Aside from the fact that she looks like Martin's mother instead of his girlfriend, I hate that comment she makes about Debbie being a Commanche's leavin's and with a bunch of half breed brats who is better off dead, or something to that effect. Really made me dislike this woman.
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Get me a bromide - and put some gin in it!
That was a very common attitude for the times. And it's one of the reasons Ethan was searching for Debbie -- he thought killing her would put her out of her misery.
White women were very often considered damaged goods if they had been kidnapped by Indians. A woman who had been raped, and especially one who then had a child, was not generally accepted back into white society.
This character wasn't the only one in the movie with that attitude.
You are quite correct.
It's not at all different from the attitude from what is prevalent (known as "Honor Killings") in present day Middle Eastern countries, but they occur all over the world, in such places as Bangladesh, Brazil, Ecuador, India, Israel, Italy, Morocco, Sweden, Turkey, and Uganda. In the Middle Ages, they were quite common all over Europe.
It's a ridiculous notion, actually. As if the woman has any control over the situation.
I don't act...I react. John Wayne
Case in point look at Ford's "Stagecoach"- the John Carradine character during the final Indian attack when he sensed they were close to getting over-run by the Indians is about to shoot the woman next to him in the head but he is wounded before he can do it.
shareSimilar thing in the movie, "Ulzana's Raid"; the Cavalryman who tried to escape with the child rode back-the woman thought it was to rescue her but instead he figured they'd be too heavy to escape so he shot her-and after he fell from his horse he shot himself.
shareI don't disagree with the points about honor killings, but in the case of Stagecoach, I thought it was more about saving her from a prolonged death by torture from the Indians.
I'm cool, you're cool, we're cool, thank you, good night!-My Science Project
Per STAGECOACH it was to "save" her from rape, kidnapping and assimilation into the tribe, or death by the Indians. Female captives could be spared to become members of the tribe but I'm not sure if a pregnant near-term white woman would have been.
shareI thought Laurie was crazy to still be a bit racist about Debbie and the idea of being 'tainted' by another race, when she clearly had marriage in mind with Martin. Maybe she didn't know he was part Native, but I assumed it was common knowledge in the community, with him having fairly dark skin too. Maybe that was meant to be ironic.
Flyswatter Ow/Tasty Werwolf/Try Wolf Sweat/Wow Flat Tyres/We Try Fast Owl/Rye Toast Flew
Laurie's attitude makes me wonder what life in the Jorgenson household was like after the movie ends. There were no therapists to send Debbie to. Assuming Martin & Laurie got hitched, were they going to spend much of the time arguing about Debbie?
"May I bone your kipper, Mademoiselle?"
It seems Martin and Laurie weren't going to stay at the Jurgenson ranch when she tells Martin that she was tired of living there.
Do I have to give it to you?
bradford-1 says > Assuming Martin & Laurie got hitched, were they going to spend much of the time arguing about Debbie?Forget about Debbie, I don't see how Laurie, with her attitude, could have gotten over Marty's marriage to the squaw girl, Look. He might have told her the marriage was never consummated but I don't think she's the type who would have believed it. Charlie had already made the point, in front of Laurie, that Marty had 'been with' more than one squaw.
Well in the book Laurie marries Charlies. Marty is going to look after Debbie and it sort of implies that he will probably marry her.
The only Abnormality is the incapacity to love
Marry her?!
May I bone your kipper, Mademoiselle?
Yea, well the time gaps a bit longer than in the movie.
For instance Marty is about 18 when they start and about 25ish when they find her. Debbie was around 10 when she was taken and about 17 or 18 when he finds her, a grown woman by those standards. They aren't technically related and the author Alan Le May did a similar thing (adopted sibling falls for other sibling) in his other book The Unforgiven, which was made into a film starring Audrey Hepburn and Burt Lancaster.
The only Abnormality is the incapacity to love
Aw man, I wish they would've stuck to this instead of having that ridiculous, out-of-place wedding scene with Charlie and Martin fighting over Laurie. Debbie needs looking after and Laurie was just a huge pain althroughout the movie.
shareI totally agree, that ending would've been far more preferable
shareNone of the characters in this movie are designed to be heroes as such, and I like that. Frankly, I think this film overall would be far less of an experience than it is without Vera Miles lighting it up through its second half.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-21AtiWV3TE
Imagine Debbie living next to someone who has this attitude!
I assume Debbie inherits her family's herd and possibly the land if they owned it. However, she would probably need help adjusting to this new old way of living, and it didn't look like Marty would stop caring for Debbie or get out of her life. I'm sure Laurie would have a lot of opinions about that because she seems to have opinions about literally everything. So, the Pawley family life might get rather controversial!
I understand why Laurie was written this way and that she brings some flair to this film, etc. but wow, she is not likable.
One major point of the novel and film is that both the Texicans and the Comanche under war chiefs like Scar are locked in an endless cycle of vengeance. Keep in mind the audience for this film included millions of war veterans, shocked and dealing with the aftereffects of a violent global struggle against fascism, and slipping into a xenophobic cold war as well. Many on all sides fought for nationalist, racist reasons and not necessarily to do the right thing for freedom and democracy but simply to punish "others" who were demonized as an eternal enemy, when in reality they were just under bad leadership. Who can break the cycle?
In the film Scar makes clear that his motivation is to make whites pay for killing his two sons. Ethan's mother was killed by Comanche, as seen on the tombstone little Debbie hides at. Both men mutilate the corpses of their enemies gruesomely from hatred. Scar has to fish for the english word for "scalp" however when he tells his "origin" story as historically the practice of taking scalps was started by whites, not Indians.
