How on earth are Westerns and war movies most reflective of American culture in the present day? On the outermost level, it connotes images of cowboys gallivanting around Santa Fe, scrolling through TikTok and pulling up to McDonald’s drive-thru on horseback. It’s an oxymoron shouting “Giddyup!” These days, the legendary John Wayne feels out of place in the relatively cosmopolitan, forward-thinking surroundings of New York City.

Like Westerns, war movies are arguably another strange representation of apparent American culture, often taking place outside America. However, it isn’t necessarily about what these films depict, and considerably more to do with what they represent. These two genres specifically contain within their very nuclei key attributes associated with American culture.

War Movies and American Culture

     20th Century Fox

There used to be a stereotype around the traditionalist, suburban American household — white picket fences and an American flag. Nowadays, the international perception of American households has changed considerably. People from other countries tend to imagine a basement full of submachine guns and enough ammunition to fully stock an army, or the neighborhood racist with a huge confederate flag draped off their balcony. Internationally speaking, other countries look at America through the prism of guns and war, epitomized by war movies, filled to the brim with God-fearing young men ready to kill for their country in a haze of bullets.

Reality is a bit different. Truth be told, the US military hasn’t always garnered the respect or approval of most citizens when at war, whether it be in Vietnam, Iraq, or Syria. Yet despite that, the majority of Hollywood war films tend to depict the American military as a force for good in the world. Regardless of its citizens’ support or disapproval of any given war, these movies rely upon a certain ideology of American culture where armed forces are brought in to establish law and order, to reinstate democracy, and to reprimand those who oppose Western ideals.

War Movies Represent American Idealism

     Sony Pictures

From Saving Private Ryan, Hacksaw Ridge, and Zero Dark Thirty to The Thin Red Line, The Longest Day, and The Great Escape, great Hollywood war movies frequently remind us of the sacrifices Americans have made to ensure not just peace in their time, but the preservation of mankind. As the leader of the free world, there is an inherent obligation in American society to vindicate the western ideology of democracy and progress, freedom of speech, and the protection of human rights and civil liberties, all of which are at the forefront of American culture on a good day.

Like those stripes and stars flying at half-mast in a front garden in West Virginia, war movies encapsulate patriotism. Whether it be the famous imagery pictured in Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers of the five US soldiers erecting the star-spangled banner on Iwo Jima, the battle-hardened General George Patton in 1970’s Patton with his star-adorned helmet, and the likes of American Sniper, Lone Survivor, and Born on the Fourth of July famously sporting the Stars and Stripes on their respective posters, these movies like to embody US ideals of courage, bravery, sacrifice, and the flag-waving devotion to the upkeep of the commonwealth. Even if all those things aren’t always true in American culture, war movies represent that way that America thinks of itself, the same way that traditional Westerns do.

Western Movies Evolve with American Culture

     The Weinstein Company

Stereotypically, Westerns are often used to symbolize the native-hating white republican cowboy, saving his family and village from so-called “savages” or hunting down outlaws. Yet, if you scratch beneath the surface, Westerns are a genre of film that offers so much more to address cultural issues, reflecting the ever-changing landscape of American society for well over a century. Westerns adapt to the times, and more than any other genre, they reflect how America thinks of itself.

Like America itself, Westerns were once a jingoistic genre that embraced hate against minorities under the pretense of “we are the good guys, and you are the bad guys,” and that really captured the now outdated macho man with his default, animalistic positions of protecting, killing, and attacking. Yet, for all their supposed narrative limitations, Westerns have always been a genre malleable enough for filmmakers to use them as a canvas for not just artistic expression, but to highlight the societal issues at hand and confront the problematic matters of American history.

     Warner Bros.

Eventually, the Western was deployed as a vehicle to demonstrate the progressiveness of American culture and the destructive forces of violent men. This was arguably first mastered in the John Ford classic The Searchers, in which the practically iconographic John Wayne and all he stood for were deconstructed and laid bare. The changes were evident in films where heroes stood to the careless, merciless jurisdiction of corporate self-interest, as seen in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West, where a lone wolf and harmonica-playing gunslinger fight back against a tycoon looking to illegally acquire land in order to implement a railroad to further his wealth.

Later, the Western would be used to confront deep-seated American issues, like Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, where the traditionally conservative genre is twisted to explore slavery, and the traditional white, male lead is replaced by the empowered Black man. Westerns have demonstrated how the proliferation of diversity and multiculturalism have quickly become embedded into American society.

Westerns and War Movies Today

     Netflix

Ultimately, the Western tracked the emergence of the United States from the rough-around-the-edges, chaotic, disorganized assembly of states (the literal Wild West), and how it related to America’s vision of itself. As time passed, it has been remolded, redeveloped, and reshaped (as seen in films like Old Henry, The Power of the Dog, and Concrete Cowboy), and has been a great bastion for American progressiveness and sociopolitical advancement. The same could be said of the war film, with many recent movies taking on a more anti-war, humanistic, and globally compassionate perspective.

Westerns and war movies reflect American culture in a more intricately detailed way than other movie genres; America is the birth of the Western film, after all, and has largely been the master of the blockbuster war film for a century. These genres incorporate the small-c conservatism of the country, and they express the importance of freedom, independence, and morality. The screen upon which these films are played reflects American values and ideals back to the audience, even if they’re sometimes fictional themselves.