The point of view of the bad guys in old Westerns

Like most kids my age (I'm in my sixties now), I grew up watching a lot of old Westerns. They all seem to kinda blur together in my mind, and of course there was always a hero, and you couldn't have a hero without bad guys. And of course I accepted the bad guys as presented, they usually wore black hats, maybe had long moustaches that curled up at the edges, that sort of thing. But as I got older, I started to wonder about these people.

One of my most vivid memories is of Clint Eastwood letting out a deep sigh as he looks some men who decided to confront him in an old Western movie, and he says, "Everywhere I go, people like you..." Of course, if they had known that they were in a movie, and his name was in the starring role, they would have never messed with him, but, well, there's gotta be bad guys in order for there to be conflict. And you can't have drama without conflict.

I've lived in Arizona for most of my adult life, and I often feel like letting out a deep sigh, because everywhere I go, I see people who act as if they were cast as bad guys in an old Western. And while it's very easy to see through the point of view of the hero, I've often tried to see through the point of view of the bad guys.

The closest that I can come to understanding bad guys is that everything they're doing seems to make perfect sense to them. They may see the world as oppressive, and as they do stuff like steal horses, or hold up the stagecoach, they're just getting a little bit of their own back. Of course there are always completely psychotic people who do anti-social stuff just because of some type of mental health issue, but the vast majority of bad guys aren't like that. They're standing up for what they think is right - thinking of themselves as Robin Hood, and the "giving to the poor" part just means keeping the loot.

A typical old Western hero may be riding into town to clean up the place, but the people that he's going to clean up may feel that they don't really need it. And that's why it's so dramatic, and can be so violent. The hero doesn't just say, "Maybe you should stop stealing horses and robbing the stagecoach", to which the bad guys say, "Yeah, I guess you're right - we're not being very nice, maybe we'll go take up gardening instead", they fight.

In the old Westerns, the story always ends as the bad guys are being hauled away to the hoosegow. Or, if there's a sequel, the hero is called back again because it starts all over again, and again, and again (depending on how many sequels are made). And people like me are left to wonder about point of view.

If you like pictures of old-time Phoenix, please become a member of History Adventuring on Patreon. I share a LOT of cool old photos there, copyright-free, with no advertising. If you like Phoenix history and would like to help support my efforts to preserve and share precious digital historic images, please consider becoming a patron. Thank you!

Become a Patron!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is ...
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the...
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me...
Read more