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Movie heroes and their prototypes: the Hollywood myth about cowboys turned out to be far from reality
Elements of a cowboy image: hat, scarf, plaid shirt
The dashing heroes from American Westerns, scorching from two-handed colts, are nothing more than fiction, another Hollywood myth that significantly distorts reality. In fact, in the daily life of cowboys there was much less heroism, romance and firing from revolvers. What really were the dashing guys of the Wild West, who became symbols of American culture?
The screen image of a cowboy is a handsome macho man of European appearance, hung with weapons. In fact, a third of the cowboys were black, freed and sought work, and a quarter were Indians! Not all of them could afford weapons: a cowboy (that is, a “shepherd”) earned an average of $ 25 a month, and weapons at that time were more expensive. Continue reading
Who is a cowboy
If you ask the first comer “Who is a cowboy?”, Then in 99% of 100 you will hear a very short and firm answer: “A tough guy riding a horse, wearing a hat and a revolver.” Those who answer in this way will be partly right, since it is precisely this image, fanned by a halo of romance, that for a century we have been seeing on cinema screens, book pages and colorful advertising posters. Dressed up with a needle, an unflappable hero with a pair of colts, a regular at drinking companions and a fierce participant in dizzying chases and shootings, these are typical examples of the “tough guy” we see in most films about the Wild West. But was the cowboy’s life really easy and easy? To understand this issue, you should take a short excursion to the United States of the XIX century – the era of the dawn of American cowboys. Continue reading
Wild riders
Real cowboys have never played the slightest political role in US history – because the cities that featured in the Wild West myths are not real cities or even state capitals, but seedy holes in forgotten god corners like Abilene or Dodge City are wild. horsemen in other countries played an important and sometimes decisive role in the history of their nations. Great peasant uprisings in Russia in the 17th — 18th centuries began with Cossack provinces, and later these same Cossacks became the Praetorian Guard of late tsarism. Continue reading
