The Western is a fiction genre seen in film, television, radio, literature, painting and other visual arts. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the later half of the 19th century in what became the Western United States (known as the American Old West or Wild West), but also in Western Canada and Mexico. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of the Alamo in 1836 but most are set in the aftermath of the American Civil War and before the end of the Indian Wars at Wounded Knee in 1890, though there are several "late Westerns" (e.g., The Wild Bunch) and some are set as late as the Mexican Revolution in 1913.

Westerns often portray how primitive and obsolete ways of life confronted modern technological or social changes. This may be depicted by showing conflict between natives and settlers or U.S. Cavalry, or by showing ranchers being threatened by the onset of the Industrial Revolution. American Westerns of the 1940s and 1950s emphasise the values of honor and sacrifice. Westerns from the 1960s and 1970s often have more pessimistic view, glorifying a rebellious anti-hero and highlighting the cynicism, brutality and inequality of the American West.