Fairly "progressive" movie

This is one of the first westerns where women and young people smart-mouth the old guard (with The Duke being just about as perfect a representation of "the patriarchy" as one can find). John Wayne seems to be mocking his own persona here as well (something he did in a few more films following this one- such as McLintock and North to Alaska; interestingly, he plays "himself" more seriously in both Rio Bravo "reboots," El Dorado and Rio Lobo), which strikes me as a "postmodern" gesture. One wonders if the Vietnam war had not split the young and the old the way it did, if the Duke might have continued a more self-reflexive path, similar to the path Eastwood ended up on, and if, thus, John Wayne's legacy would not have hinged on the stupid *beep* he felt necessary to say toward the end of his life simply because popular culture decided he was a member of the old, reactionary guard.