Eh. The way they normalize police violence and the really naked anti-Asian bigotry stand out far stronger.
a lot of them also deal with the ideas of capitalism and the state taking away freedoms or depict how men controling their lives through violence hurt those around them.
Its a very mixed bag, as "good" homesteaders/miners/small business owners are held up against "bad" capitalists and "bad" natives/latinos bandits. The dichotomy tends to be local versus outsider, rather than community versus profitability. But the story consistently treats industrialization as an inevitability, and traditionally views it as benevolent (or at least benign) with wealth "trickling down" into the community as the extractive economy expands.
Westerns don't venerate working people, they venerate colonialism.
Eh. The way they normalize police violence and the really naked anti-Asian bigotry stand out far stronger.
Its a very mixed bag, as "good" homesteaders/miners/small business owners are held up against "bad" capitalists and "bad"
natives/latinosbandits. The dichotomy tends to be local versus outsider, rather than community versus profitability. But the story consistently treats industrialization as an inevitability, and traditionally views it as benevolent (or at least benign) with wealth "trickling down" into the community as the extractive economy expands.Westerns don't venerate working people, they venerate colonialism.