Intro

0:20 Erin: or patreon.com/subtextpodcast. Hey, welcome to Part two of our discussion of the Treasure of the Sierra Madre. We talked for quite a while on gold and the contrast between gold and oil and the economic systems that the film seems to be setting up its anti capitalist bent. Perhaps we'll continue talking about that while we address some other elements of the film. But I wanted to start with the bar fight scene, really more than the work that Curtin and Dobbs do for McCormick and the Oil derrick. I'm interested in this revelatory early scene in which Dobbs and Curtin beat the crap out of.

Out of this guy who's exploited them and then take just the money that they are owed out of his wallet and throw the rest of the money down. Dobbs does and what this reveals about his character. I mean, this is an early moment we could point to and say that gold does have a corrupting influence over the course of the film. I think I'm advancing a thesis that Dobbs is not in fact corrupted, that he starts out corrupted and just sinks deeper and deeper into a system which has corrupted him. But I don't know if you have any thoughts about that and about his increased corruption over time.

1:45 Wes: I mean, Curtin, of course, is in the same position as Dobbs and is not corrupt. In fact, comes across as a bit of a Christ figure.

1:54 Erin: Yeah, I was gonna say he has a baby face.

1:56 Wes: Even gets raised from the dead.

1:57 Erin: Yeah.

1:58 Wes: And. Oh, and he has a baby face.

2:00 Erin: Yeah, he's a cutie. So he's not a baddie. Like, like Fred C. Dobbs. We know them by their faces. That's the biblical quote. No.

2:10 Wes: Anyway, yeah, we get these glimmers of hope for Dobbs and I think watching the film for the first time, you might expect that when you see him take only the money that he's owed, that's setting us up to see him redeemed ultimately, which is not what happens. So he just sinks deeper and deeper into his paranoia.

2:32 Erin: Yeah, I'm thinking too about the delight he takes in killing the bandits when they attack the train.

2:38 Wes: Yeah, I made a note of that myself. There's something childlike about it because he's like, I got three. I got three. See, Dad, I got three.

2:44 Erin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

2:45 Wes: It's cowboys and Indians.

2:47 Erin: He's a mixed bag for sure. I don't know that I would call him an interesting character because he's so childlike in this way, but I do

2:54 Wes: think that he's very repellent, I think.

2:57 Erin: Yeah, yeah. And this, this moment when he, when he throws down the money, what's keeping him in line in this instance? I mean, they've, they've beaten this guy so badly now that they figure, okay, they, they'll just have to leave town anyway. Is it the consequences of the fact that if he just took all the money then he would just be thrown in jail? He knows that there's an immediate stick, you know.

3:17 Wes: No, I mean, I think it's supposed to be, I think it's supposed to be an ethical moment for him. So there is some grain of possible good in him. The investment doesn't pay off.

3:28 Erin: Yeah, well, you know, the incident, the incident with, with McCormick though is, I think it's part of the, the, it's deeply revealing of the, of the anti capitalist spirit of the film. Right. That you put in a hard day's work and you're still going to potentially be exploited. Like somehow putting in a hard day's work is as risky. I mean, I'm not, I'm overstating this, but in a sense it's as risky as buying a lottery ticket. So long as you are not. What would be the flip side? Like sharing in the, in the value of the goods and the. You know what I mean? Like, like it's. As long as you're working for somebody else or you're getting money or money is your value or you're working for something outside of yourself or a part of the system, you're.

4:09 Wes: You're being exploited by the system.

4:11 Erin: Exactly, exactly. Yeah. You know, so I guess gold is just, you know, then when they get to the mountain and they don't, you know, they put in the hard work and they still don't get the payoff. You know, gold is just, it's sort of like at the top of the hierarchy of exploitation. Like gold is the ultimate exploiter. Yeah. So maybe gold itself is like the symbol, the symbol of capitalism, which dobbs like I said, I see him as sort of like going deeper and deeper or maybe to a higher and higher floor of the. Of the capitalist pyramid. And that's what sort of changes his character, if you will, or causes him to sink deeper or whatever the metaphor is, into this degraded state, but not necessarily because of anything inherent in him.

Though I do take your point that he's flawed from the beginning and more flawed than Curtin, though we do see this glimmer of goodness in him. But of course, we also are set up for the expectation that he's going to have a fall. When in the flop house, he says, not me, I wouldn't, you know, I would take, you know, just a good payout and then leave. I'd be able to walk away from the roulette table. Right. The vagaries of his nature. I think it's a. It's pretty realistic that he would think really highly of himself, maybe especially because he's just.

Is that before or after he throws down the rest of the money? It's got to be before, you know, but maybe he's. Maybe he's thinking, you know, I'm a good guy, I'm, you know, and the taking only what he's owed and throwing the rest down on McCormick, even though it's a little bit, you know, it's not like he's being benevolent or something, throwing the money on this guy that he's just beaten up. But maybe it's part of this idea of his self concept which then corrupts over the course of the film.

5:50 Wes: Yeah, I mean, obviously he comes to the story with a certain character and he's pretty rash, inflated in a way. He's got all these bad qualities, but he has some glimmers of hope. So the whole scene with the bar fight represents that very well because he can be very violent and so can Curtin, but he can also do the right thing. He's not completely immune to the lure of doing the right thing, but he doesn't have enough of that in him ultimately. And in particular, he's not himself a very charitable person, it turns out. So Cody, in a way, right, is in the position of the beggar when coming to camp and then being rejected by Dobbs in particular.

And Dobbs convinces the other two that they have to kill Cody. And also further, the whole idea of giving Cody's widow 25% of their money. Right. That seems absurd to him. Or when Howard is going to go off to perform an act of altruism for the Indians to save a Little boy. Dobbs thinks that's ridiculous as well. So at every point in the film where the possibility of charity or altruism comes up, Dobbs is very contemptuous of it.

