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ACF #36: Stagecoach
Prof. John Marini and I continue our series on John Ford and the Western. And today we come recommended by Powerline! Glad to see the gentlemen there are friends of the show and we’re looking forward to having them on the podcast! Today, we deal with the movie that made John Wayne a star and made the Western an art form. Ford seems to have thought it both possible and necessary to establish a national form of poetry–and, for two generations, the Western really was that. Ford’s idea was to tell the story of America’s past in a heroic way–his art was essentially anti-Progressive. Things and people past were not, in his eyes, worse, essentially, than things and people present or future. Instead, going back to the origins of civilization, the essential character of man and city emerge in his movies, and in a way that defends and criticizes civilization at the same time.
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Our previous John Ford podcasts: The Searchers and Liberty Valance.
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Good point. It explains a lot about the way Westerns and John Wayne are deprecated by Progressives.
Hi Titus. Scott Johnson at Power Line has nice things to say about your series of discussions with Prof Marini.
Yes, I’m happy to say he’s a friend of the show. It’s really both helpful & gratifying, each time I see we’re not alone in trying to get this thing done, curating the culture, recovering art that’s been foolishly forgotten.
Just off the bat, if the past had grandeur, heroes irreducible to class or social pressures, the present isn’t entirely a Progress…