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OATER (OH-tuhr)
A
movie or television show about cowboys and frontier life Common
clues: Western; Grade-B western; Shoot-'em-up;
Horse opera; Any Roy Rogers flick; Film with a stage? Crossword
puzzle frequency:
2 times a year News: Reinventing
the Western Video: John
Wayne Is The Last Shootist
Life
is hard; it's harder if you're stupid
– John
Wayne
The
Western is an American genre in literature and film. Westerns are
art works – films, literature, television and radio shows,
sculpture (particularly that by Frederic Remington), and
paintings – devoted to telling stories set in the 19th
Century American West (and sometimes Mexico, Canada or the
Australian Outback, during the same time period), with the
setting occasionally portrayed in a romanticized light.
Justus
D. Barnes, from The Great Train Robbery
The
popular perception of the Western is a movie that centers on the
life of a semi-nomadic wanderer, usually a cowboy or a
gunfighter, whose possessions include a canteen; period clothing
that might include a large Stetson hat, a bandana, spurs and
buckskins; a revolver or rifle; and a saddle, but not necessarily
a horse. The horse itself, the "faithful steed", can be
a major character in the story.
The
technology of the era – such as the telegraph, printing
press, and railroad – may be evident, usually symbolizing
the imminent end of the frontier. In some "late Westerns",
such as The Wild Bunch, the motor car and even the aero plane are
referenced. Weapons technology is very evident and a recurring
theme is the merit of the latest piece of "hardware",
be it a repeating rifle produced by the Winchester Repeating Arms
Company or a Colt Single Action Army handgun.
The
Western takes these elements and uses them to tell simple
morality tales, usually set against the spectacular scenery of
the American West. Westerns often stress the harshness of the
wilderness and frequently set the action in a desert-like
landscape. Specific settings include isolated forts, ranches and
homesteads; the Native American village; or the small frontier
town with its saloon, general store, livery stable and jailhouse.
Apart from the wilderness, it usually the saloon that emphasizes
that this is the "Wild West": it is the place to go for
music (raucous piano playing), girls (often prostitutes),
gambling (poker or five card stud), drinking (beer or whiskey),
brawling and shooting.
This
article is licensed under the GNU
Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the Wikipedia
article "Western (genre)".
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