7:02 Erin: Yeah, I mean, the most shocking moment is when he goes after the little boy who wants to sell him the lottery ticket. Though it could be argued that he knows that that little boy is going to grow up to murder his wife. But anyway, juries decided on that one. But no, the incident with Cody. I mean, let's go to him. I think I was. I think it was the Roger Ebert review of the film that calls him like a likable character or soft spoken or moral character or something like that. I find him so annoying. It's like, get off our mountain. Yeah, yeah, I do too.

But he's a fascinating figure because of what the slower moment, one of the slower moments of the movie reveals about him in the letter that we see from his wife. He's living the fantasy that Curtin wants in which Curtin controls the means of production, that is the fruit trees. And so Cody has a fruit orchard and a wife and child and what seems like a pretty idyllic pastoral existence outside of Dallas.

8:04 Wes: And Howard, at the very end of the movie, basically sends Cody off to bring some money and the wallet back to Cody's widow. There's a nod and wink to the effect that also she's single now and there's the orchards. So maybe you two will get together. It's not said explicitly, but it's obviously there. So Curtin potentially end up taking the place of Cody. Right.

8:29 Erin: Because Cody's been greedy himself. He's been going down to try and strike it rich in Mexico, even though it seems he has a perfectly happy situation up in Texas. You know, Curtin is filling Cody's shoes maybe, you know, better than Cody could. Because we know that Curtin has this fantasy which seems actually very beautiful. I mean, there's some typical kind of misogyny in it. But, you know, there's a. Most of what he describes is pretty beautiful. A lot of the fantasy is about wanting to be waited on hand and foot by women. That seems to be the, you know,

8:59 Wes: pervading theme for all that's in Curtin as well, I think.

9:04 Erin: So doesn't he mention something about the women and the fruit trees and the. I think there's a little too close of a connection there, but I'd have to go back and look. But anyway. Yeah, yeah. So Cody, I don't think is a great guy. He's willing to take a gamble Himself, I mean, right. He's willing continually to go down to Mexico, but he's also willing to throw his fate into the hands of these three men, lay out his options and potentially take, you know, he has a 33 and a third chance of being murdered. And he even tells them how to do it in such a way that'll relieve their consciences.

9:43 Wes: So.

9:46 Erin: Right, right. And then only because the bandits come does he get. Well, he dies anyway, but. Spoiler alert. But, yeah. Why is he there? The movie is, you know, it's a long movie. Why is he there? Why is this guy with a sort of prototypical American Western name, why does he show up? And, you know, it's just another illustration, I suppose, of what happens. You know, there would have to be somebody that would try to get in on it, that would figure out what they're doing. And he's just another sort of vignette in the illustration of the character of Dobbs thematically, too.

10:22 Wes: Yeah, he's in a position of beggar. And so we can see Dobbs turning away a beggar. It's similar to what happens on the waterfront front with, you know, I'm a bum, but I'm going to turn away the bum in the park.

10:37 Erin: Yeah, that's right. Wow.

10:39 Wes: Yeah. So it tells us quite a bit about Dobbs. And then one of the other interesting things about Cody is he's on a lot about, hey, these federales are so efficient at dealing with crime. They're judge, jury and executioner. Just immediately take the bandits out and shoot them. And Cody seems very fond of that idea. And of course, the federales are efficient. They do end up saving them, except for Cody, from the bandits chasing the bandits off. So there's something. Right. I think we have to bring the federales into it as well. And they, of course, are the representatives of law and order, which is part of the fantasy of exploitation, of course, is being outside of that.

There's something perverse about that. Well, perversion would mean kind of being at the edge of the law. So in the gray area. And that's where they are with the mining claim. Right. They don't want to stake a claim because then more people are going to come. And so. And then also staking a claim is a matter of who gets there first. And so it's a weird, weird legal area. They're on the frontier again between civilization and wilderness and between lawlessness and law. So Cody, in a way, heralds the introduction of a legal principle into the film.

But the principles of altruism and. And the League, you know, legal stuff. Or the federal.

12:02 Erin: I really like that.

12:03 Wes: Yeah.

12:04 Erin: Yeah, I really like that. Because it's, you know, it is this sort of American story, displaced in Mexico. But Cody comes in and he's like the, you know, the embodiment of, say, a town like Deadwood itself, where, you know, you have this kind of mix between. Have you seen the show? Do you. You know that. A little bit, yeah. Like. Like this sort of like. Yeah. Extreme justice on the one hand and the extreme lawlessness on the other, which is united in these mining towns in. On the frontier where, you know, they. They don't have time to wait for, you know, for someone to send out a jury duty summons or something like that. You know, you're just. They just took care of it.

12:43 Wes: Yeah. There's that great scene near the end where the Bandit is getting executed. Then he's like, hold on, can I get my sombrero? Put that on before you shoot him. Do you remember that? Yeah.

12:52 Erin: Gold hat. Yeah.

12:54 Wes: One of the few elements of comic relief, I think, in the film. Or am I right about that? There's not that much comic relief, is there, in the film?

13:02 Erin: Yeah, there's some. I mean, you know, Walter Huston, Howard, he can be, I think, pretty funny.

13:09 Wes: Yeah. That's why I paused there for a second, so I had to think about it.

13:12 Erin: Yeah, I know.

13:13 Wes: Because the manic elements in the film do involve a bit of humor.

13:17 Erin: Yeah.

13:18 Wes: And Howard himself is such a great character because he's so glib and talkative. I don't know how you talk that fast. But that, in and of itself, is a talent just to keep going like that and to make it look. I mean, if that's all scripted and he can just do that so smoothly, that's quite something.

