Welcome back to the new Thinkery on David Barr. With me as always, my good friend Alex Priyoh. How are you, Alex? Doing well, David.
I'm calling in from the world headquarters of, I can't think about anything. Certainly not nice people. Just trying to steal my thunder here. I'm calling it from the world headquarters of nice people.
You haven't been introduced yet. Sorry. David, have you ever seen such bear bookshelves? We have Greg's colleague, Chris Burkett, and his office has just filled with books.
Meanwhile, Greg has become such a people pushing administrator that he just doesn't even read anymore. No, no. He's really, Greg is my bow ideal of a Soviet era middle manager. And you're right.
And also, Alex, or listeners. I'm actually working on a little novella called the death of Greg McBrayer based on that. Greg doesn't read hard copies anymore. He only does these paperless kindles, something about his eyes.
But Greg, how are you doing? Well, I was doing all right. I can see you guys. Right.
It's good. I actually am having a little eye problem, but I'm really excited because our guest today is a friend of mine, and someone I teach with, you know, I teach in class together right now called Understanding Politics Year for the Ashbrook Scholars. It's Chris Burkett. He's associate professor of the political sciences department here at Ashbrook University, and he's director of the Ashbrook Scholars Program.
He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on American Global Thought, including courses on the American Founding and the Progressive Era. He's the 2011 recipient of the Edward and Luann Lewann Taylor Excellence in Teaching Award at Ashbrook University. I can speak to it having taught with him and having witnessed him teaching now with course the last, she's five or six years. Chris really is a fantastic teacher.
He's the editor of 50 Corps American Documents, required reading for students, teachers, and citizens, the author of several articles and chapters, including remaking the world, progressivism in the American foreign policy, James Madison in the Grand Convention, the Great Difficulty of Representation, and the American Founding and Conservative Foreign Policy. He actually got his undergraduate BA from Ashbrook University and his MA and PhD from the University of Dallas. Now he's been back at Ashland for about 20 years. 17.
17 years. So it's a pleasure to have my friend Chris on to talk about Westerns. Chris, that resume is wonderful. You sound just like a kind of professor I'd love to have.
My question to start is, you surely weren't on the committee that accepted Greg into political science. When I look at his TV, and then I even just 30 seconds of your CV, it's hard for me to comprehend how he's with you. I was on the committee, and all I can say is that for a few beautiful moments, Greg was witty, charming, smarts, seemed like a decent guy. I mean, he basically just did anything to get the job.
That's the first time you realize he recycles his jokes. The first time you're like, oh, this guy's clever. And then you realize he's got about 12 or 13 jokes that are just on. He's got a limited repertoire.
It's 13, exactly. No, we're so lucky to have Greg. I was saying this, although I appreciated the insults that take place. We like to insult each other here as well.
That's our way of showing on. So Greg, you guys are co-teaching a course. I mean, and it's understanding politics, it's called. It sounds like a great combination.
So Greg, more like your TA in this. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, he's observing until he's got to get so many hours of observation in before. Yeah, yeah.
He's like that. So we throw him basically the throwaway courses for students don't really want to take and figure it's not going to hurt that much to do that. But I will say he's coming around a little bit. Has it been five years, Greg?
I can promise. I can say I'm sitting on slides. It's like this. You're in the right direction.
So maybe by the time I retire, you'll not feel like that. It's like, yeah, it's been great. Right. So Chris, what do you hear to talk about?
I think this is the first we discuss movies on the show and Zulu, which doesn't quite come close to Western. So this is our first episode devoted to Westerns and two of the best. Can you talk a little bit about what we're going to discuss? Yeah, sure.
Yeah, I'm happy to do it. I will say I think of Westerns really good. But let me just start by saying I am not a big fan of Westerns in general. There are a lot of Westerns out there, some of which are entertaining.
Some of them are just sort of cheesy. Right. So, but I think there are some good Westerns that can be viewed very, very carefully, almost in the way that you would read a good book, very carefully. Right.
So I view these as great texts. Some of these films are like great texts and the authors try to raise some important questions through their films that can be revealed. If you've noticed things carefully, you ask the right kinds of questions. Just the way you would when you're reading a great text, you have to see what's going to be the surface and put some things together.
Notice that there are seeming contradictions and then wonder why the director of the film make them more than a great writer. I think of them as great texts, at least these handful of great Westerns that I'm really fascinated with. I've got a philosophy in the film a number of times. I do some Westerns.
I do some different genres, different directors, usually around directors. That's absolutely right. It's, you know, it can be a work to be entertaining. The way that like McBeth is very entertaining and gripping.
But then there's all these subtle things going on and great directors that do think right there works not only to be something that you enjoy taking it in and sort of one fell suit, but you reflect on it and you think about it. There's little subtle things in language too. Certainly jump forward. It's up there.
