In my first class today, only one out of the whole class had ever even heard of Dances With Wolves, let alone seen it. But to be honest, I kind of envy a generation who hasn’t had to watch that mess.
In my second class, I had them read a P.N. Limerick article (that summarized her book The Legacy of Conquest) and carried on about the watershed in American western history/historiography Legacy had been. The students are just, like, duhhhhhh, we know the west sucked for most people, and was dominated by corporate interests, and was dependent on the federal government, and was overrun with racists, and that individuals got squashed and did not prosper. Cowboys? What are you even talking about? The whole thing was like a teenager telling their parents how uncool they are, gawwwhhhh. These people never fail to amaze me in both their cluelessness and their intelligence.
Oh, and I reenacted Val Kilmer's "I'm yer huckleberry" line from Tombstone. They thought it was gross.