13:34 Erin: That's such a great performance. We should talk about Curtain's death. Death scene when he's then raised from the dead. Is that something. Should we go to the Gila monster first?

13:44 Wes: Yeah. Is that how you pronounce it? Are they saying Gila monster or Gila?

13:49 Erin: I think they're saying Gila monster, but that's how I would say it. But they're saying gia, like turning.

13:56 Wes: Let's just call it the lizard. The poisonous lizard.

14:00 Erin: Yeah. So, yeah, it's usually two Ls that become a Y.

14:05 Wes: This is a scene which is supposed to illustrate the amping up, the gradual amping up of the paranoia that is afflicting Dobbs. More significantly. Yeah.

14:14 Erin: I like the very clear illustration of where his paranoia goes, which is actually entirely coiled in around itself, right? Because he presents a scenario under which he is being exploited. Someone refutes that scenario and says, you know, why would I do that? Or they say, fine, then I'll do it this way. And then he sees that as, you know, the flip side is also the exploitation, right? So whether he stays and doesn't go into town, that's exploitative. If he then goes into town, then that's also exploitative. Like there is no. There's no safe place.

And I think that the. The lizard maybe is. I mean, it's a. It's an obvious visual symbol that this lizard is coiled among the. The bags of gold. Right. But it also, I think, is a symbol of the sort of the lizards and Dobbs's mind, the poison that is lurking wherever he tries to turn. Like it's the, you know, it's the corruption of his thoughts that everything is poisoned. Everybody is a lizard. No one can be trusted. Even if they've just saved your life, you can't trust them to not kill you in the next breath, you know.

15:26 Wes: And it's guarding the gold like a little dragon in the end, right? So when the rock is lifted up, there's a dragon on the gold and. And then curtain shoots it, right? So there's something inherently poisonous about the gold and poisons. What it poisons really is the mind, as Howard puts it. I know what gold does to men's souls and I think it poisons men's souls because it instills this or it animates this fantasy, not just of getting rich, but again, it's the something for nothing fantasy or it's the thing that you can use to adorn women, connection to Mother Earth, all of that stuff. But sorry, I think I got us off track. You were bringing up this event, the

16:08 Erin: murder of Curtin, the attempted murder, what happens in that scene? So they're separated from Howard. We get this kind of like the Orchard fantasy. We get this alternative society, this alternative anti capitalist society in which, oddly enough, what must be paid is what must be repaid. Like, you know, there's this reciprocity principle at the heart of the system. And so they're forced. They force Howard to receive their generosity. He has to go back and, you know, be the. Be the beneficiary of their altruism in response to his altruism or something. And.

16:47 Wes: Yeah, so this is what the Indians are doing in the film. They're kind of the representatives of communism, or at least community.

16:53 Erin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

16:55 Wes: Howard is taken Away to be part of a community. And then you have Dobbs and Curtin who can't survive without him.

17:01 Erin: Yes. And who are left to handle his burros. Which Dobbs says that, oh he's, we've been stuck with the burros. It's always Howard's burros that are going off the track and that have to be reeled like, like the, you know, and actually I wonder, does this make sense? Because they're maybe they've become attached to Howard and they're, they're confused so they have to constantly, you know, like maybe it's not just a fantasy, but he's reading it as like, he's reading it as like the evil legacy that Howard has left them with. Like haha, my burros are gonna, you know, they're gonna screw you over.

And so it's like the exact mirror image of what the Indian society is doing which is like, you know, you've done this for us and now we must repay you lavishly because we're so grateful to you versus like, you know, something happening in among Dobbs and Curtin. Like everything is a punishment. Everything is like I'm being repaid with more punishment.

17:56 Wes: This is a really interesting point because one of the moments of what I would call mania in the film is the point where Howard is being dragged off by the Indians. So I think this is the second point in the film where Dobbs uses the word dames. So he says, yeah, and look out for those Indian dames. They tell me they're pretty smart. One of them squaws might marry you. And then Howard says maybe I'll do just that. Pick me out a good looking squaw and marry her. They're easy to dress and feed and entertain. They don't nag at you either. Anyway, so I, I guess Dob seems very excited by this idea of Howard leaving and enjoying himself with the Indians.

Although later on he's going to resent that. He's going to. Well he's off basically at the spa getting his spa treatment while we here doing all his work for him. That's the way he will later on represent it. So what's the fantasy and the, you know, so what's the manic fantasy that later on gets repaid with poison or the manic fantasy? I think it has something to do with not having to depend on Howard anymore, which they don't really know consciously that they can't. I mean it's pretty clear on the way there that they're exhausted and they can't.

There's Not a lot that they can do without Howard. They really do depend on him. And then they find that out in a. In a big way after he's taken off by the. He's taken by the Indians. But it seems to me that Dobbs thinks that Howard leaving. You know, maybe part of it is this unconscious idea. Okay, well now his gold is ours. But I think another part of it is just the idea of. Well, he resents being ordered around by Howard. He resents not having to depend on. I mean he resents having to depend on Howard. So I think this is also the part of the fantasy of the gold and something for nothing and striking it rich is just not having.

Being completely self sufficient and not having to depend on anyone. That's why Dobbs is excited. And then he quickly finds out that they did, you know, depend on Howard and that they're going to have a hard time without him. And that's when the paranoia really amps up to the point where he's willing to try to murder curtain. I don't know. Does that make sense?

20:15 Erin: Yes, it does.

