Saturday, December 23, 2006
Quantrill's Raid
Did anybody catch that Quantrill's Raid reference between Rooster and LaBoeuf? Rooster would have rode against our Free Staters -- does that color his perspective on race at all? Do Lawrence natives have an opinion on this? Also, Rooster was angry when LaBoeuf claimed women and children were killed, which historically, we've sinced learned they weren't.
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7 comments:
Oh yeah! That was awesome. Was the idea that you can be a pro-slavery conservative and still have your heart in the right place? a la Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Pat Buchanan, Tom DeLay, Trent Lott apologists. Hehe.
Maybe it was meant to show something dark in his past to add to his enigma (there seems to be a lot of speculation in the film about his background and what sorts of experiences made him who he is .. like the what-brought-him-to-this-place question at the heart of "Exotica.")
I wondered if the average American filmgoer would even know what Quantrill's raid was. Maybe it's something the filmmakers thought they could throw in for atmosphere without it being scrutinized too much. Maybe it was mentioned in the book, and it got thrown in the movie without much thought.
That's what I wondered, too: Would people know what they were talking about?
Didn't it show that he was a kind of mercenary?
Good point, Ben. A hired gun, even though we know he has some scruples. He's basically a bounty hunter.
The way Rooster spoke of Quantrill seemed to think he thought highly of him.
And I don't think the average filmgoer would know the context. I didn't know anything about it until "Ride with the Devil," and I didn't know the full story until I lived in Kansas.
But did Rooster think highly of Quantrill because he thought Quantrill got a bad rap, or did Rooster always think the best of whoever signed his checks?
More evidence that Rooster is a Hemingway hero. Reminds me of the Hemingway hero in the short story "Fifty Grand" -- you'd really dislike him in real life, but you pull for him within the context of the story.
Maybe it's like the tradition of the early Clint Eastwood westerns -- as Ben suggests, if you're a mercenary, that's whose side you're on.
Coincidentally, my uncle just finished a book on Missouri-Kansas battles pre-Civil War, and he says it took Missouri's side and defended Quantrill's actions. Thus our own family had a Christmas Day dinner skirmish that raged around the table (my grandparents serious Mayflower types) that ended with my uncle yelling to my grandmother, "Barb, you were probably a Southerner in a past life!"
Sacrilege!
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