Western (genre)

The Western is an American fiction genre seen in film (when it can also be known as an "oater"), television, radio, literature, painting and other visual arts. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the later half of the 19th century in what became the Western United States (known as the American Old West), but also in Western Canada and Mexico. Closely related to the Western is the gaucho literature of Argentina, tales of the European settlement of the Australian Outback, and the charro or "rural" film genre in Mexico (see Golden Age of Mexican cinema). In film, the genre was most popular from the 1930s and into the 1960s, and the number of Westerns made since that time has declined significantly.