Posted on 04/25/2013 11:31:02 AM PDT by nickcarraway
The Searchers has its critics — but who seriously believes John Wayne had a drop of racist blood?
Film critics, a tense and peculiar family (with apologies to the late Max Beerbohm), have spent a half century praising John Ford and John Wayne’s tense and peculiar movie, The Searchers, beyond all-reason. They do this because they believe it gives them a clean shot at calling the Duke a racist, something they enjoy doing, and which appears to be required by a Film Critics Union work rule. For those who haven’t seen the movie or don’t remember it, The Searchers tells the story of a Texas frontier family in 1868, some of whose members are murdered and two of the women kidnapped by Comanche raiders (a terrifying but far from uncommon event during the period), and the five-year search by two men to recover the kidnapped women. One of the searchers, played powerfully by the Duke, is Ethan Edwards, perhaps the toughest, most intense, most vengeful, most morally ambiguous, and least likeable character of the Duke’s long film career. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that film critics and other liberal thumbsuckers like The Searchers, or at least profess to like it, because the Duke’s Ethan Edwards is so unlikeable for much of the two hours he’s on the big screen (to accommodate the Duke, it has to be a big screen).
The latest contribution to this ritual is Glenn Frankel’s The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend (Bloomsbury – 406 pages – $28). Frankel, a card-carrying member of the liberal hive, is not a film critic but a former Washington Post reporter and now director of the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. He bagged a Pulitzer in 1989 for, as his bio puts it, his
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
John Wayne was white. Therefore, being a Crakka he is, by daffynition, a racist.
Certainly his role in "The Searchers" has no bearing on the question, since he was an actor performing a part.
If we’re going to start reaching into the past to make accusations of racism, we ought to start off with the entire Democrat party.
What they were doing in 1956 when The Searchers was made, not to mention the decades before and after, makes anything John Wayne did acting in a movie virtually irrelevant.
I’ve been wondering how long it would take before the left started attacking John Wayne. At some point, they’ll be demanding that his movies be pulled from the airwaves.
The final scene, where family members have been reunited is nothing short of magnificent movie making. Wayne's Edwards realizes his multi year search is done, he turns and steps out into the sun, while the door closes behind him.
Mr. Thornberrry seems not to understand Eathan Edwards’ desire to kill Debbie. Did he miss Vera Miles’ answer to Jeffrey Hunter just before they leave to recue Debbie at the end. She describes what Debbie has experienced and says that Eathan will kill her and that Martha would want him to. I guess Mr. Thornberry didn’t read the novel or any of the history of Texicans and Comanches. Oh and Wayne was acting and despite Mr’ Thornberry’s protestations the only two roles where Wayne even equals his portrayal of Edwards are Nathan Brittles and Tom Dunson, and Dunson’s character is very similar to Edwards.
All 3 of his wives were Hispanic.
John Ford was a true patriot. He was on Midway when the Japs started bombing and much of the film we have of the attack is Ford’s. Patriotism: Strike 1. Ford believed in the civilizing influence of western expansion. Proud of American culture: strike 2. Wayne’s character is an unreconstructed confederate. Politically incorrect: strike 3.Wayne’s character is classic western tough guy - direct, violent, driven, unrepentant and not “in touch with his feelings”. Testosterone: Coup de grace. That’s why libtards hate the movie.
He was a Republican.
That settles it.
Great film ping....
Everyone is a racist and all dead great men are homo’s.
In the one instance, no matter one’s objection to being called a racist, only demonstrates the truth of the claim, for one doth protest too much.
In the other, they don’t deny they are gay. then again, they aren’t amongst the living, so the homosexual community feels they the imprimature to put their little asterisk on anyone’s name and append their history, to bolster their agenda.
I just finished reading the book, “Empire of the Summer Moon” about the Commanches and Quanah Parker.
The cowboy movies whitewash the truth because the truth is so terrible that movie audiences of the day would have left the theater from nausea. The Searchers was notable because it hinted at the vast cruelty in an age when polite people could not use the word rape in public.
The Commanches (some of my ancestors) were incredibly evil by our modern standards. They not only gang raped women and children while torturing them to death, they killed babies and tortured children. They castrated boy slaves and maimed some so that they could not escape captivity.
The Texans and other pioneers were driven to rage by the atrocities. For example, when some children were ransomed in the 1840s, a 15 year girl came back with her nose burned off down to the bone by the squaws who used captives for sport.
They killed many tens of thousands of natives of other tribes, wiping out most of the Lipan Apaches and Tonkawas among others. They raided and murdered their way across Mexico every Summer for over 100 years.
The Commanches did not do this because white settlers were moving onto their land. The very name Commanche derives from an Indian (Navajo, IIRC) word that meant “those who are always against us”. With few exceptions they fought every tribe around them and every white settler. They only spared the Commanchero traders of New Mexico because they needed a place to trade all the horses they stole.
The Commanches raided and murdered because in their culture, the only path to greatness was to excel in raiding and murdering. They attacked anyone around, the weaker, the better. For example, they enjoyed killing the hapless and helpless peasants of Mexico. Every Summer the Commanche raiders rode 1000 miles or more to murder, rape, and torture the poor Mexicans.
I remember seeing The Searchers when I was a kid. It disturbed me a bit because of the propaganda I had absorbed in elementary school about the noble savages.
I don’t mean to single out the Commanches. If you go back far enough in your family tree you may find someone who committed what we moderns consider crimes and atrocities.
The Commanches were probably the best and worst of the plains horse tribes.
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