The Searchers: Liberal Morality Play or Reactionary Epic?

At the end of The Searchers (1956) Ethan Edwards, played by John Wayne, watches a family enter their Texas homestead with the young girl he has rescued from Comanches. They disappear past the camera into the darkness of the interior. He turns his back on them and walks out alone into the desert. The door closes on him. The film ends. But who has rejected whom? Has Ethan Edwards turned his back on civilisation? Or has civilisation turned its back on Ethan Edwards?

A Fate Worse Than Death

It is often assumed today, by those who seek to integrate a “problematic” masterpiece into the safe pantheon of approved films, that the Texas community rejects Ethan's racism at the end and that this is the final message of the film. Ethan after all is an unrepentant Confederate, a man who like Jesse James refuses to surrender to Yankee civilisation and whose hatred for the Comanche Indians is such that he almost kills his niece Debbie rather than allow her to be forcibly assimilated into an alien culture. He is irredeemable in the eyes of modern liberal audiences.

On the other hand we have been shown by the attitude of Laurie (played by Vera Miles) that the whole society shares his basic values. Laurie understands Ethan's feelings and endorses them. She even believes that Debbie's mother (who has been raped and murdered by Comanches) would rather see Debbie killed than live on as she is. “Fetch what home?” she asks, “The leavings of Comanche bucks sold time and again to the highest bidder with savage brats of her own? […] Do you know what Ethan will do if he gets a chance? He'll put a bullet in her brain. I tell you Martha would want him to.”

It is her sometimes fiance Martin Pauley (played by Jeffrey Hunter) who is the outlier. He if anyone is the liberal audience surrogate whose mixed-blood identity makes him an outsider. He is prepared to die rather than see Debbie killed for any reason even if that means condemning her to a terrible fate. We can only wonder who the American audiences of 1956 would have sided with in that respect? Ethan and Laurie or Martin? Critics have commented (judgmentally) that contemporary opinions on the film remarked little on the “racist” aspects which were simply taken for granted.

Audiences today have a difficult time reconciling the nuances of Ethan Edwards. His hatred for the Comanche can of course be contextualised. Not only is his brother's family butchered but the grave markers on the hill where Debbie hides show that his parents were also killed in such a manner. But how can he contemplate killing the kidnapped girl he has spent years tracking down? Whether Debbie is really his niece, or his daughter as is softly implied, the emotional and familial stakes are the same. She is the daughter of the woman he loved. His brother, her husband, is dead. The assertion of paterfamilias is his. She must be rescued or die. And if she is beyond rescue as he sees it – if she has become one of them – she must die. Honour and mercy insist upon it.

The idea of captivity among Indians as “a fate worse than death” is frowned upon today as a Victorian literary cliché but it was a commonly held belief. One which was informed by countless atrocities and by an extensive literature documenting such captivity. I would suggest that if you transported most modern people to the Texas frontier of the mid 19th century, they would very quickly acclimatise themselves to the concept.

The Hollywood conventions of the 1950s do not allow the film to show its actress (rising star Natalie Wood) in a state that realistically portrays what a woman in that situation would actually have gone through. She looks a little too glamorous. But we do get strong hints of it in the scene at the army outpost where Ethan and Martin search out Debbie among young girls rescued by Custer's 7th Cavalry. The scene goes a long way towards communicating the trauma and the utter dislocation of rescued captives. Children taken by Comanche warriors would have seen their families tortured and killed. Men burnt to death, women raped, babies smashed to pieces on the ground. Plucked from one world and violently immersed in another, they quickly forgot how to speak English and blocked out of their minds everything prior to their captivity. By the time they were rescued they had often been so thoroughly assimilated that they rejected their native society. Nothing is more horrifying to Ethan Edwards than the thought that these trauma victims represent the fate of Debbie. “It's hard to believe they're White,” a soldier remarks. “They ain't White... anymore,” Ethan snaps back, “They're Comanche.”

Philip Sheridan, the Irish-American General who along with William Tecumseh Sherman was tasked with subduing the Plains Indians, thought that captured women would be better off perishing by the “providentially directed bullet of a would-be rescuer” than live with what they had experienced. In that sense Ethan is only a man of his times. His motivation to kill Debbie is not a melodramatic contrivance nor does it require Freudian justification. It is historically plausible. It reflects the attitudes of a place and a time.

