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The Searchers (1956) has been acclaimed not just as one of John Ford’s greatest films, and not just as one of the greatest Westerns, but as one of the greatest films of all time. This praise is all the more surprising given that The Searchers is a profoundly illiberal and even “racist” movie, which means that most fans esteem it grudgingly rather than unreservedly.
I think The Searchers is absurdly overrated, for it is far from flawless. But it is still a great work of art that plumbs deep themes and stirs deep feelings. It should be seen by everyone, even people who generally don’t watch movies. (Spoiler Alert: I am going to talk about the whole story, so bail out here if you want to see the film with fresh eyes.)
Although The Searchers is set in Texas in 1868, Ford’s treatment goes beyond the historical to the mythic and epic. The movie begins in a dark room. A door opens on a magnificent Monument Valley landscape. The silhouette of a woman appears in the doorway. As she steps forward, into the light, she moves from being two-dimensional to three. It is like watching a specter, a shade, taking on an embodied form. It has the feel of a creation myth.
But what is being created? The answer seems to be civilization, and it is a very different myth than the one told by liberal social contract theorists. The opening also suggests that the interior realm of family and domesticity is less real than the exterior world. It certainly proves to be more vulnerable and less harsh.
A rider approaches across the desert. This is a lawless land, where every stranger is regarded with apprehension. The wife is joined on the porch by her husband, then her daughters, then her son, all scanning anxiously. The figures are shot from a low angle. They move with dignity. They barely speak. The whole feel is monumental, epic.
As the rider comes closer, they recognize him as a long-lost member of the family: Ethan Edwards, played with searing charisma by John Wayne. After eight years of fighting, first with the Confederacy then as a mercenary for the Emperor Maximilian in Mexico, the wanderer Ethan has come to the ranch of his brother Aaron, Aaron’s wife Martha, and their three children, Lucy, Ben, and Debbie.
Ethan clearly aims to stop fighting and make a home there. He gives his sabre to Ben and a Mexican medal to Debbie. He presents Aaron with a substantial amount of money to “pay his way.” But Ethan’s attempt to reenter society and enjoy the fruits of peace does not last a single day, for there’s trouble afoot.
The next morning, Ethan goes off with a group of Texas Rangers to recover the stolen cattle of a neighboring rancher, Lars Jorgenson. When they find the cattle slaughtered with Comanche lances, Ethan concludes that the cattle theft was a diversion to pull the men from the ranches, leaving them vulnerable to attack. The party splits up, riding to defend both the Jorgenson and Edwards ranches.
When Ethan arrives back at his brother’s ranch, he finds it in flames. Aaron, Ben, and Martha are dead. Lucy and Debbie have been abducted by Comanches. After a brief funeral, Ethan and a group of Rangers go in search of the girls.
After a battle with the Indians, the party splits in two. Most of them return home, while Ethan continues the search accompanied by Lucy’s fiancé Brad Jorgenson (Harry Carey, Jr.) and Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter), an orphan who was adopted by the Edwards and considers the kidnapped girls his sisters. When Ethan finds Lucy dead, a distraught Brad charges into the Indian camp and is killed. The searchers are thus reduced to Ethan and Martin, so we need to pause a bit and examine both characters.
Who is Ethan Edwards? He is a warrior and a wanderer in wild spaces: the space between warring civilizations and the space between civilization and savagery. He lives in the state of nature, not civil society. In the state of nature, there is no overarching power to enforce the peace, so a man needs to know how to protect himself. Thus Ethan knows how to thread his way between hostile peoples, negotiate treaties with enemies, strike bargains with crooks, and deploy both trickery and violence in a fight. He knows Spanish, Comanche, and probably some other Indian tongues.
Ethan fought on the side of the Confederacy out of loyalty. (He won’t swear another oath to the Texas Rangers.) Once the Confederacy was defeated, he fought for the Emperor Maximilian for money. But war is a young man’s game. Ethan is getting too old for it. Thus, he wants to take his earnings and make a home for himself with his brother’s family in Texas.
Ethan is a dark character. He has done dark deeds. He fits “any number of warrants,” which doesn’t necessarily mean he is guilty of anything. But the local Rangers would rather be his friend than his enemy. On two occasions, the Ranger Captain Clayton chooses to ignore Ethan’s possible crimes because they need his help. They sense that Ethan is like them: a guardian of peace and family life, even though he has known precious little of them himself.
For instance, when a fight breaks out at a wedding at the Jorgenson home, Ethan shoos Mrs. Jorgenson inside because he doesn’t think a woman should see such things. When Ethan finds the bodies of Martha and Lucy, both of whom were presumably raped, he spares others the sight. He has peered into the abyss so that others don’t have to.
Ethan doesn’t wish to remain in the state of nature. But he understands that he may never see civil society. He may have to give his life so that others will see it. He may have to do things that render him unfit for civil society, so that others can enjoy it in innocence and peace.
At one point, Mrs. Jorgenson says, “A Texican’s nothin’ but a human man out on a limb . . . This year and next and maybe for a hundred more. But I don’t think it’ll be forever. Someday this country will be a fine good place to be . . . Maybe it needs our bones in the ground before that time can come . . .”
Texas is a pagan land that demands human sacrifices before it becomes a decent place to live. This is why Ethan interrupts the Christian burial of his family to begin the search for the killers. Texas is not yet ready for such niceties. It needs more blood and bones, and Ethan is ready to lay down his own.
Ethan is a man in a hurry. The proximate reason for haste is that with each passing minute, the girls are closer to rape, torture, and death. The deeper cause is that he’s over the hill, so his time is short. Thus he’s rude and abrasive. He treats weakness with contempt. He is focused on action and has no time for social niceties. He is cold and ruthless, using Martin as bait to trap and kill the treacherous merchant Futterman. He is also increasingly savage. He shoots out the eyes of a dead Indian, because mutilated men “can’t enter the spirit land” but must “wander forever between the winds.” He scalps another Indian corpse for the same reason. He even slaughters buffalo simply to starve the Indians.
Ethan’s search for Debbie quickly takes on the quality of an obsession. He barely knew the girl. She was eight years old when he returned from eight years of wandering. But she is all that remains of his family, and he searches for her for five years, long after most men would have given up. He is Odysseus, who returns home for a day, then becomes Captain Ahab.
There’s a lot to dislike about Ethan Edwards, but he’s the only man who could have rescued Debbie. As in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Ford wants to confront liberals with the fact their civilization could not have been built without illiberal men and illiberal deeds.
The central hangup of most critical writing about The Searchers is that Ethan is a “racist,” even a “virulent” one. “Racism” is a recently invented sin, a bogus moral concept that means hating people “for no reason whatsoever” except the fact that they are “different.” A racist, in the words of Jim Goad, means “a vicious loser who hates people with different continental ancestry . . . merely to compensate for being an inadequate psychopath and to avoid taking responsibility for his own problems.” Racists, we are always told, are “ignorant,” for apparently to know Indians or blacks or Mexicans is to love them.
Ethan clearly isn’t a racist in this sense. First of all, he is not ignorant of the Comanches. He knows their language and their myths. He respects them as enemies. He clearly hates them. But he doesn’t hate them because they are merely “different” or because he is a “loser.” He hates them because of their treachery, violence, and cruelty. They butchered his family after raping the women, something they did to countless other white families.
Critics are also exercised over the fact that Ethan would rather kill Debbie than allow her to stay with the Indians. Surely this is an expression of irrational “racism” and “hate.” But is it? Plan A was always to rescue Debbie. At one point during their search, Ethan and Marty encounter some white women and girls rescued from Comanche captivity. They have clearly been driven mad by the experience. “Hard to believe they are white” says their rescuer. Ethan says, “They’re not white anymore.” Arguably, this is a fate worse than death. At this point, Ethan formulates Plan B: to kill Debbie if he can’t rescue her.
Ethan also knows that once Debbie reaches puberty she will be raped. Maybe she will be killed then. Maybe she will be made into a squaw. Ethan would rather die than suffer that fate. He wants to spare Debbie from it. This isn’t racism and hate. It is an act of love in a terrible situation.
Martin Scorsese was deeply influenced by The Searchers. (His 1967 movie Who’s That Knocking at My Door includes a discussion of the film.) In Taxi Driver, Scorsese modeled the characterization of the pimp, Sport (played by Harvey Keitel) on Scar. Scorsese saw the relationship of Sport and the teenage prostitute Iris (Jodie Foster) as an exploration of how someone like Scar would establish his hold on a captive like Debbie. (Screenwriter Paul Schrader originally made the pimp black, which was true to life. The producers thought it would be too “racist” to have a black pimp, so Scorsese had a Jewish actor play him as an Indian.)
The Searchers is based on Alan Le May’s 1954 novel of the same name, which is based on the true stories of James W. Parker and Brit Johnson, both of whom searched for years to rescue female kin kidnapped by Indians. In the novel, the conflict is neatly racial: whites versus Indians. But in Ford’s movie, these neat lines are blurred in two important cases.
First, Ford makes Martin Pawley one-eighth Cherokee. He first appears riding a horse bareback, then neatly dismounts while it is still trotting. He’s also late to dinner. Later we see that he is highly emotional and impulsive, although he is still a teenager. When he is a little older, he does not fight “fair” in a fist-fight. All this suggests that he has a bit of Indian wildness in him.
Ethan rescued Marty as a child after his parents had been killed by Comanches. He was adopted by Aaron and Martha and regards the Edwards as family. When Ethan sees him, he blurts out that he could be mistaken for a half-breed. In truth, he cannot. Played by Jeffrey Hunter, Marty has strikingly handsome Caucasian features, with a dark tan—but no darker than Aaron—and flashing, pale blue eyes. Ethan also rejects Martin calling him “Uncle Ethan,” because they are not blood kin.
Second, the Comanche chief Scar is played by a German actor, Henry Brandon. Like Marty, he has handsome white features, a dark tan, and pale blue eyes.
I don’t think Ford was trying to lessen the racial conflict in the movie so much as to create additional dramatic conflicts. Blood loyalties drive the whole story: Ethan wants to avenge his dead kin and rescue or kill Debbie. Scar wants to avenge his two dead sons killed by whites. But there are other loyalties. Marty is not blood kin to the Edwards, but he was raised by them and feels loyalty to them, a tie that Ford brings into sharper relief with a taint of Indian blood. Scar, by contrast, has white blood and Indian loyalties.
Ethan himself recognizes that blood kinship is not everything. The rescued whites who have gone mad in captivity may be racially white, but they no longer belong to white society. Which opens the disturbing possibility that some whites can embrace “going native.” When Ethan and Marty finally find Debbie, she claims that the Comanches are now her people, but she also tries to save Marty and Ethan from them. When Ethan sees she has gone native, he tries to shoot her. It looks like he will shoot Marty as well to get her. But he is wounded by a Comanche arrow.
When Ethan and Marty reach safety, Marty tends to Ethan’s wound, and Ethan informs him that he is disowning Debbie and leaving his property to Marty. Clearly, he is giving up the search. Earlier, Ethan offered Marty some of his property to settle down and marry Laurie Jorgenson. Clearly, he doesn’t think a taint of Cherokee blood makes him a bad match for Laurie. Blood matters a great deal in this world, but so does loyalty, and sometimes it cuts across the lines of blood and race. When Laurie suggests that it might be better for Debbie to die than stay with the Comanches, it is obviously not because she has a horror of miscegenation. Instead, she has a horror of rape.
The characters of Marty and Laurie bring us to the main faults of The Searchers. They are incredibly annoying: less characters than caricatures. Perhaps these characters could have been saved by good acting, but both Jeffrey Hunter and Vera Miles as Laurie are committed over-actors. Marty is annoyingly whiny and buffoonish, and Laurie tends to be shrill. There is a great deal of childish flirting and bickering. It is often painful. But the worst thing about it is that Ford left nothing to accident. He clearly wanted it exactly this way, which is a terrible lapse of taste.
George Lucas claimed that Ethan’s return to the flaming ruins of the ranch influenced the scene in Star Wars where Luke Skywalker returns to the moisture farm after the Stormtroopers have destroyed it. Anakin Skywalker’s massacre of the Tusken raiders in Attack of the Clones clearly takes some inspiration from The Searchers as well. I wish to suggest the terrible possibility that Lucas also copied Luke’s annoying whining from Marty and the juvenile bickering between Luke, Leia, and Han from similar scenes in The Searchers.
The character of Marty does develop, making The Searchers something of a coming-of-age tale. Marty starts out as a callow teenager who is simply sucked into the vortex of Ethan’s maniacal charisma and drive. By the end of the film, he is man enough to defy Ethan then fight off Laurie’s would-be groom, a grinning, drawling buffoon about whom the less said the better.
The end of The Searchers baffles the critics who see Ethan as simply a racist hater. A short time after Ethan almost kills Debbie, Scar’s Comanches show up in Texas. The Rangers, along with the US Cavalry, go in search of them. Marty insists on going into the camp alone, to rescue Debbie. He kills Scar, then the Rangers and Cavalry attack. Debbie runs off. Ethan scalps Scar’s corpse, then goes looking for Debbie. She flees from him in terror, but he rides her down, dismounts, scoops her up, and says “Let’s go home, Debbie.”
What happened? Obviously, Ethan has had a change of heart. But it makes perfect sense. He wanted to kill Debbie when she wanted to stay with Scar. But Scar is now dead, his people will be killed or captured, and Debbie has run away from the Comanches. So she has had a change of heart too. Now Ethan can rescue her, so he does. But that was Plan A all along.
The final scene of The Searchers is utterly heartbreaking. Returning to the epic Laconicism of the opening, it is entirely without words. Ethan, Marty, and Debbie return to the Jorgenson ranch, where the family is gathered on the porch. Then we see through the door of the darkened Jorgenson home. Mr. and Mrs. Jorgenson welcome Debbie and take her inside while Ethan watches. Then Marty and Laurie pass Ethan and enter together. Two new families are forming. Ethan stands for a moment, then turns and walks away. He will not enter the domestic world that he has given everything to secure. He will wander between the winds and know no peace. Then the door closes, and we see only darkness.
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Solid review. Some comments:
It’s been suggested that Ethan might be the girl’s father.
On this point, note this exchange between Scar and Ethan:
Ethan: Scar, eh? It’s plain to see how ya got your name.
Scar: You, Big Shoulders. {Then, pointing to Marty] The young one – He-Who-Follows. [Scar’s name for Martin.]
Ethan: You speak pretty good American, for a Comanch. Someone teach ya?…
Scar: (echoing Ethan’s words) You speak good Comanch. Someone teach you?
Ethan is implying that Scar learned English (“American”) from a White female captive, but Scar’s rejoinder suggests that Ethan might have also learned the Comanche tongue from a Comanche girl.
Scorsese on THE SEARCHERS:
Video Link
Who’s That Knocking At My Door (1967) – Everyone Should Like Westerns
Video Link
Video Link
Great review!!!
I believe that the movie’s plot was influenced by the life of Cynthia Ann Parker (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynthia_Ann_Parker), who was kidnapped at ten years of age and adopted by the Commanche, became the mother of the Commanche chief, Quanah Parker, and was so thoroughly adapted to Commanche life that she eventually starved herself to death after being “rescued” and forcibly returned to White society.
I agree that Marty and Lori are the weakest characters. The idea of copying that sort of whiny Behavior strikes me as absurd, but Lucas surely did make Luke a whiny character. I find the finest a serious distraction The Searchers and the Star Wars trilogy.
The behavior of Ethan and Martha suggests that there was something between them and her husband appears to suspect the same. It was confirmed when Ethan returns to the burning Edwards home and cries out desperately for Martha, rather than his brother. I was not aware that Ethan had served as a mercenary for the Emperor Maximilian. I assumed he had been in California, as Mose Harper attested and that the fresh-minted gold coins he had were ill-gotten. Ford’s penchant for bathos is a weakness of his directing style and the whiny, clownish behavior of Marty and Lori are an example of same.
One of the greatest scenes in the history of cinema. Looking at it, I’m struck by how it suggests science fiction, as though the homestead were a spaceship, with the door/hatch opening out onto an alien world:
Video Link
And then we have the other immortal scene. Ethan is a kind of savage. As numerous critics have pointed out, Scar and Ethan are quasi-mirror images of one another (TAXI DRIVER underlines the doppelgänger theme by actually having Travis adopt a Mohawk haircut). But his savagery is in defense of home and hearth, of civilization itself. But then we have the tragic ending, where Ethan is denied the very things for which he fights:
Video Link
Good review!
Many reviewers talking about Ethan’s “racisms” have blinded themselves over the fact that he has obviously relatable reasons for it, even though it has become a consuming obsession that sometimes makes him appear almost insane.
