Tonight's movie was "Texas Rangers Ride Again" (1940), another oldie but goodie from my recently acquired Western 10-Pack. Unlike the first two films I reviewed from this set ("Daltons" and "Tomahawk"), this one has "B-Movie" written all over it. Now, that doesn't make it inferior. It was quite entertaining, actually. It's just that it has a more "seat of the pants" feel, like they were working on a tight budget. It has a "B-Movie" look and feel, whereas "Daltons" and "Tomahawk", which would now also be classified as B-Movies, actually looked like A-List material, whatever faults they may have had.
"Texas Rangers" is fun from the start, however, and it is in black and white, so I was hooked from the get-go even though the film began unexpectedly with a comedic sequence featuring character actor Akim Tamiroff as a "Si, Senor...Ay Chihuahua"! bumbling Mexican peasant stereotype. Again, as with last night's caricatures of Chinese people, I did not find Tamiroff's portrayal offensive, because it is not my place to do so. I'm caucasian, and I do not participate in fake Liberal Outrage, and you know that I don't like Far Left politics any more than I like Trump. Now, if a person of Mexican heritage found the character offensive, I would not argue. I would take the person's word for it and honor their opinion. But for me, the character is only a mild stereotype from the 1940s, played for laughs and in good fun. There are also white stereotypes in the film, of country bumpkins, again played as comic relief.
I mention all of this just as a disclaimer, even though I shouldn't bother because I don't believe in political correctness. Perhaps nowdays it would be inappropriate to include such a character in a movie, but this was 1940, a very different time, and again, the character is more a buffoon than a racial stereotype. And at the end of the film, he is a hero. So there you go.
Man......I have gotta stop getting political in my movie reviews. This is not stuff to get offended over, and I think most viewers would agree. I guess I became sensitive after watching "Song Of The South", and actually got upset that it was not available as an official release because of left wing political correctness.
I'm gonna divert from my review to talk about Hegel for a moment. Georg Hegel was a German philosopher of the late 17th century. I am reading, in a book about Skull & Bones at Yale by Antony Sutton, that Hegel created dialectical theory, the idea that human progress is only possible by conflict and resolution. I could go on a book-length tirade about Hegel, and I am glad Mr. Sutton did it for me, but to boil things down, Hegel believed in the German philosophical ideal of the Political State As God. In contrast, the Anglo Saxon ideal was of the Individual as having the God Given Right To Self Determination. Out of Hegel came Karl Marx and Communism on the Far Left, and Hitler and Fascism on the Far Right. In both cases, the State - meaning the government by dictatorship - determines the freedoms or lack thereof, of the individual under it's power.
In Anglo Saxon philosophy, under John Stuart Mill most recently, it is the Individual Right to human liberty that holds sway over any notion of "State", of which there is actually no such thing.
"State" is not an entity, only an agreement between the mass of people to be governed, according to Anglo philosophy. But in Hegelian philosophy, "State" is what the mass of people add up to. In Hegel, there is no such thing as the Individual, only members of the State. Humans are cogs in a machine to advance the goals of a faceless leadership that supposedly has their best interests in mind.
Yeah right. Ask Germany and The Soviet Union how that worked out for them. Germany was Far Right; Soviet Union was Far Left, but in reality they were the same thing, both systems based on Hegelian philosophy, that the State knows best.
So we see that, in America, both the far right and the far left subscribe to Hegelianism, which is groupthink.
Now, to take matters a step further, it really isn't groupthink. It is rather a handful of hidden people behind the scenes who choose the topics that are put forth in the media, and in academia, and these topics become groupthink because of the peer pressure of everyone who goes to college and everyone who watches the news.
This is how you are supposed to think. Choose a side, please.
And both sides are based on Hegel, and his philosophy of conflict equals synthesis equals progress.
What a Colossal A-Hole. ///
Anyway, as usual I apologise for the rant. I got way off topic, but the movie was very entertaining and involved a group a cattle rustlers led by a young Anthony Quinn who were scheming to rip off a wealthy ranch owner. But then The Texas Rangers got involved and saved the day. Ellen Drew provided the love interest, John Howard was the leading man.
See you in the morning. Think for yourself. You rule.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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