Western cinema is as old as the medium itself. In 1894, Edison Studios distributed a 21-second film of Ohio-born sharpshooter Annie Oakley demonstrating her prowess with a rifle. Less than a decade later, Edwin S. Porter released The Great Train Robbery (1903), a 12-minute narrative film about a band of outlaws. The Great Train Robbery concludes with one of cinema’s most iconic moments—later imitated in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas—in which the gang’s leader (Justus D. Barnes) fires his pistol menacingly at the viewer:
From the beginning, then, Westerns have sought to mythologize the American West as a place of danger, treachery, and violence. Indeed, even the land itself exhibits these qualities: the more people seek to bring the comfort of bourgeois society to the wild plains and mountains, the more they find their plans thwarted. In this sense, Westerns also reflect the insignificance of the human order and thus point toward the mysteriousness of the cosmos. Notably, over the last few years, the Western genre has been revitalized, not without controversy, by the Paramount Network’s drama series Yellowstone. Elsewhere I have argued that Yellowstone is, in the end, a show about how ecotourism and popular recreation threaten to end the West as we know it. Yet, whereas Yellowstone tends to assume the audience’s familiarity with its genre, showrunner Taylor Sheridan dives headfirst into Western mythology with 1883. Streaming on Paramount+, 1883 will soon end its first season, and, though flawed, it represents a thematically rich and always visually arresting contribution to the genre. Indeed, Sheridan seems intent to demonstrate that Western resistance to the global tourist trade, embodied in Yellowstone by the recalcitrant Dutton family, is but a new chapter in a long, complex, and still evolving history.
From an 1852 journal entry by Søren Kierkegaard: “Not even a sparrow falls to earth without his will—yes, in a quiet hour when, dressed in silk and velvet, you play Christianity with us and present this in your resonant voice and magnificent oratory, and the rest of us enjoy it—then this can be very simple. But take an actual situation in nature: in a storm, when a hurricane rages and uproots trees, and the birds in death-agony plunge to the ground. Or suppose that the wind blows away the pollen of millions of flowers, or that the earth opens up and swallows entire cities—then say that not even a sparrow falls to earth without the will of your heavenly father, yes, that even the hairs on your head are numbered. Really, we need to live more with nature if for no other reason than to get more of an impression of God's majesty. Huddled together in the great cultural centers we have as much as possible abolished all overwhelming impressions—a lamentable demoralization.”
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It's a remarkable passage from SK's journals. It makes me wonder here about how SK faces the theodicy question about the senselessness of catastrophe and the will of God. The passage doesn't seem to address that but more a prophetic critique of the domestication of God's majesty of metropolitan Christendom. Hey, and about the connection between SK and the Western genre, don't forget about the passage in "Our Duty to Be in the Debt of Love to Each Other" where SK says that the Christian is not the rider who seeks to break the horse, but the "bronco-buster" who rides the horse only so that it will become more wild - the incapacity of bourgeois prudence to domesticate the divine.
Hey Chris, I'd love to know what reference# that is in his journals so I can keep track of it. Would it be difficult for you to locate it? Thanks if you can. By the way, keep up the great work.