1960: Why do men like westerns? They're Outlets for Suppressed Homicidal Urges, Say the Experts

by Norma Lee Browning
1960 June 26 Express and News 
      Chicago - In the good old days a man with a bossy wife could retreat to the woodshed and relieve his pentup hostilities by chopping logs. Today he unwinds via television. 
      In case you maybe have wondered -- and who hasn't? -- why the modern American male is so mesmerized by those 30-minute morsel of violence, sadism, and [sublitercy] known as "adult" westerns, here it is: they're outlets for men's secret suppressed desires. 
      .... In other words of Prof. Erie Wolf, cultural anthropologist at the University of Chicago: "You just can't go around shooting people you don't like. But on television you can."  
      ..."The TV westerns is the great American folk myth," he says, "an escape into a glorious world, however ludicrous, of moral simplicity where things are either black or white, right or wrong, and problems are solved by direct action and violence."  
1960 June 26 Express and News 

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