Meta Commentary on the Western Front in Film - Midnight Cowboy vs. Lonesome Cowboys & Paris, Texas

This is a super interesting concept in Hollywood to me, especially being from New Mexico, having lived in Oregon and traveling all around the west coast. I also have a fascination with the beat generation and the hippie movement of the 60’s and one of my favorite books is On the Road by Jack Kerouac.

I first remember analyzing the idea of "the west" in films when learning of Andy Warhol's Lonesome Cowboys and John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy and their contrasting reception in the media. 

The former was praised in more avant-garde spaces and employs several tropes of the western film in a campy way, while the latter was initially critiqued - now acclaimed -, and uses those same tropes, in a melancholic and satirical way to criticize them. Both were censored in mainstream spaces because of their commentary on masculinity, homosexuality and homophobia. 

A few years later I saw Paris, Texas - my favorite movie -  and was exposed to Wim Webers one of my favorite directors. He specifically has a fascination with Hollywood and was deeply influenced by the myth of the American West. 

Though he loves the classic American film iconography, especially that of Western and road movies, he approaches the genres with melancholy. In the film he flips the Western mythos from that of a land of freedom to a land that is lonely and isolating with many shots of vast American landscapes, neon-lit motels, dusty bars, and desolate highways.