About the savage ways of the Comanche see this excellent book:
https://counter-currents.com/2020/05/s-c-gwynnes-empire-of-the-summer-moon/
Yes, there are subtle hints in the beginning that Ethan is or has been in love with Martha and it follows that Debbie may probably be his own daughter.
Lori is the best. She makes the movie. Vera Miles shines in that movie.
I’ve always been on the fence whether the framing shots were brilliant or hyper-artificial.
I mean, does that look like the sort of place, where someone would build a wooden cabin? Not to me, and Monument Valley has certainly been used tastelessly and discordantly in other realms, like the TV show Game of Thrones.
But I guess you have to suspend disbelief and accept it as one would accept a painting, with a certain theme.
An interesting historical fact: The Indians did capture many White women and children since colonial times. When they were returned by force to their White families (I imagine many Indians were slaughtered in the process), some snuck back to the Indians the first chance they had. The women were treated as equals by the Indians, while they were often little more than servants to their domineering husbands in White civilization, with no legal rights.
When Ethan rode off into the sunset, after searching 5 years for Debbie, I’ve often wondered if she’d sneak back to her adopted Indian family when she became disillusioned with the hard, tedious work of ranch life, isolated and miles from the nearest town.
Btw, Trevor Lynch provided the real names of the other main cast members, but failed to mention the actress who played teenaged Debbie – the luscious Natalie Wood. Quite an oversight, in my opinion.
I mean, does that look like the sort of place, where someone would build a wooden cabin?
I thought the same thing. The homesteaders built their cabins where there was arable land.
That cabin is surrounded by sand.
But I have seen some pioneer houses in pretty strange places.
Debbie was played by both Natalie and Lana Wood, both of whom were too young at the time to be described with propriety as “luscious.”
If a white woman returns to her abusive white husband, feminists treat it as a pathology. If a white woman returns to a non-white rapist, that is a feminist morality tale and a lesson to the white man.
Has feminism always been more about attacking whites than defending women?
The women were treated as equals by the Indians, while they were often little more than servants to their domineering husbands in White civilization, with no legal rights.
Treated by equals? Did they teach you that in public school? What legal rights did Indian women have? The right to get up and cook?
Fans old enough to see the movie when it came out did not esteem it “grudgingly” – back in the before time we did not view every god damn thing through the lens of racial identity….
Video Link
Fairly good example of that shown in “Duel at Diablo”, James Garner….
Then Garner’s character finds the woman he rescued husband had killed Garners Indian Wife….
Even with Revenge brewing, he declined to end the guys suffering from what the indians had
done……
I would argue that they are both brilliant and hyper-artificial.
I’m afraid that you’re being a tad too Rousseauvian. Here’s a book that provides a less rose-colored portrait:
A Fate Worse Than Death: Indian Captivities in the West, 1830-1885
And here’s a little anecdote describing what happened after the Comanches attacked one white family in 1836:
https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/howard-sarah-creath
If by “treated as equals” you mean “beaten and tortured by the females of the tribe”, then you would be correct. Captured White females were often little more than slaves of both the labor and sex variety.
If a white woman returns to her abusive white husband, feminists treat it as a pathology. If a white woman returns to a non-white rapist, that is a feminist morality tale and a lesson to the white man.
Has feminism always been more about attacking whites than defending women?
It seems so which merely reinforces the theory that feminism was born from White women that had limited access to White men. Their short to non-existent list of potential mates is the driving factor. I suspect during nomadic times it was much easier for women to gain access to better mates even if for a night.
The White feminist feels dejected and lashes out at Whites in general.
It is also quite telling as to how they treat women that want to raise their children. They are derided by feminists and told they should be in the workplace. Well who raises the children then? Daycare workers that have no familial connection to the children.
The balance should be in having women raise the children until they are school age.
In fairness, at the time of filming she was middle-aged. And when she passed at age 43, she had the skin of a prune.
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Seriously, enjoyed your review!
Easily one of my favorite movies; can’t recommend highly enough.
Lana was 8 years younger than Natalie, and played Debbie as a young girl. I wasn’t referring to her. Just for the record, Natalie, a star since childhood, was born in 1938, making her around 18 when “The Searchers” was released. “Rebel Without A Cause,” where she played the troubled James Dean’s girlfriend, came out one year earlier. Was she too young to be described as ‘luscious’ with ‘propriety?’ OK, will you settle for ‘beautiful?’
Sorry to nitpick, but Scar’s rejoinder to Ethan was not a direct or immediate replay, as it appears to be indicated in your post. His reply to Ethan about speaking pretty good “Comanch” comes several minutes after Ethan made his remark about Scar’s English.
I wish the author mentioned my own favorite character in the film–Mose Harper, played by the great Hank Worden.
I guess by your logic, O.J. Simpson, a San Francisco street gang member and accomplished knife fighter in his youth, treated Nicole “like an equal” that night at her condo on Bundy Drive.
Sounds remarkably like the story of Hannah Duston. Hannah was abducted from Haverhill, MA, by Indians who came down from Quebec. Along the way, they killed her baby. Probably, a mistake…
There are a lot of local monuments to her. Apparently you can still see the axe and knife she used. I’ve only ever seen the statue of her in Boscawen, NH, on the spot where she supposedly got her revenge. It was put up during railroad days. Unfortunately, there was a motion to change the name of the park a year or two ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Duston
Can we please get a review of the White nationalist classic Dolemite (1975) ?
Its high esteem owes to several reasons. Auteur Theory, mainly established in America by Andrew Sarris who regarded John Ford very highly. Ford has been a pantheon among auteurs. Also, John Ford and the Western are considered quintessentially American, and the Western genre defined Classic Hollywood. Though Ford made several fine Westerns, THE SEARCHERS gets extra-nods for its high energy and darker themes. It is at once a Classic Western and something of an Alt-Western more in line with those of Anthony Mann. Then, there’s the French Influence. Jean-Luc Godard claims to have wept at the ending of THE SEARCHERS. Of course, the Auteur Theory(or Policy) originated in France, long an influential hub of cinephilia. Then, there was the Movie Brat influence. The American filmmakers who came of prominence in the 1970s got hooked on THE SEARCHERS. Why that one than other Ford Westerns? It was old-fashioned and revisionist. As such, it had double or triple meanings open to post-modern interpretation. It was as if Ford was channeling something of Sam Fuller & Elia Kazan in slight but significant deviation from his formula, much like Alfred Hitchcock with his batch of movies such as REAR WINDOW and VERTIGO.
THE SEARCHERS offered the nostalgia of Old Hollywood but also a bit of edginess to keep it relevant in the turmoil of the 60s and 70s. THE SEARCHERS, like VERTIGO, has been prized as a bridge between the old and the new, and also an indication of what Ford(and Hitchcock) might have been capable of with greater artistic freedom, available to later filmmakers like Sam Peckinpah and Robert Altman. THE SEARCHERS and VERTIGO represent the dawn of something new in American Cinema and yet also represent what was lost with the new freedoms(that could just as easily lead to indulgence as inspiration).
If Scorsese wandered into the darker regions of Fordom, Spielberg remained in the lighter spaces, as in THE WAR HORSE. So, when film critics, film scholars, and filmmakers vote for THE SEARCHERS, they aren’t necessarily saying it is really one of the top ten greatest movies. Rather, they are voting for what it represents in terms of genre, theme, and significance. It also explains why RASHOMON rates so highly in polls. Though Akira Kurosawa made several greater films, its cultural significance cannot be overstated. Its effect was electric at the time and introduced the world to Japanese cinema.
The Western genre is innately mythic, but THE SEARCHERS isn’t really big on myth. It’s more folkloric and picaresque. Ford generally wasn’t interested in Western genre conventions of the classic gunfighter and the final showdown that served as the basis of the myth. His Westerns were more about a group of men(and good deal of womenfolks) than about the Man. SHANE has mythic overtones. Pauline Kael derided the hero as Kid Galahad on horseback. And of course, Sergio Leone pushed the Western myth to the stratosphere with ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, which is really about giants than men.
Also, THE SEARCHERS doesn’t feel like an epic. It spans several years over large territory, but the treatment is usually intimate and episodic than grandiose and sprawling. Much of the movie is a like a road movie or buddy comedy with Ethan & Marty and furthermore takes place in interiors. The movies doesn’t try to be Large in the style of THE BIG TRAIL or THE BIG COUNTRY, let alone THE GIANT, a modern Western. There’s no air of Importance to the story-telling. The obvious use of studio sets in some scenes further undermines the sense of the epic. Also, Ethan’s brooding quality reminds us that he is more an embodiment of personal rage than a symbol of Western Expansion and Progress. He is an outlier.
Ford didn’t think in such big terms. That was the folkish Irish in him. She represents family, at most community. That’s what Ford really loved and felt at home in. Civilization is a big concept with highfalutin ideas and monumental architecture. Ford had no real feeling for that. Even his modern movies, like THE LAST HURRAH, are more about community and a culture. In this, Ford felt sort of Indian-ish. After all, the Anglos often characterized the Irish as brutish, tribal, kin-oriented, and backward. Irish were more about pride than principles. So, even as Ford romanticized the coming of community to the West, he sort of lamented the coming of Civilization that would do away with manly roles and womanly roles in a closeknit community.
Yes and No. There are Indian hostiles about for sure, and you never know when they might form a war party. But homestead is also part of an intimate community. Because there aren’t as yet many people in the area, it seems all the white folks know each other by name. They are awful neighborly and supportive of one another, unlike city folks who are mostly strangers unto one another. So, unless there’s Indian smoke and war drums, a figure on the horizon would likely be a familiar face and be welcomed into the house for coffee or broth.
Ethan still can’t get over the fact that the South lost. He has some of that Jesse James rage. If the Civil War were still on, he’d be in the fight as warring comes naturally to him. But by the time he reaches the home of his brother, he’s come to bitterly accept that the North won and there’s no way of turning back history. But deep down inside, he’s smoldering over the defeat. He will fight with the Yankees against the Indians, but his Southern folks have been defeated by the Yankees, much like the Indians are being beaten by the cowboys. Also, he sides with white folks against the Red Man, but he probably feels bitter that the Yankee North waged war to free the semi-savage ni**ers against white Southern folks. The Yankees wage race war against the Red Man but also waged war on Southern White Man to free the black man who, being stronger and donger, could whup the white man.
In one way, the Indians disrupt his chance for peace and stability. In another way, the crisis saves him from a life of slow dissolution as just another farmer or rancher(like Eastwood character in the beginning of UNFORGIVEN before he embarks on a quest). He has reason to be a man of action once again, and he truly feels at home on the move. It’s like the guy in TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A., while genuinely enraged over his partner’s death, uses the opportunity to get his nihilist kicks. War is tragic, but peace is tragic for the man of action. It’s like what Douglas MacArthur said about old soldiers just fading away. And the men in THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES, while glad to be back home, feel so humdrum. In war, they were heroes. And the military guy in WORLD TRADE CENTER(by Oliver Stone), though saddened by the terrorist attack, also welcomes it as godsend. He can finally do what his kind is meant for: To fight and destroy.
Ethan is functional in both. Unlike Travis Bickle who is a bundle of neuroticism, Ethan is an all-around personality who fits equally well in civil society and war zone. He can be sociable and chummy as well as fearsome and aggressive. He’s in his environment as a wandering ‘cowboy’, but people of the community feel comfortable when he’s around. He gets along with everyone while simultaneously standing his ground. In other words, Ethan is very much a John Wayne character. He’s sort of like Pat Buchanan. Pugnacious and always relishing a fight but also amiable and sociable with people of all stripes.
Age isn’t really a factor in the movie. Sure, Ethan isn’t a strapping young man anymore, but he’s still younger than some others in the community. And his reason for ‘coming home’ was the bitter acceptance of the lost Southern cause. He stopped fighting because the Southern defeat was total. It seems that, for a time, in Jesse-James fashion, he took part in revenge violence against Yankees and Carpetbagger types. But it became pointless as the South was lost. It was a bitter pill to swallow but swallow he did.
It’s mainly because Ethan is a tough guardian of self. It won’t be easy to force one’s will on a man like Ethan. While he’s useful as another white man against the Indians, there’s just enough outlaw in him to intimidate even a proud and tough man like Captain Clayton. Clayton knows Ethan will not come peaceably if he tries to arrest him. And other men would also think twice about arresting him. Besides, as fellow Texans who share the bitterness of the Southern defeat, they sort of empathize with Ethan’s vengeful feelings and actions against the Yankees. It’s like even law-abiding Southerners who didn’t take part in Jesse James’ criminality looked the other way because “it was for Dixie and nothing else”.
I think he was just clowning, a way for him to say, “You womenfolk pretend to be for home and hearth but love to see a good fight like anyone else.” So, his action was sarcastic than moralistic. It’s like when Laurie pleads with Ethan to stop the fight, he tells SHE started it, and soon enough she’s reveling in the sight of two men whupping each other over her.
That was more personal than anything else. He loved Martha and feels that Marty setting his eyes on her ravaged naked body would be more violation of her dignity. As for Lucy’s body, he kept that secret so that young Jorgenson wouldn’t lose his head. Just as he predicted, once Jorgenson hears what really happened, he burns with rage and rides off into an Indian camp and gets killed. In a way, Ethan despairs what happened but also understands Jorgenson died a manly death.
Ethan doesn’t try to protect Marty from the horrors of the world. He was certainly about to kill Debbie right in Marty’s presence. And when he shot the eyes out of the dead Indian, Marty was there as witness.
She was a school teacher, you know.
This is over-interpreting Ethan’s motives. He’s just impatient for action. He is not a high concept person who thinks in terms of history, meaning, and significance. He lives for what is his, whom he knows and cares for. The only larger loyalty he had was to the South and only because of the Civil War that divided the US into North vs South. Even if Ethan lived in a civilized setting without red savages, he would always be impatient and a bit impulsive, like the Burt Reynolds character in DELIVERANCE who is eager to reach the river. (Why? Because it’s there.) Or the Stampers of SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION. Ethan isn’t acting for civilization or even for Texas. The school teacher may see her life as part of something bigger, but Ethan lives for himself. Even his rescue mission for Debbie is really about his feelings, his sense of revenge, his personal vendetta.
With Lucy, that’s true. She is a young woman, therefore a sexual target for the Indians. But even as victim of rape and murder, she would still be a white woman who resisted and understood the horror of what had happened. But it’s different with Debbie. She wouldn’t be raped. She would be turned Indian. She would be accepted into the very fabric of Indian life, and her loyalties would be with the Indians. She wouldn’t be sexually violated but sexually initiated into Indian life to produce braves whom she would love as her own sons. In some ways, this is worse. It’s like turning Greek boys into Janissary who genuinely accepted Islam and fought for Allah against Christendom.
It’s like a white race-ist being killed by terrible Negroes is less tragic than white kids being turned into ‘woke’ enemies of their own race, essentially tools of vile Jewish Supremacists and ghastly Negroes.
Actually, cold-and-ruthless would have been less unnerving. What’s truly unsettling about the scene is Ethan’s casual camaraderie with Marty. He uses Marty as bait but treats him like a long-lost little brother. Of course, one could say Ethan was just playacting, but his fondness for Marty(by that time) seems as genuine as the ploy is calculating. Thus, Ethan has the odd combination of warmth and ruthlessness(which could be said of Ford himself, a real son of a bitch but not without a heart). And the crazy-funny thing is Ford did it with comic touch. It’s almost as if Marty passed the test of manhood with Ethan, much like Paulie saying, “You broke your cherry” to Henry in GOODFELLAS. It’s the warrior’s code. Warriors are a band of brothers but also expendable. It’s just the name of the game. Ford made a movie called THEY WERE EXPENDABLE. So, the more Marty comes to accept his expendability, the more he becomes valuable to Ethan who lives his life like it’s expendable.
Modern times make us wonder what is and isn’t savage. During World War I, the entire German civilian population was targeted for starvation with naval blockades. In the 1990s, Madeleine Albright and Bill Clinton, both products of elite institutions, implemented ruthless sanctions on Iraq that killed countless lives of children. And the US uses food-and-medicine as weapons in its Jewish-Supremacist war on Syria. So, Ethan’s ‘savagery’ was pure amateur stuff compared to what civilizations do.
In a way, the dichotomy of civilization vs savagery misses the mark. American Indians were more ‘war-like’ because there were many competing tribes. But there was peace within the tribe. So, if Indians fought more, it wasn’t because they were naturally more warlike or savage but because the sphere of peace was smaller for them. They belonged to a tribe surrounded by other tribes. Civilization has much wider sphere of peace but only because more peoples have been conquered and forced into the sphere. But when we ponder America’s war-making on nations and entities that remain outside, independent of, or hostile to the Globalist Empire, it’s utterly ‘savage’ and ruthless. Just ask the Syrians. Just ask the Russians and pro-Russian Ukrainians in the Donbass. Just ask the Palestinians hated by the Jewish supremacist masters of America. We speak of civilization conquering savagery in the American West, but civilization itself is an amalgam of conquered peoples. The Irish who collaborated under the Anglos to conquer the West had themselves been forced into Pax Anglo. Same with Negroes. 20% of cowboys were Negroes, and they too warred with Indians. They too had been forced into Pax Anglo. So, spread of civilization is often about the conquered conquering the ‘savages’ yet to be conquered.
