Movies in 2011 #2: True Grit

I know I saw the original when the movie True Grit came out in 1969. I was 10 or 11, but I don't recall that I identified that strongly with the character Mattie Ross, although she was one of the few "spunky girl" characters I would have seen in a movie. Maybe it was because she was played by an actress who was 21 at the time, and who was overpowered by John Wayne, in the role that won him his Oscar? Maybe it was the "wink wink" musical score? Glen Campbell as a Texas Ranger? The unabashed celebration of John Wayne's character?

The Coen brothers remake of True Grit purports to be more true to the novel, and stars Hailee Steinfield, who holds her own with Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, and assorted varmints. This version shows the ugliness and brutality of the Western frontier: the casual racism, the grime, the tenuousness of law vs. will on the edge of "Indian Territory" in Fort Smith, Arkansas: who was a soldier, who was one of Quantrill's raider during the Civil War? who was a thief, who was a deputy marshall? what's the difference between hanging? murder? revenge? how many people are killed in the movie? (If you don't want any spoilers, don't watch this trailer)


I think that if I had seen this version when I was young I would have been both fascinated by the girl's spirit, and repelled by her self-righteousness, the two sides of the strength that helps her survive. And I would have cried at the sacrifice in the end.
Kelli Marshall initiated a spirited discussion of how this film fits in the Hollywood tradition of punishing strong female characters. Her post led me to Lance Mannion's post comparing the novel (also a favorite of George Pelecanos) with both films.
Unlike them, I was neither attached to an earlier versions, nor do I think a Western can leave a strong female character unpunished. There is no simply no conceivable place for an independent woman the frontier, because she is an affront to the underlying colonial structures that organize it.
If I were writing more about this than I want to here, I'd want to analyze the many displacements of rape that occur in the film: in addition to all the guns and knives, the firings and misfirings: Mattie wakes up to find LaBouef in her bedroom smoking a pipe; LaBoeuf spanks and then whips Mattie with a switch to try to undo her contract with Cogburn, only to be stopped by Cogburn's gun; after she finally kills her quarry and joins the men as one of them (another killer), she is bitten by a rattlesnake just as she tries to pull a skeleton wearing a knife closer to her; Cogburn stabs the horse Little Blackie with a knife to keep him running to death, Little Blackie, the horse that forded the river for her, that bore her throughout the perils of this journey, that makes it possible to be one of the men, dies against the backdrop of the starry night, shot by Cogburn as Mattie finally cries. In the end, Mattie has one arm and is a bitter unmarried spinster because she has been castrated. She can't be allowed to have "sand" in a Western. This isn't an anti-romance, although it turns the romance inside out.
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*The film is also the source of a well-loved insult, when Ned Pepper says to Rooster Cogburn: "I call that bold talk for a one-eyed fat man."