Why John Wayne walked away

 

From the poster for The Searchers 

At the end of The Searchers, Ethan Edwards, the character played by John Wayne, after seven or more years of searching, finally returns to what remains of his family carrying the kidnapped niece he has just “rescued” from the Indians, and does a very strange thing. Here is the climax of the film, the searched-for object found. He brings her to the doorway, but then walks away. He doesn’t set foot inside the house.  

Why does he walk away? In that moment, that gesture, for better or worse, Ford has created a myth, a clash of cultures, an undoubted (if uncomfortable) achievement of film-making. There are of course many interpretation of why he walks away. For me, that walking away represents the sheer impossibility of his character’s homophobia, racism, sexism, and belief in violence co-existing in an (equally mythic) world of communities and families, the “everyday” that we, the viewers, believe we inhabit.

After watching The Searchers, the first Western I had seen for several years, I couldn’t stop thinking about the character played by John Wayne.

Like most boys of my generation, I grew up saturated by Westerns: books, films, games, actors. If it wasn’t a Western movie, it was a Western TV series. There were series for kids (The Lone Ranger), series for adults (The Virginian, Rawhide) quite apart from individual Western movies, of which there must be thousands. John Wayne is simply the tip of the iceberg; most of these artefacts displayed the culture of the Western, the myth of a new America, the image of the frontier, the dream of self-sufficiency assisted by a bit of honest hand-fighting and the occasional use of the gun.  

After an upbringing in which the Western was a such component of everyday life, so taken for granted, it is very difficult to stand back from such a barrage of propaganda and to realise how odd it all was. For John Wayne to learn to be an actor in those days, one key requirement was to learn to ride a horse; I didn’t realise that such a skill, essential in Western world, had to be learned.  

Seeing another western movie after several years made it apparent how peculiar that world was. I remember reading chivalric epics such as the Morte D’Arthur to my children when they were young, and how they fell about laughing at the ludicrousness of the situations that clearly did not create mirth when first written: the very title “Sir Beaumains”, for example, could be the name of a pantomime character today, but clearly was a perfectly acceptable name when Malory was writing.  

What struck me about The Searchers not the landscape, or the shooting, or even the cowboys versus Indians, all part of the stock Western ethose, but the deeply unpleasant and uncivilised character of John Wayne in all his unredeemed misanthropy. He spends the whole movie as if afflicted by a personal religious quest; not for him the trivia of a wedding party, or a social event. Like Captain Ahab in Moby-Dick, he is obsessed. Like Ahab, he is a monster. But unlike Ahab, Wayne is the hero of the film. We are expected to admire, or at least to accept, his racism, sexism and inability to form any kind of equal relationship with others. For director John Ford, this is the subject of the movie. It’s not about the Indians (although, inevitably, they come off worse): it’s about Wayne’s monomaniacal quest, which, for all I know, is probably still underway today.  

I’m not the only one to be disturbed by the character of Wayne; let’s see what other critics make of him. Gary Will (yes, the historian who writes about Abraham Lincoln and George Washington), in his John Wayne: The Politics of Celebrity (1997), looks a good place to start. Wills is accurate about what Wayne stood for:  

Wayne […] stood for an America people felt was disappearing or had disappeared, for a time “when men were men”. [p14]  

Anecdotes of John Ford’s drinking sessions seem to suggest that Ford himself believed he was one of those men out of their time. Wills gets to the heart of The Searchers by describing that very moment when Wayne walks out at the end:  

Wayne’s deep fires of revenge burn so fiercely through the picture that extinguishing them in the final scene looks contrived. [p17] 

Not so much contrived as impossible to believe in the context of the traditional white settler, love and marriage narrative of the average Western. Wayne is doomed at the end of The Searchers to wander the world retelling his story, like the Ancient Mariner. And, just as I would do if I ever encountered the Ancient Mariner, I would give Wayne a wide berth.

Fantasizing about our ancestors

 

I haven’t finished Ancestors, by Professor Alice Roberts (the word “professor” appears with the author’s name on the cover)  – this is a long book, around 133,000 words, for a popular science book - but I wouldn’t complain if the text justified the length. Sadly, from the first few chapters, I don’t think I have the interest to continue. 

Choice of subject

Archaeology, as the study of prehistory, without written records, is often of necessity based around inferring a background from the sometimes very partial evidence. But if that evidence is very sparse, it may not be possible to reach any reasonable conclusion. What should we do in this case? Speculate wildly, knowing there is no way to refute our ideas, or simply refrain from making inferences in the absence of more concrete data? 

