Staking Claims in “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” (1948) (Part 1)

It’s considered the definitive film on greed, a demonstration of just what the lust for gold can do to a man’s heart. Fred C. Dobbs starts out as a down-on-his-luck panhandler in a poor Mexican town and comes into a fortune of over $100,000 before the film’s end. Yet, in more ways than one, Dobbs never stops panhandling, never stops being subject to the vagaries of fate, to forces that might just as soon give as take away his fortune, and to the darkness within himself that he can neither understand nor control. Perhaps the film doesn’t chart his moral corruption and gradual descent into greed-fueled madness so much as it critiques the system that turned Dobbs into a beggar in the first place—a system which, the film might argue, teaches all of us to stick out our hands (and our necks) in the pursuit of profit. Wes & Erin discuss John Huston’s 1948 classic, “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:19 Erin: or patreon.com/subtextpodcast. It's considered the definitive film on greed, a demonstration of just what the lust for gold can do to a man's heart. Fred C. Dobbs starts out as a down on his luck panhandler in a poor Mexican town and comes into a fortune of over $100,000 before the film's end. Yet in more ways than one, Dobbs never stops panhandling, never stops being subject to the vagaries of fate, to forces that might just as soon give as take away his fortune, and to the darkness within himself that he could neither understand nor control. Perhaps the film doesn't chart his moral corruption and gradual descent into greed fueled madness so much as it critiques the system that turned Dobbs into a beggar in the first place. A system which the film might argue teaches all of us to stick out our hands and our necks in the pursuit of profit. Today we're discussing John Huston's 1948 classic, the Treasure of the Sierra Madre. This is Erin O'Luanaigh and this is Wes Alwan and you're listening to subtext. Wes, I've been thinking a lot about gold as a symbol in Treasure of the Sierra Madre and about the difference between gold and oil. Oil as in black gold, Texas tea. But I wonder if you have any thoughts about gold and what makes it a particularly. I'm thinking a lot about There Will Be Blood. I read an article that mentioned that Paul Thomas Anderson, when he was making that film, was watching Treasure of the Sierra Madre, you know, something like every day and just the differences between oil and gold. Which is the more definitive symbol of a particular kind of American aspirational wealth and which is the more effective one? I think it is gold. But I'd just be curious what you think maybe between the two or three, just about how gold is working as a symbol in this film. 2:20 Wes: Well, personally, I think what it's good for is it's something to put on the fingers and necks of swell dames. 2:27 Erin: Yeah, I do. I remember thinking, wow, that sounds exactly like something Wes would say. Yeah, you're always talking about swell dames and how to deck them out. 2:36 Wes: Swell dames isn't that one of the. Isn't that one of the phrases that Woody Allen repeats or in his impersonation of Humphrey Bogart or swell, swell dames. I just love that. It's too bad we don't have that anymore. We don't say things like swell dames. I guess that would be a very sexist. 2:56 Erin: Depends on who says it. 2:57 Wes: I don't know if it would. Broad dames. What else? It's interesting because. So that's the way Dobbs initially. Well, it's not the way he initially thinks of it. Well, yeah, it's when they're. It's when he and Curtin are fantasizing. They're trying to make a decision about whether to go with Howard or to ask Howard to take them and to seek out gold. And there's a lot of interesting shots in that scene. I think they're in the park and you get this looks of reverie on the face of Dobbs. So that's one way of looking at it. Of course, when they talk to Howard before that scene for Howard, he makes a remark that it's only good for making gold teeth or jewelry. So he does mention jewelry. Jewelry. But he doesn't put as much stock in the implications of that as Dobbs does. And overall, he gives in this really incredible speech that Howard gives in. What is it? Is it a hotel or a flop house? A hostel? Flophouse. There you go. Where the swell dames don't hang out. So, in fact, I think I thought I would try to do something different, which is to try to actually play this and see if it comes out on the podcast. So I'm going to do that. And it's just an experiment. We could do more of that if it works. 4:22 Erin: Ooh, I like this. 4:23 Wes: So this is the speech that when they walk into the flophouse that Howard is giving about gold and what it means. So I'm going to play a bit of that and then I'll. Then we can talk about it. They're few and far between. That take a lot of finding. So you answer me this, will you? Why is gold worth some 20 bucks an ounce? I don't know. Because it's scarce. A thousand men, say, go searching for gold. After six months, one of them's lucky. One out of the thousand. This find represents not only his own labor, but that of 999 others to boot. That's 6,000 months or 500 years scrabbling over mountains, going hungry and thirsty. Ounce of gold, mister, is worth what it is because of the human labor that went into the finding the getting of it. Never thought of it just like that. Well, there's no other explanation, mister. Gold and stuff ain't good for nothing except making jewelry with gold teeth. Ah, gold's a devilish sort of a thing. Anyway, you start out, you tell yourself you'll be satisfied with 25,000 handsome smackers worth of it. So help me, Lord, and cross my heart, firm resolution. After months of sweating yourself dizzy and growing short on provisions and finding nothing, you finally come down to 15,000, then 10. Finally you say, Lord, let me just find $5,000 worth and never asked for anything more the rest of my life. $5,000 is a lot of money. Here in this joint it seems like a lot. But I tell you, if it was to make a real strike, you couldn't be dragged away. Not even the threat of miserable death would keep you from trying to add 10,000 more. 10, you'd want to get 25. 25, you'd want to get 50. 