It's stumbling blocks, Chris, that I think some people encountered as in my teens. So my father watched the Western and he said, you know, this is great. I couldn't, all I would hear is, you know, a pilgrim. It was really warm.
He had no explosions. He had no problems with modern movies. But I just couldn't, I certainly wasn't making any of the deeper political connection. Well, I did either.
I had the benefit of about 15 years ago teaching in a master's program here, one of Ashbrook Center's Ashbrook courses at Ashbrook University. And I taught with the professor of political science at the University of Nevada, Reno, and John Rene. And I know David, you were saying you were familiar with his work on Westerns. I used to write some great books, by the way, some really important books on the administrative state, but it turns out he was real passionate as Westerns.
And so I had the honor of teaching this course with him and I knew nothing about Westerns. And on my eyes were opened the way he was showing how these great, really thoughtful directors, these great directors, especially Ford and Peck and Paul, intentionally raise questions. You know, if you can watch them, like just about, again, any great text, you can read them on the surface and just sort of be entertained by them. But if you observe and watch and think carefully, you have to answer some tough questions that are thrown in your face about fundamental political questions.
So, I'm really really open my eyes to the fact that certain Westerns can be really, really great works of political philosophy. I had a similar experience with a colleague. I taught at Sarah Lawrence, and there's a film historian who's passed away since named Roberto Perez. I don't know if you've read his work.
He's written on John Ford and Buster Keating. He got me very interested in Keating. But it was the same thing. You go in and you watch them analyze the film, the way that a text is.
But one point you made, I thought was interesting is that not only are there works like great text, but often they're well-versed in the big ideas of the great text. And this is true in the case of Ford and Peck and Paul. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
Ford was a Ford's and interesting guy. His real name was John Feeney, son of Irish immigrants. So he didn't get a full formal education, but his passion in life was reading books. And there's a story about when Ford became just become famous because he had this Western said it becomes really popular.
One of these big magazines, I don't know if it was Time or whatever the big magazine was, they interviewed his mother, Little Mrs. Feeney, running a pub in Portland name, which is still there, by the way, if you were to get there. And they asked them, you know, what your son does? And she said, yeah, he reads books for a living.
She thought he was like a teacher or something. So John Ford clearly was familiar with the great canon of works. I'll just give one example if you don't mind. I won't talk too much here at the beginning.
So the searchers, which is, in my opinion, the greatest Western of all time in John Ford's, my favorite of all John Ford films, is a kind of retelling of the Iliad Nautacy, the main character played by John Wayne, combines characters of Achilles and Odysseus. And the very next film that John Ford made, it was a film called The Director, and it was semi-autobiographical. And John Wayne played the director in the opening scene of the movie. The camera pans in on the director's office on his desk, and John Wayne's there, and on the desk are copies of the Iliad Nautacy, right?
Just to make sure people knew that he actually read the books, right? So you have these clever ways of sort of giving you clues about what he was up to in his other films. But you have a very well-versed, Peck and Paul was well-educated as well. Yeah, he kind of reminded me, I don't know his background, but he's like wearing a bandana.
You could see he almost looks like a healthy group, you know, just on acid with a gun. And I looked up some new interviews of his in Playboy, and he's ornery. And it was really, just had those lying around him. Yeah, I did.
It was on Microfiche. Yeah, I ever read that article. Yeah, I'll send it to you. So Chris, why the concert?
Which two films do we're going to contrast to film by Ford, the film by Peck and Paul? Why do they make good contrasts? Yeah, so again, taking a sort of work of political philosophy or films that want to raise questions that we'd like to discuss when we're studying political philosophy, but here's what they have in common. They both, I think, raise a fundamental question.
And that is, is civil society good and is it worth preserving? Is civilization good and worth preserving? And I think they answer that question in very different ways. So John Ford, the answer is yes, for Sam Peck and Paul.
Initially, the question is yes, maybe, but by the time you get to the wild bunch, which is one of the films we're contrasting, I think the answers are pretty resounding though. But they both want to ask questions about what it means to be a human being. What is justice? I think the central questions in Ford's films are those kinds of questions.
What is justice? How do you get good governments? How do you get civil society? What are the challenges in preserving it?
What makes it a citizen, a good citizen, and these kinds of questions? With Peck and Paul in his films, and I would say the wild bunch and then another film, the Right to High Country, which is another fantastic film of his, he is dealing with these same kinds of questions, but in a sort of postmodern society. We're living in postmodern times, we're living in modern democracies. And I think he's really struggling with the question, is there any possible meaning of life for people who might have been great and noble men or over times, but are now sort of surrounded by demands to be equal in all things and claims that nothing can be really great or important anymore or sort of at the end of history.
