Posted in response to http://lesterhhunt.blogspot.com/2008/04/where-did-all-westerns-go.html

I think science fiction/fantasy picked up where westerns left off, and to some extent the reality TV show.

Today the west has been tamed. There are still shows out there like "survivalist" and "deadliest catch", but for the most part, I think we're to the point where the setting has disappeared from the collective consciousness of the youth. I think if you were to do a word association test with people my age, "final" would pop up as being far more associated with "frontier" than "west" (space, the final frontier...).

Now consider shows like Firefly, Buffy, and Battlestar Galactica. I would say that each of these contains themes that were, a generation ago, found mostly in Westerns. And then there's the 800-pound-gorilla of science fiction across the pond, Doctor Who---which has a lone hero (with sidekicks) in his TARDIS who vworps in, cleans up the situation, and vworps out again. How much more canonically Western can you get?

I also think shows are driven to some extent by the fears of the generation. We are not so worried today about fascism and communism---it's perfectly OK for a government employee to come in and clean up the situation. It doesn't necessarily have to be a lone hero. We're much more afraid of the bad guys who look like us, and we find it desirable that the person who should come in and sort things out would be the government. We are uncomfortable with the Lone Ranger mentality (note how it's become negative!) and we want justice to have procedure to it.

Probably in another few generations we'll see the renaissance of the Western, although probably with a different setting. Outer Mongolia, perhaps.