04-30-2021, 01:07 PM
(This post was last modified: 04-30-2021, 01:08 PM by Michigan Swamp Buck.
Edit Reason: Typo
)
Ninurta and I must be watching similar old TV programs on the same broadcast networks, so he should relate to my observations.
I have been watching the cowboy western TV shows on CW network, they have a lot of the classics from the 50s through the 60s. I find them interesting for a number of reasons, one thing of interest is the plots of the story lines.
In the older TV series, like Rawhide and Wagon train, the stories have a moral to teach. Wagon train is highly conservative with morals involving the law and Christian beliefs. Pretty much all of the shows from the 50s through about the mid 60s had a plot that involved a lesson to be learned at the end of the program.
Now, sometime in the late 60s and early 70s, the story lines changed. I suspect that Vietnam played a big part, but I also suspect that film director Sam Peckinpah had a lot to do with how westerns changed during that era.
The TV series Gunsmoke ran from 1955 to 1975 and is a good example of how these stories changed. I watched one episode from later in the series with a plot that was just senseless violence and cruelty with Marshal Matt Dillon unable, or unwilling, to come to the rescue. No lesson to be learned, no moral to that story, just mindless gratuitous violence and misery.
Another thing I noticed is that the earlier westerns portrayed the Native Americans as violent dangerous savages (the only good Injun is a dead Injun) and Mexicans as peaceful and hard working villagers. Then by the 70s, Native Americans were characterized as peaceful and the Mexicans became vicious criminal banditos. Toward the end of that era, shows like the Wild Wild West and Spaghetti Westerns were more like parodies of the earlier ones and apparently anything goes after that point. Some of the newer westerns like "Dead man" (1995) with Johnny Depp and "Bone Tomahawk" (2015) with Kurt Russell are really bizarre and disturbing.
I have been watching the cowboy western TV shows on CW network, they have a lot of the classics from the 50s through the 60s. I find them interesting for a number of reasons, one thing of interest is the plots of the story lines.
In the older TV series, like Rawhide and Wagon train, the stories have a moral to teach. Wagon train is highly conservative with morals involving the law and Christian beliefs. Pretty much all of the shows from the 50s through about the mid 60s had a plot that involved a lesson to be learned at the end of the program.
Now, sometime in the late 60s and early 70s, the story lines changed. I suspect that Vietnam played a big part, but I also suspect that film director Sam Peckinpah had a lot to do with how westerns changed during that era.
The TV series Gunsmoke ran from 1955 to 1975 and is a good example of how these stories changed. I watched one episode from later in the series with a plot that was just senseless violence and cruelty with Marshal Matt Dillon unable, or unwilling, to come to the rescue. No lesson to be learned, no moral to that story, just mindless gratuitous violence and misery.
Another thing I noticed is that the earlier westerns portrayed the Native Americans as violent dangerous savages (the only good Injun is a dead Injun) and Mexicans as peaceful and hard working villagers. Then by the 70s, Native Americans were characterized as peaceful and the Mexicans became vicious criminal banditos. Toward the end of that era, shows like the Wild Wild West and Spaghetti Westerns were more like parodies of the earlier ones and apparently anything goes after that point. Some of the newer westerns like "Dead man" (1995) with Johnny Depp and "Bone Tomahawk" (2015) with Kurt Russell are really bizarre and disturbing.