I think the searchers is actually meant to be a criticism of both westerns and manifest destiny, but the criticism gets lost because you can’t make a movie portraying a racist spciety to a racist society without everyone just nodding along. Kind of perfect reference for that guy to make, because he constructs a criticism of a settler colonial state and goes “and anyone who opposes it is an evil savage”. There’s something poetic in being so bought into your racist worldview that your brain can’t process critiques of it in either art or formal argument.
For all the faults of the United Citizens’ Federation, it handles gender the best of any real or fictional society, by which I mean it’s aggressively indifferent to it
it is kind of difficult to parse today, i’m still not sure to what extent it was actually subversive in it’s context, but it wasn’t that much, or presented in the overt way (hammer over the noggin’) a yankee audience requires. a lynchpin of the narrative, the awaited and expected execution of natalie wood for being ‘defiled’—i don’t think it occurs to a modern audience that the price for being SA’d was supposed to be death, and it was somewhat dated in the 50’s when the movie came out. so that commentary and criticism will well fly over people’s heads
I think the searchers is actually meant to be a criticism of both westerns and manifest destiny, but the criticism gets lost because you can’t make a movie portraying a racist spciety to a racist society without everyone just nodding along. Kind of perfect reference for that guy to make, because he constructs a criticism of a settler colonial state and goes “and anyone who opposes it is an evil savage”. There’s something poetic in being so bought into your racist worldview that your brain can’t process critiques of it in either art or formal argument.
I mean isn’t that why people support the setting from the film adaptation of Starship Troopers?
For all the faults of the United Citizens’ Federation, it handles gender the best of any real or fictional society, by which I mean it’s aggressively indifferent to it
Broke: showering alone
Woke: showering with all my bros
Bespoke: showering with all my bros and broettes
Baroque: shower with your dad simulator 2015
it is kind of difficult to parse today, i’m still not sure to what extent it was actually subversive in it’s context, but it wasn’t that much, or presented in the overt way (hammer over the noggin’) a yankee audience requires. a lynchpin of the narrative, the awaited and expected execution of natalie wood for being ‘defiled’—i don’t think it occurs to a modern audience that the price for being SA’d was supposed to be death, and it was somewhat dated in the 50’s when the movie came out. so that commentary and criticism will well fly over people’s heads