Cowboys and Indians

[shinytheelf]

We've all seen Cowboy movies. They usually centre on some handsome young man with a purpose going and keeping a town in the Wild West in order.

However, as I'm also sure we all know, the reality of this is much different. Real cowboys slaughtered Native Americans, were stupendous drinkers, some rapists, all murderers and were far from the perception made of them by these films

My question is this: Should all Cowboy films be made to depict the people accurately?


This bit here is were I cover my arse so I don't get flamed:
Now, I'm not saying that all shows featuring Cowboys are innacurate, for example, Deadwood is a gritty, seemingly accurate program.

I am also not calling into question the entertainment value of these films.

[InstaCpu]

Shouldn't all historical films then be "accurate" according to your view? Were all "cowboys" like that? After all, Native Americans have been having problems for over 500 years, at the hands of conquistadors, French and English settlers and later the news States of the US etc.

How about showing the Cruaders as they were? What about Henry V? The Shakespearan hero who put prisoners of war to death, you know what caused fellows like SS Kurt Meyer (who put some Canadian POWs in WWII to death) or Akira Muto (massacres in 1944 in the Phillipines) were charged with war crimes? True no Hague Tribunal during the Hundred Years war but the point is why stop at cowboy movies?

I am not picking on your point about Westerns, I am just saying this mythology making happens in other genres as well.

I have not had the chance to see Deadwood yet BTW. :nana:

[Cheeky Prophet]

Where did you get your information about cowboys? It seems quite uninformed and innaccurate to me. Generalizations are not a good idea. Not all cowboys were murderers, like you're saying. They're mostly just the settlers of the west, living out in the wildnerness, tending horses and farms apart from civilization. At least, that's how I see it. Also, a lot of the cowboy films you're talking about occur after the initial 'stealing of the land' (and I need not remind you that cowboys weren't the only ones killing native americans).

I mean, think of the Alamo. Cowboys were fighting there, and they were defending San Antonio from the Mexican general Santa Anna. Surely, you're not calling these men murderers and rapists for living in the (south)west and defending their city?

America doesn't have the cultural background that most countries have, because of it's youth. But we do have the culture of cowboys. Personally, I think that's why we had a prevalence of Westerns a few decades ago not so much anymore, to create more cultural unity. That's why you don't see the other side of it as much (because obviously there were some bad guys).

I'm quite a fan of cowboys. I'd highly recommend Steve McQueen's (<3) cowboy series, Wanted: Dead or Alive.

[Meadow]

We've all seen Cowboy movies. They usually centre on some handsome young man with a purpose going and keeping a town in the Wild West in order.

However, as I'm also sure we all know, the reality of this is much different. Real cowboys slaughtered Native Americans, were stupendous drinkers, some rapists, all murderers and were far from the perception made of them by these films

My question is this: Should all Cowboy films be made to depict the people accurately?


This bit here is were I cover my arse so I don't get flamed:
Now, I'm not saying that all shows featuring Cowboys are innacurate, for example, Deadwood is a gritty, seemingly accurate program.

I am also not calling into question the entertainment value of these films.

Many WWII films made throughout the 50s and 60s depicted the Germans as being bumbling or evil. However, as I'm sure we all know, many German soldiers were simply ordinary men forced to fight for a cause they might not have agreed with.

My question is this: Should all WWII films be made to depict the Germans accurately?

It's the same idea, really. I personally do not LIKE films like Big Red One's depictions of the Germans, but I can accept it if it makes a good film (which it did).

So, to answer your question and mine: No.

[renatzu]

However, as I'm also sure we all know, the reality of this is much different. Real cowboys slaughtered Native Americans, were stupendous drinkers, some rapists, all murderers and were far from the perception made of them by these films
What makes you think that? I think you've been buying into the whole "Wild West" thing a bit too much. In these supposadely "gunslinging" towns, murder was very uncommon. People weren't shooting each other in the streets, there wasn't a showdown every day at noon. These towns were simply stopping points people herding cattle.

That's what cowboys were- they herded cattle. Pretty simple. Sure, when they got paid, they spent their money on booze, but how does that make them different from the businessman who gets off work on Friday and goes straight to a bar? The proportion of people who will commit rape is no different from the proportion of people who will commit rape today, and again, murder was very uncommon. There may have been no set laws (which creates this image) but people create their own unofficial rules. If you started killing people at random, you wouldn't get away with it.

As for TV and movies, if you had an accurate movie, that wouldn't be entertaining.

Cowboy 1: "We've been hired to move this cattled from Wyoming to Kansas".
Cowboy 2: "Let's go."
-They herd cattle across the plains for 2 hours-
Cowboy 1: "Yay! We're finished."

There's not much story you can get out of that. These early 20th century cowboy movies may have been very inaccurate and often racist, but they served at entertainment at the time. Most people today know that it is an inaccurate image, and as for those who actually believe Indians to be savages, it's not like you can change their minds.

[Soma]

Being an ignornat Aussie I don't know much about the old cowboy days of America.

Renatzu has beaten me to saying what I was going to say.
As for TV and movies, if you had an accurate movie, that wouldn't be entertaining.
It's all just for entertainment purposes. Seeing a town in danger and seeing it being saved by a brave cowboy and see the triumpt of the "good" guys is what people are wanting from those movies.

[Monique]

And as for all cowboys bein the same... weren't some gay?

[Soma]

A bunch of gay cowboys eating pudding

[Roxsie]

Westerns were created to reinforce social solidarity in a young country with little (recorded) history of its own. So therefore they had to create a villain. They couldn't exactly say "here are this mighty and brave people who live in harmony with nature but we're gonna kill them all for ownership of the land which they think can't be owned anyway". It's like Custer's last stand - its all fiction shrouded in a semblance of truth.

All films that are meant to tug at the heart strings or excite have to have a convinicing 'baddy' e.g the American propaganda film Mrs Miniver (made by those who wanted america to join WWII) has a plucky woman whose husband is fighting in the war and only has her children left is attacked by a german paratrooper and defeats him showing the 'British courage'. Thats just how the genre works.

I actually think we should make crusades films like they actually were, with Richard torturing his prisoners and saladin treating them better than if they had been his own family. Might actually lead to some people thinking:)