On the basis of the first two chapters, it would seem that the seven subjects chosen in this book are finds of very early, palaeolithic, remains, a period that is challenging for researchers because of the lack of evidence in and around the sites. Often, there is not much that can be stated with certainty; yet the author is not short of ideas. However fascinating Roberts might find these excavations, it is very unsatisfying to this reader to be presented with so much speculation. The “Red Lady” is a case in point. This collection of human bones found in a Welsh cave included the so-called Red Lady,  the subject of much unwarranted fantasizing by the Reverend William Buckland, who studied the bones during the 1820s. Subsequent examination suggested the bones were of a male rather than female, but Roberts continues to refer to the bones by their romanticized title. You can’t help thinking that, potentially, the real subject matter is the dreams and assumptions that researchers assign to their finds. To study this would require the author to be more aware of her own daydreams, but instead of following this strand, she indulges in further speculation that clearly has little evidence behind it: in the absence of evidence, nobody can say she is wrong.  What researchers imagine (and what popular science authors dream) tells you more about them than about the remains, but this does not seem to be investigated by Roberts. 

Did the Neanderthals bury their dead? There is no general agreement about this, it seems:

While all the evidence from Sima de los Huesos … is inconclusive, there are other sites that suggest at least one other human species did practise burial. The debate – you won’t be surprised to learn – is far from settled, but there are a handful of discoveries … that suggest that Neanderthals themselves may hav e buried their dead. [p98]

We then get 20 pages on one excavation, which seems to suggest (according to the excavator) that it was a Neanderthal burial. But even if this was an example of a burial, it is clear that “[burial] certainly wasn’t the norm. Very ancient burials are few and far between – sporadic. Only a small number of people were ever treated in this way when they died.” That looks to me like stating the position four times over. And what conclusion should we draw? The author suggests that now we should think of the Neanderthals “less like unfeeling brutes. More like cousins”.

You might think this an unwarranted interjection of modern ideas about what burial means, based on our own preconceptions, but the author reassures us. It’s OK, states one of the research team, as long as we are looking at each site with “the utmost rigour and with as few preconceptions as possible”.

If I felt the author had been more aware of her own preconceptions, it might have made a more interesting book. Plus, of course, taking a red pen to the many unnecessary words – for example, you don’t examine remains, you “painstakingly comb through the remains” (p110) .  

Fantasizing

The chapter on the Red Lady ends with two pages of fantasy, imagining how the “Red Lady” might have got into the cave:

“We can imagine the day of his burial. He could have been a murderer, or murdered. But let’s imagine him as a fallen hero.” 

This is followed by three pages of pure imaginative reverie. Yet, elsehwere, the author warns us against too much speculation: “Such tantalising suggestions of grave good and perhaps even stones placed as grave markers. But it’s so important not to let the imagination run wild”. [p113] 

When I read a popular science book, I like to be told about what has been discovered. I’m perfectly happy with uncertainty, but above a certain level, uncertainty just leaves me (the typical general reader) dissatisfied. 

Compared to this book, I found other popular science authors such as Francis Pryor (for archaeology) and Steve Jones (for evolution and genetics) far more informative and readable. And less idly speculative.

The Voyage of the Beagle: the best popular science book ever?

 

Darwin in 1840, by George Richmond (Down House)

The Voyage of the Beagle might not be the first ever popular science book, but it certainly has a claim to be the first significant example, and today remains one of the best popular science books ever written. Even today, with thousands of popular science books on the market, Darwin’s account compares very favourably. It’s interesting to examine why that should be. 

By “popular science” is meant to convey scientific thinking in a format that non-specialists can follow. It means more than simply exposition. It certainly does not mean a textbook, which starts from the premise that the author knows but the reader does not.

The popular science genre

There are examples of earlier science books for the general reader, but the genre seems to have emerged during the 19th century; according to Wikipedia, the earliest popular science book was Mary Somerville’s On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences (1834), probably best known today because Whewell created the term “scientist” in a review of this book. 

