Review: Old Yeller (DMC #26)
“Here, Yeller! Come back, Yeller! Best doggone dog in the west!” This week we watched Old Yeller, the 26th movie in the Disnerd Movie Challenge. This may very well be the toughest movie to sit though yet! If you watched with us last night (and had a box of tissues ready), feel free to scroll down for our review. Otherwise, if you’re unfamiliar with this movie—or somehow want to relive the trauma again—you can find a synopsis below.
Synopsis
In post-Civil War Texas, Jim Coates leaves his wife Katie and sons Travis and Arliss in order to sell cattle in Kansas. He promises to bring Katie back a store-bought dress, while he asks his oldest son Travis to be “the man of the house” while he’s gone. Travis agrees instantly, and asks his father to bring him back a “good horse” in exchange. Travis begins his new duties by working in the cornfield, which is soon disrupted by an encounter with a dog he names “Old Yeller.” While Travis tries to keep the dog away from the farm, Arliss immediately takes a liking to Yeller and defends him from Travis. Katie allows Arliss to keep Yeller, reminding Travis that he, too, once owned a dog when he was little. She also encourages him to train Yeller to stop stealing food. After Travis hangs some meat to dry overnight, he threatens to shoot Yeller if he tries to steal it. He is surprised to find the next morning that Yeller didn’t touch the meat. Later, Arliss tries capturing a black bear cub. Its angry mother attacks, but Yeller retaliates and drives her off, finally earning some affection from Travis. Bud Searcy and his granddaughter Lisbeth stop by for dinner one day, and Lisbeth reveals that Yeller has been stealing food from other farms. Travis becomes determined to break Yeller of this habit. The next day, their relationship continues to strengthen when Old Yeller proves himself a successful cow dog. One day, Yeller’s original master, Burn Sanderson, arrives at the farm after hearing his dog might be there. Though he initially tries to take Yeller, he realizes that the family needs the dog more, and so trades him to Arliss for a horny toad and a home-cooked meal. He later warns Travis about the recently growing illness known as hydrophobia, an older term for rabies.
Some time later, Travis attempts to trap some feral hogs. He tries roping them from above as Old Yeller corners them, but he falls into the group and is attacked. Yeller defends Travis but is badly injured himself. Travis safely hides Yeller before returning to the farm to get his mother, who helps rescue Yeller. As Travis and Yeller recover, Searcy also warns about hydrophobia, but Travis insists that the hogs were not infected. Later on, they discover that one of their cows has become rabid. Travis shoots her and Katie and Lisbeth burn her body that night. While Travis is inside the house, Katie screams for him to bring his rifle. A wolf has attacked the farm, but Old Yeller fights it off. Travis shoots the wolf, but Yeller has been bitten. Katie realizes that a healthy wolf wouldn’t normally attack in that way, and so knows that the wolf was rabid. She says they will have to shoot Yeller, but Travis refuses and instead says that they will pen him in the corn crib while they monitor him for symptoms. After two weeks, Yeller has yet to show any signs of infection. They decide to keep him penned longer just to be safe, but believe they will be able to let him out soon. One night, however, as Travis goes to feed Yeller, he growls aggressively. Travis suspects Yeller has the disease but doesn’t say anything. A little later that night, an oblivious Arliss tries to free Yeller. Katie manages to shut the door just as Yeller is about to attack. She takes Arliss back inside, but returns with Travis’ rifle, telling him that Yeller is suffering. Travis takes the rifle, saying Yeller is his dog. As Yeller snarls and growls, Travis tearfully shoots him. Grieving the loss of Yeller, Travis initially refuses a new puppy that Yeller fathered. Jim returns home with money, a horse for Travis, and a dress for Katie, who tells him about Yeller. Jim finds Travis after he and Lisbeth have buried Yeller. He comforts his son, telling him he’s proud of him for “being a man.” After returning home, Travis finds the puppy stealing some meat, just like Old Yeller, and then happily accepts him.
Thoughts Before Watching
Megan: OMG, no! Not this movie! Honestly, I found myself contemplating whether or not we could put this one off even longer, and whether or not we could bend the rules of the challenge and just not watch the tragic ending. Unfortunately the rules of the challenge clearly state that we must watch every film in its entirety—no matter how sad (or, in the case of previous films, boring) they might be. I’ve got my box of tissues at the ready and I’m bracing myself for the gut punch that traumatized my one and only childhood viewing of this film.
