Stereotypes in Comanche Moon

Out West, Where the Ladies Are Consumptive and the Men Confused“Comanche Moon” follows Woodrow Call and his friend Gus McCrae in the years before Mr. Jones and Mr. Duvall turn them into wizened, cattle-driving old men. Still, they are a study in contrasts: Woodrow (Karl Urban), the lover of history who denies his own as it claws at him; Gus (Steve Zahn), who drinks up whatever is in front of him. Neglecting their romantic lives, they enlist with the Rangers, pursuing the Comanche war chief Buffalo Hump and his half-breed son, Blue Duck, who never seems to meet a woman he doesn’t want to rape or an animal he wouldn’t mind beating or a camp he isn’t motivated to pillage.

Just as Mr. McMurtry’s women are typically whores or consumptives (or both), the Indians of “Comanche Moon” are either spiritualists who speak in methodical cadences and stroke feathers to the sound of wind instruments, or patricidal maniacs bent on racial vengeance. Eight years into the new millennium, American Indians are still portrayed on screen according to a range of stereotypes no broader than the one laid out for blacks during the era of Al Jolson.