TCM's Woke-arama

 Turner Classic Movies is running a series in which films from the past are weighed in the balance by the standards of leftist “wokeness” and probably found wanting. Tonight is The Searchers'  turn in the barrel, and the results are both idiotic and annoying. The Searchers is the story of a man’s search for his young niece who was abducted by Comanches after they slaughtered his brother’s family, including a sister-in-law he loves. Among its themes, besides its main one of obsession and its consequences, are  ideas of courage, perseverance, redemption, the nature of the outsider and his relation to a community, conflict, moral ambiguity, strength of character, and the pioneering spirit. It is a masterpiece that has been appreciated as such by serious and thoughtful people for years. It needs no defending, but what the people at TCM are saying about it does need ridiculing.

Their first accusation is against  the film’s depiction of “indigenous people”. The simple refutation  is that the depiction of the actions of Comanches is accurate. Raids and abductions of the kind shown the movie happened frequently on the Texas frontier. The Comanches were a rough bunch, and it is neither stereotyping nor improper nor “problematic” to present things as they were. It is foolish to think otherwise.

An even sillier claim is that the main character Ethan Edwards is a racist. The supposed evidence is that he bitterly hates and obsessively pursues the band of Comanches who murdered his family.  Yet in the story that has nothing to do with racism, but rather with loss and revenge. (One might suppose that the only way he could have avoided being a racist in the TCM people’s eyes would have been to go back east and meditate on what thought crimes his  family must have committed to deserve being butchered.) His behavior toward his enemies is harsh and brutal in ways often disapproved of by others who ride with  him, but it is because they are his enemies not because of their race. He does not demean  Indians as inferior beings. He shows no hostility to other Indians he encounters, including at least one Comanche.  He just wants to find his niece and settle with Scar.

TCM seems to have gotten more politically  correct over the years. Perhaps people in the business of showing old movies and acting as though they liked them have felt they needed to for cover.  It is annoying, and a little hypocritical, since it involves some serious talking out of both sides of the mouth.  Still they do show some good movies, and the mute button is always there for the commentary.