Kevin: Yeeeah… Like Megan, I was not at all looking forward to this… then again, does anyone truly like this movie? It seems like anyone who’s seen Old Yeller was forever traumatized by it. I watched this once, and only once, when I was a kid, and I believe the reason I hated it so much was that I had not, at that time, truly felt the loss of a pet (we had some when I was even younger, but I didn’t understand loss at that age). I also don’t remember much of the movie at all, let alone liking it, though I believe it’s because the ending overshadowed so much of it.
Thoughts After Watching
It’s more bearable to watch now.
Kevin: After watching, Megan and I discussed how we both had similar thoughts leading up to “that” scene. Although we knew it was coming, it was still very intense, and we braced ourselves for possible tears. Once it was done and the rest of the movie had finished, however, we both felt it wasn’t nearly as awful as we had remembered. Don’t get us wrong, it’s still absolutely difficult to watch Travis kill Yeller. It’s heartbreaking and sad, but I didn’t get the emotional punch I was expecting. This could be because I’ve grown up, experienced loss, and learned to grieve and cope, and so I can more easily relate to Travis’s position. It could also be that once I got over the initial shock from years ago it’s simply not as terrifying this time around. Part of why it was easier, for me at least, is that by this point I know why Travis had to pull the trigger. Even if you had told kid-me that Yeller was suffering and his disease was harmful, I suspect kid-me likely would’ve been completely against it, especially when I was thinking of the dog my family had at the time. Speaking of which, I wish the film gave us Arliss’ reaction to Yeller’s death. While the film is focused on Travis, Yeller was supposed to be Arliss’ dog. I think it was a missed opportunity to not give screen time to Arliss and see how he was coping with Yeller’s death, especially since he tried to let Yeller out of the pen. But then again, Arliss seems like he was preoccupied with Young Yeller. It’s also possible that, like me, he just didn’t comprehend the loss.
Megan: Like Kevin said, we didn’t quite have as strong of an emotional reaction to Old Yeller’s death this time compared to when we viewed the film as kids. For me, personally, I think part of it was I was viewing the film with a somewhat academic approach, taking notes throughout so I could write this blog post. The other piece of it, like Kevin mentioned, is that we’re older and we have more of an understanding of what’s happening (while also knowing what’s going to happen eventually). When I watched it as a kid, even though my parents explained that Yeller had rabies and that’s why he went mad, I still didn’t really understand why they couldn’t make him better and instead had to kill him. Around that time my grandparents had a dog that looked a lot like Old Yeller, so I’m sure that didn’t help my childhood perception of what was happening.
Is “Man of the House” really the best thing for Travis?
Kevin: That phrase is not one that is thrown around too much these days, and with good reason. While children should certainly chip in with adult tasks as they get older, I think there’s a flaw in the thinking that a child needs to step up to lead the family. In the case of Old Yeller, this thinking is shown through the traditional idea that the man is the leader of the family. The man is the decision-maker, the doer, the one who tackles the hard problems. With Travis, he is both asked and arguably expected by his father to step into his vacant role while he’s away. Although Travis gladly takes this responsibility on, there are some moments when this role seems to get to him both mentally and physically, such as his encounter with the hogs and, of course, his decision to shoot Yeller. Becoming a man is much harder than it looks, and I can’t help but wonder if Travis is being forced to grow up too early. Ultimately, he seems to get what he wanted all along when his father congratulates him for stepping up and “being a man,” but it comes at great personal cost.
No glory for the “pioneer women.”
Megan: While Travis is given the full weight of being the “man of the house,” the women of this film are doing loads of work with zero recognition. Starting from a broad perspective, this film fails the Bechdel test because we are only shown Katie Coates or Lisbeth Searcy in context of a male character’s story. We never see what things are like from their perspective, nor do we ever see the two of them share a conversation with each other—even though they are together in the most pivotal wolf scene before Travis arrives, we as the audience don’t see any of it. We don’t see how they react before Yeller and Travis come to help. Thus, we as the audience are not meant to applaud the women for their work or achievements in this story. Even so, if we watch closely and pay attention to what the women do, we see just how annoying it must be to live in this “man’s world.”
Katie Coates is the true hero.
