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Western (Genre)
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Despite the severe decline in the output of Westerns since the early 1970s this section has been included to emphasise the historical importance of critical work using the Western as a case study through which much genre theory developed. The work on Westerns as a genre has established a research paradigm or set of limits of thinking about genre which arguably needs revising. Neale’s work on the Western challenges this paradigm and argues that instead of being thought of as a ‘closed’ genre, Westerns need to be thought as an open-ended genre which is both hybrid and multi-generic. As Neale (2000) points out Westerns have occupied a pre-eminent position in writing of all kinds on genre in the cinema:
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By the early 1990s, demand for the traditional hard cover Western novel had declined notably. Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour remain popular and continue to sell reasonably well. However, they do not attract new readers to the genre. Few western novels are issued in cloth -- always a problem for libraries..
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A great many B-movie Westerns were aired on TV as time fillers, while a number of long-running TV Western s became classics in their own right. Notable TV Westerns include Gunsmoke , The Lone Ranger , The Rifleman , Have Gun, Will Travel , Bonanza , The Big Valley , Maverick , The High Chaparral and many others. The peak year for television westerns was 1959, with 26 such shows airing during prime-time.
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"Red Western" or "Ostern" films usually portrayed the American Indians sympathetically, as oppressed people fighting for their rights, in contrast to American Westerns of the time, which frequently portrayed the Indians as villains. They frequently featured Yugoslavians or Turkic people in the role of the Indians, due to the shortage of authentic Indians in Eastern Europe.
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Neale draws on Buscombe’s research of 1970 to point out that the visual conventions or iconography of the Western are highly distinctive and highly coded. Neale argues that this strongly marked set of visual codes is the generic exception rather than the rule. These exceptions of Western coding include the combinations of an iconography
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There is some tension between the western as a genre rather than a sub genre under historical fiction or adventure. Some Westerns would ... fit well under the mystery or romance genre. Most of the books in this genre are historical, although the contemporary western has become more popular. Most public library readers probably consider the western in terms of place and a time period that ended in the early 20th Century. There is a distinction between NOVELS OF THE WEST which tend to be literary and sometimes unconventional and WESTERN FICTION which tends to be traditional genre fiction rooted in pulp magazine traditions. WESTERN FICTION is often true to genre conventions which may not provide an accurate picture of the West.
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Western (Genre)