The Searchers

Well, it really is 30 below today. That's with the wind chill which is a Minnesota invention along with Ole and Lena jokes.
Ole and Lena got married. On their honeymoon trip they were nearing Minneapolis when Ole put his hand on Lena's knee. Giggling, Lena said, "Ole, you can go farther if ya vant to"... so Ole drove to Duluth.


It's also too cold for the AAA battery guy to get the car jump-started which is why I'm sitting at home waiting for the tow truck guy. Lucky you. If it gets any colder in Minnesota everybody goes ice fishing. I tried it once but it took too long to cut the hole for the boat. The cold builds character which is why I agreed to move here when Linda decided she wanted to leave Utopia and move next door to Garrison Keillor. Actually, he lives two neighborhoods away, uphill. He just settled an argument out-of-court with a neighbor over her proposed garage addition. In Minnesota, garages are male which is why he didn't like it. He said it wasn't good-looking enough.

"Which is why" is my catch-phrase today. After watching The Searchers twice (second time with a great commentary with Peter Bogdanovich) I want to be like Buddy Holly who kept saying "That'll be the day." It made sense in the dialogue except once when it didn't seem to have any connection to what had just been said. But who am I too criticize Miles Davis? No, wait, Davis and John Wayne just share a birthday. Just like Aretha Franklin and our wonderful 102 year-old former neighbor who is now in the Jewish nursing home even though he's Catholic. Just like John Ford. Catholic, I mean. Ford's dead.

Aretha will not be as old as our neighbor. He will be 103, March 24th, God willing and the creek don't rise. He stayed in his house next door to us until he was 101. On his 100th birthday I wrote a letter to the editor that actually made sense and which described how much he had done for me, such as slip in a trailer hitch after I had struggled for two hours to get it in or how he jacked up a pole in my backyard that had been set in concrete or how he mixed up the concrete and patched my sidewalk all after he had turned 95. Very gracious man. He never said a word the time he came over to sit with me after I had fallen off a rope swing in the driveway that I had tried to set up for the boys. It was almost done so I tried it out thinking the boys would want to swing except right then the ice cream truck turned the corner. I fell backwards onto the concrete which is why it might not be the best place to put a swing.

John Ford as the director was the main reason I wanted to see this movie. John Wayne is a hard one to watch. Too many political issues. Of course I'd have to stop watching the Wizard of Oz if Godless Liberal Communism was my standard for entertainment. Another reason winter in Minnesota is hard is that we are close to the site and anniversary of the massacre at Wounded Knee which gets annual mention in the papers along with L. Frank Baum's editorial afterwards essentially saying that they had it coming. His descendants apologized to the tribes in 2000. Will Wayne's descendant's apologize?

Not to get too far off the topic (Bart, you lost me a long time ago) but it might be of interest to some esteemed readers of this drivel that the various Christian denominations had divided up the reservations back in the 1800's. Guess who got most of South Dakota including Wounded Knee? Yep, Reform Jews. No, really, it was the Episcopal Church. Easy to get confused. It's possible the Ghost Dancers were just trying to avert a schism unlike that other unfortunate result of colonialism, Anglican Africans. Which is why our mother will say is the reason current Episcopalians are being resettled in the California Castro St. reservation.

The Castro St. reference might have to get relayed to Tish. If you need someone to blame for the election of George the first and the second, then look no further than those California lesbians. Last time I was out there was in the election year for George the first. Lawn signs everywhere: Lesbians Love Bush.

"What makes a man to wander?
What makes a man to roam?
What makes a man leave bed and board
And turn his back on home?
Ride away, ride away, ride away."

begins the movie.

"A man will search his heart and soul
Go searchin' way out there
His peace of mind he knows he'll find
But where, O Lord, Lord where?
Ride away, ride away." is the rest of the song and which ends the movie. (What movie are you talking about, Bart?) (Star Wars, pay attention.)