20:17 Wes: So Curtin himself says this is our first day without his help. Referring to Howard. Once we get a handle on it, it'll be easy. And then very quick. Dobbs is laughing maniacally at this point and. And he has a new fantasy here of keeping all of Howard's good. He thought he was going to let us do all the sweating for him. We'll show him. And then that quickly escalates because Curtin says I'm not going to let you touch Howard's stuff, his goods, his gold and then Dobbs get off your soapbox. I was right about my suspicions. I can see through all that. There's something when Curtin's innocence and his moralism just make how Dobbs paranoia worse because he is too cynical to. Right. He says all your Sunday school talk about protecting people's goods. He's too. From his cynical standpoint, talk of conscience and morality and all the rest of it just induces more suspicion.

21:16 Erin: Yeah, I like that. I think too, you know, Curtin is. Can we argue that Curtin improves over the course of the film? Like they have sort of reverse trajectories. The exception to this I think would be when Cody comes in and they vote on whether or not to kill him. And Curtin is actually the deciding vote for the firing squad. But there's something about. What can I connect it to? Sluicing. You know, there's something about the pressure of Dobbs's evil that Seems to make Curtin better, to purify him.

21:47 Wes: Interesting.

21:48 Erin: It's an argument for gold, for going to find gold if you could find someone worse than you to go get it with.

21:54 Wes: I thought you were saying it's an argument for hanging out with evil people, because

21:59 Erin: that's part of it, too. Yeah, I know. It's a strange. It's a strange thing. It flies in the face of pretty much every other experience or illustration of this. I'm thinking too, about. I want to connect this back, and I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do it to Dobbs's optimism at the beginning of the film. Not just about his own morality, but about the fact that he kind of. He doesn't know how statistics work. In a way. I think he says something like, oh, the more money we have to. When we go out to find the gold, the more money we have to start out with, the longer we'll be able to stay out in the elements.

You know, the more provisions we'll have to stay longer to then have a better chance of striking it rich. In other words, that it's only a matter of time and they just have to last long enough. I feel there's an inherent connection here, and I'm not going to be able to make it, between his sort of optimism about time and then his, you know, this idea of not being able to get away from the roulette table, being sucked in. I mean, Curtin is the one who suggests right before the confrontation that leads to Curtin getting shot, that, okay, why don't we just split up now and then we won't have to worry about this.

And somehow Dobbs still has. Dobbs doesn't want to do that. It's like he still has an optimism, even just about the fraternity between them in a way that is fatal. If they had split up.

23:29 Wes: Well, Dobbs, I think, is paranoid about Curtin setting ambush for him on the path or following him.

23:35 Erin: Yes, yes. But he. Yeah, so it. But it's one of those things where he's, you know, the yes is the wrong answer and the no is the wrong answer. Right. Because he also makes an argument for splitting up. That seems like a pretty good argument. And Curtin's suggestion that they do that would have at least saved Curtin from being shot. I don't think it would have saved Dobbs, seeing as he doesn't last very long by himself, but he would have had half the Burrows to contend with, so maybe he would have been more fleet of foot and gotten away from the Bandits.

24:01 Wes: Right.

24:01 Erin: But it's a strange thing because it's not necessarily connected to greed so much as it is connected to optimism. For me, it seems to be. Be the case.

24:14 Wes: Optimism in the sense that. About what?

24:17 Erin: That like a risk is going to keep paying off. So long as you make the risk, all you have to do is wait it out and it'll. It'll pay off. Yeah. And even when that's disconnected from gold or like actively like feeding a slot machine, you know, even when it's just like staying together with Cody, I mean that does quickly get twisted. But like there's. I mean he meets, as you point out, he meets the situation with Howard at first with optimism that Howard is going to. That it'll be fine, that they'll take the burros. Like he keeps taking on more because he's optimistic about what his own capacity.

Even though they're useless without Howard, he's optimistic about his chances of getting out. You know what I mean? Like he just has. I don't know what it is. It's not necessarily greed, it's a separate thing. But it's related perhaps more to self regard. Maybe it just goes back to your point about mania and the idea that like he is self sufficient. Maybe the, the fact that he has

25:13 Wes: money depend on anyone or Howard and

25:15 Erin: Yeah, yeah, and the money at once makes him paranoid, but it also gives. But it's like it's a double edged sword. Right. Because it's also. Well, now I have money, so now I'm sort of impervious. Even though I'm driving myself insane with my paranoia. I'm interested in that kind of mindset because I think that the optimism is what. That's the key ingredient that makes the person go out and try to find the gold in the first place. Not so much the greed as the optimism about one's chances, which is maybe tied back to the mania point you made in the previous episode.

25:49 Wes: Yeah, the willingness to take a risk and to believe. I mean I think your word optimism captures this belief that maybe fate will smile on you and you know that you'll have the winning lottery number or something like that. And that's the way you want things to happen. You want things to happen because fate or chance is smiling on you. Not for any other reason that ties you to work or to society. All these things that hamper you, hamper your freedom. It should happen outside of that. So complete independence of all the things that bind us in the world, human relationships and the rest of it. Fate, if it smiles on Us can save us from that.

26:31 Erin: It's kind of how they get. Sorry to keep going back to this. I'm kind of fascinated by the McCormick incident, but it's kind of how they get involved with McCormick in the first place, right? They're told by the guys in the bar that McCormick is notorious for skipping out on payments. They only learn this after the fact, right when he's made the appointment to meet them in the bar with the money. That he says something like only foreigners and half baked Americans fall for his schemes or something like that. You know, the fact that they just agree to like get carted up, I mean they're literally, it's like they're like sheep getting onto this barge or cattle being, being corralled.