She is kin, the child of his brother. Also, she’s the child of Martha, the woman Ethan loved. He lost Martha to Aaron, his own brother, and he’s not about to lose the child of Martha to the Indians. Because she was abducted when young, the real problem is she can be raised to love the Indians. With Lucy, the Indians had to force their lust on her. But with Debbie, she could put out to some brave out of love. That would be the greatest betrayal.
But the rescue is purely accidental, and her survival owes more to Marty. Despite all those years of wandering and searching, Ethan failed to rescue Debbie. He came close to killing her at one point, but Marty stood in his way.
The final raid on the Indian Camp wasn’t about Debbie. The cavalry was going to attack anyway, and she just happened to be there. And she could have easily gotten killed if the cavalry charged in. After all, plenty of Indian women and children were mowed down by the US cavalry. This is why Marty asks to sneak into the camp prior to the charge. And it is he who kills Scar. It wasn’t Ethan’s plan, but by this time, he’s gained enough respect for Marty, who’d grown into full manhood, to let him have his way.
There is a virulent quality about Ethan, but what is impassioned among whites is usually called ‘rabid’ and ‘virulent’ by Jews. Of course, when Jews exhibit similar passions, those are noble and inspiring.
Anyway, calling Ethan a ‘racist’ in the context of THE SEARCHERS seems pointless. I mean, who isn’t a ‘racist’ in that setting? The movie features a race war between whites and Indians. Every white person in THE SEARCHERS is for the eradication of Indian savages to make way for white communities. Even the North, which abolished slavery in the South, was totally committed to Westward Expansion and the ‘genocide’ of the Indians. Whether Mr. Futterman the merchant is Jewish or not, plenty of Jewish merchants sold rifles and ammo to cowboys to go kill Indians with. Perhaps, the difference is other whites just do it as a necessary evil whereas Ethan really feels the ‘racism’ as a kind of all-consuming obsession.
There are people like that. Some white supremacist types are indeed the biggest losers. They aren’t smart or strong. Their ‘racism’ is a crutch. They inflate their own egos and put down others to feel better about themselves. But this is true of all groups. Black supremacists tend to exaggerate ‘we wuz kangz’ BS to compensate for their loserdom in many fields.
Now, if ‘racism’ was meant in this way, it wouldn’t be a problem. The real problem is ‘racism’ now applies to ANY expression of white desire for self-preservation. So, any European nation that doesn’t want to be swamped by the Third World is ‘far right’ and ‘white supremacist’. Of course, Jews push this invective, but then, they demand that whites, who must forsake their own blood-and-territorial inheritance, totally support Jewish right of identity, pride, nationhood, and even hegemony over others.
It used to be ‘racist’ meant a nasty hateful jerk who hated just to hate. Now, a ‘racist’ is any white person who won’t totally grovel before Jews and Negroes. And even if they do grovel, they would still be charged of ‘white fragility’ or some nonsense. But the fact that so many whites fall for this goes to show they are idiots. It seems white greatness owed to great white elites leading the white masses. Most white people are only good for following like sheeple. Once white elites abandoned their roles as proudly race-ist white rulers/leaders, the white masses just turned to the new Jewish elites for answers, and it’s been ever increasing levels of cuckery.
Comanches are a fearsome bunch, but whites are invading Comanche territories. Comanches fight back like the Germanic barbarians did against the Romans. So, even though whites are understandably horrified by Comanche brutality, it’s hardly surprising that Comanches would react this way to white encroachment on their ancestral hunting and burial grounds.
The thing about Ethan is he’s a natural tribalist(though always wandering off into the turfs of other tribes). He feels most comfortable with us-versus-them view of the world. He even feels this way about whites. He surely killed lots of whites in the Civil War and even after the war. As a Southerner, he resented the North telling his kind what they can and can’t do. As a white man, he’s at war with Indians. As the brother of Aaron, he takes the massacre personally. If the Comanches had spared Aaron and Martha’s family and gone after the Jorgensons, Ethan’s anger wouldn’t have been sufficient to become a ‘searcher’. With Ethan, the personal is political and vice versa. The fact that he even fought in Mexico goes to show his main loyalty isn’t to country or principles. It’s about what feels right to him at the moment.
This is understandable. After all, Marty himself is shocked that Ethan would even dream of such thing. And Ford as storyteller is with Marty though privy to Ethan’s motives.
It’s a variation of ‘better dead than red’. It’s been a common theme for people to prefer death with dignity than defeat with humiliation. In STAGECOACH, a southern gentleman saves the last bullet for the white woman lest she be taken by the Indians. Indeed, this rule applied to men as well. Better to save the last bullet for yourself than be taken hostage by Indians who might torture you in the most horrible way. In MASADA, the Zealots choose to end their lives than surrender to the Romans. In DOWNFALL, the Goebbels’ wife would rather kill her kids than have them grow up as ‘slaves’ in defeated Germany. Many Japanese committed suicide than accept defeat in the Pacific War. A woman in13TH WARRIOR instructs another to kill the children than have them be taken as captives by the invaders if the defenses were to fail. The black woman in Toni Morrison’s BELOVED killed her child than have her grow up as a slave. If white men had abducted an Indian child and raised him to fight on the side of whites against Indians, the boy’s Indian father or uncle might have wanted him killed. Better than than have a red man fight for whites and kill fellow Indians.
Still, Ethan’s decision to kill Debbie is deeply disturbing because she is wholly innocent. She was taken as a child by the Indians and raised as one. Under the circumstances, she is what she is. To kill her seems over-the-top, more an expression and realization of Ethan’s personal rage than anything to do with justice or purpose. (Ethan would want to kill her even if or especially if she found happiness with the Indians.)
Debbie’s ‘betrayal’ isn’t something she chose. She was acculturated into another world that accepted her as one of its own. It’s like what happens to the white kid in THE EMERALD FOREST by John Boorman. He becomes a genuine Noble Savage. Now, in THE SEARCHERS, it’s revealed at the end that Debbie never fully gave herself to the Indians. She did grow fond of them and came to regard them as her people, but deep down inside, she still remained true to her real family, like the priest in THE SILENCE(Martin Scorsese) kept the flame alive deep in his heart under captivity in Japan.
The real question about Ethan’s decision to kill Debbie is, “Was it more for her sake or his sake?” I think it was more about his feelings, and on that note, it is wrong. It was his rage more than her interests that drove him to such extreme resolve.
No, the rape issue was with Lucy. The problem with Debbie is she will be wed to an Indian. This is worse than rape as far as Ethan is concerned. At least in rape, there is the act of resistance. It’s like the scene in THE BIRTH OF A NATION and THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS(by Michael Mann) where white women kill themselves than be taken by the Negro or Indian. White male ‘racists’ may be outraged by black-on-white rape but they are truly enraged by white-on-black love, aka Jungle Fever. At least the white rape victim resisted the Negro. In contrast, there is white lust and desire for the Negro in jungle fever. A white woman happily surrenders herself to black men. So, as horrible as Lucy’s death was, Debbie’s acculturation into Indian life seems worse to Ethan. She won’t be raped but may ‘freely’ give herself to some Indian brave she regards as her husband to serve and obey.
Ethan would rather die than suffer such fate? You mean Ethan would rather kill her than suffer the fate of knowing of her ‘betrayal’.
Whatever it is, can’t it be race-ist and hate and love and honor all rolled into one? Why think in binaries? Ethan hates what has become of Debbie, but that hate exists only because of his love for her. It’s often the case that the person you come to hate the most was the one you loved the most. You feel most betrayed when the person you trusted the most turns out the wrong way. The notion that Ethan, in his fit of rage and on the cusp of killing Debbie, was acting out of love is a bit of a stretch. There is love buried somewhere in Ethan’s heart but also unhinged rage and hatred. He’s not acting rationally based on questions of ethics(in terrible situations) but burning with fury of the moment.
The problem men face with women is twofold. In SEVEN SAMURAI, a woman abducted by bandits feels great shame, and later, face to face with husband, she would rather throw herself into the fire than have him look at her fallen self. (That peasant’s rage makes Ethan’s seem pale by comparison.)
In THE WILD BUNCH however, it’s not the case. When Angel asks the village elder if his woman Teresa was molested and taken, the old man says, “No, the bitchass ho ran off with General Mapache who has more blings to give her.” Later when Angel encounters Teresa at Mapache’s compound, she laughs at him, and he grows so enraged that he kills her.
Kurosawa idealized the woman-as-saint, whereas Peckinpah saw women as natural whores, true enough in STRAW DOGS.
Raped by Black Savage or Jungle Fever? Long ago, maybe sex between black male and white female had a good chance of involving rape. Today, most of them are products of jungle fever, and furthermore, it’s promoted by Jews and endorsed even by Conservatives and Donald Trump, the friend of Kim Kardashian.
TAXI DRIVER and HARDCORE, both written by Paul Schrader, reveal that the girls ran off on their own and chose to be whores than ‘chores’ and ‘bores’ in small town setting. And so many small town girls go to Hollywood and prefer to work as skanks than be stuck in nowhere-ville with the prospect of settling down with Average Joe. Even in PATTI HEARST where a white woman was really kidnapped and raped, she becomes one of the radicals soon enough.
Coen Brothers did a variation on this with the porn girl in THE BIG LEBOWSKI:
Video Link
And it is this question that haunts Ethan. How much of Debbie’s ‘betrayal’ was forced on her and how much of it was voluntary? Is she a mere victim or a willing accomplice with the Indians?
True, but his yammering about Ethan-the-‘racist’ is so sickening in that series he did on the Western. Sometimes, an Irishman
would do well to paint his house.
His entrance comes later to accentuate his ‘intrusion’ into the family setting as preferred by Ethan. The very sight of him triggers Ethan’s deep-seated hostility. Ethan’s reaction is ‘animal’, like when a dog instinctively feels wary of another creature. It takes time for Ethan’s memory(of having saved Marty) and the family’s affection for Marty to ease him back into the family setting. He knows with his mind that Marty is ‘part of the family’, but his heart remains wary of him. He feels tolerance but not bond.
As for being emotional and impulsive, those are more Irishy traits than Indian ones, whose stereotype was stone-faced stolidity. It’s like Scar speaks in monotones.
We learn that Ethan rescued Marty as a baby, and this foreshadows Ethan’s rescuing(or sparing) of Debbie at the end. Both ‘rescues’ have an air of ambivalence. The white-man-side of Ethan didn’t particularly care to save a ‘half-breed’ child, but perhaps the Christian side made him do, though he shunted the kid off to another family than raise him on his own. Likewise, we don’t know until the very end what Ethan will do when he gets his hands on Debbie. He doesn’t know it either, also the case with revisionist NOAH of Darren Aronofsky’s movie that combines the Noah story with that of Abram. In the end, this ‘Noah’ just couldn’t do it. The difference between Marty and Debbie is Ethan’s heart wasn’t into saving baby Marty but his mind was — he knew it was the right thing to do even though he didn’t really care — , whereas with Debbie, his mind is set on killing her but his heart isn’t, which is revealed at the end.
Yeah, Marty is supposed to have distinguishable Indian features. Back then, it was the norm in Hollywood to cast white actors for non-white roles. So, we must go with what Ethan says than what we see.
No, it’s more due to her feelings about mixing with savages. She doesn’t like the idea of Debbie having Indian babies and living as a squaw-woman. She’s high-spirited and proud but not particularly sympathetic. She’s a bit vain and selfish, at least to the extent allowed by frontier experience. When Marty rides off to find Debbie, she takes it as personal insult. She wants to be #1.
I like Marty, but the performance is problematic because the actor was too old for the role, especially in the early years of the search. He acts too boyish for a full-grown man. Also, he plays the most morally and socially/racially complex character in the movie, but Ford wasn’t sure whether he wanted Marty to be a comic sidekick or the voice of conscience.
Vera Miles on the other hand shines like an apple. Her performance isn’t subtle or complicated but from the heart, but Laurie is a simple girl with strong passions and full of spunk. She’s a girl blossoming into womanhood, and it is peak Miles.
The problem lies in taking Ford and THE SEARCHERS too seriously. Ford never aspired to be a pure artist, and his movies are essentially folkloric popular entertainments. Much of the appeal owes to the air of familiarity. When you watch a Ford movie, you expect the similar cast of characters. It’s like the Irish returning to Ireland to bask in Irishness. Ford’s movies feel like ‘home’, even when set in the Western wilderness. Ford created his universe of characters, and the appeal was to popular and even vulgar taste. Ford wasn’t exactly about good taste or sophistication. An average Ford movie was perhaps more complex than the usual Hollywood fare but not by much. His movies weren’t Shakespeare or Dostoevsky. And much of THE SEARCHERS has to seen as Family Entertainment. It had nostalgic appeal, especially in the 1950s when Teen Culture was on the rise with the birth of the Cool. There’s nothing cool about Ford’s movies. When Laurie receives a letter, her parents hardly have any concept of privacy and tell her to read it out loud. It’s old-fashioned and homey.
Though Ford could be somewhat complex, his movies have to be taken like Norman Rockwell paintings(than Rembrandts). Naturally, they are filled with archetypes and caricatures than three-dimensional characters. THE SEARCHERS is very much the usual Ford fare but something a bit more, as if entertainment has been miscegenated with art into something promising to be wondrous, or monstrous.
That owes more to screwball comedies.
That ‘grinning, drawling buffoon’ is wonderful. It’s hilarious because he talks like a hee-haw tard but sings like an angel. But the single most memorable character is Old Mose who looks racially ambiguous and is wonderfully goofy. He looks both infantile and senile. Inspired personality and performance. One thing for sure, characters like Old Mose show that the movie was as much bawdy comedy for the unwashed masses as a dark tale of race and redemption for thinking folks.
No, this is too neat and rational. His murderous feelings toward Debbie went deeper than the problem of her loyalty to the Comanches. She’d been defiled in his eyes and is beyond redemption. Sure, his rage has abated some since his attempt to kill her, but the rage is still there, as Marty noticed many times. (Marty says that whenever Ethan talks about Debbie, his face goes ‘red rum, red rum’.) And when Marty sneaks into the Indian camp, it is as much to protect her from Ethan as to save her from Scar. Marty fears that the US cavalry raid might serve as perfect moral cover for Ethan to kill Debbie(as surely some women and children will get killed in the melee). Even to the very end, Marty tries to stop Ethan, and Ethan strikes Marty to the ground and rides off in pursuit of Debbie. It is only when he holds her in his arms that he knows for sure that he won’t harm her. It’s like John Wayne’s character wasn’t sure what he was really going to do with Montgomery Clift’s character in RED RIVER, an emotional precursor to THE SEARCHERS. On the one hand, Wayne’s character vows to kill the ‘traitor’, but face to face with the young man, he refuses to shoot him and slugs him instead until he is slugged back… until they make up. This element of THE SEARCHERS has something of ‘existentialism'(fashionable at the time). In the end, we cannot sum up Ethan’s final decision with recourse to logic, ethics, philosophy. He was torn between killing her and sparing her, and he didn’t know what he’d really do until the very end when she was in his arms. In a way, she saves him as much as he saves her. That sense of mystery is what adds power to that scene. It’s like the closing line of Scorsese’s RAGING BULL.
“So, for the second time, [the Pharisees]
summoned the man who had been blind and said:
‘Speak the truth before God.
We know this fellow is a sinner.’
‘Whether or not he is a sinner, I do not know.’
the man replied.
‘All I know is this:
once I was blind and now I can see.’
The Indians put up a fight in many spots but the Comanches might have been the toughest and longest. Fehrenbach’s book is an amazing read. One bit in there is that a granddaughter of Daniel Boone was tortured, raped, and killed after a few days by Comanches. A lot of this book is not safe for lunch.
As others have pointed out, it’s pretty well implied that Ethan is Debbie’s father.
Before the Comanche attack at the beginning, the scenes between Ethan and his brother’s wife have all the trappings of a romance. Lingering looks and pregnant pauses abound. Ford, who got his start in silent films and loved a good romance, paints a picture of romantic love without the two characters ever saying anything at all about it.
The implication is that Ethan had an affair with his brother’s wife, causing her to get pregnant with Debbie in 1860. Ethan, ashamed at himself at his adultery, runs off to join the Confederacy to win back his honor or die in glory, and then stays away three more years as a mercenary, an eight-year penance for his transgressions. Having forgiven himself and paid for it, he returns, to find his brother welcoming him and an 8-year-old child he’s never met.
