The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Jackie's Audacity

9.25.06 @ 12:01AM

(Page 4 of 5)

Higgins fails to mention that -- despite his often gruff tone and sharp words directed at Marty -- Ethan demonstrates by his actions a strong affection for the young man. After all, it was Ethan who originally took in the orphaned Marty as a child and brought him to his brother to be adopted and raised. Later, Ethan attempts to dissuade Marty from joining him in a thankless search for Debbie which will threaten Marty's own chance at happiness. Finally, Ethan makes out his will and names Marty as the sole beneficiary. Plainly, in spite of Marty's Indian blood, Ethan regards him as the son denied him by fate - an emotional tie hard to imagine if Ethan was the racist monster portrayed by Higgins and the leftist reviewers he parrots.

At the film's climax the renegade Indians receive their comeuppance from a company of Texas Rangers and a regiment of U.S. Cavalry. In the process, Ethan takes Scar's scalp and comes upon Debbie. He grabs her by the shoulders and for an uneasy moment the viewer wonders whether Ethan will kill her or accept her. Finally, he sweeps her into his arms and tells her "let's go home".

Not surprisingly, the obtuse Higgins finds this ending to be "contrived" and "contradict[ory] [of] everything we've been led to assume up to that point." Since Higgins sees Ethan as a one-dimensional robot consumed by racial hatred, he thinks the only true ending requires Ethan to kill Debbie in a spasm of racist rage. More perceptive viewers recognize Ethan as archetypical of the wandering knight, ranger or samurai who, denied by fate the pleasures of hearth and home, is destined to wander abroad to joust with evil. That such a character's sense of duty and honor would overcome the passion of prejudice is unexpected only to Higgins and his liberal familiars.

Perhaps the supreme irony is that Higgins himself adopts (apparently unconsciously) the trappings of the left he purports to warn us against. He dutifully evinces the obligatory horror at liberalism's totemic evil, "Racism," and he adopts the language of political correctness by referring to Indians as "Native Americans." Finally, he quotes with apparent approval Roger Ebert's condemnation of Ethan that at the film's end "there is no indication that [Ethan] thinks any differently about Indians." (At least Ebert didn't call them Native Americans.)

Ebert's observation that Ethan's views on Indians and race relations (and presumably other matters) have not morphed into liberal pieties is undoubtedly accurate. It is his (and evidently Higgins') sense of outrage at Ethan's failure to undergo what liberal's like to call "growth" (and the rest of us recognize as confusion) that is wrong-headed. I for one have no qualms about Ethan's preference for his own kin and culture over renegade Comanches and their savagery. I take no offense at his single-minded pursuit of revenge against them for their murder and mayhem.

I only wish Ethan Edwards was on the trail of Osama Bin Laden.
-- Mark Bender
Columbia, South Carolina

The only thing wrong with you article is stating The Searchers is one of the top 4 or 5 movies.

I'd put it the top one or two. Or even the best ever.

Great and long overdue article. I'm passing this site on to my John Wayne chat list.

Again thank you.
-- Terry R. Rush

Must we politicize everything? Even 50-year-old movies?

I'm a political and social conservative (same as "The Duke"). The Searchers in one of my top five favorites because of superior performances by the actors, the story itself, the scenery, the humor (yes, there was plenty) and the outcome. Can't you just believe in the power of forgiveness and redemption, and leave it at that?

Still, an interesting commentary.
-- Cheri Pogeler
Encinitas, California

ELECTRIC COMPANY
Re: William Tucker's Liberals Find Their Groove, Reader Mail's Battery Juice, and the "Generating Electricity" letters in Reader Mail's Giving the President a Foil :

I watched Who Killed the Electric Car? yesterday.

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