Ever heard of cowboy diplomacy? My good friend Wikipedia defines it as, "the resolution of international conflicts through brash risk-taking, intimidation, military deployment, or a combination of such tactics. It is criticized as stemming from an overly-simple, dichotomous world view."

[Pretend I have the ability to insert a montage of politicians - mainly Trump, Bush, Obama, and the Clintons — talking about deploying more troops, carpet-bombing the Middle East, approving of Brexit and promising to withdraw from international trade agreements.]

Sound familiar?

Something we see too often in today's politics is this overtly individualistic rhetoric, especially from prospective representatives on the campaign trail. Speeches often promise loud and clear how this one person will save the nation, how this one nation will save the globe.

Trump was lauded by many of his supporters for being the loudmouthed, confident, gun-toting superhero that America needed to drain the swamp in Washington.

"What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate."

A lot of Trump's own rhetoric seems to reflect the reality-TV-world that he came from - a world of "winners and losers," rather than all members coming together as a community to understand each other's viewpoints, educate the ignorant, and collectively defeat the world's ills. Instead, we seem to be drawn to politics much in the same way we feel drawn to cinema: it fuels our desire to watch combative conflict and ballardize the hero so we can ultimately align ourselves with the winner, while having a convenient scapegoat to pin all our remaining problems on.

So, after a thoughtful, hour-long brainstorming session with Wellesley cinema professor Wini Wood, one of many points that came up was the prevalent Hollywood narrative of the Western, and how it pervades American life long after the credits roll.

Take a look at today's blockbuster posters. What do they all have in common?

Wood: "It’s overwhelming when you see this kind of iconography everywhere, and your generation goes to [these films] in droves. All we have right now are the comic book hero, superhero movies where we believe that a super-powered hero is going to save the universe, save the nation. And it’s really just the Western revisited all over again."

Professor Wood tracks the rise of one pervasive American narrative to the dawn of the Western film genre: “The cowboy movie was about the rugged individualist coming in and taking the West, the lone hero who comes in and saves civilization from evil things.” After all, the American Dream calls for "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps." And, when you picture the ideal Individualist, you'll probably see a white, American male anyway.

These 'Western' movies tell stories of the American Old West in the latter half of the 19th century - basically every Clint Eastwood movie. The themes often revolve around the conquest of the wilderness, "frontier justice," and revenge à la wild gunfights. This genre was undone in 1971 by Robert Altman's revisionist film "McCabe and Mrs. Miller," a Western that subverted nearly every convention of the genre: a mysterious gunfighter arrives in a town and establishes a brothel consisting of three unattractive prostitutes, and the people of the town come together to put out a chapel fire while the hero dies alone in the snow.

Wood: "And there were no more Westerns made after "McCabe and Mrs. Miller," because it was so potent, in this subconscious and subliminal way, of unpacking that narrative."

But, unsurprisingly, the spirit of the Western was quickly resurrected as the rugged space cowboy in "Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope" in 1977.

So, is there any way to truly combat this?

Wood: "We have to either unpack it and dismantle it, to get Hollywood to make movies that are more interesting than these. What would be the kinds of stories that could subversively undo this prevalent narrative, and supply something more compelling and more interesting...it may mean working with the grain, or making something completely new and exciting."

We must demand fresher, more diverse stories of Hollywood, and give more support to independent film companies by showing up to see their films (such as "Carol") - and show the people who make the movies that we don't want such stark division, or bland typecast actors. We have to question why certain archetypal patterns - such as the evil foreigner trope that reflects our country's xenophobia, or how powerful women are ultimately morally corrupt - resonate so powerfully with us.

This might be one of many reasons why millennials such as myself, who actively demand more diverse storytelling, so strongly supported Bernie Sanders and his talk of "Kumbaya." However, we need Hollywood to participate in undoing this prevalent narrative as well; subversive movies still need to be mainstream and high quality in order for it to have the necessary effect that "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" once did.

Wood: "[The self-preservation of American masculinity and individualism] is deeply embedded in the ideology of the Western, and you see it resurrected in the rhetoric of George Bush - he uses the language of the cowboy hero, “Let’s bring them back dead or alive,” he says. There's also certain aspects of Christian ideology - “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” - that come up a lot. It’s also the ideology that Kim Jon Il ascribes to, who grew up watching Westerns and dressing as a cowboy. It’s pervasively infiltrated the way the politician and national leader thinks of himself."

If we're not critical enough of the movies we choose to watch, it's very possible we'll be doomed to watch history repeat itself.

[Read our full article on Escape Artistry]