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Films

The Western as Philosophy

Revisiting the Western convinces Thomas Wartenberg that historical progress is not just a simple question of good heroically triumphing over evil.

When I was growing up, my favorite genre of film or television show was the Western. I remember Saturday mornings spent in front of the TV waiting for my favorite show – The Lone Ranger – to come on. And every year, the big event was the annual rebroadcast of the hour-long episode that explained how the Lone Ranger had come to be alone or, more accurately, why he was not part of a unit of Texas Rangers but had only a single American Indian, Tonto, for support.

As far as I was concerned at the time, the appeal of Westerns was their depiction of the triumph of good over evil. The Lone Ranger encountered all sorts of unscrupulous evil-doers, and despite the odds against him, managed to overcome them with feats of skill and courage – always aided by his sidekick Tonto, who would appear as if from nowhere to save the masked man from certain death.

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