by Chris Marshall:
Wow, where to start with this one? Most likely, modern
viewers will be too preoccupied with the casual and gratuitous racism pervading
the film to see anything else. That was certainly my first reaction. I stopped
watching at the halfway point[1]
the first night I turned it on, and I told my roommate the next day that I
still needed to finish my “racist Western.”
To be fair, I’m not sure if the film itself was racist or
just the characters within it. It’s an important difference, of course, and
there was evidence of at least some
progressive views on race. But it’s hard to take the hero’s pro-Indian rights
stance seriously when he makes “black people sure do like watermelon” jokes to
his young black servant, or when his wife tells their son to stay away from the
“dirty, filthy savages” (aka Osage Indians).
