You can blame the two conservatives that made the film...Darryl Zanuck and John Ford.
Ford wasn't exactly a conservative. He became more conservative late in life, when he supported Richard Nixon in the late sixties and early seventies as part of the backlash to the counterculture and the antiwar movement (not that everyone who supported Nixon was reactionary, but Ford's move to the right was rooted in the revulsion that many Americans, and many older Democrats, experienced in response to the new dissent). For most of his life, though, Ford associated with Democrats.
Overall, one might say that Ford proved politically ambiguous, yet his primary affiliation was certainly with Democrats. In 1965, in an interview with Bill Libby of
Cosmopolitan, the director cited Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and John Kennedy as Democrats who loved Westerns, stating, "Yes, that's right, they
were all Democrats, and I'm a Democrat, too. I don't try to hide that, either."
However, as biographer Scott Eyman then notes (on page 511 of
Print the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford), "This would be the last time he would publicly identify himself as a Democrat; as Vietnam heated up, as his beloved military was reviled as a collection of mass murderers, Ford found himself increasingly nudged into Nixonian Republicanism." Indeed, in 1973, Nixon would honor Ford with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Michael Wayne, son of John Wayne, noted that historically, the star and director "weren't politically aligned at all; Ford was a big ... Democrat and of course my father campaigned for Richard Nixon, so they had their differences." Michael Wayne is probably referring to the 1960 presidential campaign when Nixon ran against Kennedy, a fellow Irish-American of New England roots whom Ford of course supported. In fact, Kennedy's triumph elated Ford. Earlier that fall, when an advocacy group called Celebrities for Nixon sought Ford's support, he responded thusly: "Thank you for your wire. However, I am a lifelong and fervent Democrat—so frankly I prefer not to be on your committee."
Ford's love of Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John Kennedy, however, did not mean that he supported Democratic presidential nominees automatically or unequivocally. Apparently, he did not support the rather intellectual Adlai Stevenson in the 1950s. For instance, in March 1953, newly elected Vice President Nixon wrote Ford a "Dear John" letter that thanked the movie director "for all that you did to make possible our overwhelming victory."
But Ford deemed the congressional investigations of Communists in Hollywood to be "a publicity stunt" and a waste of taxpayer money. When one of his actors, Ward Bond, invited Ford to a party held in honor of Republican senator Joe McCarthy, Ford rejected the offer, replying that he "wouldn't meet that guy in a whorehouse."
(See Eyman's book for all these quotations.)
If one were to view Ford's films ideologically, he constituted a mass of contradictions. On the one hand, he was egalitarian, empathized with the marginalized (
The Grapes of Wrath represents the foremost example), and loved to shake up the existing class structure (
Stagecoach comes to mind). On the other hand, his treatment of race vacillated between tentative progressiveness and crude caricature, in some contexts bordering on demonization (namely Native Americans in Westerns). While he was an anti-bourgeois populist who enjoyed exposing the avarice of the the wealthy class and destabilizing big business or corporate interests, Ford also appreciated a sense of communal order (including discrete gender norms) and glorified the military, if not always the military brass. He was an American patriot, but his heart was in Ireland. In a sense, Ford was a Democrat who seemed to share fellow Democrat Thomas Jefferson's populist vision of America as a nation of small farmers. But of course, Jefferson possessed his aristocratic and regressive aspects, most notably the fact that he owned slaves, and Ford could be a regressive traditionalist as well. Or one could say that Ford fell into the tradition of fellow Democrat Andrew Jackson, a populist who eagerly sought to strip Native Americans of their land, the better to carve a (white) 'civilization' out of the 'wilderness.'
Overall, what's unsurprising is that Ford would support the egalitarian ideals and ideological liberalism of FDR's New Deal, and that he would celebrate the religious and (modest) ethnic diversity that Kennedy's victory epitomized, but that he would also veer away from the Democratic Party when younger elements within it challenged the military's mission in Vietnam and endorsed a more radical (for the time) vision of diversity that embraced people of color, women, and even gays as the outright equals of straight white men.
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lanis_cupus
11 years ago
I stand corrected.