50, 100. Like roulette. One more turn, you know. Always one more. It wouldn't be that way with me. I swear it wouldn't. I take only what I set out to get, Even if there's still a half a million dollars worth lying around waiting to be picked up. I've dug in Alaska and Canada and Colorado. I was with the crowd in the British Honduras, where I made my fare back home and almost enough over to cure me of the fever I'd caught. Dug in California and Australia. All over the world, practically. I know what gold does to men's souls. You talk as though you struck it rich sometime or another. Okay, I know what gold does to men's souls. So one of his theses is that gold is only worth the labor that's put into it. So he has sort of a Karl Marx labor theory of value, although I guess it's there to some extent in Locke as well. But that's much different than the idea that is often introduced by Dobbs and is introduced at a critical moment later on in the film when he's upset with Curtin, which is that whoever puts more investment in should get more out. So the idea that kind of connects to a more capitalist conception of economics, where the value of something is simply what people think it's worth. Simply a matter of demand. So that's one aspect of what he's saying. He's also saying it's addictive. It's like gambling. It makes men crazy. He. Even at one point, it's not in the part I played but they ask him why he's down and out if he's been digging for gold before and seen success. And he says, that's the gold, that's what it makes of us. And he warns them about all the risk involved to one's physical safety and loneliness, but also the paranoia it induces in people who are doing it cooperatively. But again, you can't do it alone because it would be too lonely. So he really doesn't paint a great picture. He's selling it, but he's selling it by way of this idea that it's a curse and it's self destructive. But for some reason that really mesmerizes Dobbs and Curtin. So I haven't directly answered your question about why gold has the worth that it does to people. I think it's Curtin who says, well, it's rare. And then you could give a standard theory of why gold is worth what it is. It's pretty and it's rare. But I don't know, what were you going to say about that? 8:07 Erin: Yeah, it's rare, but it's not too rare. Right. There's a point of diminishing returns. If it's too rare, then not everybody could have it. And it can't be quite such a widely disseminated status symbol. Yeah, you know, I. Oil is something I've been thinking about a lot with a friend's creative project that he's been working on and, and this contrast with There Will Be Blood and this idea of like what is the ultimate golden calf. I suppose the answer is in there, you know, for American society. And I think I took for granted for a long time that it is oil. But oil is, you know, more immediately useful and practical. I mean, gold does have practical uses other than gold teeth and jewelry. Right. I mean the why it's effective for teeth is because of its malleability and certain other properties are desirable in gold. 8:56 Wes: It doesn't rust. 8:58 Erin: Yeah, non corrosive, it's not toxic, it has high level of ductility. But just thinking about the fact that oil, I mean oil in a sense is quite beautiful too, but it's not classically beautiful in the way that gold is. It's shiny and immediately aesthetically appealing and yet as the movie points out, it's difficult to recognize. It just looks like sand when it's not refined. So there's something there, I think, about hidden value. Oil is that way too. You know, you could be walking over vast deposits of oil right under your feet or you know, several hundred Feet down or, you know, a mile down. I don't know. It's too closely tied to use. Oil is. I think, though, I think Howard gets his wires crossed a little bit in this speech and kind of contradicts himself, as I think you're pointing out, with this labor theory of value jutting up against kind of what he's saying about gambling, which I want to get into as well. I do think that the thesis of the film is that gold is not useful or inherently useless or it's been assigned a kind of arbitrary value. And that, I think, within the structure of the film, makes it such a fascinating object of desire because it's entirely tied to, you know, these economic value conditions under which demand determines, you know, it's all. In other words, it's all. It's all fake. That it's, you know, forget about the fiat system, even the gold system is itself. It's turtles all the way down. There's no bottom to the arbitrariness of the value system. Right. I'm just interested in that. This vicious circle of wanting things literally because you've been told to want them, of going after things because you've been told you should go after it, of this being on the hamster wheel, all these various metaphors I could use here to describe ultimately the futility, utility, and the stupidity or the emptiness of the entire enterprise. Yeah. But I do think that he. He does contradict himself over the course of that speech. Right. It's. It's worthless. There is no real value in it. The labor lends the value, but also it's supply and demand. And also it's like the roulette wheel. I mean, panning is like the roulette wheel. But he also mentions luck. When it comes to one in a thousand gets lucky. So 999 other people are paying for the labor that they put in and are getting nothing out. So that's not quite right. 11:27 Wes: Well, he's saying that the one person. So it's not even just worth the labor of the one person who digs it up or the few people who dig it up. It's worth the labor of all the people who failed. 11:38 Erin: Right. 11:38 Wes: The collective of the people who tried and failed. Yeah. 11:40 Erin: Right. Right. But they're not getting any. Of course, they're not getting minimum wage in. In thanks for. For the effort that one gets. So it is like buying a lottery ticket. You know, I'm. I'm jumping all over the place here because I see it all as being part of the system that I Have pretty much determined is basically just. I was shocked watching this, what an anti capitalist film it is. I. 12:04 Wes: Right, it is. I was thinking these guys. Yeah, I'm surprised they didn't get in trouble up in the red scare or whatever. 