So when his brother’s family is slaughtered but Debbie left alive, it’s triple whammy for Ethan. First, all his penance has come to naught, as his brother’s family has been destroyed anyway—not by his adultery, but by the savages. Second, his great love, his brother’s wife, is gone, too. And third, his only child is now captured and going to be brainwashed into being a Comanche sex slave, unless Ethan saves her in time.
Ethan’s obsessive quest for Debbie—and his desire to kill her if she’s turned fully to the Comanche ways—is thus driven by all three things. He’s both ashamed of Debbie and yet feels responsible for her, as he is her illegitimate father and as she is his brother’s wife’s child. If she’s turned full wild Comanche, she needs to die, because it would mean Ethan’s life is a waste. Her turn at the end is redemption for Ethan—his family will go on, his now decades-long penance (8 years at war + 5 years chasing Debbie) has redeemed him; he himself is redeemable.
Nah, it’s the opposite: feminazism grows as women have increased access to men. In societies where eligible men outnumber eligible, desirable women, women act all feminist and brazen and entitled. However, in societies where the number of eligible men are few compared to eligible females, women suddenly become much better behaved and obedient.
The Old West was famous for its lopsided ratio of men to women. Meaning that when the first prostitutes came into town, they quickly became rich and powerful, not to mention brazen People have noted that many pictures of old west hookers depict them as less than the ideal of the time, and yet many were the richest or some of the richest people around then, and controlled a lot of power. Not surprisingly, the Old West states were some of the more, ahem, “progressive” states on women’s rights.
Meanwhile, in war-torn societies, where menfolk have been killed off, women suddenly rediscover the value of obedience to male desire. In post WW2 Russia, the few men who survived and had some sort of decent position in the government could demand a babushka wife, a hot mistress, and any number of dalliances from the young, desperate woman flailing about for a man.
false in the original script of paul schrader “taxi driver” all the pimps are black,it was the producer julia philipps and martin scorsese who found it too inflammatory
he’s just spewing out what he heard in a tumblr blog/movie/social media/whatever. in actuality wars have never been fought according to the geneva convention prior to modernity.
there have never been any societies that treated females the same as males. not one. females are too weak to hunt large game and outsider males which have always been a high-status occupation in societies. they’re only reliably fertile for around a decade post-menarche while men are far more and become more desirable as they age. all women are sluts and traitorous since they have no real ability to have loyalty to their ethnicity/race rather than than their peers, immediate blood (children, parents), male who claimed her aka alpha, traditional societies recognized this (see the comment in islam about hell being filled with women more than men).
I’m a member of the former James-Younger Gang (a historical society), and note that in the movie Ethan didn’t go to Mexico. Ward Bond made a reference to Ethan’s Yankee gold and the James boys, and inferred that he rode with the gang for several years immediately after the war. Oddly, the men were toting Colt Peacemakers years before their introduction in the early 1870s. And the locale of the movie was totally inimical to cattle ranching — or much of anything else. Still, the “Searchers” and “The Outlaw Josey Wales” are the two best westerns ever made. P.S. A few miles from my place in north Texas is a historical marker denoting the area as a place where white captives were ransomed from the Comanche and Kiowa.
Ethan’s time in Mexico is implied (but not proven) by the Mexican medal he gives Debbie, which in the script he says he picked up in Mexico, as well as the amount of money he carries.
……”It also explains why RASHOMON rates so highly in polls.”
That’s not how I remember it…..
“Hyper-artificial”
Ford’s westerns are essentially white American folk tales.
There’s a theory Scar is Ethan’s son.
But who knows, Darth was Luke’s father and Leia his sister.
I much prefer Italian spaghetti westerns to Hollywood movies. A really good one is California (1977) with Giuliano Gemma.
There were some Whites (of both sexes) who had very positive experiences living among the Indians, and in a handful of cases, actually expressed a physical preference for Indian life by returning to it.
But those were major statistical outliers.
The idea that White women would’ve appreciated being abducted by the Comanches, is so positively moronic, that I hesitate to chastise you as a liar. But rather I am forced to suspect you may truly be an idiot.
The Comanche were aggressive expansionists; they were defending their empire, not their ancestral lands :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comancheria
Good points. And it’s interesting to note that VERTIGO and THE SEARCHERS are both less “perfect” than other films by their respective creators. For example, just compare VERTIGO’s absurd plot to REAR WINDOW (My personal favorite among Hitchcock’s films). As for Ford, I would argue that MY DARLING CLEMENTINE is more perfectly shaped and finely wrought. Ford actually manages to keep his cornball sense of humor in check in CLEMENTINE. The jokes in the film are relatively few and mostly funny. But, as with VERTIGO, THE SEARCHERS exercises a strange fascination for the viewer…..
Bit of a meaningless statement. Shakespeare’s plays are not “pure art” (cf the numerous jokey bits in the tragedies), but they are great art.
Community is central to Ford. Note the great stress that he places on communal activities….above all, the dance:
Video Link
Video Link
Nah, it’s the opposite: feminazism grows as women have increased access to men. In societies where eligible men outnumber eligible, desirable women, women act all feminist and brazen and entitled. However, in societies where the number of eligible men are few compared to eligible females, women suddenly become much better behaved and obedient.
What happened is that women started acting entitled when they weren’t expected to be married before 21. Society used to pressure women into marrying sooner and simply picking someone at the local barn dance. Men were also pressured into finding a wife in high school or immediately after.
When society isn’t putting men and women together at a young age you end up with bitter single women that can’t attract the single men they desire but were also not pushed into something more realistic.
There is a factor of hypergamy to it. Feminists can’t attract the men their bodies desire. It’s an imprisonment of the womb. If they had kids with a local farmer at an earlier age it would have taken the edge off for them. Women simply do not function well without kids at a certain age even though society really, really wants to believe otherwise. They are born to breed and that is how nature made them. Women are also not good at making relationship decisions from around 18-24 and society used to recognize this. Men are not any better but this is still recognized to some degree. Liberalism/feminism is a rejection of human nature (especially gender and racial) and wants to think of women as suppressed men but with different parts.
The net result is that women wait too long for a man that doesn’t exist and their frustrations are channeled into feminism.
Meanwhile, in war-torn societies, where menfolk have been killed off, women suddenly rediscover the value of obedience to male desire. In post WW2 Russia, the few men who survived and had some sort of decent position in the government could demand a babushka wife, a hot mistress, and any number of dalliances from the young, desperate woman flailing about for a man.
Women will be nicer and less picky when the ratios significantly favor men. No doubt about it.
But once the population rebounds after war you run into the same problem. This is exacerbated in the West where secular egalitarians and even many Christians want to believe that gender d0esn’t really exist outside of reproduction parts. There is no central planning regarding families because our egalitarian leaders want to believe that women will become men once they are liberated and everything will somehow work out.
The idea that White women would’ve appreciated being abducted by the Comanches, is so positively moronic, that I hesitate to chastise you as a liar. But rather I am forced to suspect you may truly be an idiot.
There are liberals that have a bizarre belief whereby White women can only be oppressed by White men and would be liberated or treated as equals by any other group. It goes back to their key belief that White men are basically the devil and responsible for all immorality among non-Whites.
I had a White liberal woman tell me that pioneer women would sometimes run off with the local Indians for a stint of excitement from their oppressed lives. So basically the pioneer equivalent of the Vegas slut trip.
This is of course totally ridiculous given the accounts of settler life. It is true that White women were at times captured and raised as Indian. It is also true that they were sometimes raped and murdered along with the children. You can guess which accounts make it into public school book texts.
So, even though whites are understandably horrified by Comanche brutality, it’s hardly surprising that Comanches would react this way to white encroachment on their ancestral hunting and burial grounds.
Comanches didn’t change at all with Whites. It was never a defensive reaction.
Whites were horrified by Indian vs Indian brutality when they arrived on the continent. Death of war captures by torture was the norm. The entire tribe would gather and take part in torturing enemy combatants. You get a glimpse of this in Last of the Mohicans.
This is ignored in history because it doesn’t fit the narrative of White settlers coming along and ruining a peaceful utopia of tribes. Some tribes actually welcomed the Whites because their Indian enemies were far worse. Whites put an end to practices like war raiding where women and children would be killed in the frenzy. But talking about any of this goes against liberal White guilt based history.
The Outlaw Josey Wales is flawless as a film and has so many winning moments, its almost a crying shame it has to be placed in the “revisionist Western” category instead of just the Western.
Sandra Locke… meow. Never has a woman been so fully clothed and looked more dewey and naïve-sexual.
People forget that Henry Fonda vied neck-and-neck with John Wayne as John Ford’s favorite leading man for a while.
Then Fonda , betraying the stupid that would infect his children, got into a fight with Ford about politics on the set of Mr. Roberts and it was lights out for their partnership. And Ford then gradually moved from his centrist-social-liberalism of the day to more right-wing stances, as befitting Wayne now exclusively being Ford’s main man.
Yeah, and Romans were horrified by the ways of Germanic barbarians.
So, does it mean Germanic barbarians didn’t fight for their land and culture?
One’s empire become one’s ancestral lands. Whites took the New World, and it became their ancestral lands. If a people conquer and keep the land long enough, it’s their ‘native land’.
The thing about Indians is they had no concept of official borders, and so the borders were always shifting depending on warfare. Comanches were just better at it than some.
Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as pure artist and pure art. Even serious playwrights like Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams had the audience and publicity in mind.
Orson Welles and Stanley Kubrick worked in an art form inseparable from commerce. This goes for Fellini and Kurosawa as well. And even serious artists often whore themselves out for money. Yukio Mishima wrote serious novels but also genre stuff for magazines. Welles worked on his personal projects but also starred in cornball movies for money. He also made stuff like THE STRANGER that was mainly commercial. And Mozart sometimes did it just for the money.
Still, to the extent possible, some artists produced works of uncompromised or less compromised imagination. While CITIZEN KANE is in part very much a Hollywood product, Welles did everything possible to make his vision come true. Same goes for 2001. On one level, it is sci-fi, a popular genre. Still, Kubrick saw his concept through the way he wanted.
Kurosawa’s SEVEN SAMURAI owes to genre formulations and was made for the masses but it’s a singular accomplishment, a true work of art that confronts us with the vagaries of human nature. It transcends the genre. Likewise, while Shakespeare was a popular artist at the time(though mostly for the educated class and elites in the city as most folks who lived in the countryside had no recourse to culture — even popular culture back then was for a more limited and educated audience) and wrote some plays mainly for entertainment, his other works such as KING LEAR surely brought out another side of him. He pushed far beyond boundaries of formula and expectation, which is why they survived through the ages.
But this cannot be said of John Ford, and it isn’t a demerit because he was content to work in the popular and folky idiom. Ford certainly had artistic qualities and touched on some serious themes, but his works mostly remain in the realm of familiarity than plumb the depths. He was no Ingmar Bergman. Compare Ford’s treatment of the immigration experience with that of Jan Troell in THE EMIGRANTS and THE NEW LAND. Ford dealt with legend and lore than truth and meaning. But nothing wrong with this IF the intention was legend and lore.
What makes THE SEARCHERS so fascinating is it has all the familiar Ford tropes but also meanders into unfamiliar territory, making it more risque and challenging than his previous Westerns. Yet, it doesn’t go all the way, and while some would call it a failing, others see it as useful compromise between the personal and popular, also true of Spielberg’s more serious movies, like BRIDGE OF SPIES. David Lean was more ambitious toward art but still remained on familiar ground, as Rosenbaum says below. But then, this compromise in masterly form can make the best kind of middlebrow ‘ent-art-ainment’, and I wouldn’t have LAWRENCE OF ARABIA or DOCTOR ZHIVAGO in any other way.
https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/1989/03/lawrence-of-arabia/
Missed all the references that inspired Buddy Holly’s “That”ll be the day.”
Implied clearly in this passage is the reason why racism is always portrayed as unreasoning and nonsensical in today’s “approved” public discourse. “They hate us because of the color of our skin” and the similar “They only hate us because we’re Jewish.”
People are fed this pablum with such intensity and regularity that it almost seems to make some kind of sense. Unreasoning hatred! That’s the nature of Bad People! But the real purpose of racism propaganda is to delegitimize resistance against oppression and dispossession.
I don’t have the capacity to watch or listen to Martin Scorsese talk.
Weird post. At the time of filming Natalie Wood was 18. And when she died at 43, she did not look like a prune.
Hardly all that subtle. After watching her inhaling the scent of testosterone from Ethan’s clothes. Ward Bond’s character certainly knows Ethan has slept with his brother’s wife, who still has the hots for him. The Reverend becomes a slow eater; he isn’t going to leave them alone together.
Yes this film is far too complicated with the mythic overtones and all. A few good gunfights is all you need in a western or indeed any film for that matter.
No, Martha likely married Aaron for the same reason Laurie was about to marry the guitar guy than Marty. Ethan was away too often.
Ward Bond’s character of the Reverend is earlier shown to be a very fast eater.
No movie is perfect but The Searchers is one of the best.
Those Germanic barbarians had no problem with aiding the Romans when it suited their interests (just as how plenty 0f Celts joined Roman society, with many of Caesar’s own troops drawn from Celt lands). Arminius’ own father-in-law told the Roman forces about his plans ahead of time (Varus ignored the warning), with that same father in-law working alongside Germanicus in his invasion and ultimately slaying Arminius. Even during Dark Ages Rome, the Germanics in the empire as a whole did not reject Roman society and traditions (hence so many of them being Christian). There was nothing remotely like Basketball Muricans trying to do stuff the “Black” way to do things, Mestizo Mutts trying to show how Indigenous they are, we wuz kangz history, etc.
The Germanics and Romans were ultimately of the same greater race, sharing enough traditions. It’s no surprise that plenty of Germanics (and Celts for that matter) were able to not only side with the Romans, but be able to fit well within Roman civilization. Unlike the Amerindians towards the Whitey since they had obvious biological and culture differences.
I know there’s been a push to reframe the likes of Celts and Germanics as honorary PoC victims of Whitey (with the implication that European history can only be portrayed positively if framed through victimoloy), but that’s just not the case.
C’mon man. Why not go that extra mile? You don’t have to read on the 1870s to find White women kidnapped by savages. Those who try drugs, even today, often move into Savage societies. There they are sexually abused, raped, beaten, and often murdered. / If they return to White society, they will never be looked upon as equals.
That is NOW, man. There is nothing new under the sun.
The story of the Parker girl among the Comamches and the saga of her half-Comanche son Quanah found its way into a great book that came out about 15 years ago. It’s called
and I believe the author was a guy named Sims. It starts with the raid on the Parker ranch, which was depply in Comanche territory. It rolls out the whole story of the Comanche attempts to drive back the advancing line of white farmsteads in Texas. This counteroffensive worked for three decades. The book tells the Comanche side of the battle for their lands. A good read.
As much as I admire many of Ford’s movies, Ford was a mean bastard who got meaner with age and alcohol. From what I’ve read not only did Ford punch Fonda (it was probably about professional differences instead of politics) in ‘Mr. Roberts’ he threatened James Cagney, who put him in his place. Ford quit and the movie was finished by Mervyn LeRoy with a lot of input from Fonda (reshooting a lot of Ford’s scenes).
It would be very interesting to see a review by Lynch about the movie, Mandingo. That would probably start a fire storm here.
Feminism has always been an assault point on western societies thru the perceived weaker of the sexes. Unfortunately it worked.
All Mandingo deserves is a sentence fragment: the Marquis de Sade meets Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Its been a long time since I seen that movie. Didn’t see the racism then. Still don’t. You shoot rabid animals. Debbie was acting rabid when they found her. In the end she was returned to become is someone else’s mess to fix up. That is where I can fault Uncle Ethan sort of. Guess the woke crowd can’t even let us alone with our old movies and tv shows now.
You have to wonder if the Josey Wales movie has been partially memory-holed because the author of the book the movie is based on was revealed to have an extremely un-PC past. The film was inducted into the National Film Registry in 1996, but The Birth of a Nation made the list four years earlier
Eastwood and John Wayne were kind of like The Rolling Stones and The Beatles, you either liked one or the other, very seldom do people like both. I choose The Stones and Eastwood. Eastwood was part of my generation, Wayne was not, therefore I have only seen parts of this movie, I could not get into it. The only John Wayne movies that I watched the whole way through were, “The Shootist,” ( pretty decent movie), The Train Robbers ( probably because I can never get enough at looking at Ann-Margret), and “The Cowboys.”
“The Cowboys” would have been a much better movie had they made the boys that John Wayne had to hire on his cattle drive a little older. Wayne recruited a bunch of school boys who looked between the ages of 10 to 16 years old to drive his cattle to market where they run afoul of some bad guys led by Bruce Dern.
