Ethan Coen once noted that having an education in philosophy was crucial to his development as a filmmaker. Ethan wrote a thesis on Ludwig Wittgenstein and has a stellar reputation for bringing both high and low brow ethical dilemmas to the big screen and mass appeal. All film of any merit, even popcorn summer features, have a philosophical underpinning, an ethos from which they emanate. The most popular type of film throughout American history has been the Western, and that is due in large part to the ethos and legend of the American West. The 19th century Western landscape is by and large filled with entropy and chaos, tumbleweeds and hideouts for bank robbers. A lone individual must face a lawless band of robbers terrorizing a town, and with weaponry and righteousness on his side the Sheriff makes the town safe again. It is the job of the sheriff to maintain authority, providing the stability necessary for the demiurge of statecraft. From The Great Train Robbery (1903) to the Avengers of today this philosophical ethos has sold more movie tickets than any other, albeit with many iterations, and variations on this theme. In the 1930s between 1–3 westerns were released every month (approximately 200 in that decade) and following the success of Stagecoach (1939) and conversion to color, in 1940 alone 87 westerns were produced. In the time before multiplexes many theatres were likely playing multiple westerns on a screen daily. One of the more memorable variations on this Western theme starred Jimmy Stewart, one called Destry Rides Again (1939).
Destry Rides Again
was based on the popular novel of the same name and puts the squeaky clean image of Jimmy Stewart, fresh of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (also 1939), into a familiar Western trope. A small western town, aptly named Bottleneck, has gone corrupt and the saloon owner has a nosy sheriff killed and replaced by an easily controlled drunkard. The drunkard sobers up and reaches out to Destry, son of a famous lawman well-known to the town. The conceit of Destry is that, unlike his father he is a diplomat who eschews a pistol, and shows up to Bottleneck with a parasol, a latent endorsement of Neville Chamberlain’s approach to German aggression. It was one year prior, in September 1938 that Chamberlain declared Peace in Our Time, and famously carried an umbrella around. The leading lady in Destry is Marlene Deitrich, a German woman (again, no coincidence here) of ill repute who is the lover of the saloon owner and town boss. Marlene Deitrich is a sultry chanteuse named Frenchy who is charmed by Destry. Deitrich’s character makes the ultimate sacrifice in order to redeem herself in the eyes of Destry and the audience, and in this mild deviation from the Western theme it is the diplomacy of Destry and self-sacrifice of Frenchy that brings order to the town.
There is also a minor scene for the Leggett family, ranchers living under corrupt rule of the boss. This is a key scene because it establishes a proxy connection with the audience, suggesting that Destry and people like him (i.e. law enforcement in your town, the President and authority figures in general) are working to maintain civilization on behalf of your family. This is the type of entertainment that seeks to support societal traditions of property law and self-determination.
Further Deviations of the Western theme
Blazing Saddles
One simple and effective deviation from the Western Theme is the introduction of a black sheriff Bart into a Wild West town in Blazing Saddles (1974). The plot is essentially the same as “Destry”. In a script by Richard Pryor and Mel Brooks that portrays racism as so over-the-top dumb it’s hilarious. The introduction of the cowboys with Slim Pickens singing “Camptown Races” was unforgettable and effective humor. Saddles is written off as getting by on racial humor that is by today’s standards deemed unacceptable, but let’s look at the ending. Gene Wilder, who plays the sharpshooting town drunk “The Waco Kid” and becomes the deputy for Sheriff Bart and together they take on not only the criminals but the landed aristocracy (wealthy white men, represented by Hedy Lamar) behind the plot to drive down property values and swoop in to own the town. Unlike traditional Westerns, the citizens are hardly worth saving.
Instead of proxy characters like the Leggett family, Brooks takes his message directly to the audience by priming them with cues of the theater experience, in order to inculcate them with integrationist themes. The climactic fight breaks the fourth wall and as Lamar attempts to escape he is met with Bart who has a bag of popcorn. This is one of the most direct appeals to a movie going audience to accept these absurdly presented themes. This is far more persuasive than the schoolmarm serious “To Kill a Mockingbird”.
