Touch of The Searchers

The Searchers is a 1956 American Western film directed by John Ford, based on the 1954 novel by Alan Le May set during the Texas-Indian wars. The film was a commercial success and since it’s release, it has come to be considered a masterpiece and one of the most influential films ever made. The main character Ethan Edwards is portrayed as the “good guy,” but I feel as if he was the “bad guy.” Same situation with Orson Wells’ Touch of Evil with Hank Quinlan, but the two characters took different paths which shaped them into what they are at the end of the films.

Hank Quinlan as we know was racist towards Mexicans and he didn’t hide it either. He was a dirty cop who would frame people for doing a crime they didn’t commit. Especially to Mexicans, he saw that all Mexicans are guilty. These are not the methods of a “good guy,” sure he’s a cop who has put criminals behind bars, but he’s not a good one. On his path though his karma caught up to him and he was killed trying to frame Miguel Vargas a Mexican law enforcement.

Ethan Edwards was also racist, but towards the Indians. When he fought them it was fun for him, he enjoyed it. He hated them so much that in the film he shot a dead Indian in the eye so that he would be in the afterlife blindly beginning his suffering. Another time is when he would hunt buffalo in the winter to cut the Indians food supply. He was literally trying to starve the Indians into extinction. Doesn’t sound very heroic. Although when Ethan was looking for his niece, who was kidnapped by the Indians, he did spend years looking for her, but found out that she had become one of them, even exclaiming that the Indians were her people. He did not see her as his own anymore. He intended on killing her because he felt betrayed by her, but did end up sparing her and taking her home in the end because she was still his family.

Even though both films showed great examples of racism, they both demonstrated being masterpieces of film. Both characters took different paths being prejudice. What Hank was doing was just plain wrong. What Ethan was doing was morally wrong. The difference between Hank and Ethan is clear. Things aren’t always what they appear.

Comments

  1. CharlesSeptember 27, 2020 at 5:51 PM

    About your post, the intro paragraph is too dark and can't read. But. I do like the way you compare this film to "A Touch. Of Evil" in terms of racism, yet in the movie it's towards the Indians. I do like the way you show how racist Ethan is in. the film, firstly we thought he was the "protagonist", but watching the film, it shows that he doesn't, but at least he returned the niece home at the end.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blackkklansman: Ironically a Comedy

  Chloe Kowalyk Professor Wisniewski Intro to Film 18/11/2020 Blackkklansman, directed by Spike Lee, is a fantastic film. I especially liked how Lee integrated aspects of real protests and fights for civil rights into the film. The clip of the protestors who were run over by a car at the end brought tears to my eyes. I also felt that the clip, in the beginning, was extremely effective. It depicted a crane shot from Gone With the Wind where Scarlett O’Hara is walking through a scene of dead Confederate soldiers. I had to watch this movie for one of my AP English classes in high school, so I jumped up when immediately recognized where it was from. Along with Gone With the Wind, Lee also includes scenes from Birth, which heavily romanticized the Ku Klux Klan. Both films embedded in Blackkklansman are racist and exemplify what Ron and Flip were investigating.  Another aspect of the film I really liked is that it was presented as a comedy. Something as touchy as the Holocaust, the ...
Read more

Female Troubles: No Subject Too Sensitive

Viewing Female Troubles directed by John Waters felt like an ongoing manic episode, though I enjoyed that about it honestly, it didn’t hold back on it’s content. I can understand how some might not have been comfortable making through this, it’s not common to find in our media to be unfiltered in it’s dark and raunchy comedy. Some jokes would be distasteful or needed to be worded better to be more acceptable now, though I saw reason as to why the humor was taken to such crude and extra lengths to make fun of certain subjects or groups.  Any subject that was brought into this movie had to be made fun of, it had to be turned ridiculous.  If you heard anyone say a quote from this film in any serious context it would be viewed with concern. Though that’s part of the weird enjoyment you can get out of this, if you know this isn’t going to be serious, it’s labelled as a comedy for a reason. Not all of it is tasteful or going to be for everyone, but it doesn’t try to be, it’s not t...
Read more

Female Trouble: Trouble with a capital "T" that rhymes with "P" that stands for Pool

               Female Trouble (1974) is one of several films directed by John Waters and starring Divine that depict violence and sex so candidly that this is the first NC-17 rated film I’ve had the pleasure(?) of seeing. This was also one of the hardest films to watch as I was cringing through most of it and looking away at other times. Reasons for this being that I found the cinematography just as abhorrent as the grotesque visuals that I did see clearly. But to his credit, if I’m cringing at the sight of horrible people doing horrible things to other people then I guess John Water’s point has been made. And he gets this across while on a shoestring budget and the power of Divine and much like Natural Born Killers describes the rise to fame of criminals to celebrity status. I however don’t think Dawn Davenport (Divine) was as big of a star as she claims to be. Does she really get to be such a big celebrity that the whole nation goes bonkers...
Read more