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‘Red Dead Redemption’ Allows Me an Escape From the Mundane
The endless allure of the Wild West
Recently my wife pointed out that I’m something of a hypocrite.
“Why do you play a cowboy game when you hate country music?”
It was a quiet Saturday morning. We were sitting on the couch, together but lost to our own interests. She looked up at the screen from time to time, usually whenever there was a lot of neighing. A horse will bring my girl to the yard, or at least the TV.
Her question snapped me out of half-dreams in which I’m a rugged outlaw who stops for little old ladies but shoots people dead for raising their voice. I reined up — literally — and looked at her. “What?” I asked, even though I’d heard her clearly. Sometimes the only valid response is to question the question itself.
It didn’t go down any easier the second time.
“Those are not the same things!” Beyond the bare facts — Red Dead Redemption, and its sequel, are self-evidently awesome, and country music is clearly not — the Western has nothing to do with country music. Other than maybe country music wishing it was a Western.¹
This was one of those mild disagreements doomed to go unresolved, one that could easily spiral into something bigger if we decided to be…
