Western Myth

Abstract

Necessary feedback in understanding the phenomenon of westerns is certainly the social background that is closely related to the myth of westerns from its beginnings until the decline of westerns in the seventies. America, as we see it in westerns, is a picture of a mass exodus of people who wanted more, often those for whom the old homeland had become cramped and insufficient. It is in this environment that we see the heroes of the Western empowered in the desire for individualization. In the USA, the western used to be a large part of the entire production, and its popularity was transferred to other continents (Europe, Australia and Asia). An interesting fact is that the western myth does not have its beginnings in western films, although they are not only his strongest and most persistent accomplices but also the strongest populist weapon for telling folk legends such as the ones about Wild Bill Hickock, Calamity Jane, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday or Billy the Kid who become the heroes of these legends. Even before the invention of cinema and Porter’s The Great Train Robbery (1903), considered by many to be the first western film, Western literature was represented, but in the form of cheap books glorifying groups of conquerors of distant wilderness. However, what the heroes of the western persistently carry with them from the old homeland are the laws. They try to turn their new environment into a socially organized one, to turn the “desert into a flower”.