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Rescuing the Western from Hollywood MarxistsThe year 2007 was a bad year for the Western.
For the 80th annual Oscars, Hollywood bypassed the nihilistic, Marxist Western, 3:10 to Yuma (which was nominated for Best Original Score), in exchange for an even more disturbing nihilistic, Marxist Neo-Western, No Country for Old Men. It was the fourth time in the history of the Academy Awards that a Western won Best Picture. The last Western to win an Academy Award was the nihilistic, Marxist Western, Unforgiven, directed by Clint Eastwood. And this leads us to a basic question: Can the Western be redeemed? Can it be rescued from Hollywood Marxists? After all, the Western is the most quintisentially American genre. Keep in mind that not all genres are created equal. Horror, for example, is rooted in presuppositions that are explicitly at war with biblical Christianity, including unholy fear. Consequently, “horror” cannot be redeemed without fundamentally redefining the genre altogether. That is why I argue that “Christian horror” is an oxymoron. Attempts by well-intentioned Christians to appeal to youth by using the premises of the horror genre to communicate righteous conclusions are theologically schizophrenic and thus ill-conceived. Not so for the Western. The heart of the Western is the notion of a morality play—good vs. evil (lawful order vs. lawlessness) with good triumphing in the end. The archetypal stage for this morality play is the untamed West. The impact of the Western on modern film making is far-reaching. Gene Roddenberry originally pitched his television series Star Trek as a “Wagontrain in the stars.” The Western’s influence has even extended to nations like Japan where filmmakers including Akira Kurosawa have attempted to take the basic concept of the Western and build new archetypes for the genre which are distinctively Japanese in flavor. But one need not look to space stories or samurais to witness the power of the Western. For more than half a century, this film genre has been manipulated and used to change the way we think about good and evil. The best known example of this is the Academy Award-winning film, High Noon (1952). Directed by Fred Zimmerman—a man blacklisted by the House Committee on Un-American Activities for alleged communist activities—High Noon was an allegory on McCarthyism.
Now, in this thought-provoking message, film producer Geoff Botkin and I explore the battle for the Western in light of contemporary trends and historical realities. Presupposing the sufficiency of Scripture and the authority of Christ in every area of life, we perform an autopsy on the current state of the art and answer the basic question: Can the Western be rescued from Hollywood Marxists? This message is available between now and March 10th for an online donation of any amount to Vision Forum Ministries.
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