12:11 Erin: Yeah, yeah. And I, I started to see that more and more that, and this is a slightly separate issue, but that, you know, Dobbs is basically bad from the beginning. I think this isn't really about necessarily his corruption so much as it is what it's about what, what happens to you when you get to higher and higher levels of the, you know, the capitalist board game that they're playing. And yeah, so something about this idea of going after the worthless thing or the thing whose worth is just socially constructed and the position that puts one in when one is also just a beggar buying a, buying a lottery ticket, hoping to strike it rich in a way that's, I think that's an expression for what the film thinks the entire capitalist system does to one. Oh, I hope, I hope my small business makes it and that people decide to come and, you know, I hope I strike it rich with this idea for, you know, designer popsicle sticks or whatever, whatever the case may be. And I hope that I hit on some million dollar idea that's going to get people to come into my store. The film seems to suggest that everyone is just begging for money. 13:17 Wes: patreon.com subtextpodcast 13:22 Erin: Sorry, I'm rambling. I'm going in many directions. 13:25 Wes: No, no, no, I think that's spot on. But I want to address your earlier question first, which is the difference between oil and gold. And I liked your talk about one being closer to use. And oil is also dirtier. Of course, gold is pretty, but yeah, you can use oil for lots of things. We're probably wearing oil right now. There's so much, you know, these microphones are made of oil, anything that's made of plastic. And so that, that's one thing. It's of course, what does it mean to be useful to people? Some of it is about right, we need food to survive, but then beyond that we have things that are a matter of convenience and then things that are a matter of luxury. And gold stands out. But because I think what you were saying is that it gets its value purely by way of being a signifier of something. It's not just that it's pretty in and of itself and can be used for jewelry, but there's something about its capacity to signify something. So it becomes a way of you know, if you have this thing that is both pretty and rare and you can give it to someone, you know, like a ring, for instance, as a symbol of their value to you, then it takes on a different significance. Gold, like oil, right. You get it out of the ground, out of Mother Earth. At a certain point, Howard says we have to repair the wounds that we've created. And it's a mountain which is very. Sorry to be a psychoanalyst for a second, but very breast like so this idea of something that you can dig out of Mother Earth, that's not just a matter of sustenance, but that is really special. So ultimately you could say that it signifies this profound connection to the maternal or something like that. But the other thing that you're getting at is the anti capitalist trend in the film. And it plays on a few different ideas. And it starts from the very beginning of the film where Dobbs is running around saying, can you stake a fellow American to a meal? This idea of a stake. Yep, as if. So what is it? So he's begging on the one hand, he's suggesting to someone who might give him money that they're making an investment, right. They're taking a stake in something. But of course we get that immediately tied to the lottery. He's losing at the lottery. So there's an element of gambling. And of course, Howard's theory of the labor value of theory in a way is about the investment of work into something that makes it worth something. Gold mining. Right. They have a stake in the share of the enterprise, they stake a claim over the land. And even this idea, you know, the fact that he's saying a fellow American because he's essentially a foreigner or a temporary immigrant, I guess, in another country. It's almost as if there's a, you know, you're. You're investing in a fellow American or. Well, let me put it this way. What is one investing in? Potentially, if you give money to a beggar, you can think of it in a few different ways. You're investing in the idea that they may become self sufficient. They may use that money to set themselves up and not have to beg anymore. The suggestion might be that it's an investment in society. If everyone becomes self sufficient because of your charity, society is improved, or it's an investment in the conscience of the one who gives. You'll feel better about yourself, you did the right thing. You can think of investment in all these different ways. But on the other hand, it really is a gamble because for the most part that's you know, if you're expecting a return on your investment, other than feeling good about yourself, you're bound to be disappointed. It's not a great investment, right. To give money out to people who are begging. So he's suggesting it's investment, an investment, but he's really asking them to gamble on him. And so, yeah, the confusion of all these different ideas. Begging, investing, gambling, work, gold mining, all of that gets run together. 17:21 Erin: Well, I like this a lot, but say we do see that Dobbs sometimes uses money to get a shave and to get his hairpiece greased down. But otherwise he was totally bald during the filming of this movie. And he had a team of people who were involved in putting his hairpiece into various states of disarray. Suggestive of insanity. Over the course of the. Over the course of the film. And then I guess he got B12 shots and his hair grew back. But, you know, I was thinking about the fact that he is hungry. So the question to me is more of like, what does that investment mean when you're just, what, you're. Basically, he's asking someone to become his patron insofar as he's able to just keep his own life going. He's almost selling a privatized stake in himself. If I keep going, then what? You'll have given me some seed money or something? And it was funny because I, watching him get a shave, I was thinking to myself, well, that's not a very good use of that money because you're, you're still a bum. You're not like going to a job interview, you know, so that hair is going to grow back and you will have wasted the money. Like, it's just, you know, it's just. You're just running through it like water. But then again, like, you eat and then a few hours later you're. You're hungry again. You know, it's, it's hard to, to, to keep yourself up in this world where everything costs. So you could argue that, well, he could just skip another meal. I mean, you know, it's. 18:48 Wes: Yeah. In fact. Right. He asks three times from the same person. 