The Searchers and John Wayne's America
[Dir. John Ford]
A film review for a class that I'm genuinely quite proud of. Fuck John Wayne, but here is my attempt to understand him.
There’s a certain tone to film critic Andrew Sarris’s piece on John Wayne that feels like he has to set the record straight. And in time, that guarded intention is made clear in the ninth paragraph where he addresses the “strong, influential, and even understandable pockets of resistance” that rally against Wayne’s messy legacy:
Many of his detractors have never seen his best films; many have never patronized Westerns as a matter of course. Much that has been written causally about the Western is remarkably ill-informed with respect to the almost dialectical diversity within the genre.
Putting aside Sarris’s condescending rhetoric leading up to this line, I concede that he has perfectly pinpointed me in the crowd of John Wayne detractors–at least before I read Sarris’s piece.
John Ford’s 1956 western classic The Searchers manages to stuff the mouths of film critics, consensually or non-consensually, still 70 years after its release because of the wave of geriatric praise that seems to follow it in every greatest films of all time list printed in the Western world. For reasons I did not understand, this movie seemed to encapsulate what was so culturally powerful about Westerns and it included all the aspects of the genre that made a generation of filmmakers. The Searchers has everything a bright-eyed kid from the 60’s could want out of a film: sprawling desert landscapes, blood-pumping shootouts, dry (dated) comedy, and most importantly, John Wayne, the man who seemed to pave the way to the wild West that never existed.
For the most part, the plot of The Searchers isn’t particularly special. The movie stars John Wayne as Ethan Edwards, a Civil War vet from the losing side who visits his family out west for the time in years. There he reunites with his brother Aaron’s family and daughters, including youngest daughter Debbie (Natalie Wood) who Ethan almost sees as his own child too. Suddenly, a tribe of Comanche warlords raid Aaron’s stead in the night, killing Aaron, his wife, and his son, and abducting Debbie and older sister Lucy. This enrages Ethan, who already despises Comanches, and sends him on a quest through the West to rescue Debbie. The journey spans several years, and Ethan butts heads with the adopted son of the family Martin (Jeffrey Hunter) who accompanies him on his long journey.
2 hours have passed and my only instant reaction to the film was “Sure.” Westerns are a favorite genre of mine, especially in their least western-like forms, so I can confidently say I enjoyed myself. The production design–fantastic. The action scenes–stellar. The cinematography–easily some of the best western iconography I’ve ever seen. Every five minutes, the movie would deliver a breath-taking shot of the crimson wild West as cowboys would ride gallantly through the frame. The aesthetics wowed me–except for the brownface–but I was what made this ‘the one’, the masterpiece among masterpieces, the greatest film of all time. The story felt like cookie-cutter,like a venue to have John Wayne run around in the desert and save the day–and what I missed was, yeah, that’s exactly what it’s about, and that’s why people love it.
John Wayne was born Marion Robert Morrison in the prairies of Iowa, 1907. Marion was reportedly a bright kid, whose childhood exemplified American normalcy like any other at the time. John Wayne, however, did not exist here. No, in fact, John Wayne was not born until Marion walked onto the soundstages of 1930’s Los Angeles. In early films like The Red Trail (1930), the myth of John Wayne grows in front of camera lenses, and by the end of the decade, the cowboy has come to eclipse the host. Following 1939’s Stagecoach, John Wayne became a household name, a firsty-lasty, coming to symbolize America’s fascination with the western. He was always referred to by his stage name, onscreen and offscreen, no matter what a script or birth certificate said.
We return to The Searchers, which by this time, is Wayne at his peak of cultural and political influence. Whenever he was on screen, he was the quiet but snarky man who could get the job done, save the day, and crack a joke while he did it. And off screen, his anti-communist campaigns aligned with America’s fight against the nasty commies in the USSR. He was America’s blueprint for masculinity, fighting for what he stood for, never breaking under pressure, and being the cool, collected leader of the pack. The myth of his impenetrable masculinity is why The Searchers’ destruction of it so important. When Ethan Edwards held back, when Wayne’s character showed mercy for the American Indians, it was like all of America watched a 30-year long character arc resolve. Wayne’s big man machismo peeled back for the role of Ethan Edwards, and America saw it as a cultural turning point–not just for cinema, but for men.
Connecting the pieces, I see now why The Searchers is so important to film. At a time when film was more powerful than propaganda, when movies merged with America, the president of Hollywood took a stand and said no against bloody retribution. Wayne matured on screen and America grew with him. But only retroactively did the nation accept what Wayne was trying to say. Nevertheless, the nation accepted. Now The Searchers is viewed as a growing point for all of America, and it seems only right to say that this movie where a cowboy as influential as a president changed the nation should be treasured as one of the greats.
I still have my mixed feelings about The Searchers. Yes, Wayne’s change of heart in the third act was revolutionary at the time, but now it just seems performative. The movie treats Native Americans like animals to be laughed at or shot at. They are portrayed as either violent savages or simpletons with no common sense. Wayne’s change of heart at the end of the movie isn’t even on an actual American Indian–**SPOILER**--Wayne is merciful to Debbie, who's only been seemingly indoctrinated into the Comanches’ savage ways. The movie feels ingenuine with its compassion, and it only makes the movie’s racism feel even worse.
It’s not fair to judge these movies completely on our modern standards of social justice. This movie is very racist, that is indisputable, but it does have its moments, and hyperfocusing on its problems distracts from the good this movie did. The Searchers has come to be one of the most influential westerns of all time, making thematic cameos in Lawrence of Arabia and Star Wars. John Wayne, however problematic he is, invented what we know as the modern cowboy. Sarris is right to call this man an auteur, and The Searchers is the movie to display Wayne’s genius.
There, the movie can have its flowers, but I don’t need to watch this film again. So much of what I loved about this movie I can get from other movies with less racism. My anger towards Wayne might be a little more nuanced now, but I still don’t like him. I think that he, and his messy legacy can stay in the past with the brownface, the mental arrest of auteur theory, and racism that makes up the ugly, but apparent parts of The Searchers.
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