Western films commonly feature cowboys, gunslingers, and bounty hunters who wear stereotypical Western clothing and use guns to survive in dusty towns and cattle ranches. Westerns typically depict the good guys wearing white and the bad guys wearing black, and often show conflicts with Native Americans. Over time, the Western genre has expanded to include subgenres like epic Westerns, Spaghetti Westerns, revisionist Westerns, and comedy Westerns. Famous Western actors include Clint Eastwood, John Wayne, and Lee Van Cleef.

2. Conventions of a Western
• Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the later half of the
19th century
• Western films commonly feature as their protagonists stock characters such
as cowboys, gunslingers, and bounty hunters, often depicted as semi-
nomadic wanderers who wear Stetson hats, bandannas, spurs, and
buckskins, use revolvers or rifles as everyday tools of survival, and ride
between dusty towns and cattle ranches on faithful steeds.
• Westerns usually depict the bad guys in black clothes and the good guys in
white clothes.
• Western films often depict conflicts with Native Americans.
• Recurring themes of Westerns include Western treks or perilous journeys
(e.g. Stagecoach) or groups of bandits terrorising small towns such as in
The Magnificent Seven.
• The Western film genre has portrayed much about America's past, glorifying
the past-fading values and aspirations of the mythical by-gone age of the
West.

3. Western Films
• Billy The Kid
• The Outlaw
• Oklahoma
• How the West Was Won
• No Country for Old Men

4. Sub Genre of the Western
• the ‘EPIC’ Western (The Big Country (1958))
• the ‘SINGING COWBOY' Western (films of Gene Autry and
Roy Rogers)
• the ‘SPAGHETTI’ Western aka Italo-Western (the "Man With
No Name")
• the ‘NOIR’ Western (Pursued (1947))
• the ‘CONTEMPORARY’ Western (Hud - 1963)
• the ‘REVISIONISTIC’ Western ( Little Big Man - 1970, Dances
With Wolves - 1990)
• the ‘COMEDY’ Western (Cat Ballou - 1965), Blazing Saddles
- 1974)
• the ‘POST-APOCALYPTIC’ Western (Mad Max 2: The Road
Warrior – 1981/2, The Postman - 1997)
• the ‘SCIENCE-FICTION’ or ‘SPACE’ Western (Serenity)

5. NOTABLE ACTORS
• Clint Eastwood
• John Wayne
• Lee Van Cleef
• Gene Autry

6. Over time, westerns have been re-defined, re-invented
and expanded, dismissed, re-discovered, and spoofed.
In the late 60s and early 70s 'revisionistic' Westerns that
questioned the themes and elements of
traditional/classic westerns appeared (such as Sam
Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969), Arthur Penn's Little
Big Man (1970), Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs.
Miller (1971), and later Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven
(1992)).