"Frayling Chases Spaghetti Westerns"

Hollywood eventually got over the Western movies that used to be so popular, and when confronted about it by Leone, many directors told him that the Western was dead. Sergio Leone "revived the genre" (NPR) by creating a brutal west in his movies where it was more often than not a kill-or-be-killed kind of story. The "Freudian Westerns" (NPR) that contained subtle psychological themes were excluded from Sergio's depiction of the memory of the American Western because he didn't like them, which I find annoying. I don't like that he made the Western genre all guns and horses and no complex motives or detailed reasoning behind why the borderline-psychotic cowboy just shot down 57 Native Americans in a desert.

In fact, the repetitive, shallow storyline in the Western movies of the time disengaged the viewers brain, and that is why I don't like to watch Western movies. The pattern of analysis and prediction that makes a great storyline so much fun to read or experience is nonexistent all too often. When there is some kind of background explanation or expressed reasoning, it's never hard to figure out, which destroys the wonderful chances that the authors would have for deeper character development. I will most likely zone out and stop actually watching the movie unless I have some other reason for watching it (Like my grades!). The Instant Hollywood Brain-Musher seems to dull the senses and can also desensitize the viewer from things like murder, theft and alcoholism, too, since you see a ton of drinking, shooting, and looting in pretty much every single Western film.

To give Leone some credit, I should definitely say that he did his homework. It was said during this podcast that his physical appearances for the people that lived in the western movies was closer to the actual photographs of the actual Western people that lived during the time than any other movie depiction thus far. Despite the typical good guy physical appearance, Leone gave his protagonists gray hats and a dirty look to neutralize their appearance and make the characters seem more believable.

Frayling Chases Spaghetti Westerns. NPR 2005. Podcast. 24 Feb. 2010.  http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5506405