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com. Let's talk about genres, you know,

let's talk about genres, you know broad categories of storytelling. There's action

adventure, there's horror, there's romance, there's thriller, mystery, comedy. There are

combo genres like romantic comedy. There are

genres like romantic comedy. There are genres by setting like sci-fi or fantasy and then there's one genre that is all of these but absolutely its own the Western.

What is a Western?

Is it exclusively set in the American Old West?

Not really.

The 1954 Japanese film, Seven Samurai, feels pretty Westerny. so much so it inspired an actual Western film

The Magnificent Seven. So no the setting isn't what makes a story a Western.

Instead it's maybe the themes, independence, a search for justice, the connection

between us and the land, often the broken connections between us and them. And for this reason,

the Western might be the most versatile of genres. You could have a comedy

Western, a horror Western, a sci-fi Western, but I don't think it really works the other way around.

A Western drama is just a drama set in the West.

What I'm getting at here is that tales of the Old West transcend other stories.

They have their own unique qualities and though I do believe a Western

can be set anywhere in any time there's something special about the original.

...