Is Nada the Stupidest Person in the Movie?

Taught to love Brando from the beginning, we can no longer criticize him at any particular moment or even acknowledge his objective stupidity . . . We can sum up Kazan’s mistake by saying that what should have been judged was much less the capitalist than Brando himself. For there is much more to expect from the rebellion of victims than from the caricature of their masters.

—Roland Barthes, discussing On the Waterfront, in “A Sympathetic Worker”

 

If paranoia generally turns its sufferers into cartoons—even, sadly, the righteous paranoia of the just-because-you’re-paranoid-doesn’t-mean-they-aren’t-after-you variety—the particular cartoon Nada turns into is Yosemite Sam. Up to this point, Nada’s self-protective instincts, at least, haven’t been half bad. He’s muscled and squinted his way into our hearts. Yet from here on his sputtering, red-faced imprudence verges on the cretinous. Maybe that’s been the point all along: to subject a pure unthinking lumpenprole (Who else would have gazed at L.A.’s skyline and said, “I believe in America”?) to an allegory so blatant that even he can see the truth about capitalism.