It is not enough to impose a cookie-cutter “anti-racist” message onto the film's ending. It is not productive to label and pathologise the very understandable actions and emotions of ordinary people in a situation of cultural confrontation. The standard liberal frame has been to view the horse warrior societies as morally in the right. But in fact the settlers are as easily characterised as “hard-working” immigrants and the Comanches as “reactionary” nativists if one wants to impose liberal frames. Whether one sympathises with the Indians or the settlers is irrelevant. These societies (these ways of existing in the world) were such that they could not coexist peacefully. A tragic outcome was in that sense unavoidable by the law that one nation expands at the expense of another. In the original novel Martin Pauley (who in that version does not have Indian heritage) says of the conflict: “They want us off the earth. I understand that, because that's what I want for them. I want them dead. All of them.” The conditions depicted are those of literal “race war” and the creators of the film are explicitly aware of that.

Political Influences

The Searchers benefits from a myriad of contradictory political perspectives and any attempt to distill from it a simplistic moral message is in vain. The film was based on a fine novel by Alan LeMay which in turn was loosely inspired by the case of James Parker who spent the 1830s and 40s searching for his kidnapped relatives including his niece the famous Cynthia Anne Parker whose son later became a Comanche war chief. LeMay consciously wrote the book as a corrective to the Nobel Savage trope in popular western stories at that time.

“I thought it was time somebody showed that in the case of the Texans, at least, there were two sides to it, and that the settlers had understandable reasons to be sore.”

He tells his story from the point of view of homesteaders (mostly Baptists and Quakers in this case) whose ranches and homes were attacked by Indian raids. He contrasts a nomadic horse warrior culture, dependent on natural abundance and tied to the seasons, with the relentless drive of European settler colonies. The Comanche lose in the end because, in LeMay's terms, they cannot conceptualise the “critter that just keeps coming on.”

The book was adapted by the somewhat more liberal screenwriter Frank Nugent (“half-Irish, half-Jewish” as writer Joseph McBride is always quick to point out) and put on film by the politically mercurial John Ford. While he rarely took a writing credit on his films, Ford was usually intimately involved with the screenwriting process and constantly played with the scenes right up until the point of shooting. The famous scene where Ethan kisses Martha on the forehead for instance was not in any version of the script.

As liberal as Ford could ever be, his Irish Catholic heritage always made him suspect of having reactionary views. The screenwriters of What Price Glory (1952), husband and wife team Henry and Phoebe Ephron, walked off production convinced (probably wrongly) that Ford harboured prejudice against them. Phoebe Ephron had remarked that there were an awful lot of churches in the French village set and Ford had replied gruffly: “Don't you think there are a lot of synagogues in a Jewish village?”. One suspects that the prejudice was at least as much on their part.

Accusations of racism and misogyny have always dogged Ford's films even the ones that supposedly have an anti-racist message. A recent Turner Classic Movie podcast on Ford's life recounts how on the set of Sergeant Rutledge (1960) Ford provoked a harrowing performance from black actor Woody Strode by yelling at him to “stop niggering up” the movie. Yet Strode remained friends with Ford till the end of his days, as did others who suffered abuse and bullying on set.

You get a sense of how Irish Catholics were treated as politically suspect in a taped conversation between filmmakers Orson Welles and Henry Jaglom.

Jaglom asks: “Wasn't Ford very reactionary politically? Like his pals John Wayne and Ward Bond? […] And their reactionary positions came from what?”

Welles replies: “Irish, Irish, Irish. The Irish were taught, 'Kill the kikes,' you know.”

Despite this Welles had good relations with Ford and Wayne. He was almost cast in the lead in Ford's The Last Hurrah (1958). When pressed on how he squared that with their politics, Welles responded, “I never had any trouble with extreme right-wingers. I've always found them tremendously likeable in every respect except their politics. They're usually nicer people than left-wingers.”

For some the presence of John Wayne alone makes the film offensive and reactionary. But it is unquestionably his finest hour. Ethan Edwards is compelling in part because Wayne identifies so strongly with the character he is playing. This has befuddled and fascinated liberal critics of the film who recognise Wayne's contribution on a level with Ford, Nugent and LeMay. The empathy that Wayne's performance elicits from the audience has in their view a fascinating distorting impact on the story. If you withdraw identification from Wayne completely, as liberal critics would like to do, the film becomes incomprehensible. You can then label it an “anti-racist” parable if you choose, but it's hardly worth watching on those terms. I refuse to accept that you can like The Searchers as a film and not like Ethan Edwards as a character.

