The Western, the endless session of American psychoanalysis

Like no other genre, the Western reveals the extent to which the United States is focused on itself and its past. Each film is like the umpteenth self-therapy session, often navel-gazing - and increasingly repetitive.

For such a young country, the United States is singularly obsessed with its myths of origin. In political discourse, the will of the «Founding Fathers» is a quasi-religious mantra invoked to establish political legitimacy. When Donald Trump markets a Bible in his own name, it contains, in addition to the Testaments, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the «Pledge of Allegiance», the oath to the American flag.

This obsession with the past and the origin story, as we would say in the Marvel multiverse, is also illustrated by the persistence of the Western as a cinematic genre. Its classic form emerged during the Golden Age