So is there any purpose for life or meaning for life for people who might otherwise have been great human being? So different kinds of questions, but I think they're really asking what does it mean to be a human being? Hey folks at home, we know that you enjoy podcasts about classical texts and important thinkers, but don't you wish you had some place to take your questions to the next level, and then come to Devon Hall where they advance and renew classical wisdom in the digital age. Folks philosophy is a way of life at Devon Hall is the course they're offering this next term.
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And now back to the show. One thing I was struck by watching the Minish Outlery Vans, the wild bunch alongside each other, is that they really both are focused on the question of greatness. On the one hand, you have an Larry Vans John Wayne's character who is great but has to feed into the background. As law comes in and there's a sort of founding myth and there's this sort of pencil pushing lawyer, Greg McBrayer type who is...
I appreciate that much, Alex. But those of you who didn't register, that was an attempt at a Jimmy Stewart, a person that was like Greg. But then you get to the wild bunch and you realize it doesn't matter where you are. If you're with General Mapacci, right, that's pretty horrible in decadent.
If you're in the town, what's the most noble to be one of these? Temperance, you can be people maybe. The town seems as corrupt. And where's the actual kind of sense of morality?
There's a struggle there, but it seems like this group. They struggle with morality, but they seem to have some kind of allegiance that draws them around to the end to come back and stay there. But it's a pretty bleak picture for... You can temporarily lie with the Senurea and the Cove.
It's like a huge one even. But we'll talk about that. Sorry, Greg. No, no, that's okay.
I just thought maybe... For the folks at home, I was wondering if you guys thought it would be helpful to have Chris maybe just summarize the plot of each quickly. So the man in shell would be bouncing one hand and the wild bunch on the other. Or should...
Yeah, this folks may not be familiar with the plot of each. Can I suggest we have David do it? Because I'm always suspicious that he didn't do his homework. I don't know.
Man, I watched both of them thoroughly. Yeah, that's right. This one was watching. So you did it this time.
Actually, just for his words, folks don't know. I'm texting David while I'm watching it. I'm texting Chris while I'm watching it. Oh, I got your text.
So this is how we usually operate in the episode. We're like, we're reading or watching it. We're like, what's actually... I was texting Chris.
What the hell is going on? Yeah, like 9-3-10 o'clock at night. I do a text with Greg says, what the hell is this? So that's a resounding enforcement for folks.
So I'm sending these screenshots of nudity. From explaining it was all female. That's not fair. Anyway, so David, you want to do it?
I'll do it while I'm watching it. Chris can handle the wild bunch. That's okay. You'll do the man in shell every now.
Yeah, I'll try. And then Chris, if you can fill in. Sure. The movie opens...
Oh, I won't go too detailed, but the long short of it is. You have a Jenny Stewart's character is a guy named Lancem Stodder. He's a lawyer from the east. He's traveling to the west.
He makes it to a little town. What's the town's name? I can't recall. Chinbone.
Chinbone at the time or some time had been plagued by Lee Marvin's character, Liberty Vounce, who was on the side of these big railroads. So you have this modernity is pushing up against this little town. And he's just, it's a lawless, more or less a lawless place. And the law is what you can essentially do with the barrel of the gun.
So, the balance is running around. You also have John Wayne's character in and out of the town, a man named Tom Donovan, who is alike Liberty Vounce in so far as that he exists outside the law, but he has more moral inclinations. And so he's a quote unquote good guy. There's also a woman, Haley Stoddard, in the film who will play a love interest.
But those are the three main characters. Stoddard at the start. Yeah, Stuart's character started at the start is ambushed by Valance and his crew, and they rip up his law books and tries to get in their face and say, Oh, don't you respect the rule of the law? And then they beat him and they laugh about how sicily that is.
So he gets to town and he starts trying to teach the people how to read and write. Then elections come into play. They want to elect Stoddard and this upsets Valance. And so after an evening, after an evening bust up at a local restaurant, Valance and Stoddard square off and they get into a gunfight or it would seem like they got into a gunfight except lurking in the shadows.
As Wayne's character Tom Donifen. So just as Valance is raising firearm to shoot Stoddard, who incidentally is a terrible shot as you might expect from a lawyer back east. It's like Alex trying to shoot a gun. Wayne's character shoots from the shadows and kills Liberty Valance.
But of course, who gets the praise is Jimmy Stewart's character Stoddard. And there's some scenes in the end of the movie which we can discuss. Just one small point I wanted to add there, Chris, but there's a narrative frame as you alluded to the beginning. The incident between the two characters is in the past and it's when Jimmy Stewart's character is a senator and they traveled back to Shindone because of John Wayne's character has died.
And the whole thing that's happening is Jimmy Stewart relating the story to the local newspaper men. And then at the very end, after Jimmy Stewart's told in the story, the most famous line probably, the newspaper guy just rips it up and throws it in the fire and he says, you know, I don't remember the line, Chris, when the legend becomes, was it? When the legend becomes fact-print the legend. The legend, right?