18:52 Erin: Yes. 18:52 Wes: And I think the third time he's like, well, here's one final one. But, you know, don't do this again. Get yourself together. Is it after the third time that he gets the shave and all that? 19:01 Erin: I think it's the second time. 19:03 Wes: Maybe it's the second time. Right. Yes. Okay. And incidentally, that's what. Later on when they're all fantasizing about what they're going to do with the money. And Howard and Curtin talk about settling down. Essentially. He's like, I'm gonna go do a Turkish bath. And they get primped up, get a nice suit, go eat a lot, and then it kind of trails off. And then the subject of women comes up because it's obviously what Dobbs is thinking about. And then I think it's Howard who says something like, you know, well, don't. Don't worry about that, because that'll ruin your life. That's only trouble. The dames. Dames are only trouble. Which is interesting in light of the. Even if they're swell, they're swell for a while. But it's interesting in light of the fact that when he gets his shave, he comes out and he has this flirtatious moment where there's a woman looking at him and I guess he kind of ignores her. But you. You're wondering if there'll be some payoff to that interaction. What's going to happen with that? And I think she's the one who's with the guy who deceives them. Is that right? Is that. Does she reappear? 20:04 Erin: I don't. I don't think that's the same woman. 20:07 Wes: I. I was unclear on that, and I didn't go back and look. Ok, so maybe that's just a complete throwaway scene where he has this interaction with a woman after he's gotten all dolled up, and then that's it, that's gone. So that's very telling, I think. 20:21 Erin: I think prostitution is like the right. That's the theme at the bedrock of this film that actually never, almost never gets directly addressed. But what you're pointing to with the mountain and with this idea of sort of like privatizing people or. I mean, in a way, it's reversed with Dobbs. In a way, he's treating the. The person from whom he's begging as a kind of object. So there's a kind of reversal there where he gets a little bit of power over them, maybe by exploiting their conscience in the way that you're suggesting, where they're making an investment in their own sense of ethics or the belief that they're a good person. But insofar as one can, you know, buy someone a meal and thereby have a stake in them, have an investment in them, the suggestion of bodies and other people's bodies being owned by someone. Yeah. Giving away a stake, a share, an afternoon, an evening, you know, however long you want to invest in that person's. Body, I think, is directly connected as well to the mountainous woman. To the mountainous wounded woman. That has to be restored to some sort of original state out of respect at the end of the film, as Howard suggests, they have to close the mine and close, I believe he says, close her wounds. And this is, again, something like, you know, we're all human beings, right. We should all be free in the same way. I think, like, you know, the mountain is. It's. It's not owned by anyone in particular. It's not necessarily theirs to exploit, but over the course of the investment that they make in it, it kind of. It becomes theirs. They are. They feel entitled to it. They've. They have, in a sense, mentally privatized it so that when Cody wants to come and take a share, it's like, no, it's our mountain. We're getting what we need out of this. Right. And so I wonder if. Yeah. If what they're doing to the mountain is we can tie that to the sort of exploitation of bodies. But it's a tricky thing. This idea of the meal, I think, is I can't quite draw the squiggly line back to what it's saying about panhandling, you know. 22:25 Wes: Yeah. So when I was thinking about all this, these different meanings of stake, and in light of can you stake an American, fellow American to a meal? I was thinking about staking a claim and how that worked. And I looked it up, and here's a little quote from what I found online. The process of staking a mining claim began in 1849 with the California Gold Rush, where, in the absence of government regulations, miners adopted their own rules to claim and mine land. The law was based on prior appropriation, which means that the first person to put public land to beneficial use was granted a claim. While the regulations have since adapted, the basis of finding a mineral deposit and staking a mining claim, so long as the land is available for such claims and does not have a current active claim, remains essentially the same. Which really surprised me. It has me searching all over Cambridge for mineral. Mineral deposits. Now, I find that interesting because it doesn't belong to them by law, but in a way. Well, they are in Mexico, right? Are they out? Did they go to. Yeah, they're in Mexico. So it's a more complicated situation. But if they were in California, in a way, the law, it sort of stands outside of the law. Or they're on the frontier between civilization and lawlessness, which is an important part of the movie. But I think this idea of Staking a claim, a mining claim, is basically appropriation based on putting the land to beneficial use. It's kind of connected to Howard's idea of the way labor gives something value. So it also gives you some sense of ownership, which is something, by the way, you can do with yourself. Right. So you put yourself to productive use. You lay claim to yourself. And that's supposed to be the return on investment for someone who's engaged in charitable giving or giving to a beggar. Right. Ideally, they lay claim to themselves and become more independent. But, yeah, I guess I'm not getting. I'm not. I'm not making the connection. You were back to this concept of exploitation of the land. But I think the concept of exploitation is very important. So it reminded me a little bit of on the Waterfront, because in both cases, you have. Right. It turned out that mobsters have to work very hard, and they have to even have accountants. And they're basically running a business, so why not just run a legal business? And here it's a very similar thing. Howard tells them how difficult it is, how dangerous it is, how they could get killed. And what