The history of the American West needs to be rewritten.

Not long ago, historians and their artistic brothers in the western United States celebrated what we now think of as the "Old West". For historians and artists, "the victory of the West" is a brilliant achievement, which marks the victory of "civilization" over "barbarism". In fact, according to traditional academic wisdom and orthodox artistic vision, the United States is great and Americans are different in conquering Indians and in the journey of destiny. However, in recent decades, most historians and many Americans have denied this view. The new research has broken the fable that people cherish the old west, stripped romance from the history of "Xihao", and excavated the casualties and environmental costs caused by American expansion. These explanations of how the west disappeared are not very glorious, but they emphasize the barbarity of American civilization. Deyang Museum's exhibition "Ed Rucha and the Great American West" and its exhibition area "Wild West: Pacific Plain" were invited by the San Francisco Legion of Honor to carefully examine the celebration and its death. In many ways, this modification of American western art is similar to the change of the content and significance of American western history. In art and history, with the broadening of themes and the change of contemporary views, ancient and powerful myths have disappeared.

American West: A very short introduction authoritatively, clearly and extensively involves environment, people and identity, which is the myth of American West. The complex integration of people, politics and culture has decisively shaped the history of the western United States, and this brief introduction has become a key explanation clue. As early as19th century,

Celebrating purchases and territorial expansion is commonplace among American historians. Theodore roosevelt admitted in his multi-volume Victory in the West and other historical works that bloodshed is not always "pleasant", but he thought it was a "healthy sign of the American people's vigorous strength". As the president of the American Historical Association and the president of the United States, Roosevelt said with joy: "Our destiny is doomed to annex all the land that is too weak to resist our neighbors." He believes that "for the benefit of all mankind, the American people should eventually drive Mexicans out of the sparsely populated northern provinces" and take Indians away from other parts of the west.

It was very popular in Roosevelt's time. At the same time, it was frederick Jackson turner who put forward this explanation, and he gained lasting academic attraction. Most notably, in the article "The Importance of Frontier in American History" published by 1893, Turner gave the western expansion a central position in American history. He believes that this not only expands the territory of the country, but also shows the individualistic and democratic nature of its people and institutions. In Turner's view, the process of moving westward separates Americans from their European ancestry (in Turner's imagination, the word "American" only refers to people of European ancestry). From what Turner and his contemporaries called "the Great American West", American exceptionalism and the roots of American greatness were formed.

Later, historians in the western United States got inspiration from Turner's "frontier theory". Some people also echoed this point. Someone expanded it. Someone modified it. However, in the first half of the 20th century, few people tried to challenge Turner's belief about the fundamental importance of the frontier to American development, and few people questioned the improvement of American western expansion.

Has changed in the past half century. * * * The Vietnam War and the spread of various civil rights movements "westward expansion is beneficial to the country and all participants." This proposition makes western art and western artists serve their destiny, which is an ideology that guides painters and sculptors, while photographers try to cover up "the problems brought by the westward advancement".

The exhibition "Beauty of the West" is quite controversial. Some visitors confine their vitriol to the corridor. Others vented their anger in the comments. In response to the riots, several congressmen demanded that the museum be abolished because it allowed such blasphemy against western art. The campaign failed, but the planned national tour was cancelled.

In terms of propaganda, the most influential thing so far is the change of views on the history of the western United States registered in the film. The social trend of thought in the 1960s rewrote western history, reinterpreted the meaning of still images, and dramatically subverted the art of film ... For decades, "westerns" have dominated Hollywood. From the 1920s to 1950s, "epic films" and "westerns" flooded cinemas and dominated American TV programs in the 1950s, but in the 1960s, traditional and heroic westerns began to lose their appeal to the public. The output is much less. Those types of conventions that are often subverted, about heroes and villains, are only violent and obvious fate. Good guy, bad guy and ugly guy in Sergio Leone (1966), fistful of dollars in sam peckinpah (1969), Little Giant in Arthur Penn (1970) and Lady McCabe and Miller in robert altman (1970). Dancing with Wolves has gained the upper hand at the box office and the Oscar, but in the past 25 years, the best historical theory is not just the subversion of the ancient myth about the old west. An important direction is to restore and connect what happened in the western United States with other parallel places and processes. Historians in the western United States do not separate the roots of the United States and Europe from what Juettner said, but emphasize the unitary system between the United States and other "colonists". The construction of "settler colonialism" has become the key to put the American experience in a broader global context. Deprived of the uniqueness of the American West, historians have adopted the lens of "ethnic cleansing" or worse, "genocide", "in order to understand the expansion, mass displacement and sometimes even destruction of Native Americans."

The most shocking western history written by KDSP in the past 25 years faces the complexity of the past and the present. First of all, we should realize how deep the past is, understand the history that began long before the West became an American, and understand the diversity and vitality of Native Americans before the arrival of European colonists. From archaeology and other aspects, historians have now discovered a rich pre-colonial world and complex societies, which continued to exist after Indians met people from Europe and Africa, weaving a fascinating new understanding of how indigenous people and new immigrants met and merged. The new history shows that Indians not only colonized Europe, but also expanded themselves in some parts of North America. These most wonderful passages in the latest history of the West describe in detail how long-term interaction has led to racial leapfrogging and ethnic cleansing. Most obviously, this kind of communication produced mixed-race offspring, but historians also trace back to the extensive cultural exchanges that led to mixed-race. This integration has always been a symbol of American western culture in the 20th century, but now it is 2 1 century.

The history of the western United States, like the art of the western United States, is not what it used to be. There is no doubt that many people lament these changes and miss the myths that western history (and western art) once admired. However, we don't need a one-dimensional story if we want to understand the various developments in the West and figure out how we can live together and sustainably in this region. On the contrary, we need to respect the past history and art, just as historians and artists must do, and we also need to challenge our complexity in wrestling.