THREE AVENGERS, SIX VICTIMS, PLUS EXTRAS!

HENRY HATHAWAY — JOHN WAYNE — TRUE GRIT — 1959

THREE AVENGERS, SIX VICTIMS, PLUS EXTRAS!

John Wayne and his films are a big chunk of what the whole world believed, after the Second World War, about what the American Dream was. It is the dramatic and sad fact that this country has so little history, is composed of so many people from so many different cultures, religions, countries, and so many refugees projected by history, or self-projected into a myth that ends up having no history, being cut from all history of the world. Their manifest destiny is then to turn themselves into the dream-history or the history-dream of the whole world that has to enter it and submit to it.

When you do not have a history attached to a country that is your origin, a continent that is your planet, you have to dream it, and John Wayne is one of those who have dreamed the history of Americans. In this film, it is only one small part of that dreamed American turned nightmarish for most (the bad ones and a few innocents) and fairytale-ish for the profiteers who have killed their opponents, rejected as outlawed (by the sole law of the shooters and killers) bandits. The dream of a people among whose members the only rule is violence, legal violence with three hangings at the opening of the…