teppscan's Replies
>>I think it represents Ethan forever trapped between two cultures. He's too violent and rough to stay with that community and he wouldn't fit in with the Indian's either. He's an outcast, not really fitting in anywhere.<<
John Wayne frequently plays what scholar Richard Slotkin called the "frontier hero," a character type unique to American culture who appears time and again from the early 19th Century throught he late 20th Century. The frontier hero exists to protect "civilized" America from the the savage elements at its boundary. As you say, he straddles the boundary and adopts the techniques of the savage to defeat it. However, he is an outcast -- never married, never having children -- because if he fully assimilates back into the culture he protects, his own savagery will corrupt it. By the same token, the rest of us cannot emulate him. We have to have him out there on the border, but if we follow his lead our culture will become savage. Another perfect example of this type hero is Dirty Harry. He's there for the "dirty" jobs, and he bends or breaks the rules to protect us. However, when we try to institutionalize his methods -- as in Magnum Force -- everything breaks down.
One interesting theory about the final scene of The Searchers is that it is a fantasy or dream sequence. Ethan is in fact dead or dying (having been shot in the Indian camp), and this is his dying delusion. Notice that no one looks at or speaks to Ethan in that entire sequence. It's as if he isn't there. And of course, the door closes placing everyone in the comfort of the home and leaving him isolated on the other side of the black door.
This is not my theory (it first appeared in a book written by a well-known academic), and when I pointed this out over on IMDB I got lots of strong pushback, including some very hostile criticism. I haven't watched the movie in a while, but there's a scene in the Indian village in which Ethan comes riding up and three well-positioned Indians all take aim and fire at him with rifles and pistols. It's very hard to see how none of them hit him. It's immediately after that that he rides out alone to the cave (also a very "pregnant" image) and rescues Debbie. Up until that moment, everything in that movie has been preparing us for this reunion to be an execution. Ethen was obessed with obliterating wht he saw as a totally corrupted being. But like throwing a light switch, everything changes, reverses, and the fantasy begins.
Just sayin'.
posted 8 years ago in The Searchers (1956)