Megan: Take Katie Coates, for example. Her husband has to leave on a cattle drive in order to make money for the family. He will be gone for months, with no way of communicating with his family. (Think about the current pandemic quarantine only not being allowed to text, call, or video chat with anyone you don’t live with.) Kevin and I have been social distancing during this pandemic and that seems hard enough. Imagine having to run a farm and take care of two rambunctious boys on your own all while missing the one you love and wondering if he’s safe or when he’ll be home. From what little we see of Katie’s life, she seems to take this in stride. She and Travis work together to cut down trees and repair the fence that Old Yeller destroyed. She keeps policing Arliss’s pockets to make sure he hasn’t picked up something poisonous. She takes over tending the corn field when Travis is injured. That’s of course after she cleans, treats, and bandages Travis’s wound. Oh, and after she takes both her boys and a mule out to find the injured Yeller, and keeps Arliss blissfully unaware of how badly Yeller is injured while she uses a needle (which she just so happens to have pinned to her blouse) and a hair from the mule’s tail to stitch Yeller’s wound before building a makeshift litter for Yeller to lay on so they can take him back home. Talk about one resourceful woman! What’s more, she takes on the duty of burning the body of the family’s rabid cow after Travis shoots it, and when it’s clear that Yeller has been bitten by a rabid wolf, she tells Travis that she will shoot Yeller if Travis can’t.
Mr. Searcy is the worst!
Megan: But does Katie get any respect or recognition for this level of resourcefulness, ingenuity, and courage? Certainly not from the likes of Mr. Searcy. Though he claims he was asked to stay behind to take care of the children and “women folk,” he is absolutely terrible at the job. In fact, the women and children are taking care of him! He has the audacity to visit the Coates household right around suppertime, asking corn for his horse from Travis, water for himself from his own daughter Lisbeth, and then, just as Katie predicted, he invites himself to dinner and proceeds to eat the lion’s share of the food (as evidenced by the large pile of chewed up corn cobs on his plate). While he’s visiting, he even tells how he found a neighbor boy up a tree surrounded by angry hogs, and he admits he could do nothing to help the kid! All he did was tell his mother where the boy was so she wouldn’t worry, as if that is any help. Later, when Travis is injured, he talks an awful lot about poultices and cleaning wounds, but he doesn’t lift a finger to help Katie with Travis’s wounds. Instead he starts blabbering on about “hydrophoby” and how someone died of it because they were bitten by a hog—real comforting words to tell a boy who’s just been bit by a hog. Katie muses to Travis that the reason the men didn’t want to take Mr. Searcy with them was because he’d talk too much, but I’m of the opinion they didn’t want him along because he’s lazy, completely useless, and would’ve eaten them clean out of all their rations before they’d even traveled a day.
Lisbeth gets the short end of the stick.
Megan: While Katie may have to deal with Mr. Searcy eating her out of house and home whenever he comes to visit, Lisbeth unfortunately has to live with her father. From what few interactions we see between Lisbeth and Mr. Searcy, it’s not a great relationship for Lisbeth. When we first meet them, Mr. Searcy all but orders Lisbeth to fetch him fresh water from the Coates’s well. Later in the film, when Mr. Searcy offers to help after Travis has been injured, Katie says they could use help bringing in the corn. In answer, Mr. Searcy volunteers Lisbeth. Clearly Katie had been asking Mr. Searcy to do the job, but, useless as always, he makes Lisbeth do the work instead. Lisbeth doesn’t complain or protest the arrangement, though she doesn’t exactly seem thrilled about it. Honestly, Lisbeth really gets the short end of the stick for most of this film. Even Travis isn’t all that nice to her. When Lisbeth tells him she won’t tell anyone about Old Yeller stealing food because he’s the father of her dog’s soon-to-be-born pups, Travis at first doesn’t believe her, but then gifts her an arrowhead as a way of saying thanks for not telling. Yet when Lisbeth brings over one of the pups as a gift for the injured Travis, he refuses the puppy (and with it, her affection) saying he already has a dog and that she should give the pup to Arliss instead. Later, she tries to comfort Travis by saying that the puppy is part Yeller, but Travis again rejects her—even though she stood by him as he had to shoot Yeller and then helped him bury his beloved dog. Just as Katie gets no recognition, neither does Lisbeth. We can imagine that this is only the first of a long string of slights that Lisbeth will have to endure as a woman in this time period.
Anyone else worried about the animals in this film?
Megan: So, I know film making standards were different back then, and I know there’s a lot that can be done with “movie magic” to make things look believable, but was anyone else concerned with the way animals were treated in the creation of this film? The first scene that really bothered me was the one where Arliss is wrestling with a bear cub. First, even training a wild bear to be in a film seems like a problematic thing to do from today’s standards, but having a kid wrestle with a bear cub?! What were they thinking?! And then there is the scene where Travis hauls up a young hog by a rope into a tree. While I don’t think he actually used his knife to brand the hog’s ears, that hog was still hoisted up into a tree by a rope, and it didn’t look at all comfortable. Even the cow seemed really miserable when it was tied up to a post for milking. While I recognize that this film was made before there were “no animal was harmed in the making of this film” notices in the credits, I have to say I’m glad we now have such standards in place.