by Ryan Silberstein, Managing Editor, Red Herring

The first time I watched The Searchers was in the fall of 2019 as research for an article about the films that influenced every Star Wars movie (that article is no longer online, but I should bring it back sometime). George Lucas drew on Ford’s work for his depiction of remote farm life in both the original Star Wars and the second prequel, Attack of the Clones, where Hayden Christensen stands in for John Wayne as Anakin Skywalker searches for his mother who has been taken by the indigenous Sand People. The Searchers was my first experience with the work of Ford as well, setting me on the path to write this column for a year and a half so far. Since then, I have seen 35 other John Ford pictures, making him the director I’ve watched most since I started using Letterboxd ten years ago. I wrote about Ford four times in the first year of this column, as I checked in with the western each decade, but I didn’t want to tackle The Searchers. It was too big, too monumental. 

Originally, I wanted to talk about the depiction of indigenous peoples in The Searchers, but there is a lot to unpack on that topic. I still feel out of my depth as an expert on the subject. For film theory, I recommend Celluloid Indians by Jacquelyn Kilpatrick and Invisible Natives by Armando José Prats.There are a myriad of other sources discussing this film and its depictions, given that this is one of the most written about westerns.. Instead, my main view will be as a lens into masculinity and how the film views American history.

Ford is likely the best American historian when it comes to narrative filmmaking (his nearest rival might be his disciple Steven Spielberg, especially in his work from 1998 onward). Two of my previous entries in this column on Ford, about My Darling Clementine and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, ran under the title “What kind of town is America, anyway?” referring to how those films wrestle with American expansion and identity. The Searchers has that question on its mind as well, but the answer here is mostly personified in the form of Ethan Edwards, played by John Wayne.

There are quite a few articles of people watching The Searchers from a contemporary perspective and missing the point. While audiences in 1956 may not have immediately questioned Ethan’s attitude towards indigenous peoples, dismissing the film for the attitudes of the character is assuming that Ford and Wayne are portraying Ethan as a hero. In this second watch, it became clear to me that Ethan is actually the villain of the story in a number of important ways, and his attitudes about race are a huge part of that. Not that this makes The Searchers an easy watch. In the words of Martin Scorsese:

Like all great works of art, it’s uncomfortable. The core of the movie is deeply painful. Every time I watch it — and I’ve seen it many, many times since its first run in 1956 — it haunts and troubles me. The character of Ethan Edwards is one of the most unsettling in American cinema.

Part of what makes Ethan so unsettling is the firmness of his beliefs. When Ethan arrives at his brother’s house at the films beginning, he is wearing a Confederate coat. Not only did he fight for the losing side, which colors his attitude, but he also fought for slavery (and is certainly in favor of not mixing races). After that, he didn’t return home right away, taking another three years to show up at his brother’s house. Even then, he seems to worry he is an interloper, surprised at his open-ended invitation.

While warmly received by the family, especially the children, there is also an obvious mutual attraction between Ethan and his sister-in-law, Martha (Dorothy Jordan). When they are reunited, she holds his upper arms, embracing him while keeping distance between them. He kisses her forehead and she closes her eyes, relishing it while knowing that her husband, Aaron is there. For his part, Aaron doesn’t seem to be the one keeping the homestead going. In his words, “without Martha, I don't know... She wouldn't let a man quit.” Ethan’s determination (or later, obsession) is something Martha may see as a commonality between them. Ethan being single at something approximating Wayne’s age at filming, 50, in the heteronormative 1860s (and 1950s), says volumes about how dysfunctional he is as a man. 

The way he treats other men also says something about his version of masculinity. He is constantly berating them, not communicating with them, and generally refusing to join anything other than by his own design, as he refuses to be a Texas Ranger. We are so accustomed to seeing loner heroes like Batman and John Wick, but it also must be recognized that both of those characters have a strong supporting cast that is added to over time, if only to prove they aren’t sociopaths. Ethan is almost a textbook anti-hero, and it’s no surprise that Roger Ebert pointed to him as a model for Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle:

The Ethan Edwards story is stark and lonely, a portrait of obsession, and in it we can see Schrader's inspiration for Travis Bickle of “Taxi Driver;” the Comanche chief named Scar (Henry Brandon) is paralleled by Harvey Keitel's pimp named Sport, whose Western hat and long hair cause Travis to call him “chief.”

While the depiction of indigenous peoples may be problematic, they make more sense if we think of the whole film as being depicted from Ethan’s perspective. He is openly racist, and he plans to kill a young girl because being raped by a man of another race has tainted her to the point of worthlessness in his eyes. The main tension in most of the film comes from whether or not Ethan will kill Debbie (Natalie Wood). These are not the actions or attitude of a hero, or a good role model. No hero would murder a girl because of what happened to her as a victim. At that point, he’s not there to do anything for the girl, but to assuage his own fears of miscegenation. Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter) is Ethan’s foil, and he is steadfast in wanting to find Debbie for love and bringing her back, not as some kind of revenge against her captors. He doesn’t hide his emotions, and doesn’t hesitate to stand up to Ethan. 

But I don’t think that the movie is only about racist attitudes toward indigenous populations. While Wayne had his own problematic views on race, Ford was fairly progressive, even if not ideologically pure. Just six months before The Searchers was released, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus. The struggle for Black rights was just beginning to bubble up nationally, and Ford, as a student of history (and seemingly unabashed fan of Abraham Lincoln), created in Ethan a perfect representation of toxic white male masculinity. The Confederate allegiance is so pointed and brought up enough times where it is an important trait of Ethan’s character. While the commentary on southern treatment of Black Americans may be subtext, it also connects Ethan’s background fighting for enslavement to his vocal racial hatred of indigenous people. It is not an accident that Martin asks about Ethan’s “Johnny Reb” coat as Wayne penetrates the sand with his knife, foreshadowing the reveal that Ethan buried Lucy in his coat, explaining that she had been raped, a crime so heinous that it can’t even be said in the film:

What do you want me to do? Draw ya a picture? Spell it out? Don't ever ask me! Long as you live, don't ever ask me more.

White supremacy is white supremacy, and in Ethan, The Searchers creates a portrait of the darkness in America’s heart, showing how toxic masculinity, combined with the devaluing of women and non-whites leads to violence.

This reading is supported by the film’s ending. Ethan carries Debbie to the porch. She, the Jorgensens, and the camera move into the house. Ethan only manages to get onto the porch before walking off. He’s not allowed inside. He is a failed state of a man, doomed to never have a wife and family because his racism is so abhorrent that he is unfit for domestic life at all. In the words of Scorsese again, “In its final moment, The Searchers suddenly becomes a ghost story. Ethan’s sense of purpose has been fulfilled, and like the man whose eyes he’s shot out, he’s destined to wander forever between the winds.” Ford is telling us that macho-driven men who wrap themselves in the flags of white supremacy and racial purity are unfit for America. They aren’t necessary evils, just evil.