So the news men make a conscious choice to bury the story because they think it's more important that Jimmy Stewart be known as the man who shot Liberty Valance. So the founding is based on a noble lie. Right. Yeah, quite a few noble lies.
Actually, I was going to say we probably should have mentioned there will be spoilers right in this. Oh yeah, there will be spoilers. Hopefully for those who haven't seen movies that came out prior to 19. We need to have 50 years.
Come on. Should we do Peck and Pawn? Peck and Pawn, should we do Peck and Pawn hours? Should we talk about Liberty Valance?
Let's just do the plot of the Wild Punch. Chris, do you mind? No, I don't mind at all. So the film opens.
It comes out in 1969, Vietnam's going on. So you've got the Wild Punch who are just, you know, they're going into this town to rob a bank and they're dressed in US military uniforms. This takes place by the way around the Texas Mexico border, I think in 1913. So there are US troops around at the time.
And they write into this town and there's this famous scene with the little children that are, you know, playing with the ants and scorpions and that very, very important symbolism going on there, which we can talk about at some point if you want. They write into the town. There's a religious revival or temperance thing going on. So there's religion, you know, at the beginning of the scene, but it seems sort of shallow and empty and robotic in a way.
So they go in, the Wild Punch writes in and they rob this bank and at least to this massive shootout because unbeknownst to them, there's a gang of bounty hunters that've been hired by the owner of a railroad that the Wild Punch apparently robbed at one point. So waiting on top of the roofs for them to come out and at least to have a massive shootout at the beginning of the film, one of the longest shootouts in one of the bloodiest shootouts in film history, certainly the bloodiest step at this point. And lots and lots of people die, including innocent women, children and men at the elderly and everything. So they're used to shields even by the way.
Yeah, they use the Wild Punch. So they're really despicable guys from the beginning in a way, right? According to the traditional standards of what people are supposed to be, of what heroes are supposed to be like in Westerns, right? So this is why this film by the way is often called the first anti-Western or really the death of the Western, the traditional Western in many ways.
The rest of the film is them, you know, trying to, you know, they get involved with some Mexican local Mexicans that are, I think, maybe fighting with Pancho Villa against the Mexican Federales. They get involved in the plot, they get the guns and things like this. And so, I think it's a very interesting film. One of the Wild Punch, his name is Angel by the way, and by the way, names, names mean a lot, right?
Both the four of the impact in Paul Films. But this character named Angel finds out that his girlfriend has left him and is now sort of pouring it up with this general Mapache, who's in charge of this division or whatever of federal soldiers. And he decides he's going to go get her back. He shoots her dead, murders her right on the spot, essentially, and Mapache then captures Angel, tortures him, and at a certain point in the film, the rest of the Wild Punch decide they can't just leave their friend Angel there to die and be tortured the way he's been tortured.
So they look at each other at the end of the film and just say, why not? That's all they say, right? Just why not? And it's sort of an unspoken understanding that they're going to gear up, they put bandoleros on and hit all their guns.
And the four of them, I think they're four surviving once they march right into the center of this town and just start blasting everybody. And they all go down in the blaze of glory, right? And that's the end. And then the bounty hunters show up, they collect a bounty, and there's a booby trap or something to kill some of them.
And so, you know, it is a remarkably violent film. It was known for that. But it's bookended by the violence. And then I was just going to mention again, there's this one moment in the middle.
I think it was David that actually mentioned this, right? There's this right in the middle, which seems to have some significance sometimes, right? There's this moment where they go back to this little village that angels from kind of kind of returned to nature or an attempt to return to innocence, but it's bookended by the most extraordinary violence. And one thing that just to add a little bit is that this Wild Punch seems to be getting near retirement, right?
They're like a little bit older, some younger and newer crews, but one of them is too old to even be involved. There's also, I think the title struck me as very meaningful because when you actually think about it, Wild's Punch is kind of contradictory, right? If you truly wild, you don't punch up together and be a gang. So it wanted me a little bit of the gang of thieves argument in Plato's Republic, right?
Except the man of thieves is one alternative and then there's healthy politics. That alternative is not there in the movie. But there's this underlying theme of regret at betraying their own, right? There's the guy that he left behind in the whorehouse, who's now a bounty hunter, and he has to do that and also go back to prison.
And then there's the young man at the beginning in that shootout that they leave behind. And the main character, I forget that character's name, the main guy. Like Bishop. Yeah, Bishop, by the way.
And he legislated the label. And he reflects back on these moments with profound regret at a number of times just sort of feeling bad that seems to motivate this return. That particular guy was the grandson of one of his later guys. He's working with him.
And that's when regret comes and he remembers that. They argue explicitly about that, at one point, right? The code. Who is it?
