Reading "El Gringo" as a realization of the Self

"El Gringo" is the journey of a man who, by running away from "the other", ultimately finds his own self. Though the film's plot is a highly screen-bound unrealistic American action setting, the message is quite real; that the self is only realized in the land of the other. In other words, to use Rene Descartes' altered ideology of the cogito in Zizekian terms, the self is an empty place of what is left when the rest of the world is expelled from itself. It is the process of subjectivization that the man in El Gringo in possession of the bulk money goes through, which fills his void, wherein the latter is given an identity, which is altered by none other but his own Self. The barmaid in the film, Anna, serves as a undeniable symptom in the man's existence towards his ultimate self-realization. Just as much as the film ends with the union of "El Gringo" and Anna, it also proves that woman is not a mere fantasy object of the man, the cause of his desire, but one that sustains him through and to his sublime realization. The woman thief, who puts the man in trying situations by never ceasing to rob his bag of money also realizes herself  in the end. However, all self-actualizations are realized through the man, which makes the movie highly phallo-centric in direction.

The entire action to self realization happens in El Fronteras- literally the frontiers. The selection of the venue out of America itself, in the underworld drug ridden Mexican frontiers suggests that it is only out of context that the man is capable to identify with the Self. However, though some philosophical insight into the Self vs Other is readable through the film, it's ending where the American, the stranger and his ideology is welcomed, negates the rational other, while promoting the American and his view and actions. The ending is quite superficial, is this sense, for a man with a bloody past receives unlawful justice, not to forget, in a land which is not America. The new colonization of the world by the Americans...