this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2025
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I think having a frontier and colonialist expansion are big parts of a western. That's why they translate to sci-fi so well. Some podcasts I listen to always highlight how capitalism requires a frontier to infinitely expand. and I feel like Westerns are about bit players in that expansion.
Like in Blood Meridian. They were getting paid for the scalps of natives, so they just scalped everyone. Because by the time they got back to who was paying, you couldn't tell what was a native scalp what was not. And they were getting paid to kill the people who lived there first just because they were a business inconvenience.
The distance from what happens and the way it's told is a big part of that book as well.
I think frontiers and by extension colonialism is about bringing law into a place that is offering resistance
either the environment is inhospitable, like a desert or forest or tundra,
or the people are inhospitable
or both