Genres changing over time

The Western
The Western genre has a mythical context. This is seen to be very fascinating to the film audience, purely because the setting is based in the past, meaning that the rules and laws of modern society would be different due to the isolated places used in the mise-en-scene.
Fights between good and evil were seen in original western, this consists of a victorious, heroic, cowboy who would restore the audiences' faith in humanity.
Because of the monstrous amount of westerns that were made during the 20's and 30's, there has been a series of changes and adaptations  which have occurred in its cinematic history.

1. A structure which came from the 19th century of melodramatic literature, including a victorious hero and a villain who menaces an damsel heroin.
2. Action stories. Involving chases and violence which would be appropriate to a particular place, e.g American western in the 19th century.
3. The opening of the frontier and the introduction of the history of the migration westwards signalled in films like The Covered Wagon and The Iron House both which where created in 1924.
4. The idea of revemnge, which was see in the 1930's 

These were the 'premise' which developed westerns making them what they are now.
1939-Stagecoach was released (first modern western)
This included an outlaw protagonist and a prostotute which he assists.
1946 - my darling clementine
1956 - the searchers, this era was introduced as more 'stylised' westerns for example Johnny Guitar and high noon. which came from around 1954, these have been sited at being a more 'classical' period. This then was followed by the western genre going down hill in the late 1950's/ early 1960's. This caused the westerns to take action and find something new, a new life was then introduced in the mid 60's with the emergence of the 'spaghetti western'. This name was selected because of the films' Italian produces. In these films there were villains of a different ethnicity, usually Mexican. The protagonist was a lot less romantic, he would be more violent and would travel from town to town. The 'spaghetti westerns' were also more graphic in content with the social change and softening of censorship.
1970/80 and early 90's - there was a lack of westerns, They began to lose their appeal to the more contemporary audiences such as horror and scifi which had concerned the youth market. Towards the end of this period there were drastic measures to make more new westerns.
1988 - young guns was released. This included key conventions of western movies and included a modern, more popular soundtrack.
1990 - dances with wolves was released. This was the attempt to make westerns more politically correct, castive Nativive Americans in a positive way.
Soon after this the genre changed again, replaces white male hero's with 'black westerns' such as posse and 'feminist westerns' like bad girls.
1992 - unforgiven commented on the american government in office.

This shows how much a genre can change in order to keep an audience hooked so they can survive in the film industry.