Speaking of Bruce Dern, he played in a laughable B-movie back in the day called “The Thing With Two Heads.” Two lazy to do a search but the premise of the movie involved a racist White guy having to have his head transplanted on the body of Black actor/football player Rosie Greer. haha. Now that is one for the reviews. LMAO.
I dont look at movies. I prefer to keep my $10 dollars (or $20 for a DVD) in my pocket rather than hand it over to the Hollywood Juice.
In any case it looks like this is a great movie starring Big Duke, the stud cowboy who can shoot 20 men with a six shooter without ever reloading BUT who avoided WW2 enlistment. I guess fighting Indians, Outlaws and Other Cowboys was more gratifying and dangerous than butting heads with those nasty little Japs with their swords or Supermen Germans. What with other literary subtleties like a German acting as the Comanche chief I can hardly wait to check out this work of art.
If I ever have to choose I would go for the Spaghetti westerns where they shoot each other for no good reason, blow shit up with dynamite, the dialog is stupid and the lip sync is out of whack. That way I can lapse into a comfortable coma and not have to seek out the literary genius in the typical Hollywood western.
An added benefit is of course that I can pause the Spaghetti western to tale a dump without feeling I am unable to plumb my deep themes, hidden inner feelings and deep subconscious transition from 2 dimensional spiritual awakening to three dimensional snoring.
It is really sad and I do feel sorry for myself that I will never be able to arise above my animal instincts, to appreciate the finer things in life and to elevate myself morally, spiritually, financially, emotionally and constipationally because I stubbornly refuse to look at these enlightening Hollywood flicks.
Well dont talk too soon. I hear there is a movie coming out “The Stretchers” about Ndongo and Mlongo his Brother , two Mandingos who rescue Stormy Daniels from a tribe of Pygmies in the Congo.
Keep in touch unless of course you are not interested in becoming more enlightened and broadening and deepening your appreciation of literature and fine art.
Sometimes, maybe most of the time, a cigar is just a cigar.
I always liked how John Wayne spoke. He had that drawl that I think he made his own. But watching him walk away from the porch in the closing shot made me think that his boots were always a couple sizes too small for him. Very odd gait.
A cinematographer couldn’t help but film artistic, award worthy panoramic shots with that sort of country to work with, the big blue skies and the different coloured sands.
But you have to wonder if the cattle were surviving on dirt alone, with not a blade of grass to be seen. Would it it even be one beast to 100 acres? Places like that, the settlers would usually discover in a good year after plenty of unseasonal rain. They’d build, stock and plant, only to find that after the rains, came the unforgiving drought years. Years of struggling and loss, only to finally give up and move on. You see it a lot when driving around this country. Centuries old stone farm houses in ruins where people gave up, just walked off the land never to return.
Let’s get back to reality. John Wayne only fought in wars that were on a movie set. He was a draft dodger in the classic sense. While many other actors went off to war (WW2, Korea) John Wayne pulled every trick in the book to avoid following them. So what did he do? He made propaganda war flicks where he was the Army or Marine hero fighting the enemy. Now that’s some hero !!
If I had to choose a favourite movie it would be “The attack of the Killer Tomatoes” with a second being the “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” where the whole movie was just people screaming, the chainsaw buzzing and people being hoisted onto meat hooks.
I would like Trevor to critique those two classics ! I mean ,talk about pics that are epics that are mystics, mythics but will never be relics, derelicts and so on and so forth.
By the way, I have to bow to your prose regarding another Thread starring the Troof. Your comments ended lunch I was having with friends. They were so hilarious we could not go on the Maitre D wanting to know of there was something wrong with the food. We took doggy bags (no pun intended if Troof is reading this from his Harlem tenement) but at 4.45 pm that afternoon we still laughing. Good writing on your part.
Eastwood was part of my generation, Wayne was not, therefore I have only seen parts of this movie, I could not get into it. The only John Wayne movies that I watched the whole way through were, “The Shootist,” ( pretty decent movie), The Train Robbers ( probably because I can never get enough at looking at Ann-Margret), and “The Cowboys.”
I don’t see why you would have to pick between Wayne and Eastwood. They are in completely different types of westerns.
Watch The Searchers in HD. It starts a little a slow but the film work helps move it along.
Rio Bravo and El Dorado are also good.
None of these movies are part of my generation and Rio is one of my all time favorites. One of the few movies that I can watch multiple times.
JJ, you just know those kidnapped White women loved living in tents and squatting over the ground when nature called.
“The women were treated as equals by the Indians” is as laughable as it is false. The roles between male and female were more rigid in so-called Indian culture than just about any other, save Islam, perhaps.
To say otherwise, is folly, indeed!
I know there’s been a push to reframe the likes of Celts and Germanics as honorary PoC victims of Whitey (with the implication that European history can only be portrayed positively if framed through victimoloy), but that’s just not the case.
Yes and with the implication that all groups are the same and advanced civilizations arose after being Romanized. It’s just “by chance” that the Romans and Greeks were European. Civilization dust could have just as easily favored any other group. According to egalitarians like Jared Diamond there is really nothing special about Europeans and aboriginals would be creating vaccines right now if they had the proper resources a few thousand years ago.
The Romans also didn’t view the Germans as just another barbarian tribe.
In fact they had traits that the Romans valued. The Romans were impressed by their courage, democratic leadership and loyalty to their women.
The modern narrative of the Germans being just another savage tribe is a half-truth. It plays to the modern narrative that all groups were tribes once and as such we shouldn’t consider one tribe to be more primitive than another.
I’ve seen the film maybe 3 or 4 times and have no idea why anyone would label it with this preposterous, overused, and inaccurate term (racist). The Comanche were a brutal, bloodthirsty, cruel tribe. Those white settlers they murdered, the Comanch did far worse to the corpses than shoot out the eyes.
Aren’t we all really tired of the term racist? To see it used even in a review of a 50s film is over the top. No one cares what some movie critic or reviewer thinks if he/she/it uses the term racist even once.
I can assure you that the 13 year old Scorsese didn’t think the film was racist when he saw it. And whether he chose to flip the race of the pimps in Taxi Driver would have more to do with the realities of 70s filmmaking, New York City, and the American moviegoer than anything about The Searchers.
Look no further than Andrea Dworkin: http://exiledonline.com/exterminate-the-men-honoring-andrea-dworkin-a-feminist-who-meant-it-and-paid/
Now for something a bit.weired…wierd…weird
https ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KN9c_VfFEAU&list=RD1vheu45OynA&index=36
Ziegfeld Follies (1946) – Bring On The Wonderful Men – Virginia O ‘Brien
Well said. And the recurring rape angle is way overdone, according to the literature on the Amerindians, who weren’t particularly attracted to white women. Compared with the behavior of the Europeans, native raiders were much less inclined to rape but preferred to take women captive if they were young and health. These were then typically assimmilated into the tribal band and treated as equal members, as you said.
The current fixation with rape has been aggressibvely promoted by modern feminists, usually ones with hair on their teeth. It also seems more like a case of projection by male writers, naturally of European background. Nowadays we have this arbitrary concept of statutory rape, meaning the girl was under 17. But consider that the age a girl could be married off by an officiating Catholic priest in 17th Century French Quebec was only 12. The idea was to grow the population. And the civil marriage contract could be made at age 11 or earlier with the girl’s consent. I found one such contract in which the girl was seven years old. Her only son became a knight of France. Times change. Rape gets redefined — and exaggerated.
Of course it’s heroic from his perspective. He saved his hide and his scalp. Only nitwits go off to fight wars that are started by other people and that don’t bring you any personal benefits.
There is a kindle edition of Alan LeMay’s The Searchers that includes a long essay by Harry Carey Jr, who played Brad Jorgensen in the movie. The piece is long (and yet not long enough) and will induce many chuckles (if not belly laughs) from the reader. Most of it is free to read using Amazon’s “Look Inside” feature. Unfortunately, it does not include the final paragraphs—
“There are moments and a certain feeling, somewhere between your heart and your throat, that you rarely get on a movie set. It might be a moment while shooting a TV episode of little consequence, except for that moment. This was a day possessed of one of those moments. It didn’t take Uncle Jack long to shoot it. One take, and boom, it was done. Had it been take five or ten, it would never have happened. It would not have been— well, one of the greatest endings of any picture ever made. I wasn’t in the scene, but I was behind the camera, able to see all of it— able to feel all of it. Duke was the only actor in front of the camera now. He was standing alone in the doorway…
“There he was! The big man standing alone in the doorway, the red desert stretching out behind him. The other players in the scene, which included my mother, had passed by the camera, a joyous moment. Debbie was home at last, brought there in the arms of the man in the doorway. He was to look and then walk away, but just before he turned, he saw Ollie Carey, the widow of his all-time hero, standing behind the camera. It was as natural as taking a breath. Duke raised his left hand, reached across his chest and grabbed his right arm at the elbow. Harry Carey did that a lot in the movies when Duke was a kid in Glendale, California. He’d spent many a dime just to see that.
“He stared at my mother for a couple of beats, then turned, walking away into loneliness across red sand. The cabin door slowly closed. ”
Alan, LeMay (2013-03-05). The Searchers . Pinnacle. Kindle Edition.
For more, check out Harry Carey Jr’s book— Company of Heroes: My Life as an Actor in the John Ford Stock Company.
You ought to be lecturing at the Army War College. They and the Pentagon seem to have un-discovered this ageless practicality.
The Searchers is a great Western piece of acetate. Imperfect, of course. But eminently watchable and full of many subplots and sub-texture. It definitely broke from the ‘classic’ Western genre and sought to explore the characters (caricatures?) more deeply and humanistically, set within the tragic storyline. And it is is both iconic and iconoclastic in its cinematography and as well, the treatment of
the struggle between white settlers and native American culture during the time period depicted.
While I enjoy some of the better Westerns from this classic era, I tend toward some of the offbeat Westerns made during the revival of the Western genre in the 1970s and 1980s. Tom Horn, Little Big Man, The Missouri Breaks (BIG mistake casting Brando, but, whatever…).
High Plains Drifter is the best of the non-Sergio Leone “spaghetti-Western” films. A classic, IMHO.
Clint Eastwood’s sophomore director effort. This, and Play Misty For Me, are my favorite Eastwood director-plus-acting forays.
That’s not the reason. ULZANA’S RAID features brutal Indians but is much praised.
It’s due to Ethan’s feelings about miscegenation.
Take this stupid article:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/01/22/john-ford-and-the-politics-of-the-western/
Are so-called ‘lefties’ capable of saying anything other than ‘racism, racism, racism’ about THE SEARCHERS?
This passage is hilarious:
“He wishes to kill his own family for inter-ethnic coupling. When Ethan speaks the wretched words he does, it is vital to remember that Wayne was saying on screen what a whole generation of fathers were saying in private about the idea of their precious white daughters going to school and perhaps one day dating African teens. The film’s literal Indian War is a deep analogue for the culture war that was going on at the time…. you understanding that Wayne’s Ethan is as psychotic and sexually-confused as De Niro’s Travis Bickle, it is possible to see the earlier film on a psycho-analytic level that otherwise escapes today’s viewers.”
Andrew describes himself as ‘queer’. I find it funny that a guy whose idea of ‘sex’ is fecal penetration with other men would be making fuss about OTHER people’s psycho-sexual hang-ups.
Maybe he haven’t heard but sexuality is DARK. It is animal. It is about territory, pride, possession. It isn’t something so genteel like a tea party. It isn’t lovey dovey at the core despite the romantic trimmings(but then, is the art of courtship even alive anymore in the West?)
The reason he doesn’t get THE SEARCHERS is because ‘lefty’ types see everything through the idiotic prism of ‘racism’. Also race-ism is Truth insofar as different races and racial differences exist. But first, to get a better grasp of THE SEARCHERS, suppose we take out the racial element. The emotional dynamics would be more or less the same though, of course, the factor of race makes it more intense. It’s like this: If a black guy kills a black woman, the family members of the slain victim will feel vengeful toward black killer. They might even feel murderous. But the rage will even be more charged IF the killer is white. Then, it will be seen as a white-on-black-crime. Indeed, the whole BLM outrage was predicated on the race-rage that young black men are being killed by WHITE cops. Why was US so angry when Pearl Harbor happened. It was because the ‘Japs’ done it. Jewish media and FDR(that wanted US entry into WWII) was livid with joy since the anger at the yellow ‘Japs’ would rile up all Americans, even isolationists, to enter the war.
So, race makes it more intense, but sexual dynamics are pretty dark and brooding even without it. Take THE ODYSSEY. The hero comes back and kills all the suitors. He also kills the female servants of the house who sexually serviced the suitors. Odysseus is about manly pride. He has to reinstate his authority as man of the house. He kills other Greeks, but the rage isn’t different in kind from that of Ethan Edwards. Though the element of race makes it more charged in THE SEARCHERS, Ethan’s blood thirst is driven by healthy manly pride and rage. Maybe Andrew, being a queer, lacks an understanding of real manhood. Maybe he’s used to other men sticking their dongs into his bung. Maybe he likes to play bitch to the stronger Negro. Maybe, maybe not. But real men are like Ethan, a true hero on the Greek scale. And it’s not just about race, race, race. Indeed, suppose his brother’s family had been killed by Liberty Valance and his gang than by Indians. Ethan would be just as vengeful and angry. He would want to hunt them down and kill them.
As for his willingness to kill Debbie, it’s dark but understandable. Ethan really wants to save her but fears that she will grow up to becoming a breeder for the Indians. Imagine that. A tribe of ‘savages’ murdered his brother and his brother’s children. The woman Ethan dearly loved was raped and butchered by them. Same was done to the older daughter. OF COURSE Ethan is angry as hell.
Suppose some gang did that to Andrew’s family. Wouldn’t he be enraged? It’d be PERSONAL. It’s like in THE GODFATHER. After the attempt on his father’s life, Michael felt obligated to kill the Turk and the police captain. And Vito Corleone(DeNiro) eventually returned to Sicily to take revenge on the man who killed his family. Vito was calm on the outside but his vendetta had always been there. And Hyman Roth is obsessed about getting back at Michael because of Moe Green. Jews may act ‘liberal’, but they are intensely clannish deep down inside and never ever forget. They still want to destroy Germany out of revenge. Maybe Andrew doesn’t understand such sense of revenge, pride, honor, and family/clan loyalty since he’s a deracinated white queer ‘lefty’ who prefers abstract ideas of ‘social justice’ that are mostly bogus and divorced from reality.
If Ethan’s brother’s family had been spared and if Jorgensen’s place had been raided, Ethan wouldn’t have been so obsessed. The issue here is PERSONAL. Ethan really loved Martha. It was bad enough that he’d lost her to his brother(just like Marty nearly lost Laurie to the guitar strummer). But to find her body raped and killed by Indians? That’s some bad shit. Ethan loves Debbie and wants to save her. But he knows as the years pass, she will become part of the very tribe that raped and butchered her family — Ethan’s brother and Martha. She will be serving the very people who committed horrors against her own kind. Of course, we and even Ethan know that it’s not Debbie’s fault. She was taken when young and the Indians accepted her as their own as long as she makes babies who will grow up to be warriors who attack white people. THIS is what Ethan cannot stand. But Andrew’s queero PC mentality can only see ‘racism, racism, racism’. He doesn’t understand true manly pride cuz he’s a globo-homo.
But surely even a homo can have feelings like that of Ethan. Suppose my gang wiped out his family. Suppose my gang is ultra-right-wing and hate ‘progressives’ such as himself. Suppose my men took his young sister(whom he dearly loves) and plans to use her womb to create ultra-right warriors who will attack and kill more ‘progressives’. Wouldn’t he be livid with rage? Wouldn’t a part of him wish his sister was dead than join the enemy(like Patty Hearst, topic of the Paul Schrader movie) and attack his kind?
Indeed, suppose we flip the SEARCHERS. Suppose it is about a bunch of white cowboys that attack an Indian village. Suppose these imperialist & ‘genocidal’ white men rape red women and kill almost everyone. But they take one Indian boy and raise him as ‘honorary white’ and teach him to hate and kill Indians. Suppose the Indian father or uncle of that boy wants to rescue him. But suppose the years pass and the abducted boy has joined with the whites to fight Indians. Wouldn’t it at least be understandable why the Indian father and uncle would be angry and possibly want to see him dead?
Consider the Ottoman Turks? They ruled over Greece for 300 yrs. They took many Greek Christian boys, brainwashed them, and turned them into Janissary trained to fight and destroy Christendom. Many Greek mothers would have preferred to have their kids die than be taken and used that way. Does his queer mind at least understand such mindset? Or would he accuse those Greek mothers of ‘racism’?
