Review: Davy Crockett and the River Pirates (DMC #23)
We’re back from another adventure with Davy Crockett! This time we watched Davy Crockett and the River Pirates, the 23rd movie in our Disnerd Movie Challenge. Read on for a quick synopsis of this adventure, or skip ahead to our review.
Synopsis
Davy Crockett and George E. Russell have just finished a successful stint of trapping and hunting, and they have a great many furs to show for it. They’re looking to transport their furs down the Ohio River to Maysville, Kentucky, but when they ask Mike Fink, the self-proclaimed “King of the River,” he quotes them an outrageous price. Crockett and Russell ask another boat captain instead, but this captain has no crew. He tells them that if they’re able to pull a crew together, he’ll take them down the river on his boat. While trying to recruit men to crew the boat, Russell accidentally tries to recruit Jocko, one of Fink’s men. Jocko and Fink proceed to get Russell drunk, and Russell makes a drunken bet that he and Crockett can beat Fink in a keel-boat race to New Orleans, wagering all their furs against Fink’s title as “King of the River.” When the sober Crockett arrives, he reluctantly agrees to the wager. Though their crew is unskilled, Crockett’s team manages to best Fink’s at every turn, despite Fink’s constant cheating, and in the end it is Crockett’s boat that comes into port first. Crockett allows Fink to keep his title, though Fink reluctantly still eats his hat like he said he would should he lose the race. Crockett and Russell later gift Fink a new hat and a small cannon for his boat.
Fink drops off Crockett and Russell at a place along the river where Crockett says they’ll see if they can get some horses from the Chickasaw. However, Crockett and Russell are soon captured by the Chickasaw who are preparing to go to war against the white men for killing Kaskaskia tribesmen. Crockett tells the Chickasaw that they saw the Kaskaskia attacking keel boats a few days prior, but the Chickasaw explain that the Kaskaskia had moved on prior. Crockett realizes that the Kaskaskia he and Russell saw must have been pirates dressed as Native Americans. Crockett promises to bring the pirates to justice if the Chickasaw and the other tribes agree not to go to war. Crockett enlists Fink’s help, convincing him to pose as a wealthy banker with a boat full of Spanish gold. Fink’s bragging attracts a traveling musician whom they agree to give a ride to the next town. Crockett correctly suspects this musician is in league with the pirates, using his songs as a way to notify the pirates of what cargo their ship is carrying. When the musician realizes the supposed bags of gold are really bags of rocks, Crockett and his men subdue the musician and face off with the pirates at Cave-in-Rock. After defeating the pirates, Crockett and Russell again part ways with Fink and head home.
Thoughts Before Watching
Megan: I don’t think I’ve ever seen this Davy Crockett movie before. I liked Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier, though, so I imagine I’ll enjoy this film, too, if it’s similar in tone.
Kevin: My thoughts are pretty much the same as Megan’s. I’ve never seen this film, and I enjoyed our last viewing of a Davy Crockett movie, so I’m anticipating that I might enjoy this one, too. The last movie had a pretty definitive ending. I understand this movie is based on some of the more fictional aspects of his life, so I’m curious if this will be much different in style.
Thoughts After Watching
Let’s keep things historical.
Megan: I love a good work of fiction and typically find history boring, but in the case of the two Davy Crockett films, I much prefer the more historically-grounded King of the Wild Frontier to the River Pirates legend. There’s something about this particular story that feels a bit small—like the creators took a short-story legend and tried to expand it into a feature-length film, but didn’t have quite enough story to sustain it. Or perhaps it’s just that I grew up watching the first Davy Crockett film and have a certain nostalgia for the broader adventure epic it tells. In any case, if I had to choose between the two, I’d definitely re-watch Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier any day over Davy Crockett and the River Pirates.
Kevin: I somewhat agree here. The previous film took several moments of Crockett’s actual life, if not with a few creative liberties. This allowed the filmmakers to create a story that seemed much more complete. It was actually more fascinating to see multiple arcs in Crockett’s life with the last film. This film, on the other hand, is a single adventure. While there’s a whole story to tell here, it seems like Davy Crockett and the River Pirates could have been a lot better as a smaller, half hour television episode instead of two episodes meshed into a theatrical release. In fact, in order to make the story work within the framework of the last movie, it’s considered a prequel. The problem here is that Davy’s legend is hyped up that it actually makes his exploits in Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier look tame. I’m thinking especially about his shooting skills, such as the trick shot in the pub (which was, in hindsight, way too ridiculous) vs. his “bullet on top of the other” shot in the last film. With all of that said, there is one thing in this movie that outshines the previous one, which I’ll go over below.
The music is better.
Kevin: “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” is an incredibly catchy and fun tune in the previous movie. It is played multiple times during scene transitions and is used partly as a narrative tool. With this movie, it’s used at the beginning to set up the plot, going so far as to admit the tale is fictional, but later on it actually gets used within the story itself. Russell and the crew of the Bertha Mae sing a verse of the song, andRussell again sings a bit of it by himself later on. There’s another song to be found here, called “King of the River.” It’s a contrast to Davy’s title of “King of the Wild Frontier,” but it’s just as fun of a song, so much so that it is repeated several times in various ways during the rest of the film. Not only do we now have two pieces of music, but having the characters sing turns Davy Crockett and the River Pirates into a musical, and it is for this very reason that I actually prefer the music here over King of the Wild Frontier. What can I say? I’m a sucker for musicals.
This film is rife with toxic masculinity.