Is it Ernest Worten? He starts yelling at him about the code and you've got to have a code. And so they do it at the band of thieves argument. It matters who you give your word to.
Yeah, I mean, Chris and I talked about this to be a text in person. And you should push back and correct me on this. But because I sort of saw a grasping or a longing for something noble in these hesitations in these, you know, man's got to have a code. But you've convinced me on a few points.
And I think the ending especially is where you convinced me. So why do we want to start? How do we want to start it? Chris, we can start there.
We can start there. What are the, yeah, so to maybe rephrase Greg's question, what are the, is there an outlet for this noble longer for this desire for self-sacrificing, or the sacrifice to the noble activity that they want, or they struggle to find? Yeah, well, that's a great question. I think that if there is anything regaining about these guys, that's it.
I mean, let's just put them again in context. We've already mentioned some of this. They use women and children as human shields. They gun down anybody for what?
You know, what do they get out of the bank robbery at the beginning? They get metal washers. They don't even get money out of it. And you know, they're, they're, they're ticked about this at first.
But I think they're doing it for, um, uh, uh, in our text, Greg, I drew the parallel with Fight Club. Right. We've got these people living in modern times who are longing for some, something to make them feel alive. I get a sense that that's sort of what the wild bunch is motivated by as well.
Right. Alex, you mentioned they're older, right? So these are, these are 19, 13. These are guys who've presumed presumably been around in the West for a long time.
You've seen the old ways of doing things disappear. I mean, for crying out loud, people are driving around in cars now, right? Even the Mexican generalizer car. So what do you, what do these guys who used to have an outlet for their sense of what it meant to be a noble human being?
What do they do in these modern times when those opportunities seem to pass? What's left for them is to not betray their friends. But again, their friends are, they're all kind of a despicable bunch, um, in their morality. But what's left is do the noble thing.
Don't leave your friend to die. So I mean, that is a noble thing, but it's a frame in the context of, again, a flard of morality. Is that it? Is that what, is that, is that what's left for us?
And for certain types of men in modern society is to dare to do something great and dangerous. So that's, do you think that that's nihilistic and Chris? Is this sort of, is this nihilism like bear for us? I, when I, when I teach this to undergrads and grad students as well, I have them read each.
Just to get a sense of some of the problems that Nietzsche is, you know, grappling with in modern times, right? So I don't, I don't know that it's nihilism simply. It's an attempt to, I think the wild bunch is an attempt in a way to find a way out of nihilism. To say that there is nothing, that there is some meaning to something, right?
But we have to invent that. We have to invent that nobility. We, so I don't think in the end it's simply nihilistic, but it's, it is, it is a kind of Nietzschean solution to the problem of nihilism, right? They, they have to be creators.
They have to create the new, new laws of nobility. So to speak. It's so strange because if they go into this at the end, they do finally engage in something like noble self sacrifice. It's in this weird kind of armed encampment, right?
Not really a town. And everybody's dead, right? And their bodies are collected from money and plundered, it looks like, right? Right.
And it ends with this, the old timer that's not fighting anymore, that used to be an eye. And the guy who went to jail, they ride off together. And it's not the kind of nobility where you create something in the sense of Nietzsche's sort of founder, poet type, philosopher type, right? And there's no, nobody left to erect a monument or to celebrate or to consecrate what they've done.
And so it's, it's, maybe I'm pushing back a little bit, but it seems like maybe, maybe they took the wrong path or it's too little too late and it's, it's a warning sign of what happens if you don't take these longings seriously earlier in life, but it feels, it feels still very nihilistic, at least to me at the end. Yeah. No, it was great. I was back to even harder to do what I, I, I, I agree on time.
I was scared. You look like you could beat me up. No, no, no, no. No, I couldn't.
No. One of the things that, how to use the kids as shields in the beginning, you can sort of, one could come away with the sentiment that, well, Peck and Paul still sort of treats kids and women as innocent. But gosh, that's, that's not the image, right? And the women are just as guilty.
They do nasty things. I mean, angels, girlfriends, which seems to be a shame. And there's a strange dialogue they haven't managed, which is basically forget you. But then even the kids, even the kids aren't, you alluded to this in your synopsis of the movie, but like the kids themselves aren't innocent.
Like they're torturing us, or scorpion at the beginning. And they're delighting it. And you pointed this out when we were talking, but like they take the light and some of the nastier things that go on throughout the movie. Right.
Everyone, everyone is. Yeah. No, at the end of the film, in the final big, you know, 10 minute shootout, there's a woman who comes out of the, she's been with a Mexican soldier and she just sort of pulls a gun out of nowhere. She's one of the wild bunch and he blows her away.
There's their children in Mexican military uniforms shooting in the fight at the end, right? Yeah. And the beginning scene, by the way, is so important because I think that is, again, symbolic of one way to watch the film by the way, I should point out. One way is that there's the way that I'm suggesting.