Indeed, Greek mythology and folklore are filled with such stories. And what is the main musical form of US today? Rap music which is about tribal blacks yapping about how their life is all about fighting and fuc*ing and how they finna blow away anyone who done dis their pride. White ‘progressives’ are okay with the violent sexuality of Rap Culture, but he bitches about how Ethan is too enraged over his brother and family having been mutilated in and rubbed out in the most gruesome manner. He’s too much of a pansy PC ideologue to understand human psychology and instinct. Sure, Ethan is angry, even unhinged at times, but his feelings are understandable and all-too-human. And on some level, it is virile and healthy. Man is, at the root, an animal driven by survival, sex, territory, and pride. Andrew is the sick one because he lacks such healthy instincts. Instead, he has the anti-instinct of decadence and racial suicide.
Now, I’m not saying men should always act out their natural rage. The World would blow up like in DR. STRANGELOVE. But those instincts are natural and of the essence. There is a powerful bond within the race and between parents and children. To Ethan, Debbie is a sex slave of the very people who raped and murdered her family. And from her womb will come more warriors to kill whites. To him, that isn’t ‘being alive’.
Of course, the history of the West was tragic for the Indians. From their point of view, they were defending their own land from white invaders. This is all very true. Indians had their own reasons and pride. The Walter Hill movie GERONIMO shows a ruthless warrior who fights for his race, land, and pride. Sure, he does horrible things and kills ‘innocent’ white folks, but it is war, and war brings out the ‘worst’ on all sides. Jews used Barack Obama to aid terrorists in Syria to bring down Assad. It’s amusing how so many progs bitch about how ‘racist-wacist’ Ethan is but are totally okay with Jewish-Zionist mass murder around the world.
Anyway, we need a better understanding of the dynamics of male pride, its dark side but also as a source of courage and inspiration. After all, what is the catalyst of events in SEVEN SAMURAI. One of the farmers had his wife taken by the bandits. He was helpless to do anything about it and feels shame as a man. His wife is being raped by scum, but he’s impotent to do anything about her. He feels the kind of rage that Ethan feels. But Andrew is the sort of PC pansy who’d accuse the farmer of ‘psycho-sexual hang-ups’. A man’s pride can snap under humiliation. Kurosawa understood this. Peckinpah understood. So did John Ford. But all Andy-Pandy can do is bitch about ‘racism, racism’.
Also, he says Ethan’s fear of miscegenation is some kind of sickness. Why? If a white man has a white daughter, he naturally wants the girl to look up to her father and marry someone like him. It’s part of human nature. If she goes with another race, it means she would be sexually betraying her own kind.
During Southern slavery, black men sometimes felt the same way. Some black women happily themselves to the massuh. White master had the whip hand, and the black ho wanted the white man’s seed than that of the Negro. Imagine how humiliated the Negro male must have felt.
In today’s world, white women are finding out that black men are more muscular and bigger-donged. They look down on white males as ‘slow white boys’. So, it is only natural that many white men would feel hurt and offended by this. Black men are more muscular and tougher than white men. So, it is NATURAL for white men to feel threatened in racial/masculine in relation to blacks. And there is a whore element in womenfolk. Women are naturally into hierarchy. They are not egalitarian in their sexual preferences. They want winners with more money, more muscle, and/or bigger dongs. It’s like French women threw themselves at Nazi German victors upon French surrender. Given that France lost, you’d think French women would have stuck with their own men out of national loyalty. But they didn’t give care. They saw German men as winners and French men as losers. French women acted like Teresa in THE WILD BUNCH. Like Arletty said, “My heart belongs to France but my ass belongs to the world.” Women are natural whores who will always go with Power. Women like power and look down on ‘losers’. Women may be politically on the ‘left’, but their sexual preferences are hierarchical. They wanna put out to the Best and reject all the Rest.
Historically and socially, white men had the advantage over blacks, who’d been historically oppressed. But white men were right to fear that, once social discrimination were removed, black men would gain over white men. Tougher black guys would beat up white guys, and white girls would see black men as racially-sexually superior. Races are not the same. Get rid of social ‘racism’ and you end up NOT with equality but natural ‘racism’ that picks new winners and losers. Look at sports. Social racism of Yesterday favored whites. But natural racism of Today favors blacks and discriminate against whites. We say US is so diverse, but NFL and NBA are almost all black.
So, white fathers were understandably worried about their daughters going with Negro men. It meant racial-sexual defeat of white males, not colorblind racial equality.
Such white girls(as ‘mudsharks’) were not opting for racial equality but rejecting white men as being less manly than mandingo-like Negroes. We hear of the cuckold fetish among white liberals. Why is it racially so unequal? We don’t hear of black guys inviting white guys to do their women. Tyrone don’t say, “Hey, white Wilbur, hump my Yolanda and humiliate by black ass.”
And what does Rap music tell us about black sexuality? Negro rappers say, “the only thing on our minds is fuc*ing and fighting and whupping fa**oty ass white boys and fuc*ing white girls.”
It’s amusing that white Libs condemn Griffith’s THE BIRTH OF A NATION for saying that black men are a bunch of sexual beasts, but when one looks at rap culture, sex industry, sports franchises, and much else(all controlled by Jews and Liberals), the message is black men are wild studs, white girls should put out to them, and white boys should accept their wimpy secondary status and be cucky pussyboys. White Libs SAY one thing but they CELEBRATE another. They say all races are the same and race is just a myth, but they really celebrate black superiority as athletes, singers, sex beasts, mandingos, and studs. And the music industry is run by Lib Jews and ‘progressives’. Not by KKK or by D.W. Griffith. But their favored depiction of Negroes is as thugs and sex lunatics. And blacks themselves lead all the other races in promoting thug behavior, skank culture, and whore attitude. So, it seems THE BIRTH OF A NATION, wasn’t entirely wrong about blacks. Its fears about blacks were dismissed by Progs as ‘irrational’, but the favored Prog image of the Negro is as the thuggish sex stud or gangsta mandingo. Lib Jews control sex industry and own music industry, and the prevailing image of Negroes is a wild studs who have nothing on their minds but humping white women. The ONLY difference between Griffith and Lib Jews is Griffith saw this as a bad thing, a threat to the white race, whereas Lib Jews welcome it because they want to castrate white males so that the white race will never gain the pride and unity necessary to challenge Jewish power. Difference is Griffith called on white race to resist the looming black sexual imperialism. But cucks like Andrew and Ken Burns celebrate their own racial-sexual demise as beta-male wussies before the macho black man. They are like the Eternals in ZARDOZ. He’s lost his male instinct to fight and survive. They really hate Ethan because he, like Geronimo, is a warrior for his race. Andrew is a collaborator cuck dork wimp. He can hide behind all this talk of ‘social justice’, but he has surrendered to Jews and blacks.�Anyway, sexuality is dark and brooding. It’s like what Camille Paglia said. We have to start from nature. Nature is at the root of everything, and nature is ‘unfair’ and ‘unequal’. It made men stronger than women. Nature is sex-ist because it created stronger men who can beat up women. Nature is also race-ist because evolution made Jews smarter to rule over us all and made blacks stronger to beat up other races.
https://newrepublic.com/article/77727/groups-and-genes
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/jewish-genius/
Indeed, if US had imported small Vietnamese as slaves, would we have the same problem? NO. White males wouldn’t be afraid of the charlies. But whites bought powerful muscular blacks from Africa, and once the blacks were freed, they began to whup white guys who became wussified and afraid. White women lost respect for white guys and more of them go with Negroes. You see, this is not equality. It is the new inequality. More social freedom means nature will play a bigger role in sex and crime. Since blacks are stronger and more aggressive, social equality between the races means blacks will beat up other races. This is why white folks want guns. Man to man, a white man is likely to get whupped by a black guy who will then rape the white guy’s wife. In fact, white guys are so demoralized that they now invite black guys to fuc* their wives. White guys are into cuckold fetish.
http://conservative-headlines.com/2014/12/the-truth-about-interracial-rape/
Take STRAW DOGS? Sexuality can be disturbing stuff. Dustin Hoffman’s character got the girl because he’s smart and successful. Girls like winners with careers who can provide, like Hoffman’s David. But girls also like studs, and studs resent and look down on successful geeks or nerds who lack ‘genuine manhood’. So, the sexual dynamics in STRAW DOGS gets all confused. That’s how nature works. But Andrew is too PC priggish and neo-puritanical to have the requisite empathy to understand. Instead, he hysterically shrieks, “oh, that is so racist, that is so sexist, that is so… blah blah blah.”� he will never fully appreciate art and reality if he’s such a neo-victorian PC pussy boy.
Yes, all the characters in STRAW DOGS are sexually anxious and/or ‘hung-up’, but that is natural. All guys are anxious about sexual matters. A big strong ugly guy can attract a girl with his toughness, but he is jealous of the handsome guy and smart guy. It’s like Jake LaMotta in RAGING BULL. He got the girl cuz he’s a tough boxer. But he is outwitted by old gangsters, and he is intensely jealous when his wife says Tony Janiro is good looking. Or a guy may be handsome and attract girls. But he may be anxious cuz he can be whupped by strong ugly guys. And a smart guy can get a girl with his money, but he may be anxious cuz she might be attracted to strong guys and handsome guys. It’s like that Eagles Song ‘LYING EYES’.
Take The Iliad. That was about a woman. A war for Helen. But then, what do men live and fight for? Land and pooter. That’s what matters most. Before there are ideas, there has to be life. And life is created through man and woman. So, if man loses the woman, he is lost. No children, no lineage. And if he has no land, he is vulnerable. This is why Jews obsessed about race for 3,500 yrs. Unless Jewish women had children for Jewish men, the Jewish race would face extinction. And even after 2,000 yrs of exile, Jews found a way to take back the land with the creation of Israel. Even the most Liberal Jews supported this massive ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Also, blood matters a lot to Jews. Take the Moses story. Like Debbie was raised by Indians, Moses was raised by Egyptians as one of their own. But he rediscovered his roots. He sided with Jews, and to defend the Tribe, he worked with God to kill all the first borns of Egypt. Jews still celebrate that day as Passover. That is how Jews survived for 3,500 yrs. There was a bit of Ethan Edwards in all of them.
Such is the way of life. Ethan is like a little Moses. He fights for his people. And it’s understandable why John Wayne stuck up for Ethan. Wayne’s remark about the Indians in his article is both valid and invalid. Wayne said the Indians were greedy for having all that land for themselves. He was right in the sense that the US as a nation couldn’t have become a reality if a few million Indians had all of it. There would have been no roads, factories, schools, hospitals, universities, and etc UNLESS white man took over and settled the land. Besides, the moral logic of Wayne’s pro-white-settlement account is now used by Progs. They say US is so big and bountiful that Americans must share the land and wealth with others. They say whites mustn’t hog it for themselves, just like Wayne once said it was wrong for Indians to claim all the land. These progs who feign outrage over Wayne’s remark don’t seem terribly interested in reviving Indian communities or returning much of the land to them. Instead, they call for even more mass invasion-immigration so that the remaining Indians will lose their ancestral hunting grounds to ALL THE WORLD.
For those who believe in the American enterprise, Wayne’s sentiment has much validity because the Indian Way had to be removed to make way for civilization modeled on European achievements. After all, what has America been but a vast social experiment where white peoples, under leadership of Anglo-Americans, were given a virtual blank slate of land and freedom to show the world what they are capable of? At the time, no other people, provided with the same raw resources and opportunities, could have done as much. Not even close.
But Wayne’s argument is also invalid because, for the Indians, it was not just a matter of economics or politics or ‘social progress’. The land under their feet was sacred and mythic, spiritually alive to them. Their folklore and identity were wedded to this land. And even though red ‘savages’ couldn’t build a great modern nation like the Anglos did, they lived in a kind of brutal balance with nature, and there is something to be said for nature and wildlife. America built by whites is a tremendous achievement, but so many animals had to be wiped out to make way for farms and factories. We modern folks don’t wanna live like savages, but Indians had a deeply meaningful relation to the land, and it was tragic that it was lost in the progress of industry and science and etc. Progress is good but came at a price.
So, there are always two ways to look at things. Even what Andrew says of MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE misses the point. On one level, it is true that the man’s career was built on a lie. But it was also built on a truth. While it’s true that Wayne’s character of Doniphon was the man who really shot Valance, it is no less true that the James Stewart character did show great courage when he picked up a gun to take on Valance. So, his career was built on a half-lie, not a total lie. He did have the mettle to stand up to Valance and be a real man. If Stewart’s character had ran from Valance and taken credit for having killed him, that would really have been a lie. But he did show courage in challenging Valance.
One thing for sure, Ethan is very different from Travis Bickle of TAXI DRIVER(written by Paul Schrader, directed by Martin Scorsese). Ethan is one tough hombre, a leader of men. He is man among men. An alpha. He becomes enraged because of what happened. He can be sociable and is very alert to the world around him. He is a good reader of people’s character and motives. In contrast, Bickle is really messed up in the head. He is sort of like Norman Bates.
Also, we are talking of two entirely different worlds. In THE SEARCHERS there is civilization vs savagery. Though Ford is somewhat sympathetic to the Indians, the coming of progress means savagery must make way for churches and rule of law. In contrast, TAXI DRIVER is more disturbing because it is set in the heart of civilization, New York, the greatest city on earth. Yet, the decadence and degeneracy are worse than savagery. It is neo-savagery at the core of civilization.
Some say Bickle is ‘racist’ cuz he fears black thugs. But this is so dumb. I mean how could any honest person NOT have noticed black thuggery and crime in NY, especially in the 70s? Things got so bad that even ‘liberal’ NYers finally got Republican Rudy Giuliani to clean it up. NYers also elected Bloomberg three times to get tough on blacks through stop-and-frisk(the ‘negro’). So, in a way, Bickle’s fears were shared by Libs themselves. Andy-Pandy sure has it too. If not, he should go live in Detroit or the black parts of Baltimore. It’s easy for him to talk the Lib talk while refusing to walk the Lib walk. Indeed, look at all the biggest Liberal cities. They’ve gentrified to drive out dangerous blacks. San Francisco is only 6% black. Housing projects have been torn down in Chicago to make way for posh condos for white and Jewish ‘progressive’ yuppies. And for all those ‘nice libs’ voted for Clinton who locked up tons of Negroes. So, while all Libs put down Bickle, his ACTIONS confirm their fears.
In the original screenplay of TAXI DRIVER, the pimps were black. Some say Bickle is ‘racist’ cuz he tries to save a white girl from black thugs. What in the hell is wrong with that? Suppose a black taxi driver saw a bunch of white pimps exploiting black girls. Would it be wrong for him to feel racial rage?
Weren’t Vietnamese men angry that whites and blacks were turning their women into a bunch of whores? Viet Cong men were a bunch of Travis Bickles who were trying to end sexual imperialism by the US. Bickle wants to save a white girl from black sexual exploitation.
If a bunch of Arab men sexually exploited Jewish women, Jewish men would be angry as hell. And good thing too. Suppose Arab men exploited Jewish women in the way that Jewish men exploited Slavic women as sex slaves in Israel and Ukraine. Suppose Arab men controlled pornography and got mostly Jewish women to have sex with Negroes for money. Jewish men would fly off the handle with rage. Any man who is okay with men of another race exploiting the women of his race is a pussy-bitch(like what the Japanese have become since the end of WWII).
Anyway, sexuality is some dark stuff. It brings out the murderer in us. Consider what OJ did to Nicole Simpson. Or consider what happens in Othello. In Romeo and Juliet, the two young ones commit suicide or murder themselves for love.
Sex also creates family and new dynamics of bonds and hatreds. When Agamemnon had Iphigenia sacrificed to the gods, his wife got so angry that she waited for him to return and then had him killed. And then her kids killed her. All very dark and crazy stuff but also very understandable since humans are driven by dark passions. But Andy-Pandy is the sort of PC pansy freak who can only think in terms of ‘that’s racist’, ‘that’s sexist’, or ‘that’s homophobic’ when it comes to the arts.
This is why humanities have come to suck so bad. Too many ideological freaks like him reduced the arts to a bunch of buzz words. He doesn’t know the true nature of passion. Consider Marty in THE SEARCHERS. He comes across the voice of reason through much of the movie, but when he finds out Laurie his love is about to marry the guitar-strummer, he turns all ‘savage’, and the ‘Indian’ side of him emerges. For a moment, he seems even more unhinged than Ethan as he even bites the groom in the ear. Andrew as a homo should know this since the homo community is filled with all sorts of obsessive freako people who are so vain, narcissistic, possessive, and even socio-pathic.
Wayne v Douglas
Wayne should have won Best Actor for his portrayal of Ethan Edwards but his political conservatism did not (nor does it now) play in Tinseltown. He finally won for “True Grit”, though frankly he was better in his last movie “The Shootist.” Am a bit surprised that the reviewer did not bring up the issue of Edwards brother being a cuckold. I never picked up on that until I read about it and upon seeing the movie again it is clear that there was a certain tenderness exhibited by Edwards to his putative sister-in-law which suggested that there was something else going on.