Laurie has loving and kind, if clueless parents but is part of an isolated white racist society. Their remoteness has forced them to cling too tightly to the trappings of their "civilization," which is why they seem to put so much stock in ceremonies, breeding stock, oaths, wills, "going steady," etc., - even a single letter becomes a link to the idea that they HAVE conquered a wilderness when it is clear their precarious situation on a frontier has little actual use for many of the practices. As Laurie's mother wisely says they are "NOTHING but a human man, way out on a limb." The promise of civilization don't make you civilized. They make you prideful usurpers of someone else's lands, hoping to someday paper over the history of violent conquest. Olive Carey as Mrs. Jorgensen puts it well when she says "someday this will be a fine land. Maybe it needs our bones in it first." Probably the truest words of the whole movie, right there. "
The arc of a moral universe is long, but it bends towards Justice." - MLK.
Bear in mind Laurie counsels for the "honor killing" of Debbie but Debbie herself, the victim of the captivity has made her soul's peace with the situation and advises Ethan and Martin, whom she prayed TO, not for, to simply abandon the conflict and go away, as "these are my people." And so Martin completes his commitment to her first, and Laurie only secondarily, as an afterthought.
One reason we are implicated in Laurie's viewpoint is through the masterful sequence utilizing the narration of Martin's letter from the wilderness, where director Ford shows us an unreliable version of events. Martin is unsure and inept in his telling, Laurie visualizes a fat, unattractive romantic rival in Look, and very one else injects their motivations into the depiction of what's actually occurred. Charlie McCrory sees opportunity to claim his rival has a "Wife," the father seems folly in the whole quest - it doesn't make anyone any richer, as he only cares about livestock increases - and the mother seems grateful her daughter may let go of an old flame. Ethan as usual flouts the bonds of ceremony and obligations, and only opportunity (and humor) in the endeavor of Look's actions. Laurie sees what we see, but we are HER. In the end we made fun of and were disgusted by a young native woman who likely gave her life to honor her father's trade for a hat, and tried in her way to carry out her commitment to be a re-uniter of family. Who now is the one without honor? Reuniting a family is almost the #1 plot of every western hero, and we dismissed the only selfless and true heroine of the movie up to then because we saw her as Laurie must have, not as she probably was.
(Aside: watch GOODFELLAS for a central sequence where Karen narrates her outsider perspective of what wise guys and their women are like: "they wore cheap pantsuits and too much makeup and spoke about beating their children with broom handles…" etc. Same brilliant trick.)
In The Searchers, whites bring nothing but death, mutilation, dishonorable battle, lies, liquor, false trades, starvation, sexual enslavement of young women (the purchase of Look), useless trinkets and utter destruction to Comanches. And they themselves covet others' wives, girlfriends, cattle, and hold contradictory figurehead positions having fought a war over slavery and opportunistically joined on the side of foreign conquest of Mexico. The Army is either incompetent (the shavetail young officer played by Pat Wayne with his too loose sword, who represents the overarmed, militarized projection of power into a situation out of it's depth, or else seen whipping unarmed women and children through frozen water, a sight that looks frighteningly familiar to what is happening at Standing Rock right now.) They are us, and we are greedy intolerant MONSTERS who think we are god's chosen people. Granted, Scar vows to "take many scalps" but even he has no illusions of genocide, which the whites clearly possess, and are seen enacting both in the snow (Look's massacre site) and in the final battle, where Ford makes sure to show women and children in the line of fire.
Ethan continually thwarts white society's trappings - his Ranger oath is declined, he gives away a French medal, he turns down trader Futterman's offers of whiskey and probably prostitutes, and his arrival interrupts and spoils a wedding after falsifying a will to exclude Debbie from her rightful property. (He kills wounded retreating indians and countless buffalo to bring starvation, and shoots Futterman's associates in the back, too.) We admire his pragmatism because, well, he's John Wayne and has the courage of conviction that is often compelling. And damn it, he's John Wayne. He's gotta be right! This is what makes The Searchers one of the greatest films of all time. Because he's wrong, (just as we are often wring) and his terror and inner horror boils out continually, consuming his soul. The hatred and searching become more to him than the actual point of the quest - a rescue presumably, but not anymore. Laurie's feelings become twisted by the same intolerant influences that consumed Ethan. Don't forget she lost a brother, Brad to blind vengeance too. In trying to redeem Ethan, Martin seeks to prove Laurie wrong as well.
In the novel she does abandon her hope for Martin's return and marry another Ranger in his absence. More importantly, in the novel Martin locates Debbie in the midst of the final battle and it is implied that these two are rejecting BOTH cultures and setting out for the wilderness together, to live apart from ANY society. The novel's John Wayne character dies in a frenzy of sickness and murderous mayhem, his hatred eventually having completely destroyed him from within. He kills Scar but of course spiritually he IS Scar and so dies like when matter meets anti-matter. Scar did what Ethan secretly wanted to do - kill his brother and possess Martha carnally. They cancel one another out in the end, vengeance being only a pointless cycle of "an eye for an eye" leading to the whole world being blind, as MLK was preaching at that time. It is still true.
In the film of the 1950s it was considered too much to suggest adopted-brother to sister "incest" and more appropriate to a movie plot to redeem Laurie through an unspoken happy ending. Her intolerance provides conflict for Matin to heroically overcome, and visually she accepts Debbie's return in the procession (very impotent motif in all John Ford films) that goes back into the home at film's close.
So are these racists, the Spanish or the Mexicans( the ruling clique were mainly Spanish, after all)? Or were they the Crow who forced the Commanches out of the Northern Midwest into the Tex/Mex region?
Why can't you wretched prey creatures understand that the Universe doesn't owe you anything!?