Friday, August 14, 2009

Because It’s Friday, Pilgrim   [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

In my continuing Claremont Institute–sponsored John Ford/John Wayne movie marathon here in Newport Beach, last night I watched The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. After The Searchers, this is the second Ford/Wayne movie I’ve ever seen (I grew up in Chelsea, Manhattan; cut me a break!). What terrified me about it — really, about us — is that Jay Marini, who watches it with groups frequently, explaining that young women increasingly like the Jimmy Stewart character, Ransom Stoddard, whereas women used to go for the Wayne character, Tom Doniphon.

God help us.

In a tribute to the Duke earlier this summer, Nicholas Tucker summed the movie up well: 

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is a story about the death of the American West. John Wayne does more than simply play the title character; he also serves as a clear symbol of the American spirit, and his heroic sacrifice in this film is John Ford’s meditation on the paradox of American individualism.

Wayne plays Tom Doniphon, the only man tough enough to stand up to Liberty Valance, the local thug. It is the arrival of Ransom Stoddard, an idealistic lawyer, that forces Tom to shoot Liberty, and in the process he sacrifices his own happiness, his own way of life, and the woman he loves.

The core of Wayne’s appeal is not his swagger or his charm, but his willingness to act and accept the consequences, even when it means the end of his own way of life. Although we see his character dead, largely forgotten, it is Stoddard’s wife who puts the cactus blossoms on his coffin, an unspoken confession of her own love for him. She speaks for us all. We may be married to the security and safety of Stoddard’s government, but John Ford reminds us that it is the cactus roses of Tom Doniphon that grow in the heart of every American.

Corner ladies, tell me all hope is not lost.

08/14 01:13 PMShare