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Saturday, September 9, 2023

HOW MANY WESTERN MYTHS HAVE I FOUND?

I stated in the previous essay that on my two main review-blogs I had not devoted much space to any isophenomenal westerns, mythic or otherwise. Despite this caveat, I did devote two long posts to two such non-fantastic western works:



So of the all other westerns, or western-associated productions I will list here, they will all have some metaphenomenal content.

Not all of them take place, however, within the same era as the traditional western, or even as the so-called "Eastern western," which concerned the American Revolutionary era. I find that western iconography spans three broad periods:

THE PRE-WESTERN ERA

Stories fitting this heading take place prior to any major European incursions in any of the Americas, North or South. Typically this will concern only stories about Indian tribes who have not yet encountered any persons associated with the colonial efforts from the 16th century onward-- though I would have no problem with stories in which Indians met Viking travelers or even Phoenician sea-traders. In literature, there's really only major pre-western narrative.


In theory, certain comic-book series like Gold Key's TUROK SON OF STONE and DC's SUPER CHIEF would qualify for this category, if they possesses the sort of mythopoeically rendered epistemological patterns that constitutes good mythicity.

Then at the other end of the temporal spectrum, there is--

THE POST-WESTERN ERA

This includes any narrative with western iconography taking place after the dawn of the twentieth century, whether or not the narratives takes place in the American West or even in any physical place corresponding to the North and South American continents. In addition to 20th-century stories with some major connection to western story-tropes or icons, this category can also embrace so-called "space westerns," though the significance of the trope or icon has to be very strong. I for one do NOT deem STAR WARS a "space western," even though the series used western tropes (like the "cantina scene") from western cinema. And I would not regard the entirety of Edgar Rice Burroughs' "Mars series" of books to be space westerns either, though the first one counts, because its 20th-century protagonist starts out his narrative fighting wild Indians. So the first book qualified for high mythicity.


And so does this Osamu Tezuka take on Western mythology:



I also include here stories where some significant character uses western iconography, even if some other genre is dominant. Thus the story in SPIDER-MAN #10 is predominantly a superhero story, but it is "western-adjacent" because one of the villains wears a ten-gallon hat and twirls a lasso as his only weapon.



Finally, I come to the meatiest category, taking in all narratives centered within the domain of the Americas from the 16th through the 19th centuries, though obviously not all of these have western iconography. (For instance, stories about the Civil War take place in the same time-frame as the "winning of the West" stories, but only a few of these tales are likely to boast strong western tropes or icons.)  All of my other Mythic Westerns are as follows:










Technically, SCALP HUNTER, one of the "Son of Tomahawk" stories, is not a metaphenomenal story, and might better be listed alongside Django and the Purple Sage Riders. I've also left off this list all of the individual "good" episodes of the teleseries KUNG FU. This program sported a high percentage of stories with either a "good" or a "fair" mythicity rating, and so I prefer to associate the series as a whole with my next category: all the "fair" westerns that weren't quite epistemologically complex enough to be good, but which at least included important myth-motifs.









And finally, I made brief reference to a very "post-Western" storyline in THE WEST COAST AVENGERS here.

I may add to this list over time, as I encounter new "good myths" or "fair myths" worth collating.


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