Four Points make me FOR Bernie

[senz]

42. Interesting, Octafish.

The breadth of your knowledge and interests is slightly mind boggling. I'm seriously glad we progressives and Bernie supporters have someone like you on our side.

My take on westerns is different from yours. I grew up at a time when cowboys were hero figures for kids, representations of inner strength, nobility and freedom as well as attunement to the rugged natural environment of the southwest which I periodically experienced in summertime. All my siblings were boys, which may have helped me internalize the cowboy ethos both as male qualities to admire (plus, they're pretty hot) and personal qualities to aspire to. So, westerns feel natural to me. However, I've never been interested in actors and other celebrities, so the name "Randolph Scott" is simply a name I've heard. In my teens I began to comprehend stylistic differences between writers and then, thanks to a boyfriend who avidly read every copy of Cahiers du Cinéma and took me to scores of movies, I began to understand film as art and directors as auteurs. And then, again due to his enthusiasms, I finally conceptualized westerns as a serious genre. My knowledge is not extensive and deep, nor organized, and I can't even remember all the westerns I've seen and enjoyed. Directors that pop up are John Ford, Sergio Leone, Howard Hawks, Clint Eastwood, Sam Peckinpah. Some films that come to mind are The Searchers, Shane, Stagecoach, The Ox-bow Incident, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, High Plains Drifter, Rio Bravo, Unforgiven, Ride the High Country, and of course, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. At the present moment, I'm remembering Leone and Eastwood films, as well as Altman's very special McCabe and Mrs. Miller, as aesthetically and/or emotionally resonant, and Shane is pretty well internalized for me as classic good vs. evil (hmm, maybe some similarities to the situation here at DU). I wish all this were better organized in my mind; maybe when this harrowing election is over, it will be a nice project to escape into.

I wonder if your perspective as a SF writer gives you a more global understanding of the current state of the country and the world? I've only come to what little I know through flashes of comprehension beginning in the 1990s and probably not complete. I have a bad habit of averting my eyes and mind from evil (for some of us, growing up takes decades.)

Sorry it took so long to answer your question. I shift gears rather slowly.