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30| Susan Stebbins Dear Diary: Why can’t all Westerns be The Searchers? (Oh wait, they are.) What won’t The Duke be demanding after this? Attila the Hun, here we come. And speaking of hons, what can we do for Jeffrey Hunter? Note to Self: Get Ford on the horn and make him give Jeff the starring role in his next pic. Or, no more French lingerie for his friends. I mean it. Ta-ta, darlings, Hollywood The Searchers f f f Susan Stebbins Despite the many ways it bothers me, The Searchers is a movie that I will watch time after time. Part of the film’s appeal can be attributed to cinematographer Winton C. Hoch’s keen eye for its dramatic imaging of Monument Valley.Thelandscapeisnotonlybeautifulandgrand,but is used symbolically to illuminate the movie’s underlying themes as well as to identify its genre. This is a Western, albeit an alternative Western. Apropos,theopeningsceneofthefilmisshotthroughtheopeningdoorofasmallcabinthat simultaneouslyrevealsandframesthestunning,quintessentialWesternlandscape,butalsoshows a lone figure riding towards the viewer. Within this visual frame, the audience understands that outside of the cabin is the “Wild West.” Yet, inside the frame of the door is a mythic “fine, good place” from which settlers are desperately trying to eke out a meager living in the harsh land. The approaching rider is Ethan Edwards, played by John Wayne. Throughout the film he is a character forever caught between the open wilderness in which he is comfortable and the confines of the home that he desires but can never have. As Richard Slotkin has demonstrated inhistrilogyRegenerationthroughViolence:MythologyoftheAmericanWest,FatalEnvironment, and Gunfighter Nation, America’s psyche is tied to the mythic Old West. Boundaries such as the cabin door separate civilization from the wilderness, and establish a focal point for the motives and actions of the story of the American West. The Searchers is widely recognized as one of John Ford’s best films because he understood The Searchers| 31 Americans’ need to identify with the imaginary Old West. What I want to concentrate on, though (and what was widely commented on at the time of the film’s release), is Ford’s treatment of racism toward Natives in The Searchers. It’s my belief that John Ford was concerned about Native American mistreatment at the hands of Europeans and Euro-Americans, so he sought to address it (as he would in later films Sergeant Rutledge, 1960, and Cheyenne Autumn, 1964) in this hate-ridden odyssey of revenge. On the surface, Ford addresses racism by focusing the film’s plot on Euro-American settlers and their interactions with the Comanches—or “the Comanch,” as Ethan refers to them. The first of many violent acts contained in the Frank S. Nugent and Alan LeMay script occurs during the opening fifteen minutes of the film with the massacre of the Edwards family. Ethan’s brother Aaron Edwards (Walter Coy), his wife Martha (Dorothy Jordan), and their son (an apparently uncredited role) and their two daughters, Lucy (Pippa Scott) and Debbie (Natalie Wood), are all at home when the massacre takes place. In the attack, Aaron, Martha, and their son are killed and Lucy and Debbie are taken captive. The scene of the massacre is grim,yetbreathtaking,setagainstthebigskyofMonumentValley.ThecaptureofyoungDebbie, clutching a doll and hiding behind a family gravestone as a shadow of a man towers over her, is particularly haunting. Of course, viewers understand within minutes that the killers of the Edwards family are Comanche warriors. However, I argue that Ford’s intent in making The Searchers was not simply to address racism against American Indians, but also mixed-race marriages as well, which were abhorrent to many moviegoers of the 1950s. Most urban moviegoers in the 1950s took for granted that they were never going to meet a “real” American Indian, much less marry one. Therefore, I present a different reading of The Searchers, based on several key elements of the plot that have, to date, not been adequately explored: the fears Euro-American moviegoers in the 1950s held concerning interracial marriages. In the American culture of the 1950s, the intermixing of the “races” was verboten. First, let us consider Ethan’s quest to find and kill Debbie in order to prevent her from bearing a mixed-breed child. For me, this part of the plot symbolizes widespread fears among the American public over interracial sexual relations between African Americans and whites. I grew up living in both northern and southern states in the 1950s and 1960s. I...

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