So when the wild bunch is writing past this group of children at the beginning, you would expect again, children are innocent, they're giggling, they're having fun, but then you see what they're doing. They've got a scorpion, which I suggest might represent sort of this great, the great man, like maybe an overman or something in a Nietzsche instance. Right. And again, I'm taking this Nietzschean parallel loosely, right?
Alex on your point earlier. But what are they doing? They're having fun and laughing because they've filled this little pit with these fire ants, modern glass men, democratic man, and they're seeing the scorpion of death, right? And they're laughing and taking the light in this.
And then the wild bunch writes in the town, they do their things, shoot everything up. And as they're writing back out, the children have just lit it on fire. They're killing everything. Right.
So it's like, let the whole thing burn. I think this is reflective of, I think, peck and pause attitude towards society. Again, you know, if he's one of the things he's wanting to think about in the film is this is modern society is civil society we're preserving. I think at this point in his life, the answer is no.
And it's symbolized by just burning the whole thing down. How do you interpret it? Do you think it's a hard note, Chris? How do you interpret the very, very end?
So you had the bounty hunter who was after the wild bunch in a kin and spirit to the wild bunch. Right. Can you write it off? De-Forton.
What is his line? So the Mexicans invite him to join their group of Mexicans that they say, you know, we're off to liberate something or other. And he just say, like, why not? Yeah, that's what they all say to them.
Why not? Yeah, why not? So why not asking why not is the sort of flip side of the coin of asking, well, what is there? What is there to do?
Right? What should we do? I'm not putting that very well. But what's the right thing to do?
Instead, they just ask why not? I mean, so what's I don't know. There's no moral code there. I mean, the frame, which is a time.
Yeah, sorry, David. I mean, there's this line of Nietzsche, right? That man would rather will nothing than not will at all or something like that. Like, I'd rather just destroy things than just sit around doing nothing.
Yeah. Yeah. But what kind of, Alex, I'm sorry, that will you reminded me of what you see in the wild bunch is just this raw sort of natural will to power, right? So keep moving things better to rob a bank and kill innocent women and children and go down to a place of glory that just die old men, but medical men.
No, surrounded by people who didn't do anything nearly as great as we used to do in the rest that we used to live in. Anyway, sorry. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, I think one may be silver lining to this massive deep gray cloud is that in destroying the poncho, they saved that town, essentially, right? The little village. Yeah. The little village, which is kind of like the, you know, the guy who ends up being tortured, right?
He's from that village. He brings his, you know, group in there. He's like, they don't know what we do. This is, you know, we keep this and he brings them in and he, and he, and they have a kind of beautiful kind of bucolic simple.
They're respectful of the women. They're respectful of women. And it's, and it's pleasant. And then they salute them as they leave.
And it's very nice. And you forget about that place, but in a way, I guess they destroy him, apache, and his people are going down in the place of glory. Now they might not conceive of that because again, they just say why not? But it does seem like they, they at least there is one kind of hope in this kind of outside of the US and this very rural, simple town.
One can have something like a decent life. Maybe not noble. That's a great point. But Alex, don't you get the sense that that existence is super tenuous.
Like, it's only a matter of time. Before that, that village is the zoom door. Yeah, consumes about this sort of force. Yeah.
Yeah. But you know, but the other thing, that village scene in the middle is so important because the elder, they have that great line just before they leave. You know, they spend the night and as you said, it's very, you know, I feel like in everything, it's like a momentary return to the innocence of nature. The elder says in the end, we all want to be like little children again.
And then they, but they see the thing is so they may have ended up preserving that village of that way of life, even temporarily. But the wild bunch can't stay there. I think that's the point, right? So they, they're actually going to be able to preserve that way of life for others.
But that's not a place they themselves, I think, is live. So there's no place, there's no place like that for these great men, these men who, you know, so why couldn't you know, great men put the railroads together, right? Those captains of industry and massive loss to and they're perhaps not great in the way that the four of us are accustomed to think of greatness. But I could have seen given another kind of temperant or pushed in a more positive direction, the wild bunch coming together and forming their own railroad conglomerate.
And they make a certain decision that that modernity, such as it exists in the West is not for them. They could have decided on another kind of path. The pack and pot doesn't leave us much choice, but I don't know if it means that those choices don't exist. I don't know since you mentioned the railroad, right?
The deacon is apparently short for Deacon, which is another religious title. Deacon's to be the wild bunch. He has now forced to get out of prison. He's forced to work with this railroad there.
And right? So the railroads, and I don't know if this is an answer to your question or not, David. It's a really interesting thought. But the railroads seem to represent in a way the corruption of corporate America at the time as well, right?