And at one point when they're kind of grousing, rightfully so, over the fact that they've been working 16 hours a day or something like that and haven't seen, you know, Dobbs says, I haven't seen a buck out of you yet or something like that. McCormick says, don't worry, we'll, I'll pay you. And he says, anyway, what can you do with money out here except gamble and lose it is what he says, you know, so the very fact that they put in with McCormick or that they like trust him implicitly gets them into this situation. McCormick being an exploiter and someone sort of above them who maybe doesn't have their optimism is like, well, why, what do you want with money anyway?

Because you'll just gamble and lose it. Which is exactly what they will do. But they think they won't and it's actually exactly what they do do, right? Yeah. And so, so it's like if you're in a position of authority, then you have this disdainful but absolutely correct view of the shortsightedness of the people that are just trying to like, you know, like taking multiple strides to keep up with your big ones because you're in a position of power. You know, these are the scramblers, the scrappy people that will in fact be overly optimistic and lose it all.

Whereas McCormick is like somehow smarter because he's, he's better able to exploit people and thereby has like gone up the totem pole enough that he has a slightly wider view and can see exactly what, exactly what the little guys are going to do with their money, you know, But I guess, I mean, the question is if he's right about Dobbs, the question is if he's right about Curtin and the Sorry, I'm getting us off track because I wanted to get to this scene where he does try to bump Curtin off and the fact that Curtin actually he's not only wrong about Curtin's character, but man, if there's somebody in the, in the film who's lucky or there's some mechanism that comes out, the deus ex machina that comes out and saves Curtin, it's the Indian.

28:50 Wes: It's the fact that Dobbs is a. Well, yeah, good point.

28:54 Erin: Yeah.

28:54 Wes: Indians ex machina.

28:56 Erin: Yeah, Indians X something and they take him to El Dorado there where they hang out.

29:03 Wes: Yeah, right.

29:05 Erin: No, but you were going to say Dobbs.

29:06 Wes: Dobbs is kind of a loser. So of course he can't just kill him. He's an inherently self destructive person. So he's always sowing the seeds of his own self destruction. So botching the murder is just part and parcel of that. And I think he thinks to himself, well, maybe I need to go out and do one more shot to make sure he's dead. But he doesn't end up doing that. And then in the morning thinking, well, I should go out and check to see if he. He's there. And then initially leaving, Right. Leaving things to fate, leaving things to chance because that's how he likes to do it. He wants everything to be up to fate and chance and not his own effort. But then saying, oh, okay, well, right. He ends up going back and checking.

29:48 Erin: Yep.

29:49 Wes: And then convincing himself that maybe a tiger carried him on. What the hell? What tigers? Are there tigers in Mexico? I don't.

29:57 Erin: Yeah, that's the big game that they're hunting, right? Or lions. I'm like, what, what universe is this?

30:04 Wes: Yeah, I guess Dobbs just doesn't know there aren't tigers in Mexico. But yeah, mountain lion or whatever. But there's something, I find it believable that he would mess up the murder in just the way that he did and create another avenue for his own destruction. But of course, ultimately it's the bandits who will end up doing him in.

30:26 Erin: I like this idea that he's both sowing the seeds for his own destruction and at the same time convincing himself that he is being lucky. Like I think part of the paranoia seems to be connected almost to like the Wallace Shawn character in the Princess Bride who is, you know, like he thinks he's anticipating the poison being in the other cup. So it's luck, but it's also this belief that he's smarter which is like fatal. Right. So, oh, oh, you're going to take advantage of me in this way. And they say, okay, Then we'll do it this way. Oh, no. Then you're going to take advantage of me. Me. That way the poison's gonna be in there. And really, he's not smart enough to, you know, to realize he's doing a

31:05 Wes: galaxy brain thing, as they call it.

31:06 Erin: Exactly. Yeah, yeah. And then. And in the same way, he's reading the disappearance of Curtin's body as like he's thought himself into what he thinks is a smart and lucky outcome or read of the scene, which is, oh, a tiger has come and taken his body away. And isn't that perfect for me? Because now there won't even be any bones left to betray me.

31:33 Wes: Right.

31:33 Erin: Which is like Saint.

31:34 Wes: The wizard of Oz, buddy,

31:38 Erin: but it's connected, you know, it's at the nexus of both his belief in his own luck and his belief in his own cleverness. Like, somehow, if he comes up with a good enough story, then he'll think his way into luck. It'll be true.

31:51 Wes: Yeah. At the point where he says a tiger must have dragged him off, that's another point where he starts laughing maniacally and he says, done as if by order.

32:01 Erin: Yes. Yeah, yeah.

32:02 Wes: This is our opportunity to bring up omnipotence of thought again. And the idea that just by thinking it, he made it happen. But I don't know why is Tiger meant to reveal the fact that he's ignorant or deluded or something? I don't know why the word. You know, in the script he's using the word tiger. It's really interesting.

32:25 Erin: A tiger is like, to me, it's almost a creature of fantasy. Right. It shouldn't exist somehow, even in the places where it does exist. Right.

32:34 Wes: Yeah. Right.

32:35 Erin: Yeah. I mean, we could really play this out and think, okay, like, it wears bars. It's. It's almost a manifestation of his guilt that's come to take curtain away. It's also sort of.

32:46 Wes: It's not bright.

32:48 Erin: It's exactly. I know, that's what I was thinking. No, but it's also like symmetry. Symmetry. It's not as classical. What do you want? A lion is classical, you know?

33:04 Wes: Yeah.

33:04 Erin: A tiger has designs on you. It's. A tiger is shady. It's. It's stripes market as something that's morally dubious or. Right. Like purely symbolically. I think it's a fascinating place that his mind went.

