the current cultural phase of wanting everything to be gritty and cynical and dreary with morally bankrupt characters and no aspirational values
You say that, but yet the most popular characters of the times are Deadpool and the Guardians. There's nothing dreary about them, and their morals and values are staunchly liberal-libertarian.
They're only cynical and gritty in the sense that they accept revenge as a moral imperative, which frankly was the norm for most of human civilization until Doc Spock and the french intellectuals started us down the SJW path.
Which was incidentally right around the time the western died as a genre. The western hero is ALWAYS an anti-hero, always believes that killing for justice is good, and is exceptional because they are an anti-hero in a world where villains take advantage of the genuinely good.
the current cultural phase of wanting everything to be gritty and cynical and dreary with morally bankrupt characters and no aspirational values
You say that, but yet the most popular characters of the times are Deadpool and the Guardians. There's nothing dreary about them, and their morals and values are staunchly liberal-libertarian.
They're only cynical and gritty in the sense that they accept revenge as a moral imperative, which frankly was the norm for most of human civilization until Doc Spock and the french intellectuals started us down the SJW path.
Which was incidentally right around the time the western died as a genre.
the current cultural phase of wanting everything to be gritty and cynical and dreary with morally bankrupt characters and no aspirational values
You say that, but yet the most popular characters of the times are Deadpool and the Guardians. There's nothing dreary about them, and their morals and values are staunchly liberal-libertarian.
They're only cynical and gritty in the sense that they accept revenge as a moral imperative, which frankly was the norm for most of human civilization until Doc Spock and the french intellectuals started us down the SJW path.