Core Response #3

Funny, I remember being about six years old and sitting in the passenger side of my dad’s old Chevy Nova, driving down Wilshire Blvd and seeing this enormous statue of a man on a horse. I asked my dad who he was. My dad responded, “Es el ‘duc.’ Yon Wein.” I still had no idea who he was. That weekend, my dad called me to come to the T.V. since he wanted me to see something important. As I sat down, I saw the name John…Ford, and asked who that was. My dad told me to keep watching. Another name appeared, this time it was John…Wayne. It was the first time that I had seen The Searchers. At the time, I was captivated by the story of one man’s search for his niece as evil Indians kidnap her after murdering her family. Some twenty-four years later, my feelings for the film have changed. I now see it as a racist, sexist product of the 1950s mythmaking machine known as Hollywood. Granted, the film addresses the issue of racism against Native Americans, but in the end, the “Injuns” still get eliminated. Sure The Searchers is art, but so is Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will.

I’ve always had an ambivalent relationship with John Wayne. Having attended Glendale High School, I was aware that The Duke had been there, back when he was Marion Morrison. It was weird because he was a person with whom males were supposed to identify. He embodied that eternal cowboy which many of us men emulated as little boys on the playground. But it’s funny how things work. As a Latino, I carry in my Indian blood, which was readily handy for the spilling in many a John Wayne film. Moreover, my brown skinned represented precisely the type of person The Duke was more than willing to dispatch. It is quite ironic that the real-life john Wayne/Marion Morrison enjoyed the company of Latina wives.

Yet there is something about the man…something dangerously seductive. Seductive in the sense that as you are watching his films, as the viewer, you want him to succeed, to win. Last week, when we sat watching Stagecoach, the Ringo Kid was the type of hero/anti-hero one could root for. I wanted him to get to Lordsburg, kill the Plummers, rescue the girl from a life of prostitution, and live happily ever after. Of course, a second after feeling like this I realized he would have to kill a heapload of Indians to get to the “happy ending.” I realized that Wayne could have been the poster boy for Manifest Destiny.