Thoughts about The Searchers

While Westerns aren’t usually my favorite genre of movies, The Searchers was interesting and eventful enough that it captured my attention. It contained the usual things that these sorts of movies include: Indians, who are the bad guys of the movie, and Americans, who are the good guys. There is stereotyping of the Indians through their clothing, feathers, houses, faulty weapons, and horses. I don’t think that the Indian characters were portrayed fairly; their characters had little depth and seem to be incapable of outsmarting the white men. It is unfair that movies such as this depict Native Americans as not being as smart as the Americans.
            In addition, gender roles were prevalent in the movie as well. Women were seen as the ones who prepared meals and cleaned the house. When the Indians attacked the family in the house, they killed the parents and the son, but kidnapped the two girls. I’m not sure exactly why they were taken and not just killed, but it may have to do with the fact that they would be able to act as maids for the Indians, or they just didn’t want to kill young girls. The search parties were always made up of men; women were not allowed to join them. This shows that women were not seen as useful or able to do dangerous things. Gender roles in this movie are typical of what I would expect from a movie made in 1956, and also typical of the time period that was portrayed in the movie.

Something I didn’t understand about the movie, though, was why Ethan wanted to shoot Debbie when they found her with Chief Scar. They had spent all of those years looking for her and hoping she was alive, and then he wanted to kill her. Was it just because she had been living with the Indians for so long and called them “her people”? Another confusing aspect of the movie was the way time passed. The filmmakers did not do a very good job showing the viewer that years and years had gone by. If I was not made aware of this fact, I would have been incredibly confused. Overall though, I thought this was a pretty good movie and was even somewhat entertaining.