JOHN WAYNE, KIRK DOUGLAS AND DICK CAVETT: THE MUD, THE BAD AND THE SMUGLY

Television and the media in general interpret the world for the masses. The problems are not just with who gets to do the interpreting and with the dishonesty of the interpretation, but also with the dishonest personae of the people most viewers - even sceptical ones with regard to interpretation - buy into as genuine. To give you an example of what I mean, I'll give a little commentary on the clip below from the Dick Cavett Show. As you will see later, it is very relevant to contemorary events. In a mirror of contemporary life, John Wayne is absent from the studio, just as he is now long deceased in real life, while Cavett and Kirk Douglas live on, Douglas currently at the ripe old age of 102. Douglas and Wayne both had their names changed in order to play the heroic masculine characters with whom they became synonymous, Wayne, born Marion Morrison, probably because his name was too effeminate (although he himself had no part in the decision), and Douglas, born Issur Demsky, because it was too foreign.

 

 

FILM REVIEW: THE SEARCHERS, John Ford's Look at Race Realism

The Searchers has been hailed as one of the greatest films of all time. The BFI's Sight and Sound have it at number seven in their poll of esteemed film critics - and this is in spite of it being a very politically incorrect film in an industry that has been by turns liberal and Judeo-bolshevik since its inception. Even the liberal bourgeois critic I love to hate, Roger Ebert, despite his affected bandying about of words like 'racism' and 'genocide', had to admit that the character of Ethan Edwards was 'one of the most compelling characters Ford and Wayne ever created.' What Ebert does not like is the fact that Wayne's character is unashamedly racially aware and that the film does not seek to criticise this.