Dodge City as a “progressive” western

The film's historical subject is the modernization of the Frontier after the Civil War. The coming of the railroad means

the end of the old buffalo-hunting life of the Indians and the development of the ranching and trail-driving business. The

small Indian-fighting outpost of Fort Dodge will become a city where vigorous western productivity meets the Eastern

capitalist and consumer. This nascent metropolis will also be the site of an ideological confrontation: the overt antagonism

between northern and southern veterans of the Civil War; the political opposition between the forces of corruption and

civic virtues; and the ideological opposition between the frontier principles of rugged individualism and masculine violence,

and the refinements of a civilization presided over by women. Through the course of the narrative these oppositions will

be resolved and a new and more perfect western society created.

from Richard Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation: the Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America (New York, 1993), pp. 288-89.