ALTERNATIVE WESTERNS

   The Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, the women’s rights movement, the American Indian movement, and other historical events of the 1960s and 1970s brought paradigmatic changes in American culture that affected every form of art and certainly every facet of the U.S. film industry. Westerns changed as well, first with the appearance of antimyth Westerns such as those of Sergio Leone and then with the development of alternative Westerns, sometimes called postmodern Westerns or revisionist Westerns, which reflect end-of-century cultural changes. Three types of alternative Westerns, according to Richard Slotkin, have appeared since the 1970s: formalist Westerns, neorealist Westerns, and cult-of-the-Indian Westerns (also called counterculture Westerns). Alternative Westerns, reflecting the postmodern consciousness, are substantial departures both stylistically and ideologically from Westerns earlier in the century. They tend to reflect end-of-century gender and race concerns and usually mix dark, grimy reality with elements of fantasy. The Quick and the Dead(1995) tells the story of a quickdraw contest, with the fastest gunfighter being a woman (Sharon Stone). The Ballad of Little Jo (1993), with close attention to historical authenticity, tells the story of a frontier woman forced to conceal her gender for decades merely to survive. Dead Man (1995), filmed in black and white, uses techniques of surrealism to tell its story. Recent Westerns are still considered “alternative” rather than mainstream because they are countering a tremendous body of cinema and a powerful cultural force of the previous century.

   See also AFRICAN AMERICANS IN WESTERNS; CIVIL RIGHTS WESTERNS; CROWE, Russell; FEMINIST WESTERNS; HACKMAN, Gene; INDIANS; MYTHOLOGICAL HISTORICISM AND ALTERNATIVE WESTERNS; WOMEN, STEREOTYPES.