The appeal of John Wayne is as a surrogate father figure. From Red River (1948) right up until the 1970s, Wayne's persona became more and more the tough but fair patriarch. The Searchers is his most authentic variation on this theme. Martin Scorsese has said that he saw his father in Ethan Edwards. I think a lot of people feel that way. Especially if you grew up in a rural place with roots in old world values. If not your father, you certainly had uncles like that. Ethan Edwards represents to me what adulthood or manhood seemed from the point of view of childhood. Tough as nails, intimidating, hyper-competent, laconic, quick witted. But also shrouded in the darkness of moral responsibility. The Western cliché “A man's got to do what a man's got to do” takes on deeper meaning in light of what Ethan Edwards feels he “has to do” in The Searchers. Being an adult means doing things that children do not understand and which they often see as cruel or unfair. The facts of life are inconvenient. For Ethan Edwards “being a man” also means being, in modern terms, a “racist.”

Wayne's attitude towards his reactionary character contrasts strongly with what we see today where most actors are reflexively liberal. When interviewed about his role in No County for Old Men (2007) Tommy Lee Jones felt the need to distance himself from his character's beliefs which he disparaged as “ethno-centric” and from Cormac McCarthy's portrayal of a conservative “salt of the earth” Texan lawman. Not so with Wayne who defended Edwards to the last and even named a son after him.

The ending of the film portrays in certain aspects the tragedy of progressive morality. The United States of the late 1950s was in the process of undergoing radical racial transformation which in the following decade would alter American society beyond recognition. That society was certainly ready to close the door on Ethan Edwards. At the same time, there was disenchantment with the liberal direction of post-war America. That was something John Wayne and John Ford both felt deeply. To a great extent they both turned their backs on that society. Wayne became more and more politically reactionary. He caused outrage in 1971 with his incendiary interview for Playboy magazine.

You could argue however that Wayne couches his “racism” in liberal assumptions that Ethan Edwards would have little time for. For instance he says: “I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility.” This is pretty wishy-washy “equal oppertunites” conservatism really. On the point of American Indians, Wayne was maybe closer to Edwards: “Our so-called stealing of this country from them was just a matter of survival. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.” The lack of apology might be refreshing but the general sentiment is more than a little unsettling in an age of hyper-globalisation. I often think Wayne should have extended a hand of friendship to the Indian Rights movements of the 1960s. They were no threat to the United States and by some acounts they had more in common with conservatives than with the '60s counter culture he so hated.

Ford would not have been so cold. He remained friendly with the Navajo Indians who worked in his westerns and he helped them out over the years. When an English interviewer asked him whether he saw the destruction of the Indians as a blot on American history, he responded obliquely: “I don't know. I wasn't alive then. I had nothing to do with it.... My sympathy is all with the Indians... anymore than the invasion of the Black and Tans into Ireland. Do you consider that a blot on English history?” His most pro-Indian film Cheyenne Autumn (1964) was recieved with mixed reviews and did poor box-office. Aside from Donovan's Reef (1963) his films generally became more pessimistic. Later in life he shocked Katherine Hepburn by telling her that he voted for Goldwater and Nixon. He had become part of the “silent majority” who pushed back against the revolution of the 1960s. By the time the door closed shut on Ford, he had already turned his back.

The “Great American Film”?

The film critic David Kehr once wrote: “We may still be waiting for the Great American Novel, but John Ford gave us the Great American Film with The Searchers.” One may agree or disagree with that assertion. But the fact that anyone would assert it at all, speaks to a quality which very few American films share. The Searchers has the gravitas of a great saga. The mono-mania of Ethan Edwards (even more so in the film than in LeMay's novel) achieves the grandeur of Captain Ahab without being an imitation of Ahab like so many other examples. While the novel has Edwards die like Ahab, destroyed by his obsession, the film ends more profoundly by having him go on wandering forever.