Today, popular science is a well-established component of trade publishing. For some authors, their academic reputation has not suffered as a result of their popular writing (Steven Jay Gould and Douglas Hofstadter spring to mind). Wikipedia contains a list of no fewer than 200 popular science authors, the majority of them still alive today. Its popularity, it would seem, has never been greater. But there is one great difference between science today and in Darwin’s time: the growth of the science academy has transformed and professionalized the study of science, and in many areas limited or removed the role of the amateur. Today, there is often an expectation that science will be practised (or written about) only by professionals, and this affects the tone and style of writing science for the common reader. Here is Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College London, and well-established popular science writer, writing about evolution and religion: 

Today’s biology emphasises how little relevance the subject has to the issues so often and so tediously discussed by non-biologists. [Darwin’s Island, 2009, Preface] 

In other words, non-scientists should keep out of this discussion: biology is for (professional) biologists only. Cat Jarman, writing about genetics and archaeology, uses the pronoun “we” to mean, not all of us, but professional archaeologists, not including the reader: 

… the new isotopic and genetic evidence on migration has forced us to rethink the interpretation of these burials … The remarkable shift in the way we are learning from the past and the scientific evidence … is having a tremendous impact.  [Cat Jarman, River Kings, 2021, pp 150-152] 

There is a very different feel when we travel with Darwin on the Beagle: we feel we are sharing his discovery as he sees new unexplained rock structures, new evidence of extinct animals. We don’t feel that he knows, and we do not. Crucially, we often don’t know what we are going to find: this is true of people, plants, animals, and rocks. 

Darwin avoids lecturing by sharing his thinking. Although for each new landing, Darwin is happy to present what is already known on a topic, as a result of his background reading, he soon moves on to his hypothesis, which he shares with us: not to tell us that he knows and we don’t, but to say “I think this might be the cause … what do you think?” In other words, he respects the reader. We all notice what is around us when we travel, and we make observations, but not quite as incisively as Darwin. The most commonplace objects and events start him thinking. For example, he is crossing the Cordillera Mountains between modern-day Peru and Argentina, and then, presumably during a rest halt, notices the mule train carrying their luggage: 

In a troop each animal carries on a level road, a cargo weighing 416 pounds (more than 29 stone), but in a mountainous country 100 pounds less; yet with what delicate slim limbs, without any proportional bulk of muscle, these animals support so great a burden! The mule always appears to me a most surprising animal. That a hybrid should possess more reason, memory, obstinacy, social affection, powers of muscular endurance, and length of life, than either of its parents, seems to indicate that art has here outdone nature. [The Voyage of the Beagle, 2nd edition, chapter 15]. 

You can almost see Darwin’s thought processes in action; and you feel encouraged to look, and to think, for yourself. When he writes about “the upraised recent shells along more than 2,000 miles on the western coast” of Latin America, you suddenly think, yes, of course, that’s how to demonstrate earth movement on a large scale. Unlike much other popular science writing, Darwin’s Voyage makes you want to go out and to look for yourself. I’d love to know how many people became scientists as a result of reading Darwin’s account of his epic journey. 

Is the Voyage just a popular account, a travelogue? It’s certainly not a fully-fledged scientific treatise; it is an account of a voyage, with, afterwards, separate specialist publications examining the various finds from the expedition. Nonetheless, I bet that for every reader of the books about the specialist findings, there are a hundred readers of this book. And, unlike the specialist accounts, Darwin gives us a gloriously joined-up account. He pulls everything together, displays the evidence he has found, gives his interpretation, but appears to make you think that your opinion is valued.  You can disagree.

Darwin the observer

For Darwin, his focus on science does not prevent him responding to non-scientific events. During the voyage, he encounters people and places that he responds to, quite openly. In Brazil, he is horrified by the evidence of slavery: 

On the 19th of August we finally left the shores of Brazil. I thank God, I shall never again visit a slave-country. To this day, if I hear a distant scream, it recalls with painful vividness my feelings, when passing a house near Pernambuco … [The Voyage of the Beagle, 2nd edition, chapter 21]

Some of his attitudes are of course out-dated; in Mauritius he praises the English-built roads and compares them unfavourably with the earlier French colonial infrastructure (and you suspect not without a little national pride). He takes a great dislike to everyone in New Zealand. But we can make allowances for what appears as prejudice to modern eyes. Certainly, Darwin’s five-year journey was not value-free, whatever Steve Jones claims: 

As Darwin put it in The Descent of Man, ‘We are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with the truth as far as our reason allows us to discover it.’ Science can do that, and no more.  [Steve Jones, Darwin’s Island, preface] 

For me, the unfortunate distinction between “the truth” and everything else is what science has lost in the last hundred or so years. For me, the Voyage represents science at its best: thinking, questioning, no doubt sometimes wrong, but always observing. The experience of reading the Voyage is to share one scientist’s inquisitive examination of everything he sees. Right at the end of the book, Darwin asks himself if he would recommend a similar journey to anyone: “If a person asked my advice before undertaking a long voyage, my answer would depend upon his possessing a decided taste for some branch of knowledge, which could by this means be advanced.” For me, the magic of Darwin is the distinction between his taste for knowledge, and his openness to discovery of things he did not know when he set out: genuine scientific enquiry, and genuine inquisitiveness.

