Originally Posted by
Vakanai
Never said it should be ignored, just that we can't judge the genre going forward on it, or even old films solely on it.
1. It doesn't matter. Superheroes had their racist and sexist elements too. And I don't see what the modern people thing has to do with anything. We don't need a time machine to cast people to play westerns you know - and it's highly fictionalized, so we don't need to write characters as racists like everyone was back in those days either.
2. And westerns (the film genre) wasn't founded on racism. Yes, it had racist elements in the beginning, but it isn't a foundational pillar. There's a difference between foundational elements and secondary/unrelated elements. It was racist not because that's inherent to the genre, but because it was inherent to Hollywood and America for most of film making history, especially during the first 50-75 years or so - which just happened to be when the Western was the most popular genre.