Many have commented on the unreality of the settings of the film. But it is that very unreality that makes the characters stand out as larger than life. The story appears as Barry Fitzgerald might say in The Quiet Man (1952), “Homeric!” If the story were being told around a campfire a thousand years from now this might be how it would look in the mind's eye. As far removed from the real events as the Greece of Sophocles was from the Greece of Homer. Monument Valley in VistaVision is not a realistic depiction of Texas (obviously) nor do the filmmakers want it to be. It is a landscape intensely heightened in feeling and emotion. We don't simply get a wilderness, we get wilderness in the abstract. A red Martian landscape peopled by alien races. It has been called “psychological” but I think it has the opposite effect. It is not a “psychological” western like Anthony Mann would make. Nor is it a spare, stripped down existential western of the kind Budd Boetticher would make. We experience the character's emotional conflicts but the effect is not to foreground neurosis. Inner and outer lives remain balanced. The characters become forces of immense physical action which we cannot take our eyes off of. It is action motivated by honour codes and by rituals of kinship. It is a world of forms and the observing of forms. Closer to Achilles and Hector than to Freud. It is a Homeric western.

Contrasted with this, the filmmakers portray a domestic world which is also heightened. The interiors of the homesteads, with blazing open fires and cozy wooden furnishings, are exaggerations of homely comfort. It's too cozy, too inviting. You almost want to go there and pull up a rocking chair by the fire like Mose Harper. At the same time these dwellings are anachronisms on a barren, inhospitable desert. It is domesticity in the abstract dominated by the feminine in opposition to the harsh masculine world of honour and violence outside. Between these two worlds stands the portal of the doorway which Ethan at the end refuses to walk through. As he refuses to surrender to the Union Army, he refuses to surrender to domesticity. He has brought Debbie back rather than kill her but he doesn't quite know if he has done right or wrong. The real life rescue of Cynthia Anne Parker was a sad affair. Though her family had been brutalised and murdered by the Comanche she had become totally assimilated into their society. Ripped away from this violently and returned to Texas, she failed to reintegrate and died an early death pining for her Indian children. The film does not answer the question of whether Debbie reintegrates since Debbie is not the protagonist of the story. Alan LeMay's choice was to follow the searcher. The wanderer.

Ethan Edwards is an Odysseus who can never quite return to Ithaca. He comes “home” not to a wife and children but to his brother's wife who he covets but cannot have. Instead of suitors he has to defeat the Comanche who rape and murder her. At the end he comes “home” again carrying the niece who may be his daughter. He would have left for war just before she was born. But rather than enter he turns and continues to wander. Many people have pointed out that Ethan shoots the eyes out of Comanche corpses because it is their custom that without eyes they cannot enter the spirit land and have to “wander forever between the winds.” But Ethan has eyes. He chooses to wander.

Ethan's shadow in the film is Scar the Comanche chief who mirrors Ethan's own race hatred back at him. The Comanche are losing their place in the world, being pushed out by European immigrants and the United States government. However it should be noted that Ethan himself has been on the losing side of a war with the United States. “I figure a man's only good for one oath at a time. I took mine to the Confederate States of America.” Both Scar and Ethan embrace an honour culture which hyper-domesticity and the forces of industrial civilisation are in the process of wiping out.

Ethan's conviction that he must kill Debbie because she has “been with the buck” is both a mercy killing (from his point of view) and an honour killing. In the Elizabethan tragedy Titus Andronicus, Titus murders his own daughter who has been raped and mutilated by his enemies. He justifies it thus: “Die, die, Lavinia, and thy shame with thee, And with thy shame, thy father's sorrow die.” This kind of honour killing is difficult for a modern domesticated European to understand. It is doubtful that many in 1956 America would have condoned it. But it is in fact a common part of life in much of the world. Ethan is closer to the cultures he finds alien than we are to Ethan. We have stepped through the portal. Ethan has not.

The domestic world is preserved from danger by the honour culture of wild men like Ethan Edwards. What is Ethan rejecting when he turns his back on the household. Is he rejecting an America which does not have the will to live by such a code and therefore in the long durée does not have the will to live? An America that teaches children of European ancestry to hate themselves? Is he giving up or being defiant? Is his final decision to spare Debbie and bring her home a conciliatory gesture or a confession of weakness? Was killing Debbie unnecessary once he had scalped Scar and satisfied the demands of honour? Then why walk away?

He turns and the door shuts behind him. Modern critics would see it as Liberal America slamming the door on Conservative America. Martin Pauley represents in this view the future and Ethan Edwards the past. The neatness of that reading is that you can take it as pessimistic or optimistic depending on your political persuasion. A more uncomfortable reading is that Conservative America is abdicating to Liberal America. Not just being shut out but turning its back in resignation. That is a reading less easy to digest.