Loyal supporters of Public Radio (not to be confused with community radio) will recognize the song as being sung by those original public radio members, the Sons of the Pioneers.

The line "A man will search his heart and soul" sums up what the movie is about even though I had to watch the commentary to understand it. A little authoritative Internet research taught me that Ford had made the movie with the intention of pointing out white racism and our genocidal history. He knew what he was getting with John Wayne and had criticized his WWII draft dodging but knew a western movie star when he saw Wayne ride up on a horse.

The script is pretty clear (and much different from the book in case anyone besides me read Westerns; I used to, on the merchant ships; Max Brand was great). White people are humans, only pure, uncontaminated white people are worth saving. And in the end, Wayne's character has searched his soul and found his heart. Beautiful story. Amazingly beautiful film which I only appreciated after watching the commentary. Ford's use of poetic writing, art technique, and Shakespearean humor is riveting. Amazingly, I'm being serious for the first time.

If you do see it, watch for the inscription on the headstone. Also, the interaction between Wayne's character and his brother's wife. The lineage of the adopted son, Marty, is also important to understand Wayne's character.

Ford uses a lot of violent acts that we have to imagine. Also lots of techniques from his silent movie days. The scene where Wayne scalps one of the native Americans is very well done. The fact that his character does the first scalping in the movie may be Ford's way of letting us on to the fact that scalping was first used by Europeans on Indians. A blunt point brought up in the very non-imaginative movie, Blood Diamond, was that the practice of chopping off limbs was first introduced in Africa by the Belgians.

Look for the way Ford begins and ends the movie and in the way he uses long scenes and composes them like a painting. Bogdanovich points out that while Ford may have used a white actor for the Comanche chief, for all the others he cast members of the Navajo reservation from Monument Valley where they did much of the shooting. The way he shoots the Monument Valley scenes are beautiful.

There's a famous quote from Frank Capra (who Wayne did not like and thought the "dago should go back where he came from" which means Capra was probably of the Catholic persuasion):
"If you want to send a message, use Western Union."

Another famous quote that provides an antidote to Capra and apparently much discussed on the web as to its origin is "The political is the personal."
One authoritative web source said it was Margaret Mead. But the one I believe is the one that has the right name. My name. And the prize goes to Pauline Bart (sic) who said it was some French guy but who cares. It's her name that counts. Web search for "political is the personal" and see what you get.

The Searchers is definitely not a telegram but I wonder how much of Ford's political message a 1956 movie audience took from this movie. Those of us today (Bart, do you mean you?) have the hindsight of endless analysis combined with a wish that the Green Beret movie had been more fashionable.

Bart, would this be a good time to employ the clever Shakespearean trick used by Ford to balance tension with humor? Yes, it would and here to provide that balance is a collection of Episcopalian jokes. Here's the first one:

A gay Episcopalian is visiting San Francisco where he hears that there's a gay church nearby. He walks in on a Sunday and notices an attractive young man sitting by himself. The visitor sits next to him and reaches his hand over. Suddenly, two burly ushers pick up the poor visitor and toss him outside. The visitor cries out, "I thought this was a gay church." The ushers say "Yeah, but no one messes with the pastor's wife."

Here's the other one:

A Lutheran, a Catholic, and an Episcopalian go up in an airplane. The flight is terrifying and the plane finally lands. A reporter runs up to interview the three "persons." The Lutheran says, "I was scared but I went up a Lutheran and my faith kept me strong so I came down a Lutheran." The Catholic says, "I was scared but I went up a Catholic and my faith kept me strong so I came down a Catholic." The Episcopalian says, "I was so scared that I went up an Episcopalian and I came down an Ecopalian."

Well, Bart, you've cleverly impressed yourself once again with how well you can manage all those Internet searches to show how much you know. What will you do for an encore?

I'm going to finish The Satanic Verses before Peter does.

Wow, you are smart.

It rhymes with the right name.