So the railroads represent everything that's bad about corporate America, greed. And by the way, they're just the flip side of the wild bunch. They have a total disregard for human life, right? And what they do, they're responsible for the, you know, as many deaths of innocent women and children in that little town is the wild bunch.
So, so again, you know, I guess, no, no, you're absolutely right. I only use like a kind of gentle or real or conglomerate. I understand. Yeah, they can put together a nice wholesome company like Google.
That really care about. But there's a hint that they may actually have worked for that one time. And then we're stealing from it. And that's what got them in trouble where they turned and robbed something.
They were supposed to be guarding. And that's why this railroad baron has hired geek Thornton to lead the bounty hunters to get them. He just wants his revenge, right? He's not going to get his money back.
He just wants to punish. Alex, thanks for asking one question before we go to Ford. Sure, sure, sure. Chris, or this is for anybody.
The wild bunch as constituted this, these core of five guys or so, we get them because after the initial shootout, so many of their numbers are dwindle. There's one fellow in particular who, you know, comes close to raping somebody that he's holding at gunpoint. So the original Constitution of the wild bunch included people who we would not speak in such glowing terms as we do the final four or six. Do you have any thoughts about that?
Except if you accepted sick people within their ranks. It's not like this was just a group of like a wispole nobleman who were out of time and place. I mean, they had reprehensible types working with them. Yeah, that was a great point.
Yeah, the guy they leave in the bank with the shotgun starting the bank tellers and a few women, right? He's marching around. He's clearly psychotic in late. So he's supposed to stay there until the wild bunch get away and then he's supposed to die, you know, sacrifice himself.
You know, he's marching them around, having them sing, shall we gather the river, by the way, which I think was intentional on Peck and Paul's part as a sort of, I don't want to say slap in the face, but a rebuttal of John Ford's use of Westerns because John Ford loved use that song shall we gather the river. So, so, say, I'm Peck and Paul has them sing that song at the end of a shotgun barrel and the guy just blows him away. What does he say? Chicken's food like chicken or something.
Yeah, there's some despicable guys. I mean, they're really wrong, but, you know, I think they're, they are longing to find, you know, some way in which they can be noble in a world that doesn't seem to allow our tolerate, noble actions anymore. Hey, Greg, I'd like to talk to you about a new sponsor we have. Oh, that's exciting stuff, Alex.
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I never responded. I think because he heard all of our fan jokes about David. So, you know, I'm a cousin home. Every pizza for me.
Like David is, so you can hear David not a people, right? Yeah, he's not even, he's actually eating pizza right now. We'd like him to do an ad. Jump in and David needs to know he's still eating pizza.
He's like, you want to stop. Yeah. Now, I'm going to be this ad, which is full of political philosophy, Jokes, but, uh, both the half of this goes. All right.
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And God's name is that? David from Ford and IBM. Yeah, that's the problem. That's why we do want to charge him.
Maybe one more. That's the winner. Go there. I actually want to go get this pizza and buy enough of it to compensate for the act.
So go to Fredericksburg, Texas. Hey, I say you just pick up wherever you are in the world. We got listeners in Australia in the Middle East. Get on a plane.
Hopefully you can. There's a new variant of COVID. So maybe not get on a plane. Go to Fredericksburg, Texas.
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By the way, I'm sorry. I didn't know if we were shifting gears or not. But to forward before we do that, I was going to say for recommended reading. So speak, if you want to contrast this film with another peck and paw film, peck and paw film.
I think it was 1962, peck and paw came out with right at the country. I don't know if you've seen this or not. It's a great film and peck and paw raises the same kinds of problems. It begins with these old cowboys coming out of the mountains to a town.
It's a modern town. There are cars, people are at a festival. It's almost like Sarthers are coming down to the marketplace. But this is a new world that they're in.
These are old time cowboys and they're now surrounded by people living in town. They have police and all this stuff. In this film, peck and paw wrestles with the same themes. The two main characters are struggling with the new world that they find themselves in.
Is there anything that they can do to redeem themselves or be noble? The ending of this film is very different, but it's seven years before the Wild Bunch. I don't know if you want me to give it away or not, but they do redeem themselves. They find a way to act nobly.
But it's not just acting nobly to stand up for your rotten, despicable friends. There's actually a possibility at the end of this film for one to act in a noble way that is also moral in an almost traditional sense. Maybe if you watch that film sometime, again, it's a great film. I'm pulling more reading on you or viewing.
But I think you really see some stark differences between the way peck and paw answers these questions in the Wild Bunch in 1969 and the way he resolves them in 1962. So all this peck and paws rancid air, we need to get somewhere. I'll just say one moment in that movie that really struck out to me as bizarre, but it needs sense by the time he gets the end. When they first get this new-fangled machine gun, they don't know how to control it.
They're spinning around the town shooting out. Everybody drops. People scream a little bit, but then they stop and they just get up. Nothing's happened.
