Review of The American West in Film: Critical Approaches to the Western

Authors

Terry Nygren, Wichita State University

Date of this Version

1990

Comments

Published in Great Plains Quarterly SUMMER 1990 .Copyright 1990 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska—Lincoln.

Abstract

German filmmaker Fritz Lang once observed that the Western is to America what the Niebelungen Saga is to Germany. Set during a relatively brief period in American history, the Western genre mythologized America's confrontation with a vast frontier. Themes center on the conflict between savagery and civilization, community and the rugged individual, lawlessness and social order. Many critics have argued that the Western is primarily a vehicle for American imperialist ideology, and thus, only peripherally about the historical settlement of the West.