A quick tour of museums in the Netherlands

 

The Depot Boijmans van Beuningen: ostentatious  example of conspicuous consumption

Three days, three art galleries in the Netherlands. The impression from two out of three of them was excellent; one was very disappointing.

The Hague Kunstmuseum, courtyard and cafe

First, the successes. The Kunstmuseum in The Hague was a revelation: a glorious 1930s design by H P Berlage. Having visited The Hague a couple of times before, I am astonished that I didn’t see this gallery, but perhaps it has something to do with the museum’s title: until 2019 it was called the “Gemeentemuseum”, which doesn’t convey (to me) what the museum actually is: a collection of art. It is a joy to wander round this purpose-built gallery, with concealed ceiling lights and tile decorations throughout. Although the museum is vast, there are small, intimate exhibition spaces as well. The exhibition we saw (Josef and Anni Albers) was well presented, and the café (located in courtyard, formerly open to the elements, now enclosed) was a dream.

The Museum de Lakenhal (that is, “cloth museum”  in Leiden was another great success. Here was the best kind of local collection, a museum that showed artists with a connection to Leiden, but most of all to show the history of the cloth industry in Leiden. Where better than the building where the cloth was authenticated as genuine before being sold? Paintings took up less than half the exhibition space; the rest of the vast building showed cloth-making details, something about the siege of Leiden, and some fascinating early 20th-century art. This museum had been closed for some years for refurbishment; it was worth the wait.  

It is a good idea that art galleries are periodically refurbished; but what do you do with a museum during the building works? The Rotterdam Boijmans Van Beuningen museum is an example of how not to do it. Alongside the main building is a highly impressive egg-shaped building covered in reflective mirroring. This building, the Depot, we are told, is the future of museums. For the first time ever, the museum store was being opened to the public. This store, comprising five floors, with a restaurant at the top and a roof garden above, is big enough, we are told, to hold all the museum’s artworks – no fewer than 151,000 objects. For 20 Euros, we can buy a ticket to see the store. But what do we see? There are precisely 14 pictures on display with captions. To view these, you queue and are admitted a few at a time to the single room with these works on display.

This room has the 14 paintings on display from the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen (not, admittedly, just from the back, but if the pictures were against the wall, you could show more).

I quite understand why museums need to close. But to charge €20 to see 14 paintings seems to me a not very fair transaction. Almost alongside this room, which had a queue of visitors waiting patiently for admission, there was a much larger room that was completely empty. It would have been possible to show not 14 but 140 paintings on the walls of this room, complete with captions. Why was this not done?

To be fair, the museum website states quite clearly that the highlights are just 14 pictures. But there is no explanation why only 14 are shown. Worse, an accompanying wall display explains that the presentation of just 14 paintings was “made possible” by a sponsor. Is the display of works of art not what a gallery is for? Does it require a sponsor to show 14 works? 

The astonishing explanation for the 14 paintings that were on display

Had the museum not used “crystal easels”, many more paintings could have been displayed in the one room. On another floor, there was a vast empty room, which could have held, in my estimate, ten times as many paintings. In other words, it was clearly not lack of space to display the pictures. The impression overall of the depot was that space was not at a premium; there was a vast atrium through the centre of the building. No expense had been spared in building the depot.

What made things worse was that dotted around the store were many objects that had been clearly put on display, but without any information about the object. There was a complete lack of the kind of information I would expect from a gallery – who created this artwork? When was it done? – and instead, a smug presentation that made it clear that the museum knows what it is doing, even when it doesn’t. 

Objects displayed to demonstrate the museum's display skills, but not, it seems to tell us anything about what they are

To give a further example. One of the multimedia displays comprised several large numbers, which on closer examination were totals from a search of the  collection’s digital catalogue. By interrogating the catalogue, the display proudly told us, we can see how many objects in the collection have no image. Or have no metadata. In other words, the online catalogue is not complete – yet this is presented as a kind of achievement, rather than a failure. 

Similarly, the museum had a room dedicated to a project based around slavery. This comprised one picture, of a 19th century sugar plantation in Brazil, that had been annotated, like this:

This is an example of labour, just in case you hadn't noticed

There were similar captions for “slavery”. The aim seemed to emphasise to the visitor that the museum was fully aware of the issues raised by some of its collection, and had taken action. Now we all know this represents labour, so there is nothing more to worry about.

In summary, I would give The Hague Kunstmuseum and De Lakenhal 10/10; The Rotterdam Boijmans van Beuningen, 0/10, for a patronizing and unwelcoming attitude to its visitors.