MOVIE ESSAY: The Searchers
The most recognized film structures are in genre films. They bring to us the comfort of familiarity, and the conventions that come with knowing the forms before the movie even begins. In most genre films, particularly the Western, there is the stereotypical protagonist who does no harm, a common setting, and an ending that most always ends on a happy note. In Robin Wood’s article, Ideology, Genre, Auteur, he uses a “synthetic” analysis to look at genre films that are full of ideological contradictions, and those that go outside the conventions of the auteur (filmmakers who have a distinguishing style of directing). In this essay the focal point will be to incorporate Robin Wood’s synthetic theory (that takes into account genre, auteur, and ideology) with the contradictions regarding the Western genre, and the ideal male evident in John Ford’s The Searchers.
In order to accurately define the genre film, one must understand the films that are considered to be part of the genre category: westerns, thrillers, horror films, musicals, and every other type of film that has a certain dimension of prediction to it. The preconceived notions that the audience has when it watches a genre film fall into the category of ideology: a rational structure of beliefs, values, and ideas that are viewed as the norm by a social group (in this case by the audience). Wood decides to study these systems within the “American Capitalist ideology – or, more specifically, the values and assumptions so insistently embodied in and reinforced by the classical Hollywood cinema” (Wood 718). He breaks down the conventions into twelve categories: 1) capitalism, 2) the work ethic, 3) marriage, 4) nature as agrarianism, and the wilderness, 5) technological progress, 6) success and wealth, 7) “The Rosebud Syndrome” where money is the means of evil, 8) “America as the land where everyone is or can be happy,” 9) “the ideal male: the virile adventurer,” 10) “the ideal female: wife and mother,” 11) “the settled husband/father, dependable but dull,” and 12) “the erotic woman, fascinating, but dangerous.” (Wood 719) Wood considers these ideologies to be “riddled with hopeless contradictions and irresolvable tensions” (Wood 719). Instead of approaching genre in terms of conventions, and what these conventions are (which theorists have done in the past), Wood suggests looking at genre, and asking why these certain motifs, themes, and iconography exist within the films.
In his essay, Wood studies the ideological and thematic tensions of It’s a Wonderful Life and Shadow of a Doubt, but John Ford’s The Searchers is also a great example of a genre film that deals with ideological oppositions. To take into account its ideological tensions, firstly the auteur behind the film should be examined, since “it can perhaps be argued that works are of especial interest when the defined particularities of an auteur interact with specific ideological tensions and when the film is fed from more than one generic source.” (Wood 720)
When a director marks his signature style on a film (whether it is through lighting, camera direction, or acting technique), the movie becomes a part of the auteur theory; the familiarization of an artist. John Ford, a highly popularized director of the Western, has a distinct signature to his filmmaking. Most of his westerns prior to The Searchers dealt with social issues, such as the obvious lower and upper class, gender roles, and good versus evil, but he never delved into the issues as deep and serious as he does in The Searchers. John Wayne, who often starred in Ford’s films, is often shown as a charming outlaw who by ideological terms is an “adventurer” and the “ideal male,” however in The Searchers he is perceived as a racist whose sour attitude and irrational violent behavior is not favored.
The Searchers takes place after the Civil War in the wilderness of Texas. Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) returns from the war years after it was over to the home of his brother, and his brothers’ wife, whom he secretly loves. While Ethan and his adopted “half-breed” nephew, Martin (Jeffrey Hunter), are out volunteering as rangers, Comanche Indians raid the ranch, killing everyone in the family, and kidnapping the two eldest nieces, Debbie (Natalie Wood), and Lucy. Ethan, and Martin embark on a journey to rescue them, but they discover that Lucy had been raped and murdered, and Debbie had matured and married the Comanche leader, Scar. Outraged, Ethan continues on the search for Debbie, but in his mind his search to save her becomes the search to kill her for becoming a Comanche. Martin tags along in order to stop Ethan from doing anything harmful. Finally, Martin is the one who kills Scar, and Debbie is returned home safely.
