As movie genres go, the Western is a workhorse. It draws from a well of cultural symbols meant to capture the essence of America, including the freedom of the open frontier and the righteous self-determination of man. Standing tall inside this cinematic shorthand is the cowboy himself, a figure commonly understood to be an excellent shot who rides horses and who, above all, is white. This narrow image is foundational to the genre, which includes films such as John Sturges’s 1960 classic The Magnificent Seven. A retelling of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, the movie centers on a group of seven white men hired to protect a Mexican village being terrorized by a band of outlaws.
But a new adaptation of the film offers a notably different set of heroes. Directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring Denzel Washington,the 2016 version centers around a team of misfits trying to defend a town built around a gold mine. In addition to Washington, the “seven” include Byung-hun Lee, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, and Martin Sensmeier—all of whom subvert the conventional idea of the Western hero. But if anything, this subversion brings the movie closer to history: The Old West and the iconic cowboys who populate it in movies were never solely white to begin with. In recent years, filmmakers have grappled with this reality to varying degrees of success. Despite the admirable efforts of Westerns such as The Revenant and The Magnificent Seven, movies like Django Unchained,The Keeping Room, The Lone Ranger, and Bone Tomahawk all show how difficult it is to modernize the genre without continuing to peddle an inaccurate and exclusionary account of American history.
[For more of this story, written by Leah Williams, go to http://www.theatlantic.com/ent...est-was-lost/502850/]
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