do they do? Well, let's just start a business, and they start a successful business. They come up with the money to invest in the equipment, blah, blah, blah. Why not just do something easier? Well, it can't be easy because of the fantasy that it should be easy. One of the fantasies is just the fact that gold is just something you can find in the hills or find in the mountain, and it's potentially liberating. If you find enough, it could liberate you from work forever. You're not answering to anyone. But I ultimately think just as the mobsters are attracted to exploitation and living outside of the law, that's part of the appeal here, is that they can just exploit the mountain. The idea is that there's something easy and passive about that. It's like begging. Even though in reality it isn't right, it turns out to be very hard. And you have both Curtin and Dobbs complaining about how hard it is. And when Howard leaves them, everything falls apart because they can't hack it. 25:46 Erin: Yeah. I think, you know, it's the money tree fantasy, you know, that you could just. And I think that moment when Howard does the little jig and, you know, because they're literally treading on gold, you know, the mountain is, in a sense, paved with gold. Yeah. I like the fact that it's so that they're doing something that seems easy but is actually so incredibly difficult. All because of a sort of mental construct about a money tree scenario in which, well, it's just out there for us to take. So that seems easier if we just go out there and take. It doesn't matter the effort that it takes to, to actually go out and get it. I'm thinking too about how difficult it is to panhandle and maybe, maybe this is an indication that Dobbs isn't quite understanding its full difficulty or maybe is taking some kind of easy way out. It would be actually the most difficult thing in the world to beg for money because it's puts you in such a degraded mental state to be subject to others charity like that and to be, you know, I think that must be one of the hardest things in the world to put oneself through. 26:46 Wes: Yeah. 26:47 Erin: And it doesn't bother Dobbs, but that's because he doesn't even look at the person that he's, you know, it puts you in a, in a comportment of being subject to other people's mercy. And yet he's taken gratitude completely out of the equation. There's a very strict code of conduct around it too. Right. You know, you're in this degraded position and then somehow if you're not grateful enough to the person that gives you charity, that can prevent you from other people giving you charity. Right. If they see that you're this sort of like ungrateful beggar, so you're sort of testing their character. And also like people are testing your character and seeing if you are, you know, maybe it's a case of like if you're, if you're fool's gold or real gold, you know, are you the right kind of person to give money to and how do we determine whether or not you're the right kind of person. Person that I'm investing in? Right. And so you have to be maybe displaying your worth to receive someone's charity. You have to be putting on this kind of moral performance. And this is the part of the social contract that Dobbs is ignoring. Right. Because he's not even grateful enough to care about the person that is giving him the money and put, or, or to even pretend to care and look someone in the eye and say thank you. He's just treating the person who's, who's handing him the money like the money tree. Yeah, he's, he's kind of exploiting the, the John Huston character, the man in the white suit. I'm switching gears here a little bit, but it's an indication to me of the fact that Dobbs is Bad from the beginning, and that the system is a bad system. That we're all, on a certain level, we're all put in these degraded positions by the capitalist system, the film seems to be saying, in which we're all, in a sense, just begging other people for their charity, begging other people for their money, their patronage, their. You know, whether they're. Whether it's on the up and up or something seedy or something sort of outside the system of trade. We're all basically just looking for. I don't know, for a handout or to feel good about ourselves. Whether that be because we're handing the beggar money or because we get the money and then we get to spend it making ourselves feel good. You know, in Dobbs, sort of fantasy, just say, like, I think the first 25 minutes of this film, before they even go to the mountain, are some of the best. That's like one of the best sequences ever in film, I think. Just the Tampico scenes, and they are dark as hell. It's awful. 29:01 Wes: They are. I think this idea, your connection of begging and exploitation is important. So Dobbs is. He's a bad guy. He turns out to be a very paranoid guy and a guy with an impaired conscience. I won't say he. Why are you smiling? Because of my. My. I like the word paranoid, the way you said it. 29:22 Erin: It was just. It was juicy word. Yeah. 29:26 Wes: I wouldn't say he doesn't have a conscience. I'd say his conscience is wounded, it's impaired. So you see glimmers of conscience, but it's tortured. And he can do terrible things, it turns out. And as a beggar, yeah, the beggar is exploitative. So I'm going to say that even though it's politically incorrect, and I'm using the phrase politically incorrect just because it's no longer in vogue. So people will have to look that up to see what I mean. But, yes, when you're begging, you are in an exploitative position, because that's all the other person is to you, is what they're going to give you. And that's my experience with panhandlers on the street, is largely that I have a visceral negative reaction to the feeling that I am nothing to a person except what it is I can give them. And it creates a lot of conflicted feelings in me about, you know, pity and guilt and irritation. But, you know, Dobbs himself is. He's somewhat ashamed by his position or humiliated by his position, but he's running past that feeling as quickly as Possible and, you know, so he can get himself to the barber or whatever and look good and so feel good. He does have a bit of a look of shame, I think, the third, second or third time or maybe both, when he's getting the money from the guy in the white suit. So it's at the. At least it's embarrassing to him that it's. That he's in that position, but he's not giving any real thought to that and how to get out of that in a sustained way. And he has the ability, right? As it turns out, he can be part of a business venture, he has the ability, but something is keeping him in that. And I. And my thesis, again, it's the same as it was with on the Waterfront, is that there's an attraction to the concept of exploitation. There's a. An attraction to the idea of getting something for nothing, because it's very much like being a child at the breast, an infant at the breast. There's something inherently exploitative about that, in fact. Right? Taking sustenance from the mother's body and giving nothing in return. The selfish little babies, no, but all we are to them is milk and sustenance. But anyway. 