33:19 Wes: So I think before we reach the end, we should talk about what the bandits are doing. In a way, I think the lead bandit is the best actor in the movie. And it's the best role in a way. And I mean, how would I rank the roles? I mean, I think after that maybe it's Howard, although there's another character that I was thinking of. But in any case. Yeah. So what are the bandits for? I mean, plot wise, of course, they play an important, important role. But thematically I think, I guess perhaps it's about. Bandits represent lawlessness, federales represent the law.

And then the miners. Dobbs and Howard and Curtin are somewhere in between that it's unclear whether they're merely exploiters like the bandits, pure exploitation or whether they are in some sense on the side of the law or productive members of society. Right. What are they? Are they gamblers or are they investors? Maybe that's the way to put it. Are they bandits or are they something closer to civilization? So in the end, the bandits, of course, end up being their undoing. For Dobbs, they're an end to his life. And then for the others, they don't recognize the value of the gold and spill it all over the ground because it looks like sand.

And then there's that pathetic moment. I think when I. I was looking at was. I think I finished up the film last night and one of the bandits is lifting up Dobbs's trousers to look at his boots. And I didn't get it at first. I'm like, why is he lifting his trousers like that? I don't know why I was so slow on the uptake. I think when I originally saw the film years ago, I don't think I was that slow on the uptake about that. But I didn't get that what he was after was the boots until after Dobbs is dead and the two bandits are fighting over the boots.

And one has one boot and one has the other boot. Which in a way is a good illustration of how pathetic the life of exploitation is. Because it can't recognize what's valuable. It's impaired in that recognition and it always ends up being right. So the bandits can't recognize that the gold has the value that it has. And they're caught worrying about bare necessities. They're always engaged in kind of trying to remediate their own down and out ness. Right. That's one thing that they have in common with Dobbs. They're always on the edge of not having anything.

So this is not like cartel bandits. This is just like people who are poor and they. Even in the. You know, when they first. When you first encounter the bandits, they're just looking for guns. So they're not very well organized, they're not doing very well. And you know, you could think of them as a variation on the idea of the beggar. Instead of just asking for money, they're there to take it. And they start out by asking.

36:07 Erin: That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like this connection to how poverty keeps you in a state of having no foresight because all you're doing is trying to alleviate immediate physical demands, needs, you know, whatever. And so you can't, you don't have the luxury of thinking ahead. And in a way, you know, the bandits with the boots, it really explains like why, you know, first thought gambling, you know, for the hard luck. Americans in Tampico, they sort of aren't thinking ahead. They can't think past the get rich quick scheme because quick is the only speed that they can function at.

Right, right. So the. So the bandits are kind of that. That same way. But I really like this dichotomy you're drawing between gambling and investing. And I'm thinking about this actually in connection to language. One of the things I'd forgotten was how much Spanish is in the film and how it's not given any subtitles. How much I admire that choice that Huston made, how much dignity it gives to the Spanish speakers, to the. How much it takes away from the audience not being in a position of supremacy in that moment and realizing how like we are put in if we don't know Spanish, we're put in the position of Dobbs.

So we're people who are thrust into a country where we're looking for handouts, we're looking to exploit something, and yet we haven't even bothered to make the investment into the language. Right. Dobbs doesn't bother to speak it, Curtin doesn't speak it, but the head bandit speaks English and I'm interested in that. Like the language as currency.

37:41 Wes: Yeah. I was wondering, I'm like, am I. Are there supposed to be subtitles? Because I bought it through Apple tv and then I found that my Spanish was good enough to understand most of what was said, just mainly because they were speaking slowly enough and simply enough, which I think is by design, so that if you just have a bit of Spanish, then you could probably get by. Which is interesting. Yeah, I think it's interesting to put listeners either in the position of, well, you're figuring things out by context or by the sign language and events that are accompanying language, or if you have probably a bit of Spanish, which a lot of Americans are probably in that position, then you're just getting by a bit.

So you have that position of being in a foreign land or foreign place, but you can get by or you can communicate just enough. So I don't know what that says about the film except that Dobbs and Curtin and Cody, they're all, in a way, I suppose they're illegal immigrants. I don't think they have a gold mining visa. Right. They're not there on a student visa and then just trying to make an extra buck. So I think they've probably overstayed their tourist visa.

38:56 Erin: And I like how they started out. You know, I can see a version of this where he's a bum because he started out as a grad student at, you know, University of Mexico. Now he's. It's like, ah, Visions of Erin's future. Okay, yes.

39:11 Wes: I was there to study English Literature.

39:14 Erin: First mistake.

39:14 Wes: Which is why studying English Spanish.

39:16 Erin: Yeah, exactly.

39:18 Wes: Even though I was in Mexico, that's. Everyone there just speaks English all the time. So, yeah, that's how I became a bum. But this is a doctor, you know. But, you know, part of that's part of what's interesting about the film is this idea of spare fellow American or stake a fellow American to a meal. Because there's that camaraderie or it's almost like a familial relation. And we all feel it when we go abroad, right. You see an American if you're traveling alone, or at least when I was younger, that's the way it was. You know, if you're traveling alone and you run into Americans and it's immediate camaraderie and oh, look, we speak the same language.

There doesn't seem to be much of that in the film. Right. So Cody curtain running into Cody Curtin is just irritated now. He's got this guy who's gonna try to come to the camp. There's nothing about their fellow American ness that comes up. Or when Dobbs is begging, you know, he knows it's, hey, there's a fellow American. But it doesn't create the basis for any sort of social relationship. It's purely just about getting money out of.

40:26 Erin: Well, Cody does that. He uses the same tactic though, right? He's, oh, I've just. I've been dying to just see a fellow American, you know, I haven't seen an American in these parts. Right. Yeah. So in a way he's doing the same thing as would you stake a fellow American to a meal? It's like just, would you stake a fellow American to a gold mine?