One of Robin Wood’s ideal figures is the ideal male, which he also considers to be contradicted in the given genre it lies in. The ideal male in the Western genre is considered to be the idyllic hero. In Movie Chronicle: The Westerner Robert Warshow defines the Western hero as a “figure of repose” (Warhsow 704), but there is never a moment in The Searchers where Ethan is taking it easy, and relaxing; he is always on a prowl, and getting aggressive with the Indians. Like any familiar Western hero, there is always a love story beneath the rough core, but amongst his situations, the love seems to be beside the point. Love gets put on the back burner, and the love interest “is usually unable to understand his motives; she is against killing and being killed.” (Warshow 704) This is reminiscent of the “ideal woman” who defines safety, but unlike the average hero, Ethan’s love gets killed before the heart of the movie even begins. Thus, due to the nature of Ethan’s behavior, perhaps the ideological opposition is that he is not actually meant to be the hero in The Searchers. Martin, on the other hand, does fit the mold of the ideal hero, and stands for the principles the viewers are initially supposed to be believe in: the pursuit of justice, trustworthiness, and true love (he is the one who has the love of his life waiting for him back home), unlike Ethan whose principles are racial, violent, and acquisitiveness. Martin being a “half-breed” as Ethan calls him is half of what the hatred in this film is all about. Even though we are supposed to despise him for being part Indian, we can’t because he is the superlative of morals (he represents the “honest toil” of the work ethic ideology).
Even though Martin adopts the role as the ideal hero in The Searchers, he does not take on the masculinity that the ideal hero exemplifies in a conventional Western. Wood describes the ideal hero as “the virile adventurer, the potent, untrammeled man of action,” (Wood 719) but in one scene in particular Martin contradicts his actions completely. During the first shoot-out with the Comanche when a comrade assures Martin that he shot an Indian Martin drops his gun and begins to briefly cry. A virile man would never be seen showing emotions, especially sympathy towards the Indians.
Emotionally, Martin and Ethan are like day and night (while Martin shows emotions, Ethan manages to stay stern through-out the film), but their ethics are dissimilar, as well. While Martin is on the search for Debbie to save her, Ethan is on the search to kill her (in his mind it’s equal to saving her), because of her corruption by the Indians. Martin does not even seem to be fazed by the fact that the Indians are to blame for his only families’ destruction. Perhaps it’s because he has Indian blood, or perhaps he just has morals that Ethan, including others in the film, don’t. Even Laurie, Martin’s lover, is depicted as a racist when she is revolted at the notion of Debbie being with an Indian (even though she herself is in love with a half-Indian), and offers her support towards Ethan’s goal to kill Debbie after he finds her; something an ideal female character in a Ford film would never intend of thinking (even Ford’s erotic women were given a positive approach).
Another difference between Ethan and Martin is their financial status. Early on in The Searchers Ethan establishes his wealth by revealing freshly-minted Yankee dollars to his brother, and explaining that he expects to pay his way for leaving behind what he had before the war, but as Warshow explains, “there is no poverty in Western movies, and really no wealth either,” (705). Martin, on the other hand, continued to be the conventional hero by keeping his economic standing covert, and when he did become in need of possessions, Laurie and her family provided for him.
In addition to the already mentioned unconventional context in The Searchers, the lack of mystery in Western movies is also contradicted in the film. “The Western movie presents itself as being without mystery, its whole universe comprehended in what we see on the screen,” (Warshow 705) but the mystery in The Searchers lies with Ethan who is questioned near the beginning of the film for what he had done between the time the war ended and his return to Texas. His possible past as a bank robber becomes the leading reason to his mysterious wealth, but it is never confirmed. On the contrary, Martin is an open-book; he reveals his feelings and doings in letters he writes to Laurie.
The Searchers, which was made in 1956, may also not be conventional due to the shift in the time frame. Changes in American society led the Western genre to alter its themes. Although the idealized Western hero that John Ford made admirable in the late thirties continued to be successful in the fifties, the Western genre became dubbed the “adult Western,” because of its new “concentration on the psychological or moral conflicts of the individual protagonist in relation to his society rather than creating the poetic archetypes of order characteristic of Ford.” (Cook 432) To keep up with the times, Ford had to also take into consideration the time change, and toy with the protagonist, and his morals (as seen with Ethan).
Wood stated in the beginning of his synthetic analysis that critics’ “aim should always be to see the work as wholly as possible, as it is – to be able to draw on the discoveries and particular perceptions of each theory, each position, without committing themselves exclusively to any one.” (717) In this case, Wood’s antithetical presumption about ideological conventions regarding both the auteur theory and the genre theory are seen clearly in The Searchers. While John Ford put John Wayne as the ideal Western male in all of his films prior, The Searchers gave the viewers a chance to rethink their ideologies concerning the auteur and his conventions, and the conventions of the model hero in the Western genre.
- Cook, David A. “The Western.” A History of Narrative Film (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1981) 432-434
- Warshow, Robert “Movie Chronicle: The Westerner.” Film Theory and Criticism (New York: Oxford, 2004) 717-726
- Wood, Robin “Ideology, Genre, Auteur.” Film Theory and Criticism (New York: Oxford, 2004) 703-716