31:37 Erin: But the mother gets something out of that too. This is the whole. I mean, this is the complication nature 31:43 Wes: has tricked her into. 31:45 Erin: Oh, there is something darker than this film. And it's your mom. Okay. No, but this idea of getting something for nothing, though, I'm thinking, isn't this the fantasy? I mean, this is something you've talked about on previous episodes, like, I'm a good person, I should be rewarded. I mean, isn't this the fantasy of living? It's that somehow by continuing to exist as a body on this rock, you're owed something. Especially if you have bad experiences over time. I mean, who. Who would say that in striking it rich, that Bogey's character is really getting something for nothing. He has suffered. I mean, that's why I want to, like, you know, turn this around on the. You know, in sort of seeing the panhandler job as being so awful for the panhandler, you know, because more often than not, thank the Lord I've been in a position where I'm not the person begging for money, but I can imagine how awful it would be to be in that degraded position and what their mindset must be like, how degraded they must feel as human beings in order to be in this. In the circumstance. And what we know from. From. From Bogey, if we want to say, you know, something about his character, or whatever we see early in the film that he is someone who is. Who is looking for honest work. Right. He does go and work very hard for that guy that's setting up what but oil derricks. Right, right. And ends up just taking what he is owed because he simply wants what he is owed. We come in in the middle of things, we have no idea what his past history is, how he became a bum in the first place, but we can look at his life and say, that's a very hard life. You know, he suffered. In other words, I'm just interested in this idea that, like, what does it mean to get something for nothing? What's the right kind of. This isn't to say that one should get a. A payout in response to one's level of suffering, but I think there's something in that. You know what I'm trying to say? Like. Like, is it. Is it really getting something for nothing or is it finally getting rewarded after years of being just a cog in the machine or someone trampled by society? When you finally win the lottery and you're someone who's been begging your whole life, is there not a kind of justice in that? Or maybe the fact that, you know, in that case, everybody who suffered should be getting a handout in. In proportion to the level that they have suffered. Right. I. You know what I'm trying to say, and you know that it's. That it's ridiculous, but is there not actually, like a deep psychological truth at the bedrock of this? That getting something for nothing is really never getting it for nothing? 34:08 Wes: Yeah, I mean, I think we all at some level have that feeling that because life is full of so much suffering, that in a way we are owed recompense. 34:18 Erin: Yeah. You might be entitled to a class action. 34:21 Wes: Yeah. Some entitlement, some level of entitlement. And the more narcissistic we are, the more that level of entitlement. 34:28 Erin: Well, in a way, this is the Christian. I mean, this is the promise of religion. Right. Life sucks. But maybe if you're lucky and you do the right thing at the end, you'll receive restitution. I mean, now I'm getting really. I hope listeners know that I'm not necessarily agreeing with myself, but I think it's like. I think it's useful to sort of exercise these thoughts or see how far they go. I don't know. 34:53 Wes: Yeah, I haven't thought a lot about this idea. I mean, that you've brought up about does he deserve something now because of his suffering? I had been thinking of this in terms of his. He has a repetition compulsion that keeps him suffering. And now I'm speaking from personal experience, right? He's doing self destructive things to keep himself down and out. Because if you do that, if you keep yourself down and out, you can have this fantasy of rescue, this fantasy of winning the lottery or getting something for nothing. And I think you, and probably I certainly am, and most people are very familiar with that fantasy of winning the lottery. I don't fantasize about starting a company and getting rich that way. That's boring. I fantasize about just enormous amount of money suddenly appearing in my bank account. That's part of the appeal. This appeal of being given something, of being the infantile, completely infantile position where someone else, whether it's mother or fate or whatever, caters entirely to not just one's needs, but anything that one might want. And what's important is that it be exploitative, that it be, at least in fantasy, something that can be accomplished without any effort. It's just something visited upon you by fate, which at the very end of the movie, Curtin and Howard have a huge laugh about the trick, quote, unquote, trick, that fate or nature or God or whatever you want to call it, this is the way Howard puts it, has played upon them. 36:22 Erin: It's funny. 36:22 Wes: I don't fantasize the reason why. Oh, you don't fantasize about winning the lottery? 36:26 Erin: I think that was. No, I don't think so. I think that would be so embarrassing 36:33 Wes: to win the lottery. You got to keep it a secret. 36:37 Erin: Yeah, I fantasize about winning. I fantasize about like winning a competition that has a big monetary prize. But like, it's about the. 36:45 Wes: You want to deserve it. 36:47 Erin: Yeah, I'm absolutely no fun. I mean, this is like, I think this is telling on myself worse than fantasizing. Because who doesn't fantasize about winning the lottery? But I don't. 36:57 Wes: I mean, that's interesting. 