However, I can't help but wonder if some Mexicans resent the message of the film that the Americans are heroes who come to rescue Mexicans.
No, the message is that the village hired gunfighters to teach them how to fight back and to help them drive off the bandits. As one of them says to the old man, "we know how to grow things, we don't know how to kill." To which them old man says, "Then learn...or die."
The Mexican farmers are being preyed upon by other Mexicans with guns. The "Seven" are hired mercenaries. Not sure where you get the idea from that the villagers look upon them as heroes. They hid their women from them, and the father of the one girl forbade his daughter from getting involved with one of them, referring to them as "brutes" and "cruel".
In the end, the Seven and the villagers are just human beings fighting side by side out of mutual respect for each other and a sense of right and wrong. It had nothing to do with your incredibly shallow and juvenile assessment of the story as American heroes rescuing Mexicans. The Mexicans are not portrayed as weak cowards that need to be saved. Yes, they are afraid, but they still have the courage to act. The "heroes" are flawed, directionless shells of men who hold themselves in pretty low esteem. In many ways, they are the ones being saved, not the village.
Another thing that struck me about the film is that it's almost a recruitment film for the NRA.
Geez, is this the first Western you've ever seen? Do you actually know any history, or do you just like bringing up the NRA in a pejorative sense any chance you get?
There are no problems that won't be solved by having guns. I suppose it's true in the context of the story: apparently those Mexican villagers had no police force to protect them.
Um, no...the ONLY problem guns are meant to solve here is to stop thieves from robbing the village, which keeps them in poverty. And they DO have a police force to protect them...the gunfighters they hired, as well as themselves.
But as a general message, I consider it pretty dangerous. More guns aren't what is needed in this country.
You "consider it pretty dangerous" for people to be able to defend themselves from criminals that have guns? Let's hope you never find yourself in a situation where you are forced to question that personal prejudice.
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christomacin (4655)
4 years ago
If there is any criticism of this film compared to Seven Samurai in regards to Mexicans and the (mostly) American gunslingers compared to peasants vs. samurai is that it lacks the class and power structure dynamic. Samurai served feudal rulers and were thus near the top of the social structure. Gunslingers, by contrast, are on the fringes of society even in the States, and have even less status in Mexico. The fear felt by the peasants for the samurai as well as the bandits has more resonance than the fear felt by the peasants for the gunslingers as well as the bandits. In Japan, a samurai could legally kill a peasant for not showing deference, or indeed for any reason. I'm sure Gringo gunslingers did kill Mexican peasants on occasion, but it isn't nearly the same thing as the samurai, who frequently took supplies from the villagers during the many Civil Wars going on in Japan at that time. Again, I'm sure this was done to them once in a while by Gringo gunslingers, but not nearly to the same scale. They had much more to fear from bandits and their own government than they did from Gringos. Since this was a 1960, it was unlikely that they were going to seriously explore the historical between issues of America and Mexico, because that would involve critiquing to some extent the Mexican American War, Manifest Destiny, and Western Expansion. What we did get was a transposition from Japan to America that only partially fit culturally in the transfer, or at least wasn't as potent.
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