Myths and Heroes : How has the vision of the cowboy evolved ? What's the difference between his myth and the reality ?

I'm going to talk about the notion Myths and Heroes. To begin with I would like to define the myth, a myth is a story about famous people or gods, it can be true of false. Next, a heroe is an ideal person admired and brave with a lot of courage, for example, Batman it's a fiction heroe. But, we going to see a heroe who has existed in U.S, a cowboy. How has the vision of the cowboy evolved ? What's the difference between his myth and the reality ?

So, we are going to see the ideal vision and the myth of the American cowboy and after that will see the real image of the cowboy.

First, the ideal vision is represented in the cinema, for exemple, the movie Unforgiven and the cartoon Lucky Luck. In class, we saw the different figures of the American cowboy ,the first picture represents a cowboy sitting in a chair with a large hat, a lasso and boots. Next to him, there is a riffle and at the second plan there is a sheriff. This picture represents the Holywood vision of a cowboy. He's alone like Lucky Luck for example. But the cowboys have many qualities as heroes. ( famous, brave and gallant with women ) For example ,in movies, we consider cowboys as brave mens and « good guys », and the Indians as the barbarions ,« bad guys ».

In reality, it was very different.

Indeed, the cowboy is a simple farmer who lives on his own way, with his cattle. In class, we saw the video Longhorn Rancher where we saw the cowboy lifestyle's. It's a couple who lives and works in a ranch ,they have more than 120 cows. We saw a second picture who represented the real vision of a cowboy, this image represents a family who works together, they mark the calf with red iron, it represents the work in family, the hardlabor.

Now, i am going to give my opinion about cowboys.

In my opinion, the cowboy is a brave person with riffle like the Holywood vision, who pratices mainly rodeo. It's an extrem and brutal activity practised by the most braves and courageous persons in USA, it's a show attracts one hundred and ten millions TV viewers. The cinema has real influence on people and heroes in general.

To finish, we saw 2 visions of the American cowboy. The first one is the cinematographic vision with clichy and the second one is the reality whitout the influence of cinema. We can talk about a heroe who approaches the cowboy, Zoro.

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