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Western Genre

The cowboy gets on his horse and rides off alone into the distance. The music picks up. Thus, the typical Western ends. Through the years since the Western first hit the American theaters, it has gone through some permutations. Yet, there still remain some similarities between all examples of this genre, regardless of when they were produced: They took place west of the Mississippi River, there was a strong, quiet type of hero and his horse, and there was some positive lesson about facing the challenges of life. Although the three movies Dances with Wolves, City Slickers, and the Outlaw Josey Wales are very different in their plot, characterization and mode of delivery, they all represent some aspects of the first Westerns and the impact the undeveloped West had on the arriving settlers.
Dances with Wolves, produced in 1990, has many of the Western motifs, but they are presented in with a mindset of the 20th century. Thus, the earlier racism and stereotypes about Native Americans is eliminated and the stark black-and-white one-dimensional characters are depicted much more well-rounded. Similar to the first Westerns, however, the hero, Lt. John Dunbar, represents the strong maverick who decides his own fate rather