Turning a pastime into a brain-wracking exercise

Last week I went to a lecture by a guy named Robert Pippin. He's a professor here at the university and he teaches philosophy. Anyway, he was giving a three-part lecture series on political psychology, violence, and order in American Westerns. At the lecture I attended, Pippin broke down John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, arguing that it is Ford's attempt to show the dilemma of myth-making as a necessary foundation of political units. In this particular case, Jimmy Stewart's character, a lawyer, wants to bring order to a town run by the maniacally savage Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin). Ironically, in order for the law to be established, Stewart must kill Marvin, an act totally outside the law. Initially, Stewart's character is haunted by the reality of what he had done (even to the point of refusing to be appointed the town's political delagate). When John Wayne's character reveals to him that it was in fact he who shot Valance, Stewart, without any hesitation, changes his mind and goes into politics free of the guilt of murder (though also immune to guilt for a number of other reasons). Stewart is willing to live on the myth that it was he who did the killing because it means that his goal, political unity, is realized.

That was an overly concise summary of the film, but it serves to illustrate one of Pippen's theories: that the great philosophical and political debates of American society are dealt with not in great tracts of authors whom everyone has read, but on the silver screen, especially in Westerns, the most quintessential of American genres. This got me thinking about what other Westerns could be trying to say and it led me to watch (for about the 100th or so time), Howard Hawks' tour-de-force...

Yes, my friends, Rio Bravo. I tried watching it again to see if I could find out what Hawks was saying underneath that great story of good vs. evil, the personal struggle over sobriety, and a completely parasitic love story that contributes absolutely nothing to the main plot. I have no definitive answers, but some thoughts come to mind.

1.) A long time ago, I noticed that "talking" is a big theme in Rio Bravo. Feathers goes on at length about how she talks and Chance doesn't with phrases like, "From now on, I'll do the talking for both of us." At another point Carlos, trying to explain to Chance why he has a black eye, pleads with him not to talk. "It is better if I tell you, senor." Pat Wheeler is chastized by Chance for talking to much and to the wrong people. Ordering the mariachi band in the saloon to play the "De Guello" day-and-night is Nathan Burdett's way of talking. It's too common a theme to be simply coincidental. It seems pretty intentional to me. Why, I don't know.

2.) Tied up in the "talking" theme is the idea of communication. This is all over the place too, especially in some of the conversations that Chance and Carlos have ("Did you tell her she is a fool?" "I didn't say I was!"). Stumpy nearly shoots Dude because he thinks it was someone else. Conseula punches Carlos because she doesn't know why he is carrying Feathers out to the stagecoach. There are other examples, but I'm too antsy to think of them right now.

3.) Other tid-bits: the Mexicans all live in a slum outside of town (except for Carlos). One of the driving sub-plots is Dude's battle with alcoholism. Meanwhile everyone else is knocking back hard liquor left and right (we see Chance with a bottle of beer, but he never drinks from it). I think this is also one of the few Westerns where the show-down actually brings people out into the streets. The role of the viewing public plays a crucial role in how characters behave (especially when Burdett and his men come into town).

I dunno, that's just what's bouncing around in my head. I just thought the whole idea about Westerns as the uniquely American method of dealing with our particular philosophical dilemmas.