00a0and everyone seems pretty ok with it.<\/p>\n

Much like Betsy Ross, I think the idea of the American\u00a0West is kept alive because it is made to seem\u00a0simple, easy, and entertaining. \u00a0The idea of good vs. evil,\u00a0cowboys vs. Indians, and the “final frontier” is entertaining\u00a0to America, and to the world.\u00a0I think the reasoning behind the idea of the West makes sense, because\u00a0although it isn’t really\u00a0historically accurate, it seems to make America\u2026well\u2026 American. In avoiding certain parts of history that make us look bad, through the media and through movies\u00a0like Once Upon a Time in the West<\/em>\u00a0we can bring the image of the America we want everyone in the world to have, which I think is the idea of a durable, adaptable, and capable people.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Western Film I chose to watch was Once Upon a Time in the West.\u00a0 This\u00a0movie was made in 1968, and\u00a0it is set\u00a0in a\u00a0made up-town somewhere in Utah called \u201cFlagstone.\u201d It was filmed in a studio in Italy and in the Spanish desert. The overall\u00a0theme of this film adheres to what most, if not all …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1329,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[16,15,14,10,7],"class_list":["post-70","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-adaptable","tag-capable","tag-once-upon-a-time-in-west","tag-the-west","tag-westerns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/americanicons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/americanicons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/americanicons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/americanicons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1329"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/americanicons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/americanicons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/americanicons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/americanicons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/americanicons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}