There were plenty of people opposed to men and women of different races getting together. Some were especially forthright about it:
…”only a man who is ashamed of what he is will marry out of his race. There has to be something wrong when a man or a woman leaves his own people and marries somebody of another kind.”
Malcolm X, 1963
“A black man should be killed if he’s messing with a white woman,”
Muhammad Ali, Playboy Interview, 1975
Beatles or Stones? I know many people who like both but very few who only like one.
John Wayne was 35 when the war started, and not fit for combat arms. The older actors who went into combat were all flyers with previous flying time. If Duke went into the service he would have been nowhere near a combat zone.
Being abysmally ignorant about Hollywood, I have not seen this film, nor even heard of it … do remember back in the day some friends waxing lyrical about The Outlaw Josey Wales, but I didn’t see that either … put me down as “indifferent” …
The header reminded me of “When You Walk In The Room” (1964)
by (you guessed it) The Searchers … so all was not lost …
JJ, you just know those kidnapped White women loved living in tents and squatting over the ground when nature called.
Squatting to take a dump and then get traded for a horse.
A true progressive paradise!
Look no further than Andrea Dworkin: http://exiledonline.com/exterminate-the-men-honoring-andrea-dworkin-a-feminist-who-meant-it-and-paid/
Was reading that she wrote a book on sex.
Would be like writing a travel guide to Hawaii without ever visiting.
Oh really !
Jimmy Stewart was born in 1908 one year after Big Duke and served in the Air Force ? Throughout history there are men far older than 35 who served in combat arms and branches of the military far more exhausting than sitting in a plane.
Besides, Big Duke was “too old” for combat arms but not too old to work on the movie set for 16 hours a day for weeks at a time.
Sorry my friend. Big Duke was not putting his life on the line in any way shape or form other than as a stud imaginary hero in all his silly movies. If the Duke had been promised a job in a remote part of Britain, in a bunker, counting bandages for the same pay he made in Hollywood he would have said NO !
Its a pet observation of mine that the fellows who project the tough guy image are full of shit. Wayne is no exception.
Its the noble savage leading a noble life in case you did not know. Nothing like a squat in the bush in the summer with the skeeters eating up the privates or in the winter when the cold sweeps across the snappers. What could be more thrilling than wiping your ass with dry grass or not at all.
Even today, there are thousands of people fleeing the big cities to live in the Plains like savages, one with nature, riding their horses and so on.
We were wrong to introduce them to toilets, toilet paper and heated homes and a host of freebies, ie subsidies.
Now, instead of chasing the buffalo on their swift ponies they can engage in other noble tasks like being gainfully unemployed, loking, toking and shooting up, drinking beer and looking at TV from dawn until the Great Spirit makes the sun set in the West over Mother Earth
They have always had a noble life only now whites are footing the bill.
Ok, I regret to say that I don’t have the time in my schedule to read your immense post, though I’m sure it is worth reading.
However one thing immediately struck me as the essence.
He’s queer alright. As in completely, utterly irredeemably off his rocker.
These queers need to go back to their lifetime memberships in bathhouses where they can be as queer as they like.
In fact, if anyone says such an idiocy in his/her/they/ther/ze/zer/er/yew/lamb/veal introduction? I immediately stop reading.
Who would want to listen to someone who believes they are queer? If I thought I was queer, I’d hide in the barn until nightfall.
“Many reviewers talking about Ethan’s “racisms” have blinded themselves over the fact that he has obviously relatable reasons for it, even though it has become a consuming obsession that sometimes makes him appear almost insane.”
Racism is and invented word, created for the sole reason to vilify the European descendant’s love and preference of his own kind over that of other lesser kinds.
Sorry my friend. Big Duke was not putting his life on the line in any way shape or form other than as a stud imaginary hero in all his silly movies. If the Duke had been promised a job in a remote part of Britain, in a bunker, counting bandages for the same pay he made in Hollywood he would have said NO !
So what?
The US wouldn’t get into so many wars if it didn’t have so many Anglos willing to volunteer.
Look at how many Anglos signed up for WW1.
Get your head blown off over a battle between European powers.
Horrible.
Oscars hardly went to the best of anything.
Most winners were undeserved, and so, winning an oscar should be considered an insult, not an honor.
So, good thing he didn’t win.
PS. Russian Othello. Strange story where a black guy betrays his own kind and fights for the white Christians and expects the white woman to betray her own race and marry a black guy BUT she must be all about loyalty to him. Traitors entangled in the theme of loyalty.
Another time:
The problem wasn’t Wayne not taking part in WWII. I have no beef with that.
The problem was with someone who took no part in war himself making all these war movies that were in part designed to make young ones foolishly join America neo-imperialist war efforts.
Mike Royko said much the same about Stallone and Rambo. If Stallone found ways to avoid the draft, okay, fine. But for him to make movies like RAMBO when he himself didn’t volunteer to fight in the war…
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1988-05-30-8801030177-story.html
True enough, but this is in the grand Hollywood tradition. How many of those so-called Libs risked their lives for causes? They call for Open Borders but live in their secluded mansions. They talk of integration but in live rich secure neighborhoods.
All these Jewish ‘liberals’ call for more intervention in the Middle East but their own kids don’t serve and die.
The only solution is for people to stop taking celebs seriously.
When my 9-year-old daughter asked me, “You’re afraid of sharks. What you’re gonna do when I fall into the water [ocean]…?”
I then realized, no matter what fears I might have myself, I would dive into the waves and rescue her. It has nothing to do with being a man. It has all to do with being a loving parent. The same as with being a loving partner.
Love is genderless.
Feminism is a word, not a person.
Sounds a bit like a Occupied Palestine horror story to me…
A Fistful of $$$ = Wall Street
I only WISH that no American would have put their life on the line during WWII. That war more than any other war DESTROYED TENS OF MILLIONS OF WHITE LIVES AND BROUGHT US TO WHERE WE ARE TODAY.
Hell, like others said, The Duke was too old anyhow, and even IF he was 22 years old and said, to hell with killing other Whites, I don’t have any beef with the Germans and Italians, than good for him. And of course there is the whole controversy surrounding what we have been told to believe about Pearl Harbor as far as the Japanese are concerned.
That war destroyed Europe and placed half of Europe under (((communist rule.))) Only Whites that glorify that war are a bunch of cuckold white traitor trash. What White person would be proud of some of their ancestors killing other Whites? Unfortunately I had two uncles in that war and that is only because they had no choice and didn’t know any better because they were LIED to.
Priss Factor makes a very good point about Wayne. While I am glad he didn’t take part in WWII, face it, what 35 year old man is going to give up a lucrative movie career and go off and fight a war? My dad actually volunteered as a 17 or maybe 18 year old to fight in Korea and I always asked him why the hell did he do that?
Back to people like The Duke and Stallone, like Priss Factor, these guys need to be shamed for profiting greatly off of making war movies that brainwash young men into going off and fighting wars that don’t benefit America at all. Think of all the money Stallone made off those Rambo movies?
Again, both World Wars and PARTICULARLY WORLD WAR II were the worst things that ever happened to Whites around the globe. We lost OUR very best and for what? Look around you right now, this is what those guys and gals and tons of innocent civilians died for. Look at America and Europe now. This is BECAUSE OF WORLD WAR II.
Yup.
It’s interesting to analyse movies and some movies are worth analysing in depth but you can overdo it. When critics analyse movies they’re usually analysing things that they would like to believe are there to be analysed but that actually aren’t there at all.
That’s particularly true when you get someone (as is the case with this review) with a political agenda trying to analyse films. They impose their own political agenda on the movie. If you’re a White Nationalist you want to see White Nationalist themes (or anti-White Nationalist themes) in every movie you see. Just as homosexuals want every movie ever made to be all about homosexuality and feminists want every movie ever made to be all about feminism.
The problem was with someone who took no part in war himself making all these war movies that were in part designed to make young ones foolishly join America neo-imperialist war efforts.
I get the sentiment but his WW2 movies were too late in the war to make any difference.
I’m also not sure how much it matters when this was a problem before movies existed.
Just look at how many Yankees signed up to shoot their southern cousins.
That’s a bit unfair. Wayne was legitimately exempt. He was 34 and married with small kids when the war started.
Let’s just say his GREEN BERETS was silly.
Mr Lynch either needs a basic course in 18th Century Liberal Contract Thory, or someone to suggest a course of reading; perhaps both. It would appear he doesn’t understand the term he frequently employs (Marcb Review of ‘The Man who Shot Liberty Valence’) to explain, or perhaps describe the Wild West. If we are to assume that Mr Lynch does not adhere to 18th Century ideology- the birthplace of Liberalism and Liberal Contract Theory to the chagrin of philosophy of antiquity and the Middle Ages, why use the term? Does he understand it? There is no such thing as “the state of nature.” It would seem amiss, a non-sequitar. I suggest, humbly, some Aristotle, followed by Aquinas.
“Adopted” by the murderous rapist scum tribe known as Comanche as were so hated by all other tribes, that their defeat and expulsion from Texas was accomplished by scouts from six other tribes who led Col. Randal McKenzie into the secret (at that time) entrance to Palo Duro canyon, namely Comanche headquarters, where although absent on a war party, their decimation was achieved by executing the 1200 horses remaining to their remuda. PETA would have loved it.
Adopted by abduction at age ten following the murder of her family, then raped and brainwashed into mothering the Comanche ethos, namely unmerciful butchery and death for any all other humans not of their own tribe. How quaint an existence for a young girl–mind you, modern days liberals would defend the comanche if they voted democrat. Old enough to bleed, old enough to butcher.
The Searchers is a film about Ethan, an admitted racist when it comes to most Indians.
Don’t read about, go see it.
Oh go attend your BLM riot. Or better yet, look up arrest statistics for sex crimes by race per capita (Euro men are notably less represented than Blacks, Mestizos, and Injuns). See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#By_country
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sexual_abuse#Prevalence
A 2009 meta-analysis of 65 studies from 22 countries found a global prevalence of 19.7% for females and 7.9% for males. In that analysis, Africa had the highest prevalence rate of child sexual abuse (34.4%), primarily because of high rates in South Africa; Europe showed the lowest prevalence rate (9.2%); and America and Asia had prevalence rates between 10.1% and 23.9%.[16]
Since rape as we know it occurs across history and animals like chimps and lions aren’t particularly nicer to females than White Men are, it must be something in man’s biology with current Euro men biologically less inclined to commit rape rape than other races as reflected by crime stats (or national stats when you compare the Mexico and South America with East Europe in per capita crime stats). You’re the one going anti-European feminist here by by denying that Amerindian Males engaged in such against the obvious outsiders’ women despite this being well recorded across history in other continents and framed claims to the contrary as lies by the White Devil. The Geneva Conventions didn’t exist for most of history.
Oh, this literature uses actual data from day forager and/or early agriculture societies acquired worldwide does it and has no notable ties to Leftists? And accounts for the behavior of our closest relative the Chimp? See:
https://evolutionistx.wordpress.com/2015/06/08/no-hunter-gatherers-were-not-peaceful-paragons-of-gender-equality/
https://evolutionistx.wordpress.com/2016/12/06/why-horticultural-societies-act-like-hunter-gatherers/
https://traditionsofconflict.com/blog/2019/7/5/eternal-subjugation
https://quillette.com/2018/11/25/on-the-nature-of-patriarchy/
https://quillette.com/2018/02/24/behavioral-ecology-male-violence/
https://quillette.com/2017/12/16/romanticizing-hunter-gatherer/
Among the Mundurucu, “loose women,” or women who challenged the men’s authority, would sometimes be punished with gang-rape by the males: “the men consciously state that they use the penis to dominate their women.” This punishment would transcend kin relationships, with even male first cousins of the woman sometimes participating in her rape.
You didn’t read the book:
https://counter-currents.com/2020/05/s-c-gwynnes-empire-of-the-summer-moon/
No notable society has ever accepted biological outsiders unconditionally (as in having no blood ties with men within it, isn’t too strong to not just be killed off, etc.). Having a few mongrels who could backstab their way into leadership doesn’t change that the Injuns prior to being overly mongrelized never really saw the Mutts as normal and never saw women who bred with White men as good women (men have a wired aversion to women of their ingroup breeding with biological invaders). And women are not the same as men hence cannot be treated “equal.” This is especially the case even in the Americas (see Iroquois women being forbidden to hold executive power within their society, lack of female shamans across the Americas).
Stop using your computer or other notable examples of technology and/or scientific discovery if you’re going to distrust the White Man’s findings/knowledge by default. Since you know, science and technology are more or less European things, not Muslim things or Injun things or Black things as shown by noble prize winners.
Name a single society prior to modernity where women reliably held high-status occupations. Especially in the Americas. Otherwise your claim that captive women were treated as equals despite their obvious differences is just babble.
bonus:
https://thuletide.wordpress.com/2020/08/01/racial-crime-statistics-lots-of-infographics/
I share your sentiments. Unfortunately, many people do not feel the same way. One could list all the reasons why the activity is stupid and wasteful but it is part of the human condition. The whole North American continent could become pacifist but other nations may not and will not. So while a sensible man may abhor bloodshed and shrink from mass slaughter, in the event of conflict what do the pacifists do ? Put up their hands, cry out they are against all war and hope for mercy ? I think history shows that the conquered are generally not shown pity, are at times swallowed up by the victorious culture and unfortunately from time to time exterminated. Hence a well trained army should be maintained for home defence.
On the other side of the coin is the use of the military in these foreign adventures. Again, all the points you made are valid, the lies, the waste, the shattered lives and landscape. Every conflict since WW1 (and before) is based on bullshit shovelled up by politicians, people with their own agenda and everyone else with no personal skin in the game. However whether drafted or volunteered people join the military and a soldier goes where he is sent ! So many folks volunteer during a time of peace and then suddenly find themselves caught up in a tempest not of their making. To avoid this scenario they should stay out of the military.
I think if we divided everyone in the military and asked why they joined up (draftees aside) we would get millions of different answers some rational, most emotional. In many cases we would get no answers at all, some people of course not knowing why they did. I also think that if we interviewed everyone who were actually in a fight we could also split them into those who have regrets and those who have none. To question each group again we would get a host of logical and emotional answers and of course no answers at all. I am not sure whether we could boil down any of the reasons into a summary that makes sense. Some know, some dont know, some wont talk and some take decades to figure it out. I would say that each and everyone of us (military or civilian) looks back at our lives and just cannot understand why we did what we did or did not do what we should have done. Some may draw lessons, some may slip into a funk and others may accept that things just happened and there is nothing we can do to change that and hence MUST move on. Some poor souls never do, they are lost in their memories. We may laugh at them, mock them and consider them silly and the authors of their own fate but you never know because as they say “but for the grace of God I could be like him”
Today we live in a soft world with the resulting soft people. The things I see flooring people seem so inconsequential to me. So many people do not know how to fight, not mentally, not physically. They should learn how to, not to glorify violence but to protect themselves from it. I think military training hardens the spirit and the body. Many Westerners cannot imagine a day without the smallest convenience we are accustomed to and take for granted on a daily basis.
War WILL come to this country if not from outside then internally, maybe not in our lifetime hopefully but for sure it will. I think the majority of the population will perish unable to cope physically, more so mentally. I believe that those who wish to survive even the most terrible hardships will depend on veterans to show them the way. What we despise today,for whatever reason, will suddenly seem useful. Many will come to realize that conflict like peace has its advantages and disadvantages.
Whites kill Whites, blacks kill blacks, Asians kill Asians and from time to time they go at each other. This is nothing new and no matter how much we shout at the foolishness of it all we can look forward to more of the same in the years to come.
I dont think there is anything wrong with looking at war as a foolish business but we need to recognize that other people with the same skin colour or a different skin colour feel otherwise. Hence we should be prepared. It is no fun being a civilian in a conflict and unwise to think that the nature of man is going to change anytime soon.
I have nothing against serving in the military, I served from 1983-1987, my brother served, hell, every male in my family served and my father as mentioned actually volunteered to serve during a war. I have had relatives in family ( my father) in WWII, Korea, Vietnam and the current ongoing Middle East wars. None of these wars benefited America at all. As mentioned WWII was a disaster for the White race and we obviously fought on the wrong side. My uncle told me a story about what a German POW told him while he was serving over in Europe. This was in the early 1970s and America, while already declining, was a great place to live compared to today, anyhow, he told my uncle that one day the Americans would learn that they fought on the wrong side of the war. I was just a kid then and I have no idea why my uncle told me this, maybe he saw what direction we were heading at the time. Obviously as a kid born in the early 1960s, I hadn’t witnessed how much America had fallen since the end of WWII and the early 1970s.
