Why We Love Neo-Westerns
“The crime you see now, it’s hard to measure. It’s not that I’m afraid of it. I always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this job - not to be glorious. But I don’t want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don’t understand.” These lines come from the portentous opening monologue of 2007’s No Country Old Men. Tommy Lee Jones plays the sheriff delivering this monologue, who in the next two hours is confronted with the horrific and senseless violence of the film’s main characters. No Country for Old Men was nominated for 8 Oscars that year, winning four, including best picture. Brokeback Mountain was released just two years prior, being nominated for eight Oscars and winning three. Breaking Bad would air in 2008 and last five seasons to 2013, winning 12 primetime emmys in that period. Though 2022’s Nope didn’t receive similar accolades, it did earn a similar box office number to No Country for Old Men and Brokeback Mountain, hitting over $120 million. It’s clear that there is something we’ve loved about neo-westerns for a while now, so, what is it?
We, as Americans, have always desired a frontier. From pushing west with manifest destiny to JFK’s moonshot, we have a desire to be pushing the edge of something. Since the space race however, we’ve stagnated. There is no longer an edge which Americans are pushing. We’ve become wrought with social and political problems, too busy with infighting,to look together towards something new. Life within a world built for suburbia and consumerism doesn’t provide the thrill of adventure we once had, and so we’ve turned to the screen. Westerns gave us an America united under that rugged individualism and fighting spirit we associate with our frontier identity. No matter how hard we tried to escape the social problems facing us however, they were always going to find a way into our lives. So, we created the neo-western.
The aforementioned No Country for Old Men is the seminal piece of this neo-western movement, and not a film for the faint of heart. There is graphic violence and imagery throughout. This violence seems to be the purpose of the film — the earlier quote being a prime example. In 2007, the United States was still reeling from 9/11. We were yet to process both the deadliest attack in our history and the wars we threw ourselves into following it. Americans were dying, and on top of that, the 2008 financial crisis was beginning. We didn’t know how to make sense of the greed and violence which surrounded us, exactly how Tommy Lee Jones’ character describes his feelings about what he experiences. Josh Brolin’s character, Llewelyn Moss, is thrown into a situation in classic Coen Brothers fashion when he stumbles across a drug deal gone wrong — and $2 million. Moss takes the money in hopes of securing the future of him and his wife, played by Kelly McDonald. Javier Bardem’s character, Anton Chigurh, is a sadistic hitman who lacks the most basic human emotions apart from a desire for the money. I would prefer not to spoil the film becauseI believe it deserves a watch, but Chigurh places an emphasis on chance in his actions. Perhaps the most iconic line in the film is when Chigurh asks an innocent gas station owner, “What’s the most you’ve ever lost in a coin toss?” There is an obvious implication here that the gas station owner’s life is on the line in the following coin toss. The question is then raised of chance or choice. Though there is chance involved in the toss, Chigurh has no obligation to make this proposition. Is the violence we see in the film necessary? Could it have been avoided? Is Llewelyn to blame for taking the money? These questions struck a chord with 2007 America, as they were questions we were asking ourselves. Why are we at war? Who are we to blame for our suffering? Is this greed our own? No Country for Old Men doesn’t answer these questions, but it does force us to ask them of ourselves.
Two years prior, there was some controversy when Brokeback Mountain didn’t win Best Picture at the Oscars, with a significant amount of people calling homophobia. Whether that’s true is less relevant than the fact that people were willing to speak about gay men and homophobia publicly. The 1990s and 2000s saw a massive step forward for public perception of the LGBT community. That’s not to say there was complete public acceptance; Homophobia has remained rampant to this day, but the acknowledgment of the community in public life grew astoundingly. Brokeback Mountain was a central piece of this change in media. The film challenges masculinity and homophobia by taking something commonly perceived as the most masculine piece of American identity, the cowboy, and making him gay. It isn’t such a simple story however. It explores the nuances of gay men as real people facing real issues, rather than the single issue reductionism that was so often used in portraying gay men prior. Brokeback Mountain placed LGBTQ relations on the stage of the frontier we desire, saying it’s something we have to move towards and something that must be talked about.
Breaking Bad was one of a collection of shows in what is presently referred to as the “Golden Age of Television,”from 2000 to now. Its singularity as a western and its pertinent subject matter define it as a . The opioid epidemic is constant in our lives today. As someone who grew up knowing this, it’s hard for me to imagine a world without ever present drug use. At the time of Breaking Bad’s initial release in 2008, it was something we were really beginning to wake up to, and Breaking Bad put a face to it. Walter White’s transition from unassuming chemistry teacher to murderous meth kingpin allowed us to place our feelings on one character. To a large number of Americans, specifically white Americans, it was as if addiction was a completely unknown problem as it rose so drastically. Walter White allowed us to discover the issue alongside a character so we could begin to speak on it. Similarly, following Jesse Pinkman through his battle with addiction gave reasoning to something that so many Americans were seeing happen around them. It must be understood, however, that this was a mostly white association. Addiction had been forced on black communities for decades before Walter White arrived. Though white Americans were not entirely ignorant, the novelty of Breaking Bad somewhat was. The device of the neo-western remains, and had a massive effect.
The issue of race in westerns is a significant one, as the genre is heavily established on a racist view of the old west. The concept of the white hero, the savage Native American and a complete ignorance of slavery permeates the origins of the genre. Though not the first to do so, Jordan Peele looked to fight this and reform the genre which he clearly appreciates in 2022’s Nope. Neo in every sense of the word, Nope flips everything western on its head while remaining distinctly within the genre. It would be an incredible disservice to say this is a film about race, because for the most part, it isn’t. It addresses animal cruelty, the dangers of spectacle in the media, and the risks of meddling with things we don’t understand. It’s impossible to ignore that the main characters of Nope are Black though. Influenced by the Black filmmakers of the L.A. Rebellion, Nope situatesBlack characters in historically white roles without stereotyping. Central to the film’s plot is that the main characters own a horse farm for horses used in film, as descendants of the jockey in Eadweard Muybridge’s The Horse in Motion (who in real life is infamously anonymous). In doing this, Peele is making an outward statement on Black erasure in the film industry, of which there is a huge amount. Peele takes a historically racist and wildly popular genre and reforms it into a commentary on spectacle and Black visibility in the media.
In the past few decades, the neo-western has acted as a vehicle for us as we grapple with mounting social division. The frontier we so desire is unattainable until we can solve the problems we have with ourselves. Despite this, we seem to be incapable of forgetting that frontier, so we were left with the creation of the neo-western. This genre has forced us to face ourselves and the issues which continue to tear us apart. The placement of these issues on the frontier landscape we won’t let go of makes us vulnerable to talking about the things which now define us. The frontiersman identity we desire in a western meets the true identity we hold now.