What Makes a Man to Wander?

A couple months ago, I was talking with a group of foreign teachers in Japan--teachers from the US, Australia, the UK, and Africa--about one of the students I was tutoring in the US before coming to Japan, a Latino man who wanted to pass the English test required to join the US border patrol. The teachers expressed astonishment that such an odd, paradoxical person existed. But they're actually pretty common. According to Google's AI, about 50% of border patrol officers are Hispanic and 30% of ICE is Latino. One might also remember how well Trump polled in Latino communities in the US. A number of reasons could be offered for this, including the fact that many families flee Mexico and other countries because of a perception that lawlessness has freer rein in countries south of the US border. It may not be so surprising that many immigrants or second or third generation individuals might want to join law enforcement specifically to ensure the old familiar problems don't follow them to the US. In light of that, it's particularly a shame both agencies have been guilty of lawlessness and cruelty themselves.

I found myself thinking about this while watching The Searchers again last night. John Wayne's character, despite his clear pathological hatred for American Indians, can speak Indian languages and is familiar with many of their customs and cultural beliefs. The more sympathetic young man played by Jeffrey Hunter, Marty, who's part Cherokee, is actually much crueller to the Indian woman who attempts to take him for a husband than Wayne's character, Ethan Edwards.

What a remarkable film The Searchers is. John Ford's direction, the majestic and anxious compositions, the pretty yet melancholy score, and above all the hauntingly obsessive character of Ethan Edwards make the movie compulsively watchable. A lot of commentaries on the film suggest that Ethan was in love with his brother's wife who's slaughtered in the Indian attack at the beginning of the film along with the rest of Ethan's brother's family, with the exception of the young daughter, Debbie, the captive Ethan and Marty search for throughout the film. I think that's a fair interpretation, but there's more stuck in his craw than that. There's plenty in the sense of his cultural displacement, his disenfranchisement, and the devaluation of his passions, that can make him a sympathetic character to anyone who feels out of step with their own culture. The introspective person might see the flaws in Wayne's character not as alien things but as modes of thought one might fall into if one is not careful.