Pulp Fiction
Another effective deviation is in Pulp Fiction, which despite multiple crimes being committed throughout the film lacks a single police officer. Well, of course there is one police officer, the one that comes to pawn shop to rape Butch and Marsellus. There’s nothing complicated here, criminal bosses are righteous and the most evil people in the film are cops and small time shop keepers. Butch, the most all-American hero of the story, defeats Marsellus with his talent for boxing and wits (to bet on himself and hatch an escape plan), can walk away and leave Marsellus for dead. The shopkeeper here represents the kulak class, which have a little bit of property and voyeuristically watch cops beat blacks on the nightly news. Tarantino, maybe more explicitly than Brooks, appeals to the audience to fight back against racism by identifying with Butch, who inexplicably turns back to face the shopkeeper and the cop on Marsellus’ behalf. After they vanquish the bad guys, Marsellus offers exile instead of murder. From a utilitarian standpoint, Butch risked his life to save Marsellus for nothing in return, as he was already escaping self-imposed exile. For Tarantino, this anti-racist message was far more crucial than the logic of self-preservation. He revisits this scenario in a much more elaborate and somewhat more logical manner in the Hateful Eight, as the former Confederate Soldier has to choose to side with a BASED racist black bounty hunter over the white redneck criminals.
Gran Torino
Gran Torino (2009) is the closest to a Jimmy Stewart style movie, with the obvious transfer of the birthright from Clint Eastwood’s own granddaughter, whom Eastwood portrays as spitting in his garage, to a Laotian refugee and his sister. Eastwood maintains his tough Anglo mystique and effectively captures the ball-busting language of a salty Korean vet quite accurately, and portrays another interesting transference. Early in the movie Eastwood confronts a trio of black gangbangers harassing the young Laotian girl and does an interesting dry run with a fake hand gun before pulling out a real gun and scaring them off. Later, the young Laotian men pick up the gang culture and harass the young hero and sister. Gran Torino is the pinnacle of magic dirt cultural praxis, its thesis being that immigrants that are taught Anglo ways and the Constitution can thrive in the USA and earn the birthright of citizenship, this territory and wealth. However, if they learn gang culture they will tear down this country. Clint is martyred for the cause and leaves his most prized possession, the Gran Torino, in the hands of the young Laotian hero, and four of the Laotian thugs go to jail. It’s heartwarming, but in the larger scheme of things does a country want two lawful, upright immigrants for every four gang member immigrants? This is the fly in the ointment of magic dirt immigration activism, one not found in typical Jimmy Stewart westerns.
The Star Wars Franchise
More than any other movie, the original Star Wars trilogy represents the end of the Western and celebrates, perhaps pre-emptively, the death of Western Civilization. It would be as if the Jimmy Stewart played the heavy instead of a femme fatale like Dietrich. The paternal instinct of familial preservation is ridiculously inverted. The orderly, technologically advanced empire must be replaced with a rag-tag favela of illiterate and superstitious natives. The Ewoks who have a tenous grasp of fire and rocks, are able to drive a highly advanced all terrain scout vehicle in seconds. Even so, the Empire would not lose if not for the self-hatred and self-sabotage of both Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. The promise and dedication of Destry to maintain order of society in the face of anarchy is completely reversed, and the very town itself, the Leggett family, are asked to choose to give up their birthright and statecraft to a bunch of Ewoks, outsiders who have no capability of maintaining stable society and in reality would have no interest in helping humans. Forty years of counter-programming to Western films, films that celebrate Western culture and identity, Star Wars has produced generations of people programmed to hate their parents, and subsequently their own children.
I hope that some of these simple observations of popular tent-pole movies can persuade the reader to have a stricter criteria to select the movies they watch and subject their children. It is not enough to limit exposure to gore and porn and commercials for cereal, society needs entertainment that is edifying and supportive of family, ancestors, and nations. In Japan there is Kurosawa and a ecosystem of pro-Japanese propaganda. But beyond the traditional Western , and most certainly post Star Wars, unapologetically pro-Christendom movies have become increasingly few and far between. Beware of movies that seek at every opportunity to undermine family and nation, they are nearly ubiquitous currently, and to this effect consider watching older movies. Watch more John Ford, and less Steven Spielberg. Perhaps though, we can learn the techniques of these subversive films to critique, undermine, and destroy in effigy the Kwa in which we currently find ourselves.