the western

A western movie is usually a film set in the western United States between the end of the civil war and the beginning of World War I.  The genre is viewed an especially American genre for several reasons.  The first reason is that as a genre, the setting is almost set in the United States, a condition which no other genre has too conformed to.  A second and third reason for idea is nostalgia.  In the first place, the western harkens back to a day and age where the United States seemed full of untapped possibilities (that would eventually be transformed into suburbia) and when were rugged action heroes who could solve all their problems with a gun (instead of a pen and DMV form I-349).  The second way nostalgia plays into exemplifying the western is how the ties it has to the mid-twentieth century are.  At the time the U.S. was at the height of power and prosperity, the western was the height of popularity. By being incorporated into images of wealth and grandeur through symbols such as howdy-dowdy and cowboys hats, westerns can be identified as the part of the American image when we were the best off (assuming you were a white middle-class male, of course).