Megan: With no female characters at all in this film, it’s no surprise it fails the Bechdel Test. However, excluding women from films doesn’t just harm women—it also leads to some troubling stereotypes about masculinity. We definitely saw some toxic masculinity in Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier, but in this film it is much more prominent. From the get-go, we see illustrations in the title credits showing men engaged in war with each other. Then we meet Mike Fink, who’s basically toxic masculinity personified. He’s rude, mean, strong, easily angered, and feared by those who aren’t strong enough to face him. He’s also an alcoholic and is able to hold his liquor better than Russell (whom Crockett tells us never drinks). Aside from portraying Mike Fink as the villain for the first half of the film, there really aren’t any drawbacks to his toxic masculinity—it’s an asset, not a flaw. In fact, much like the tale of “The Tortoise and the Hare,” if Mike Fink has one flaw it’s that he underestimates the competition and allows himself to be distracted or reduce his effort too soon. Thus his character upholds these toxic ideals of how men are expected to act in society.
Megan: George E. Russell may be portrayed as a “weaker” male, but he, too, is a representation of toxic masculinity. For example, when the film opens, Russell goes in search of a crew so he and Crockett don’t have to travel with Fink. Russell follows man after man, each encountering someone bigger and badder until only Jocko remains. This is the first guy Russell decides to recruit for their crew—someone mean enough and strong enough to face off against Fink. Of course, he’s already on Fink’s crew. We then watch as Fink and Jocko pressure Russell into drinking—first verbally, and then by physically restraining him so he’s forced to drink. While Fink’s character only hints at the dangers of alcohol by nature of him being the villain, Russell’s character embodies the warning, for it is in getting drunk that Russell commits himself and Crockett to a race against Fink, wagering their full inventory of furs. Russell’s character may not fit the toxic masculine ideal in these scenes, but he clearly aspires to fit that mold. He admires Jocko’s fighting skills, and he idolizes his best friend, Crockett. While the audience is meant to like Russell, he is not the character male audiences are meant to aspire to. They’re meant to aspire to Davy Crockett.
Megan: Yet even Davy Crockett, the hero of our story, has been built from toxic masculinity. Let’s separate the real man from the legend for a minute and focus just on the legend. This entire film is based on an untrue legend about Davy Crockett, so in that sense it gives us a historical look at masculine ideals. We see that Crockett is honorable, and that he stands by his best friend even when he drunkenly bets all their furs on a keel-boat race. However, he’s also a man who can hold his liquor, and he never backs down from a fight or any challenge to his masculinity. This is fully embodied in the scene where Crockett squares off against Fink in a shooting contest inside the bar. When a drunk Fink makes a trick shot and challenges Crockett to one-up him, Crockett joins in, only he plays his own trick to make sure he wins the contest by diverting everyone’s attention and slipping a bullet in his mouth to make it look like he caught a live shot out of the air with his teeth. Honorable though he may be in other parts of the film, in this scene the implication is that cheating is not nearly as bad as losing such a contest.
Kevin: To Megan’s point about this being a legendary depiction instead of historical, it’s noteworthy how much the masculine qualities are hyped up here. There were some instances of it in the last film, but at least that one was based somewhat on historical facts. Here, the filmmakers are free to take Crockett’s masculinity to higher levels. I wouldn’t say it goes too extreme, but the movie does still try to exaggerate it, particularly with the trick shot in the bar (I’ve mentioned it twice now. Have I mentioned how dumb that trick is?). I get that it was the norm at the time, so it’s admittedly strange to critique this particular point, but it’s just so tiring to see men one-up each other with the most stereotypical masculine traits. In the film’s setting, being skilled with a gun is very much a measure of a man’s worth. What “better” way for a film set during this time period than to have two guys show off their skills with a dangerous weapon?
Megan: While drunk no less!
Kevin: Maybe I’m seeing this through my lens as someone who can be classified as a “millennial” but the fascination with guns is one that I just don’t understand.
Again with the white savior trope…
Megan: The other problem with Davy Crockett is his repeated position as white savior. Much like the previous Davy Crockett film, this movie has many racist depictions of Native Americans. (It was even blatantly obvious to both me and Kevin that one of the actors portraying a Native American was quite literally painted red for the part.) What we didn’t mention in our last blog post, though, is that Crockett’s kindness toward the Native Americans also makes him a problematic white savior. According to Wikipedia:
“The white savior is a cinematic trope in which a white character rescues non-white characters from unfortunate circumstances. This trope appears in an array of genres of films in American cinema, wherein a white protagonist is portrayed as a messianic figure who often learns something about him or herself in the course of rescuing non-white characters from their plight. The narrative trope of the white savior is one way the mass communications medium of cinema represents the sociology of race and ethnic relations, by presenting abstract concepts such as morality as characteristics innate, racially and culturally, to white people, not to be found in non-white people.”
Here we again witness Davy Crockett coming to the aid of the Native Americans. This time it’s the Kaskaskia who are being killed and then blamed for crimes committed by white men posing as Kaskaskia while attacking boats along the river. Crockett spends the entire second half of the film fighting the impostors to clear the Native Americans of wrongdoing and prevent them from going to war against the white men. However, through it all we see things from Crockett’s white male perspective. We see very little of the Native Americans, and don’t get to know who they are, thus the film perpetuates racist stereotypes.
Kevin: Yes, I think it’s obvious that at least one white man was painted to look like a Native American. I have no idea who that actor was, but it’s too apparent. If it turns out it’s not paint I would be very surprised. The main point stands, though, that Crockett is the stereotypical white savior. As we continue diving into some of these older films, I’ve wondered about how much we examine the prejudices of the past and whether we can separate the time period from the story. We know that society back then was very different from what we experience now, but it’s hard to say if we’ve really made much progress. While I do think it’s important to recognize that all art is a product of its time, that doesn’t absolve it from criticism.
Verdict
Megan: 3
Kevin: 3
Final Score: 3
What did you think of this Davy Crockett sequel? Which of the Davy Crockett films do you like better?