40:45 Wes: Yeah, like that.

40:46 Erin: Yeah, that's. That's the more American question, frankly. But. Yeah, the.

40:51 Wes: You gotta do that in the Humphrey Bogart voice.

40:54 Erin: What'd you say? A fellow American. Yeah, I can't. I can't. I don't. I don't have a deep enough voice or a paralyzed lip. But have you seen the Bugs Bunny parody of this, by the way? I'll send it to you as soon as we're done.

41:06 Wes: Yeah, send it to me.

41:07 Erin: Yeah. Howard's ability to speak the language and to be the translator and to be the. You know, that's what sets him up as, like, he then gets to be taken into the arms of the. You know, what? We can consider the idealized system, the system that's placed at the top of the hierarchy that the film sets up. The Indian society.

41:27 Wes: Yeah. It's communitarian, at the very least.

41:28 Erin: Able to be absorbed, but. Right. And he. And he's able to be absorbed into that system, even though he's a. You know, he's acknowledging that he's kind of exploiting it, too. Right. Like, he's going to be the. What is the word he uses? Not witch doctor, but the medicine man or something, you know?

41:44 Wes: Yeah.

41:45 Erin: And he says, like, oh, it's all just fake.

41:48 Wes: Howard says, yeah, I'm going to be a medicine man, and I'll be worshiped like a high priest for telling people things they want to hear.

41:55 Erin: Yeah.

41:56 Wes: Now, and he saved the boy, but that was just Boy Scout tricks. So he's minimizing and, you know, he's behaved in a genuinely altruistic way, but he's minimizing that quality in himself and acts like he's going to be in the position of an exploiter when that's not really the role that he's playing, at least not fully. Yeah.

42:15 Erin: I'm thinking about telling people what they want to hear. That's a. Like, what is that? The flip side of gambling? Getting people to think they're gambling. Yeah. That's a good.

42:25 Wes: You're gonna be a capitalist. You need to learn what.

42:28 Erin: Yeah, but. No, but. But. But it's sanctioned by the film, so it's not right, because. So it can't be capitalist, because I truly believe that this film is shutting out anything that's kind of. I mean, maybe. Maybe I'm wrong, and maybe it's, you know, maybe it's more complicated or it's more.

42:42 Wes: Well, yeah, but. But Howard is casting it as marketing and as exploitation when it's not.

42:47 Erin: Right, Right.

42:48 Wes: But he has to think of it that way. And maybe in order to think he's in the driver's seat when, of course, it's the Indians who have hauled him off. And yes, he's going to stay in that society, but society is what binds us. And yeah, so that's part of the significance of them being in Mexico. Right. Winning freedom. They want to be outside of not just the law, but normal, typical social ties. And you can do that in a. Much, much more easily in a foreign place, which is why running into another American is potentially irritating in that context.

But what Curtin and Howard both realize, right, they realize that society and social bonds are more important in the end than gold and the freedom that it gives us. So. And the irony, of course, is that they realize that they're helped to realize that by the bandits. It's because the bandits don't know the value of the gold that Curtin and Howard can learn that the gold doesn't have any value. It's because the bandits don't know the gold has value that Curtin and Howard find out it doesn't have value, at least not in this ultimate sense that the fantasy deludes one into thinking that it has.

So it's not mommy, it's not breast. It's not the thing that's going to make you free of the world and all its social demands and the demands of work.

44:07 Erin: Well, I really like this because that means that perfectly sets up, I think, the sociability on a. The opposite trajectory of gambling. Like, it puts them actually at opposite ends of some of this, you know, equation that we're kind of setting up here or that you're.

44:24 Wes: Yeah. Instead of entrusting yourself to fate, you entrust yourself to other people.

44:28 Erin: Right. And, and, and being part of the social fabric to a certain extent means. Right. Like telling people what they want to hear. Gambling is the opposite of that. Gambling means you're always being told no, no, no. Right. Telling people what they want to hear is. Is being told, we have a winner, we have a winner, you know, over and over and over again. Right. You're massaging people's egos. You're. You're not putting them in a situation where they're like, gambling makes them into people who are constantly being disappointed. Right. You're really just a loser all the time if you're a gambler.

Right, right. And telling people what they want to hear is making someone feel like a winner. That, you know, gambling isn't interested in that and exploitation isn't interested in making someone, the exploited person, feel good about Themselves. Maybe if you're a really skilled exploiter, then then that does something for you. But then that kind of means you're in a social relationship with them. And it's not quite, you know, it's. It's a little bit different. You're not just exploiting, you're sort of massaging somebody's ego. And that kind of implies a sort of better bargain than exploitation.

But, yeah, I think it's interesting that Howard's being able to speak Spanish and being able to be absorbed into the system by telling people what they want to hear, which is something that's sort of, you know, now that I say it again, it's based in language, right? It's. It's based in the sort of linguistic element of sociability and being part of a group versus the bandits learn English so that they can better exploit the Americans that are there and take, you know, obviously it's behooved them to learn to learn English. So they are. They're learning English as a kind of antisocial behavior to try and better, to better threaten, to better exploit, to better get what they want out of people.

So one is directed towards communication in the form of giving other people what they want, and the other is expressing communication in the form of taking something from other people.

46:12 Wes: I think this is important because this is why people who are paranoid or people who view the world as exploitative, essentially exploitative, people who are that cynical have trouble because there's a grain of truth in it. So that. Right. So what does it mean to tell people what they want to hear? That could be completely manipulative and exploitative, or it could just be part of daily social relations. Of course we do that. There's a lot of white lies, or there's a lot of lies by emission as a matter of social lubricant. In order to get along with people, we can't just be open about all the negative or aggressive feelings that we're having.