I still don't believe that the story has an overt political message. To me it is about compassion and the idea that when people hang together they tend to come out okay. If such things have a political slant (to you or to the OP) then I suppose the movie is about politics.
On a side note, I found it amazing how the screenwriters were able to capture the depth of compassion without including Steinbeck's original ending.
The film is an incredible achievement and need not be trivialized by political diatribe.
That's the most you'll ever get out of me Wordman. Ever. -Eddie Wilson
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Pulcherrimus
9 years ago
Anything that concerns the Society of Man, also concerns politics.
The story is about Mankind standing up for Mankind; rich or poor, we all deserve to make a decent living and be treated with respect. It's explicitly political, explicitly socialist.
And no, "socialist" is not a bad word. Nor is "communist" for that matter. But that is what the rich want us all to believe and have so far succeeded in selling this notion to the masses.
Absolute capitalism is as doomed to fail as absolute socialism. There needs to be a balance between the two. Some things (like welfare, health and education) should not be commercialized for example.
But I'm getting off track...
Quot homines, tot sententiae.
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lanis_cupus
9 years ago
Politics is exclusionary by nature; I didn't find this story to be exclusionary.
If I say "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," do you find need to assign a political label to it?
Weren't humans around before politics?
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Pulcherrimus
9 years ago
I would argue that politics have been around for as long as humans have. Politics involve any decisions that influence the whole, not just what "politicans" do, as we often like to think, absolving us from responsibility. Also, labels may not always be necessary, but not calling spade a spade, does not make it any less so.
In a democracy, politics must never be exclusionary. The people have a right to influence, to vote, and so it is their responsibility to exercise that right. Sadly, the U.S. has become more of a plutocracy, a form of oligarchy, making it more exclusionary than it should be.
The story criticizes the notion that the few should exercise so much control over the many, that human beings are simply at the whim of the system, nothing more than statistics on a paper. There is strength in numbers and as soon as the people realize that, the few will start to fear the many, as they rightfully should. The message is a rallying cry, a call to arms!
Quot homines, tot sententiae.
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kbarada
9 years ago
Pulcherrimus, I agree with your argument on politics with one exception. I interpreted the message of the movie not as a literal call to arms, but as an exhortation to rally to the voting booths. Ballots are always preferable to bullets in a democracy as the latter would lead to a state of anarchy.
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Pulcherrimus
9 years ago
I agree wholeheartedly with your take on the movie's message. I, also, was not being literal, but speaking more metaphorically.
Quot homines, tot sententiae.
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lanis_cupus
9 years ago
Early human beings were socialists, but not by choice. It was a matter of survival. It wasn't until we achieved a certain level of comfort/social stability that the individual rose up and politics were born. However, this doesn't mean that no one was interested in the condition or fate of humanity--or the welfare of his brethren--before such a time.
The question remains: Is Steinbeck (or Ford) trying to foist left-wing ideas on us?
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Pulcherrimus
9 years ago
Only if you deem equal opportunities and the universal right to make a decent living left-wing, instead of a fundamental human right. Only if you deem that socialism by necessity is somehow worse than inequality by choice.
There are still lot of people in the world who do not have the comfort we take for granted. Is this imbalance really acceptable?
Quot homines, tot sententiae.
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lanis_cupus
9 years ago
Only if you deem equal opportunities and the universal right to make a decent living left-wing, instead of a fundamental human right.
I do not, which is why I called the issue suprapolitical.
Only if you deem that socialism by necessity is somehow worse than inequality by choice.
It all depends on the definition of equality. We can all have equal political freedoms but we'll never all have equal footing in society. A 6'2" guy will always have an advantage over a 5'5" guy when it comes to a job changing light bulbs. Absolute equality isn't a worthwhile goal.
There are still lot of people in the world who do not have the comfort we take for granted. Is this imbalance really acceptable?
It is what it is. I recognize that I could have been born into a 3rd world nation but I got lucky. Luck, that's what much of life comes down to. As luck can't be created, the only way to level the field would be to destroy the good fortune of those who are advantaged by luck.
Having said this, I do believe we can gradually work toward a global society where no one has to live in fear, pain or poverty.
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