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date: 12 February 2025

Westerns. 

Source:
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World
Author(s):
Yves LabergeYves Laberge

Westerns are a popular film genre that epitomize many U.S. myths, a romantic vision of history, and shows masculine models, heroes and villains (Jesse James, Billy the Kid). In epic stories, we see how the American West was built, imagined, represented, idealized. Western movies often explored themes like justice, the Wild West, the new frontier, relationships with the “other”: either the man from the “east” (New England), the aboriginal (“the Indian”), and the often overlooked African Americans. Many westerns referred to the American Civil War (... ...

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