37:01 Erin: I want to be recognized by a jury of my peers. I mean, money means nothing to me. 37:07 Wes: I want to win all the money and then keep it a secret until people are like, wes, why, how are you driving a Lamborghini? Why are you wearing all these garish suits that are supposed to be fashionable but they're ridiculous? 37:23 Erin: Well, just want someone to love me, that's all. 37:28 Wes: I mean, as part of that fantasy, I do think about, okay, I'd give this much money to that relative and this much money to another relative and, well, less for you. Because I don't like you as much, but everyone would get at least a million dollars. And I don't know what to call that. Is that altruistic or is that a fantasy of being the giver rather than the beggar? I don't know. I haven't thought about that. But I don't think it's necessarily. That's something that speaks to a virtue. And I think from people I've talked to, this is also a very typical part of the win a billion dollars fantasy is, okay, I'm going to distribute some of this largesse, going to be the distributor, but. All right, well, that's interesting to know that you don't have the lottery fantasy that you want to. You're more connected to working hard to get genuine recognition, which I am, too, which is why I have a podcast and not an oil refinery or something. 38:30 Erin: I think I'm just missing a. Some. Some chip, but. 38:33 Wes: So you would not be heading up into the mountains? 38:37 Erin: No. I can't think of anything more mortifying than to actually. To do that and actually find gold. How embarrassing. I don't know why that just feels. That's. Yeah. 38:46 Wes: I think part of the fantasy is that you're not. Yes, you're getting lucky, but also fate has ordained it. Fate has smiled on you and that it was meant to happen or something like that. Well, I'm trying to. I'm thinking now, you had me thinking about this whole jig that Howard does when he finds out and he's relaying to the Curtin and Dobbs. You have no idea. At that point, the land is full of gold and that Howard has the knowledge to know that it's kind of a manic state. Right. And again, what I'm trying to get at here, it's not really just about, okay, we're rich, that's part of it. But it's not just about being rich. It's about the fantasy involved, what it signifies. Right. What gold signifies, what money signifies. The fantasy of being given something, being given something by the. By the earth, of not working for something, ironically, again, that's weird because they really do work hard for it, but. And ultimately of merger with a fantasy of a maternal principle, so being completely reunified with a nourisher, let's say, and not having to want, not having to desire, having all of that completely fulfilled, not having to work ever again. 39:56 Erin: I want to connect all of this back to then, to the lottery ticket that he buys at the beginning of the film and the way that undercuts this idea of the labor theory of value inherent to the gold seeking. Right. Because does the lottery ticket as a symbol give the lie to that? In other words, it's just like winning the lottery. You either find it or you don't. There's no inherent value attached to the gold because a bunch of people have. I mean, I guess. Wait a minute. I guess if it's a lottery where the winnings come from what everybody pays into it, and then just one person wins. So maybe it does work. I don't know. But there is something that just seems like Howard's like a mountain goat, right? And he sees everything and he's very wise, and he's lasted longer than anybody else, it seems. He's not terribly old, but I can't imagine. The life expectancy in Tampico is very high. And he sees what they can't. He lets them know what it is that they're treading on. There's something that seems to me to be, therefore, of value in him and in, you know, when he gets his just desserts of what, being waited on by women. Again, this is like the ultimate prize in the film, it seems. Right. That seems to be a little bit more justified than not, because he has this inherent wisdom. If they were out there by themselves, they would have just walked all over the gold and then gone home. Because they don't see anything that looks very shiny. Well, actually, they would have just taken home the pyrite and found out later exactly how big of a fool they were. So it seems to be more than just, say, effort. Right. Dobbs and Curtin put in a lot of effort in their pursuit of gold, but they need someone who's smart enough to show them where it is, what it is. That's smarts. That's not just being a workhorse, but they are workhorses to their credit. Right. So where does the lottery ticket fit in? Where does this idea of something for nothing, like pure nothing or this labor theory of value, like, how could we fit that into the movie schema or can we? 41:56 Wes: Well, the lottery ticket is a more pure representative. Right. Of the. Of something for nothing. The weird thing about the gold mining is even though it's predicated on the something for nothing idea, it's. The fantasy is enhanced by that. It's in reality, it's hard work. And they find out they want to give up very early. Right. Howard is the goat man who can just climb endlessly and never gets tired. And these two younger men can barely keep up. But yes, I think part of the fantasy of winning the lottery. It's not just that you're lucky, it's that you're special and that again, it's a matter of fate. I deserve this part, maybe because I've suffered so much, as you pointed out, you know, maybe you have that idea that you've suffered so much, you deserve it. But I'm special and special just by virtue of my own relation to myself. Being me is a very special relationship. 42:49 Erin: So you're reminding me. 42:51 Wes: Dobbs wants fate to smile on him. He wants to. Yeah, go ahead. 42:59 Erin: No, no, I was just going to tell a personal anecdote which has nothing to do with anything. 43:02 Wes: Sorry, yeah, no, no, go ahead. 