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John Wayne iconic reversal

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from The Searchers (1956)
Created by John Ford
Distributed by Warner Brothers
Posted byCritical Commons Manager

Wearing a black hat, John Wayne shoots out the eyes of a fallen Comanche

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The Searchers genre evolution

by Critical Commons Manager

A reversal of the iconic codes of the Western genre finds John Wayne behaving as a criminal psychopath.

According to the model of film genres articulated in Thomas Schatz's 1981 book Hollywood Genres, this scene from The Searchers is an example of the refinement stage in the "stages of generic evolution" as seen in Hollywood Westerns. John Wayne, the archetypal cowboy good-guy of Ford's earlier Westerns here goes on a racist, black-hatted rampage that includes moments of "savagery" learned from his Native American rivals that fly in the face of white civilization.

Copyright 2010, by the Contributing Authors. Cite/attribute Resource. ccManager. (2010, April 26). The Searchers genre evolution. Retrieved February 07, 2012, from Critical Commons Web site: http://criticalcommons.org/Members/ccManager/commentaries/the-searchers-genre-evolution. This work is licensed under a No Copyright; No Rights Reserved.