Stereotypes In The Searchers

For many it was the American dream to be a cowboy. You were treated with respect, got all of the good looking ladies, and could do some pretty cool things when it came to guns and horses. This is shown in the movie The Searchers directed by John Ford. In this story a families ranch house is burnt down and robbed by a group of native Americans called the Comanche. They kill everyone in the family but two of the girls who are taken with them. The girls’ uncle Ethan sets out on a five year journey to find his beloved nieces. Throughout his journey to find these two young girls, we begin to meet uncle Ethan and we find that he is really not a pleasant human being. He is very violent, has a short temper, and throughout the entire movie he is blatantly racist towards anyone who is not white. This movie brings about tough questions for us to deal with, because Uncle Ethan who is played by John Wayne is racist towards the Comanche people throughout the entire movie which is no different from the rest of the movies white

They are shown as dangerous, violent people who only care about killing white people and getting revenge for all of the killings that the white people have done to them. However, you could portray white people the same way because after all the white people did kill a huge chunk of the Native American population in the early years of the country. The audience at this time however did not see that the white people were really just as if not more violent than the Comanche people because we see Uncle Ethan as a hero for killing many Comanche people. The viewers of this movie only see the natives in times of violence and desperation they are never portrayed on a common ground. The director is trying to show that natives are very inhumane people and they are not civilized at all when really the audience should be focused on the lack of civilization that we see from Uncle