I’m teaching a class in Financial Modeling as part of an International Finance course; the students come from all over the world. During the course of Thursday’s class I was forced to make up for a shortcoming in the preceding Financial Mathematics class (which I created and should have been teaching, but that’s another story) in which the instructor failed to explain to the students the reason that banks pay compound interest rather than simple interest. The discussion turned, naturally, to cowboy movies.
The Terrifying Discovery:
To my horror, I learned that one of my students, a young lady from mainland China, had never seen an American Western.
The Resolution:
I assigned her homework over the long weekend: she is to watch a cowboy movie, then, at the beginning of class on Tuesday, report to the class on the movie: title, plot, and so on.
The Question I Put to Y’all:
What’s the quintessential, iconic, American Western? Which cowboy movie, above all others, should I have suggested that she watch?
I have some ideas of my own, and I got some from my wife and my younger son (at least one of which had never even occurred to me), but I’d love to exploit the wisdom of the crowd in general, and of the sage denizens of the Water Cooler in particular, and try to determine the single, most appropriate movie that I should have recommended to her.
Shane is a classic, as is True Grit (the John Wayne one)
If you want something more recent, wasn’t there something called Brokeback Mountain a few years ago. It’s a shame John Wayne didn’t live to see that one
I think Tombstone is the movie that best balances a classic cowboy movie style and accessibility to modern audiences. The story is based on folk characters like Wyatt Earp, but stars fairly contemporary actors like Val Kilmer and Kurt Russell. Most people who did not grow up with cowboy movies would probably find John Wayne sort of stories to be unrelatable, both in terms of film making and characterization, and risk being alienated from the genre altogether.
Agreed for modern Western (hemisphere) audiences. But “I’m your Huckleberry” may not translate into Chinese very well. “Howdy Pilgrim” and possessiveness over women may be simpler and more familiar concepts, especially considering the skewed sex ratio caused by the one-child policy.
