"All I Can See Is the Flags": "Fort Apache" and the Visibility of History
1988; University of Texas Press; Volume: 27; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/1225023
ISSN1527-2087
Autores Tópico(s)Race, History, and American Society
ResumoIn Genre and History: Fort Apache and Liberty Valance, Douglas Pye asserts that genre Western remains vital by being unreflective-the condition of its viability is not to know present.' John Ford's films are interesting in this context precisely because certain among them address with varying degrees of explicitness question, How did that past become this present?2 In case of Fort Apache, this entails historicising generic West (by reference to Civil War) in such way that Fort Apache community is seen as a progressive response to historical situation-not sentimental dream but social necessity. And yet, the legend of Thursday and his regiment with which film concludes effectively de-historicises event, creating a static, timeless image of an individual hero which denudes event of its meaning and suppresses human loss and potential blame. As Pye characterizes interpretive issue: the real crux of Fort Apache is, of course, ending. The problem can be simply located: Captain-now Colonel-York (John Wayne), who in bulk of film has stood for values almost opposite to those of Thursday, now not only endorses legend of Thursday's charge which has been created in East, but appears in mannerisms and in dress to have taken on his identity. Yet this volte face seems to be presented without critical distance or irony, just as rhetoric of regimental continuity seems to be firmly endorsed.3 Such troubled and troubling appraisals of film and its conclusion are commonplace of Ford criticism (cf., McBride and Wilmington, Wood, Gallagher, and Stowell).4 They are also in crucial respects incomplete or inaccurate, as following remarks will demonstrate by comparing film's closing scenes to departure scene alluded to in my title. Whether or not ending involves an abrupt volte face certainly depends on sense we have of issues and images which lead up to it. If brief passage of few shots, ostensibly depicting simple action-men leaving, women watching-is already embroiled in host of visual and narrative ironies, then simplicity of film's concluding scenes cannot be quite so easily assumed. More specifically, I will focus on three metaphoric themes knotted together in Mrs. Collingwood's remark about seeing flags-themes of distance, sight, and institutional loyalty-all of which bear in turn on our construal of film's closing moments. I will then briefly consider institutional implications of such reading. To anticipate, I will claim that
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