I guess nobody died, but it's obviously foreshadowing the scene when that same machine gun is used to actually kill everybody. And looking at you, you're like, which is better? I guess it is better if it just sort of all self-destructs and falls apart because maybe that little Mexican tablet around a long way. It's just like the meaningless of it all.
The nonchalance at the destruction, the potential destruction, and then the eventual destruction. And that's it. That's it. That's like, it's pretty bleak stuff.
So I need to take a nice shower with slightly dead John Ford. I do notice Alex that the townspeople do file out at the very end. Like some of them survive. It seems like everybody that gets killed are part of the Federal Ales through the Wild Bunch.
But the little people march on. By the way, you mentioned the little people. This film has two types of characters. I think there are the potential great men in the Wild Bunch.
And then there are lots and lots of little people. Like the aunts at the beginning of the film. So you've got scorpions and the aunts. That's a pretty bleak way of thinking about the aunts.
Well, yeah. So you go to the Manishot Liberty Valance, which is this nice open-ended title because you wanted to who is that man? It turns out that that's what the whole movie turns on. But it looks like there is room for greatness.
Or there once was room for greatness. And that greatness was that of John Wayne who becomes like an alcoholic after the founding of this town. But it seems like the chaos, the response to the chaos is a kind of great action, but it has one moment to shine. After which the laws come in and order and sort of supposedly so slightly better air, not altogether positive.
Right? Yeah. But there is something more robust you want to say. Right?
Maybe you can tell us what you see going on in that movie. Yeah. Now again, so John Ford, I'll say this about John Ford. I think he loves America.
He loves his country. But he's not given to sort of unreflected patriotism, so to speak. That is, he really wants us to ask what is God's aim bat about. You know, not just America, but about civilization, civil society.
There's a cost to be had. And the price that is usually paid by those John Wayne type characters who I sort of will in my classes compare to. Sort of from Sony and natural man in a way, right? You have to, you know, when law and society come, they have to put on the yoke and either behave themselves.
Or, you know, there's no place for them and they have to write off and, you know, die. So there's a price and there's a sadness in this film. So I think in a lot of John Ford films, after World War II, so this was made in 1962 by the way. And it's a black and white film, as you know, and John Ford made a black and white film at a time when nobody thought there would ever be another black and white film made.
And he did that deliberately, right? People laughed at him, but you know, hey, John Ford, John Ford says, I think I'm black and white film, make a black and white film, which I think is symbolic. It's not, it turns out that these questions are not that black and white, you know, who's the really the good guy in this film. But, but John Ford likes to ask these questions like, is civil society good?
If it is, what's good about it? What problems do we have yet to resolve with regard to civil society? And, and is it worth preserving despite its sort of words? And you see that, by the way, you know, John Ford, you guys probably know this John Ford was making films before World War II.
It made stage coaches a very important film, very controversial film for sort of some sexual innuendos that were going on in the film. And then John Ford goes off and serves with the OSS in World War II. And he's there at the Battle of Midway. He's actually there at Omaha Beach at Normandy on D-Day.
He's a lot of the, by the way, the black and white footage that you may have seen, you know, over the years showing the invasion of Normandy. That comes from John Ford's film division. And it was kept secret for almost 50 years. They didn't want to release it because of the carnage.
Anyway, so John Ford, he actually made a documentary, I think, with some of his footage. He did. Yeah, he did. Yeah.
But John Ford has seen firsthand civilization on the verge of collapse at the hands of thugs and imperialist, you know, Nazis and imperialist. And so, so a common theme in a lot of John Ford's westerns after that are these questions. Is civil society good? Is it worth preserving?
And his first film, After World War II, was a western called My Darkling Climate Time, which is a really great story. It's a great film. And in that film, you get, it's Tombstone, it's white herb. And Doc Holiday, it's great characters.
Henry Fonda is white herb. It is about 99.9% historically inaccurate. And John Ford just didn't care. He didn't even met with white.
He met with a real white herb to get his story about what happened in Tombstone. And then John Ford just told me throughout the window and made the film. But that's a film about, it uses Tombstone as the backdrop for how do you transform a state of nature into a good decent place for human beings to live. And that's a much more straightforward approach to Ford.
I mean, by the time white herb leaves Tombstone at the end of that film, it's a really nice place to live. It's like, what would you say earlier, the home of friendly people or something like that? Two stone, bring your families. But, but, Jim, there's a- You can consider a name change first.
Yeah, right. Two stone, the place to bring your family. In the Managedide Liberty Valens, it's a lot more ambiguous in terms of the benefits of establishing civil society and the costs. There are costs associated with it.
There are things that are lost. The exhilaration perhaps of being able to stand up to a guy like Liberty Valens and defend yourself. The freedom that you find living in a state of nature. So the ending of that film is actually very somber, right in a way.