I think it is obvious to just about anyone in 2021 who has a pulse that we fought on the wrong side in World War II. Whites slaughtering Whites over in Europe by the tens of millions, and now we have nonwhites slaughtering and raping Whites by the tens of thousands each year in America. They say the war in Afghanistan is America’s longest war, but I beg to differ. The longest war in America is and has been the War On Whites, that one has been going on at least for the last 60 plus years and really has been magnified in the last few years. Whites are losing badly and the military has become anti-White as well. NO WORKING CLASS OR POOR WHITE MALE OR FEMALE SHOULD EVEN THINK ABOUT JOINING THE MILITARY. Why fight for a nation that hates you and does everything in its power to keep you down and treat you as less than human.
Thus, according to the author, in order for the chosen ones to bring their civilizing mission to those who swarm down the hill, it is necessary to use the most barbaric means.
A truly illuminating article on the American psyche. It’s almost as if the unconscious of a people began to speak.
Although most blame Germany for both World Wars….
If Britain had just kept their nose out of things….
Both would have been limited to Eastern/SE Europe…..
After a small amount of study of WWI, the US
should have occupied Belgium, separating the two groups
and let them fight on the German/France Border…..
Few even know about the US killing thousands of Russians
to pull the Brits out of the fire in Arkangel……
How many ships/subs/sailors would have been saved had
US not become Britians/Russias Military Supply Complex….
Both ‘The Searchers’ and ‘First Blood’ are based on novels (that means ‘fiction’), material written by others in another medium. Wayne understood storytelling, and directed ‘The Green Berets.’ Stallone understood storytelling and wrote ‘First Blood.’ Both stories have lots of conflict, of all types; experienced screenwriters know that it is ALWAYS ‘the right time’ for conflict in a script. War is hell, Agent Orange, horrible treatment by U.S. vets by both public and government, blah, blah, blah. And ordinary or realistic people/places/things shouldn’t be written about.
Most importantly, both movies were very, very, very financially successful. Nobody cares about some ‘ethical message of peace’ imagined by a message-board warrior giving notes some 40 – 50 years later. Action movies are for young men (who pay for their date’s ticket, if they can get a date) who imagine themselves being courageous, sacrificing for a higher cause, and being capable under fire. And then get out of their seat in the air-conditioning, wipe their popcorn-greasy fingers on their pants, and drive home safely in a civil society their forefathers fought and died to establish and maintain.
Like I said almost all the older actors who went in to the fighting war were pilots with flying experience. James stewart for one. The USMC, and the Army were not putting older men in the infantry. There is some evidence that John Ford, who was a naval officer used his influence to keep Wayne out of the service.
Let’s just say his GREEN BERETS was silly.
Yea that is a pretty awful movie.
What I don’t get is why there is an airport named after him.
I like his movies but he was an actor and not actually some rugged American bad ass who fought in wars and rode the plains. Not sure if everyone gets that.
Action movies are for young men (who pay for their date’s ticket, if they can get a date) who imagine themselves being courageous, sacrificing for a higher cause, and being capable under fire. And then get out of their seat in the air-conditioning, wipe their popcorn-greasy fingers on their pants, and drive home safely in a civil society their forefathers fought and died to establish and maintain.
Sure they are made as popcorn fare but they can have a lot of influence on young men.
A lot of men are conned into joining the military based on what they see in movies.
Recruiters use the scam of selling them on being in special forces or a jet pilot and then the military later makes them regular infantry after they don’t make the cut (which the recruiter knew wouldn’t happen). What is the basis for their understanding and desiring those positions? Movies.
The antithesis of any culture, by its nature, cannot see what the other culture sees. Thus, an enemy who is either at your feet or at your throat. No inbetween, no diversity nor can be. Andrew Jackson understood this.
Andrew Jackson, was the presidential version of ETHAN EDWARDS from the Searchers.
https://themaxeychronicles.blogspot.com/2020/02/andrew-jackson-ethan-edwards-as.html
There is a scene in THE SEARCHERS, right before the Comanche attack, ETHAN’s nephew, 12 year old BEN EDWARDS, is standing guard with his rifle,prepared to fight and die like a man. Little BEN tells his mother he is not afraid, but he does wish for only one thing.
His mother, MARTHA, asks, “What’s that Ben?”
Ben answers: “I wish Uncle Ethan was here.”
That is it, in a John Ford nutshell; in danger, Americans don’t wish for St.George nor Sir Lancelot nor even the Virgin Mary to help, Americans wish for the killer, Andrew Jackson, the Jacksonian Dilemma in the American Psyche.
No, it doesn’t look like a place somebody would build a cabin, and it doesn’t look like a place in Texas, where the story locates it. I thought Ford used way too many shots of Monument Valley, much of the movie is shot there and it is one of the weaknesses of the film. There is such an intentional metaphysical intensity in use of these natural surroundings that the dialog by comparison seems seems trite and contrived. What monumental words can be spoken that are appropriate or commensurate to the stately bluffs of Monument Valley? There is really nothing to say, all you can really do is walk off without a word into the night and disappear into the ontology of myth…
Although most blame Germany for both World Wars….
If Britain had just kept their nose out of things….
Germany could have gone after the USSR first instead of gambling world war by invading Poland. The Germans had calculated 60/40 odds of Britain doing nothing which means Hitler was fine with a 40% chance of fighting Britain and the West.
Germany also could have severed ties with the Japanese after Pearl Harbor instead of declaring war on the US. That war could have gone a lot of different ways but it was Hitler that recklessly bet on ultimate victory even with two fronts and the Americans involved.
After a small amount of study of WWI, the US
should have occupied Belgium, separating the two groups
and let them fight on the German/France Border…..
Germany could have not gambled on unrestricted warfare as the primary method of knocking out Britain. That only furthered globalists like Wilson that wanted to sell German cruelty to the public.
A lot of guilty parties but I’m not going to allow America to be blamed when in both wars Germany took huge gambles to try and win it all. Hitler even talked about how he wouldn’t make the mistake of the two front war and then he went ahead and invaded the USSR even though his generals were against it.
So leave America out of these German gambles for world power. I’m not a fan of the British but this blame America crap needs to end.
Even more evidence. Suffice to say there was no heaven on this earth and man by birth is made to dominate and segregate and exterminate.
You don’t know wired female behavior if you call it brainwashing.
1. Women are not capable of having loyalty for anything outside of their peer circle, their immediate blood (children), and their “alpha.”
2. Women do not care where high-rank men come from as long as they can have their semen inside them.
“Stockholm Syndrome” is just a massive cope/denial of how female sexuality works. Women across the world’s history have been either traded for alliances or abducted in raids or forcefully taken into a victorious tribe. This holds even for chimps
Women are constantly looking for the best deal. They, if not deformed/fat/overly old will be constantly eyeing the males who aren’t overly related to them around them as both short-term men (knock them up) and long-term men (protect them from predators aka unwanted males, give them resources, just about control them).
Women will live in filth if it means they can get some semen from the best man around. You’re oh so wonderful blond blue eyed waif will offer her ass/tits to the swarthy barbarian who destroyed her village.
It’s also hard to accept on the basis that Ford used it in earlier movies, in a way that often didn’t make sense – for example Stagecoach , and his fingerprint as a director just serves to remind you of the fact.
“Stockholm Syndrome” is just a massive cope/denial of how female sexuality works.
An interesting point. The most notable cases of Stockholm Syndrome certainly involved women.
Women are constantly looking for the best deal. They, if not deformed/fat/overly old will be constantly eyeing the males who aren’t overly related to them around them as both short-term men (knock them up) and long-term men (protect them from predators aka unwanted males, give them resources, just about control them).
Well from what I have read this happened with French women during WW2.
Sounds like plenty lined up to get a Nazi bun in the oven.
Gotta wonder if the national embarrassment of the quick defeat helped move such things along.
When you are the champion of violence towards your neighbors you can’t help being the champion in our own family. Read the statistics.
To be fair, most of that generation of men were lost in WWI…
Then the Manly Men fled the country…..
From the movies, can’t say much about the Vichy that were left….
The key point is that societies prior to modernity recognized that woman nature is not just treacherous, but also dangerous to the tribe since they are necessary to preserve it yet have no loyalty to it. And breeding outside of the tribe, with its enemy, pollutes her. It was also recognized that woman could not be trusted when it came to interacting with males who weren’t within her immediate blood circle.
Fairy tales like Little Red Riding Hood and Bluebeard are supposed to teach that women should not be permitted to interact with outsider males who haven’t been vetted or strangers. For in traditional society a fertile woman meeting a man who’s a stranger would mean she’s about to get violated or abducted.
“ If a white woman returns to her abusive white husband, feminists treat it as a pathology. If a white woman returns to a non-white rapist, that is a feminist morality tale and a lesson to the white man.”
That reminds me of Shame by Coetzee and the film with John Malkovich. Possible review by Lynch?
I find it odd that people attribute racism to this film.
Scar and his band have killed my brother and nephew after torturing them for fun. Comanches did that. They raped and mutilated the woman I loved and killed her. They took her two daughters and raped and murdered the older one. I had to bury her because they didn’t bother. They took the other daughter and turned her into one of their own.
I really hate them and want them all dead. So I am a racist. Right.
There has really been too much of this bs about the red man being a zen environmentalist and ignoring of the reality of the plains tribes, There was a reason why whites in the west applauded any attempt to destroy the native tribes. The original Not in my Neighborhood groups.
I recently watched this film after reading the review and I was quite distracted for some time trying to figure out if that territory had been part of Texas circa 1868. Also doesn’t make sense to build a ranch in the middle of a desert.
they’re usually analysing things that they would like to believe are there to be analysed but that actually aren’t there at all.
Pareidolia comes from a neural module. I think that we must have a similar module that allows us to “see” in the tea leaves or scattered chicken bones what we “want” to see. Cognition is, in a sense, one continuous Rorschach test. For example, if one is an anti-Semite then he will “see” the Jews at work everywhere. A great example was the recent article here at Unz by a WN that discussed the encounter between Indians and Europeans in the early years of the creation and expansion of the U. S. He “saw” that the main problem for the Indians was that they never developed “Indian-ness.” The lesson being that whites need to develop whiteness. He conveniently ignored the Comanche Empire. Comanches didn’t care which tribe you came from. Hell, they didn’t even care whether you were Indian or not. They took in anyone who bought into being a Comanche. It didn’t matter whether you were Indian, a half-breed, white, Spanish or mestizo.
Blacks like Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X are liars and hypocrites when they claim to be against interracial marriage or other unions. Blacks usually hate whites in general but they love white DNA. They consider mulattoes, quadroons and octoroons to be especially desirable for marriage partners and fly into collective hissy fits if those people reject them. Blacks write constant denunciations of part-black mixed-race people for:
1) “Passing for white” (Goggle the term) and producing white families who DON’T identify with blacks. They are seen as “traitors” who have “gone over to the enemy” and deprived blacks of superior white blood and superior white beauty.
2). Endogamy with other mixed-race people of similar background or looks who refuse to marry blacks and spread the superior white DNA around. “The uppity light-skinned Creoles only marry each other and won’t marry blacks!” (Google Yaba Blay, a coal-black woman who has made a career out of claiming that blacks need to drag more white DNA into their race, kicking and screaming). Louisiana Creoles and similar mixed-race groups may be the only people in the world who are denounced for marrying EACH OTHER. Blacks made sure of that.
Racism is and invented word, created for the sole reason to vilify the European descendant’s love and preference of his own kind over that of other lesser kinds.
Invented by ((( them ))), naturally, to allow any race but Whites that freedom.
Now that’s 100% Truth To ((( Power ))) !
Welcome to the ((( leftist ))) thinking / gaslighting / shuck and jive / verbal gymnastics / sophistry of post-1960 USA.
And it’s decades overdue, to round up those that keep such twisted racist thinking alive and well, and execute them!!!!
“Oh the townsfolk talk
To see me walk
Six inches off the ground.”
(I think. From memory, sometime back in last half of the last century. Forgot who recorded it).
Best no-fuss, not-in-yer-face exposition of this was Peter (Texas Jack Vermillion) Sherayko in Tombstone (1993) @ 00:05, on.
He
did know what he was doing, not just acting (i.e =dressing-up-and-shouting).
Sorry for hinky quality, the only one I could find where it’s edited tightly enough.
For modern woke people, it’s hairy men in high-heels. What’s not to like?
Oh dearie me, oh crikey! Not a song. Although I’ve heard it sung, on the wireless.
A poem. By the absurdly British Charles Causley
Fled is my fancy sister
All weeping like the willow,
And dead is the brother I loved like no other
Who once did share my pillow.
I fly the florid water
Where run the seven geese round
O the townsfolk talk to see me walk
Six inches off the ground.
Gottit now. The tune I heard it done to was a slight variation on this un. (More melodic, naturally, and no choruses).
It’s obvious from the first clip that Ethan is or has been in love with Aaron’s wife, and she with him.
Too many gazes held a bit too long.
Eyes following too yearningly. Just in this short clip.
So maybe Debbie is Aaron’s child. Ethan obviously is the alpha male, and wifey knows it.
The preoccupation with rape in the film as reviewed by Lynch is really over the top.
The assumption that all Indians wanted to do was rape white women they captured is not historically accurate.
Rape rape rape of the white woman. The racist’s nightmare, and fantasy. Keeps ‘im goin’ . . .
It’s not about Sex, it’s about despoiling the women for the white man…..
It’s still a thing in parts of the world, especially among the Muslims……
Blacks usually hate whites in general but they love white DNA. They consider mulattoes, quadroons and octoroons to be especially desirable for marriage partners and fly into collective hissy fits if those people reject them.
It’s a love/hate relationship.
They hate mulattoes for having White DNA but as you say won’t turn one down for marriage.
But Blacks will discriminate against them out of jealousy.
It starts early in the schools. The Black kids will openly harass mulattoes that do well in their studies.
They also will happily take them as political leaders. The one-drop rule applies in politics. If you are 1/10th Black then you can have a career as a Black leader. I guess we aren’t supposed to notice how many Black politicians are actually mulatto.
I don’t mention rape in the review any more than it figures in the film, but go ahead, you obviously have a dishonest agenda you are pushing.
Indians didn’t just rape captive women, they also tortured, mutilated, enslaved, and killed them. That’s the “historically accurate” account.
“Preoccupation”? Why not “obsession”? After all, your goal is to turn the reality of rape into an unhealthy figment of the racist imagination.
Yours is the most disgusting and dishonest comment I have seen on this site.
Mr. Lynch,
Do you take movie review requests? For donations, or donations to an organization you approve of?
Sure
Great! FWIW the movie I have in mind is the 2016 ‘comedy’, ‘Hail, Ceasar!’
I believe this film is criminally underrated; I have yet to see a review that evinces any degree of sensitivity to the deeper theological elements in the film.
TWO RODE TOGETHER. An interesting work, starts promising but ends poor.
One thing for sure, while Ford developed an understanding and even respect for the Indians, he lacked the requisite empathy, curiosity, and insight to truly penetrate and understand a culture beyond his own. At best, he halfway understood Wasps and that was about the limit. All said and done, it could be said of him, ‘you can take an Irishman out his village but you can’t take the village out of the Irishman.’ At least back then.
In movies like TWO RODE TOGETHER, CHEYENNE AUTUMN, and SERGEANT RUTLEDGE, Ford tried to expand his horizons and give the Other(Indians or blacks) their due, but these works are least convincing and lean on the schoolmarm’s crutch. Ford didn’t work well with dramatic temperance. He was best when intoxicated with what he loved most: The world of rough white men, esp the Irish kind.
Here’s some ideas on Hail Caesar.
https://www.unz.com/isteve/a-twitter-exchange/#comment-2189474
i first watched the movie not long after reading mr. lynch’s review of cabaret and i couldnt help but feel that Hail, Ceasar! was literally the opposite movie
Miss Lockhart and the Comanches by Maggie Van Ostrand
In 1840 a peace powwow took place in Texas
Comanches that they were comprised of roughly 12 tribes, with 35 independent roaming bands, each operating separately.
“… Comanches brought with them one white captive, Miss Matilda Lockhart, aged 16. Miss Lockhart had been held by them for over a year and a half.”
“Mrs. Maverick was one of the women who cared for Miss Lockhart after her release. She described the girl’s condition: ‘Her head, arms, and face were full of bruises, and sores, and her nose was actually burnt off to the bone. Both nostrils were wide open and denuded of flesh.’ Safe now with Mrs. Maverick, the girl broke into tears and said she was ‘utterly degraded, and could not hold up [my] head again.’”
“She described the horrors she had endured. Beyond her sexual humiliations, she had been tortured terribly by the women, who had held torches to her face to make her scream. Her whole thin body bore scars from fire. An extremely intelligent girl, she had learned the Comanche tongue and had actually overhead discussions of their council strategy. She told of some 15 additional white captives in the same camp.”
The Texans were outraged by the savagery of the Native Americans and a violent conflict ensued.