So the civilization is built on the repression or suppression of unsavory thoughts and feelings, at least on the suppression of their expression. And so there's an inherent dishonesty in the social. And part of growing up and maturing means accepting that fact. And if you can't accept that, then it's just black and white. There's either everything that. All of that is just exploitation. So I must get outside of the system. Same thing on the waterfront. And every social relation, every work demand that's just being exploited by the system. And the only way to Transcend, that is to become an exploiter, which is to say to become an infant.

To regress completely and reject the whole concept of maturity and seek out. Just want to get the gold out of the mountain.

47:40 Erin: You're reminding me, too, that the social system, which involves a lot of this lubricant, these kinds of small lies and stuff like that, it's also, it's also the very system that protects us, right? We're not just being like. There's a reciprocity about that where we're not just being, say, exploited in small ways, we're also being helped in small ways. Or we're being. I'm reminded of the moment when, right, when Dobbs first suggests that they start dividing up the gold, when they start to make quite a bit of loot or produce a bit of gold. Dobbs is starting to get a little bit into.

This is the first blush, I think, of his paranoia. And he says the thing about going into town and provisions and who's gonna be taken advantage of in that scenario. And Howard says something like, well, he's old and slow, so he can't run away from the. Even though that's not true, right? We know it's not true, but it's this idea that trustworthiness means simply lacking the opportunity to betray someone. And what the social order does is reduce the opportunities that one has to betray someone. Like you. You betray people maybe on. In the small ways, but that you're.

You're kept in line in the larger constructs, right? And, and actually, like, this is what people need to. So say that, say society keeps you just metaphorically speaking, old and slow and therefore unable to betray in various ways. Right? It keeps you from, you know, the law maybe keeps you from betraying someone and thereby being trustworthy, even if it's an outside mechanism. It just keeps you in line. That isn't just that you are being exploited or your freedom is being infringed on, it's also that you are being prevented from being yourself exploited by other people and having them infringe on you.

Right? So it's like it's, it's, it's. It's a system of small sacrifices that actually are supposed to protect you versus being, as you're saying, like, totally outside that, in which case all bets are off. Then you're. Then it's like open season. And sure, you could exploit anybody, but that also means that you could just be hacked to death by a machete and that's the end of it. Right? So, yeah, sorry, Maybe that's not a profound realization. I'm just resting.

49:55 Wes: No, no, that's good. Now I think that's important because you're bringing up this trade off between the enforcements of rights, you know. Right. So all of our. And this is John Stuart Mill puts us very well in on liberty is everything that we call a right depends on infringement, on the liberty of others. I have a right to not be murdered. But that means you're not allowed to murder me, which is pretty frustrating sometimes.

50:23 Erin: You're damn right. No.

50:26 Wes: So that's the trade off at work here. But do we want to say anything, anything else before we wrap up? I think we alluded a little bit to that wonderful ending where Howard is maniacally laughing about losing the gold. And this is really. I said this is a different maniacally. Yes, but it's no longer mania because it's about accepting a loss. Mania denies the loss, the possibility of loss. And the loss here is really about revelation that they have what they need, that they don't need the gold and that they're free of that.

51:05 Erin: That's right. Curtin does say that he hasn't lost anything, but Curtin doesn't know that time is money. I'm not so bad off as I was before. I'm just out the money for the supplies or whatever.

51:17 Wes: Right, right, right.

51:19 Erin: Meanwhile, they've been out there for how many months? Anyway?

51:24 Wes: Yeah, I wouldn't want to go into. Into business with Curtin.

51:28 Erin: Well, it's really just all about the friendships you make along the way. But

51:34 Wes: if I have to choose between him and Dobbs. Sure.

51:36 Erin: Yeah. I like the windstorm. I think that would be called a haboob, maybe appropriately for the theme of the mountain woman. Yes. H A B O O B. I see them a little bit. I've seen them around here, around these here parts because I'm a westerner and see a lot of wounded. This is quite true, actually. You see a lot of wounded landscapes around here. You see a lot of abandoned mines and things that you know. Yeah. And it's a shame because forests grow back but not blasted out mountains.

52:07 Wes: Right.

52:07 Erin: But anyway, yeah, the dust storm and the idea that unto dust the gold dust shall return as gold dust WOMAN plays in the ending credits. It's a beautiful moment because of the. What's kind of the genius of black and white cinematography. Right. Because it really is just. Just like grayscale, just like everything else, you know, it's all just a gradient and it really doesn't even. It doesn't glimmer. It doesn't anything. Right. And so the luster.

52:41 Wes: We can't see. We can't see the color gold in the film. Yeah.

52:44 Erin: Right. Yeah.

52:46 Wes: Anyway, yeah. So I thought we could maybe try to play a little bit of this to close it out. Unless you have anything else.

52:54 Erin: No.

52:55 Wes: Yeah.

52:55 Erin: A bit of what? Hopefully not the score. The worst score of all time.

53:00 Wes: No, no, just some of this interaction between Curtin and Howard at the end when they realize they've lost the gold. Or fate or nature, whatever you prefer. But whoever. Whatever blit is certainly had a sense of humor. The gold has gone back to where we found it. This is worth 10 months of suffering and labor, this joke is. So I think that's a fitting way to end. All right, well, that was fun. Thank you.

53:43 Erin: Thank you. And thanks to everyone who listened. For an easy way to do that, go to subtextpodcast.com patreon.com subtextpodcast please send your questions, feedback and episode requests to [email protected] if we get enough questions, we'll do some bonus Q and A shows for subscribers. You can also find us on Facebook subtextpodcast and on Twitter enjoysubtext.