43:04 Erin: No, I would, I just. This has been very psychologically revealing for me. I just, I'm. I am, as I think I've mentioned in other episodes, I am an incredibly unlucky person. And what you're reminding me of is the one time that I ever won a raffle, it was a church raffle and they had like, you know, hundreds of prizes, so it was like statistically impossible that I finally, I got into a situation where if I didn't win something, it would have been bizarre. I actually won like a very nice little trinket and I had to go up to accept it. And I was so mortified that I won this thing that I realized that I wonder if I was making, making myself, like putting myself in positions where I would keep myself down and not win anything because I actually didn't want to win anything. I actually just wanted to, you know. You think that, oh, I'm so like. I complain all the time about how unlucky I am when it comes to like games of chance or anything like that. My grandfather would always buy a scratch off tickets for, for Christmas, which was fun because it was fun to scratch things off with a little coin. But I think if I had ever won a good amount of money, it would have been bad anyway. I don't know what this reveals about me. I feel someone now is going to listen to this and say, you are a basket case. And so this is all just like 44:20 Wes: you have a strong conscience. And the idea of being unlucky, which is an idea I have as well, is it's connected to punishment. Fate punishes us or ought to. And the connection to punishment is also, ultimately it's a way of connecting to parents. So one of Freud's ideas is that when people are self destructive, they're maintaining a connection to this fantasized connection to parents via punishment. If I'M self destructive destructing if I'm losing, if I'm getting unlucky. I've even seen this with people I've worked with in my, my mental health role. Yeah. Who in a more pathological way, have this idea that they're unlucky and they're always getting into accidents. But yeah, I mean, I think ultimately this is about conscience. Right. If you have a stronger conscience, you're going to be less amenable to this whole idea of getting something for nothing. That the opposing idea where I deserve to get something from nothing. That's the positively manic feeling. It's grandiose because of course, no one deserves anything more than anyone else. Right. So even if you make a lot of money in business and what's one's relationship to people who are poorer than you or even to beggars, you have to convince yourself that you deserve it. You've put all this hard work into it. That it's not just the fact that I was luckier than someone else because that is naturally going to make us feel guilty. 45:44 Erin: Yeah. And isn't mania just a defense against, I mean, you know, one in say, Dobbs's position probably has to be manic in order to just survive on a daily basis. Like, you know, you have to believe that you're going to get out of it in order to. Not my understanding of mania. Well, Dobbs is mostly against depression. 46:04 Wes: Yeah, yeah, it's a defense. I mean, so you can think of mania in different ways. Right. It can be a full blown, you know, someone can be bipolar and have manic episodes in which they're positively psychotic. But also the manic defense is something we, we all employ to avoid feelings, even, even just feelings of sadness or maybe even feelings at all. So we stimulate ourselves, say, by looking at our phone or something like that. That's a, you know, you could arguably call that a manic defense. But I think for Dobbs, he is right that, you know, you could say, well, there's a manic element to him going and getting dressed up and shaved and all that. Instead of tending to using the money that he's getting to get himself in a better position to get a job, for instance. Although arguably looking better would help him. But I think the true manic moments in the film are when, for instance, Dobbs gets animated by this idea of getting the gold or when Howard is doing that jig. That's really the spirit of the mania in the film. And also in the moments I think of laughter, maniacal laughter, which Has a much different quality at the end of the film than earlier on. So earlier on, I guess. And Howard's laughing again. What it reflects is this both mania and depression in psychoanalytic theory are about connection to the. The object. Right. Ultimately to initially to the mother or someone in that role. In the depressive position, you are. You're beating yourself up because you want to preserve the object in idealized form. So all the complaints you have against the object are turned against yourself so that you don't have to be disappointed with the object. That's the depressive reaction. The manic reaction is to say, I am the object. I am the ideal one. I can be my own perfect mother or fate can be that. So I can get the gold out of the hill for nothing. I don't have to work. I'm not depending on anyone outside of me. I'm all powerful. I'm God. All those things go to being mother or being God or being above work. Those are all manic manifestations of the manic. 48:18 Erin: So I'm writing this down as part of my self help ritual. Be more manic. Okay, I get it. 48:24 Wes: Yeah. So mania doesn't work. Depression doesn't work. Those are both, again, these kind of impaired relationships. Relationships to the maternal. But I feel like I'm getting too psychoanalytic in this. 48:37 Erin: Okay, well, in the next part I think we'll touch on. Is it McCormick? Is that the guy that they work for in the oil derricks? I'd like to talk about him a bit maybe. And then we'll talk about other elements of the film. Cody. 48:49 Wes: Bandits. Federales. 48:51 Erin: Badges. 48:52 Wes: Cody. 48:53 Erin: Badges. Badges. And yeah, I don't want to get it wrong because the line we have in our heads I. Is not the right line. 49:02 Wes: It's the one from Blazing Saddles. Is that right? 49:04 Erin: Yes. Yeah. 49:05 Wes: Yeah. That's why I'm always confused when I see this film. And I was like, wait a minute. 49:09 Erin: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So we'll touch on all those things and more and get out of maybe the first 25 minutes of the film while we're at it. Okay, thank you. 49:17 Wes: Thank you, 49:21 Erin: and thanks to everyone who listened. For an easy way to do that, go to subtextpodcast.com patreon.com subtextpodcast please send your questions, feedback and episode requests to [email protected] if we get enough questions, we'll do some bonus Q and A shows for subscribers. You can also find us on Facebook subtextpodcast and on Twitter enjoysubtext.