Josey Wales, Shane, Jed Cooper, the Man with No Name, the Stranger, Chris Adams, Vin Tanner, Preacher, Ethan Edwards, Harmonica, William Munney, Will Kane, Django, Donald Trump.
Donald Trump?
In a list of some of the top Western movie anti-heroes (most of them played by Clint Eastwood it seems) one would not expect to see Donald Trump’s name. In fact, even for supporters of Trump, the comparison is apt to bring at the very least a smile of amusement to their face.
It would be hard to confuse, for instance, the reticent and almost sullen Josey Wales or the unbragging, yet unflinchingly confident Man with No Name, with the brash and cocky Trump who is as at home in the spotlight as he is at Mar-a-Lago. But over on conservative news site Breitbart, Dinesh D’Souza, a right-wing political commentator and film maker who hails originally from India, that is exactly the comparison he is making as he promotes his upcoming movie, Vindicating Trump, due out in theaters Sept. 27.
He makes a good comparison of the two—the standard Western plot structure and the drama unfolding in America today—but we’ll let you be the judge how accurately D’Souza casts Trump as today’s real-life anti-hero.
Here are some quotes and a rundown from the Breitbart story:
“Before I came to America, I had no direct familiarity with Americans or American culture. My knowledge was largely through the lens of movies, most commonly Westerns. I saw a whole bunch of them, and my favorites include For a Few Dollars More starring Clint Eastwood and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance starring Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne. The Western is, above all, a morality tale and, as such, it provides a remarkably clear and insightful way to look at Donald Trump and our current crisis.”
He then goes on to say In a typical Western, the story begins with a peaceful small town, where life is simple, and the sheriff, though kind-hearted and non-violent, maintains order. However, this harmony is shattered when violent gangsters arrive, taking control of the town and terrorizing its people. The sheriff is powerless against them, and the town falls into fear and chaos. Just when it seems hopeless, a mysterious lone rider appears. Although rough and misunderstood by the townspeople, the gangsters immediately recognize him as a serious threat, someone with the strength and power to challenge them.
“The gangsters put him to the test, and he quickly shows that despite his evident circumspection, he has no intention of submitting to their authority. So, they resolve to destroy him in one way or another. They will stop at nothing. They try to buy him off, to intimidate him, to turn the people of the town against him, even to beat him up and kill him.
But the man proves uncommonly resilient. He takes some heavy blows, but he doesn’t go down for good. He is persistent…eventually there is the great shootout…The gangsters have rigged the odds. Despite their superiority in firepower, they are determined to cheat.
“…in the end, through sheer mastery of the arts of combat, he defeats the gangsters.
“That’s fiction, the way we like it. But it also seems to be reality in America today. America, after all, is Shinbone. The Left and the Democrats—they are the gangster regime that takes over the town. The old sheriff represents the old Republican establishment, well-meaning but utterly incapable of facing the gangster threat. And the man who comes over the mountain, and leaves in the end—that’s Trump. We are living out today the script of a classic Western, and the only suspense is to see how this story will end.”
How the story will end indeed. We are all waiting to see that.
And while I’d much rather watch a classic Western than another debate, I will say this: If Trump strolls into the next debate (if there is one) strapped with a pair of Colt Single-Action Army revolvers on his sides, draped in a serape, a cigarillo dangling from his lips, having not shaved in several days so he looks more like his son, Don Jr. (a la Junior’s Field Ethos), and then tells Kamala he’s her “huckleberry” or “let’s play for blood,” then that is one debate that will be a true box office hit for every American.
