Long Live Clint Eastwood

Ok, back when we watched Stagecoach I wasn’t a big fan of westerns. John Wayne just for some reason wasn’t doing it for me. But after watching High Plains Drifter and seeing Clint Eastwood completely transform the way we think of westerns and heroes of the frontier, I have to say that I am not only entertained but compelled by this genre of film.

Before the film began, some of the concepts regarding revisionist westerns both in cinema and overall ideology were brought to our attention. As professor McRae was giving us this information, I found it interesting because earlier that same day in my Cormac McCarthy class professor Parsons was talking about the same ideas relating to McCarthy’s novel Blood Meridian. Not only were the ideas similar but I quickly found that the imagery of the film matched the imagery of the novel. I had my book down on my desk when the opening image of High Plains Drifter came on and was shocked to see that the cover of Blood Meridian was so similar it could have been taken from that screenshot (the horizontal lines of the sky along with the rocky ground on the bottom).

From that point on, I was fascinated by this connection not only between the two classes but between both the novel Blood Meridian and the film High Plains Drifter. Blood Meridian is a western novel that takes place in the mid 1800’s. The story is about a group of men (mixed races but mostly white) that travel across the country scalping both Indians and Mexicans, destroying towns as they go. As Barcley Owens claims, Blood Meridian can be read as in some sense a reaction to the Vietnam War, a time that divides history, making people aware that the heroism of the frontier was a myth. This subject is exactly what High Plains Drifter deals with. In a much less violent and bloody way (I’m actually now interested in seeing Soldier Blue because that seems a lot like Meridian), Clint Eastwood’s character The Stranger is perfectly representative of the members of Glanton’s gang in Blood Meridian. The first scene of High Plains Drifter, we see The Stranger enter a town, eventually killing men and raping a woman. This is almost exactly what happens throughout Blood Meridian and clearly reflects what people were seeing in their own lives. Vietnam allowed people to see the brutal and inhuman actions of American soldiers, leading people to believe that the nationalism and heroism was always only a myth. Blood Meridian and High Plains Drifter are also interestingly connected by their protagonists. They both share an ambiguity about them, clearly represented in the names that each character has. The Stranger is the main character in High Plains Drifter while The Kid is the main character of Blood Meridian.

Moving away from Blood Meridian, we can specifically look at High Plains Drifter for its connections to the Vietnam War and how these connections clashed with John Wayne’s interpretation of the west. Like I said before, when we watched Stagecoach, I didn’t like John Wayne. There was something about him that just screamed fake to me. Not only that, I didn’t find Wayne likeable. I actually found Clint Eastwood’s character more appealing because he seemed like a “real” and original character. There was something about the way Clint Eastwood looked in that movie that screamed not “fake” but “badass”.

I couldn’t believe how much control he had over the townspeople. One of the most memorable scenes of the film for me was when he had the townspeople pain all of their buildings red as he changes their sign from “Lago” to “Hell”. The fact that the film’s setting is renamed “Hell” could very well be connected to our new perception of what American conquest actually is as a result of us being in the Vietnam War. Rather than us seeing a classic and nostalgic western setting that we would see in a John Wayne film, we are seeing a corrupt and “evil” town. When The Stranger first steps into Lago, one could see this as Eastwood’s interpretation of Americans entering Vietnam, eventually killing innocent people and “painting the towns red”.

I really enjoyed what Eastwood did with the western film genre in High Plains Drifter. It is such a huge change from the corny, unrealistic, and frankly false image of the western that John Wayne represented. I recently saw Gran Torino in theatres and I wish I had seen these films and had this discussion before watching it. I can now see that Eastwood has continued to push the way we see the western genre and the classic western hero. He makes as big of a leap with Gran Torino as he did with High Plains Drifter by placing this classic idea and iconic character in a contemporary rural setting which deals with gang violence.

One thing that I really admire about Clint Eastwood is his ability to still be able to make these films even though he is pushing 80 years old. In the article it mentioned that as John Wayne got older, he was no longer able to fulfill his role. John Wayne’s image and iconic character began to suffer and die out with age. Clint Eastwood, now 78, hasn’t lost his edge as he points rifles at kids saying in that everlasting raspy voice, “Get off my lawn.”