Red Dead Redemption 2 was released on the 26th of October, exactly one week ago from the time of writing this article, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. Whether it be the characters, the story, or my horse (he is wonderful, and his name is Henry), my mind wanders off into Wild West on many occasions during the day. Scrolling through Facebook, I see multiple memes and articles about the game, making me long to jump back into that world more. To say this was one of the most anticipated games of 2018 is an understatement. People were chomping at the bit to get their discs; in Brisbane alone, many JB Hi-Fi outlets were pumping them out at a midnight launch. While popularity is not a unique thing for a video game—Pokemon Go facilitated world peace and unity for a brief period of time —this scale of adoration is quite surprising for a Western in 2018.
The Western, as a genre, was enormously popular in the silent era, eventually climbing the popularity ladder until its ‘Golden Age’ in the middle of the century. Some have argued that the Western was the most popular genre in the first sixty years of the silver screen, with the number of Westerns outnumbering all other genres combined in the 1950s. The Western was a national mythology; they were the Genesis book of American History, establishing a cultural identity for the United States and giving birth to national heroes. Gunslingers and cowboys eventually became complex protagonists, sometimes skewing lines of morality and giving cause for nuanced ethical debate. As the Western dwindled (and some would argue, allowed the Superhero film to eventually take its place), the Western film lost its status as a central figure in popular culture.
However, the Western was still able to maintain its mythos. There have, of course, been modern entries into the genre (some good, some bad), and you can see the influence of the Western in pretty much any film—we consistently see the same plots, they just happen to be set in a time period other than the 18th-century. Essentially, the Western isn’t really dead—its influence has instead scattered throughout the entirety of film and television, residing in genre-hybrids and archetypes.
In 2016, Westworld premiered, allowing HBO to assuage some anxieties about their subscription numbers after Game of Thrones finishes. Subtle, sleek, and sexy, Westworld is a mixture of the Western, Science Fiction, and is mystery-box television at its finest. In Westworld, artificial intelligent beings known as ‘hosts’ allow the customers of an elaborate park to feel as if they are a part of the old west, to be the cowboy they have always dreamed of. We are presented with multiple ethical deliberations about human psychology, artificial life, and exploration into fantasy. We do not have hosts in real life, or theme parks that we are able to visit as an immersive, escapist experience—instead, we have video games.
This begs the question, why the Western? For a genre that is known for its tragic demise, how come two of the biggest pieces of media in 2018 are Western-themed? Some would argue that we are entering an era of post-romanticism since the Western itself was a nostalgic attempt to re-capture some lost innocence or simplicity of a by-gone era. However, people forget that the genre itself began to become self-reflexive—films deconstructed their heroes to their most basic elements, highlighting the faults and flaws of idolising constructed heroes. Films such as Winchester 73 (1950), High Noon (1952), The Searchers (1956) and Warlock (1959) were more concerned with deconstructing the pre-established genre than just adding more instalments to the mythos. In The Searchers, John Wayne (known for portraying the ‘western hero archetype’) sets out to save his niece from the murderous Camaches.
However, his character Ethan Edwards is not presented as the cowboy with a heart of gold but instead is characterised as a bigot—saying he would rather let his niece die than see her marry a native. Here, Edwards is presented without judgement; we are not supposed to see him as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’, his sensibilities are just a result of the times and his past as a Civil War veteran. The later stages of the Western genre unpacked their own roles in the creation of the popular mythos, and attempted to unveil the consciousness of American society.
If we look closely enough, we can see this self-reflexivity reflected in both Westworld and Red Dead Redemption 2. In an age where we are constantly being sold sequels, reboots, and homages to by-gone eras (’80s fever is still ripe, currently), our Westerns are almost acting as Trojan horses among the nostalgic properties. Sure, they look like the old films we would watch on a Sunday afternoon to remember simpler times, but really, they are filled with complex characters with skewed moral codes. Red Dead Redemption 2 has a morality system (you can earn honour through performing good deeds), but it would be difficult to classify any meaningful character in the story-line as either ‘good’ or ‘evil’. The game is set in ‘The Old West’, and although it makes reference to real locations, it presents us with a fictional map of the frontier, packed to the brim with Western archetypes. By toeing the line of fictionality, it is able to make political and historical statements without being bound by the laws of historical accuracy.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is an excellently executed piece of media and has catapulted the Western back into a brief but intense popularity. As soon as you slide in its disc, you are transported into an immersive playground to make all your cowboy wishes come true, and in this real-life Westworld, we are taken through a story that is surprisingly intricate for a shoot-em-up. I would highly recommend anyone with a working games system to give this experience a shot; just take a lesson from Narcissus, and avoid looking at your reflection while you are there.
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