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A Look at the
Movies
You may be surprised, but the movies are a good barometer
of our national mood. Not only are they a reflection of our
basic beliefs, but they reveal how we feel about ourselves.
During WWII, we found evil aplenty outside ourselves, and
our movies had clearly defined heroes and visible villains.
During the McCarthy Era and during the Vietnam war, we found
that, as often as not, the enemy might be ourselves.
Traditional villains and cowboy heroes vanished from our
screens. Not only was evil murky and our villains less
clearly defined, but our heroes were often those at war with
the society that gave them birth. But, what ho! The pendulum
returns. Our cowboy now pilots a spaceship and the enemy
dresses in black. Reagan is elected, and all is right with
the world, or at least these United States.
Tonight, we are going to take a look at some classic
genres of films and see what they reveal about the American
Cultural Belief system.
First, a belief system is a . . . set of answers to basic
life-problem questions . . . The five basic beliefs
constituting a belief system are the following:
1. Shared views of what is wrong with the present
situation.
2. Shared views about what is causing this problem.
3. Shared views of how to solve the problem and defeat
the source of the evil.
4. Shared views of what the salvation or utopia would
look like.
5. Shared views of what means are necessary to achieve
this perfection.
1 & 2) The Nature and Source of the Problem
(Evil).
The most consistent character trait of ACR is the
externality of evil: "The people who are having the problem
are not themselves responsible for it. They are . .
.innocent and hence basically good! They may be impotent or
afraid, but they are guilty of nothing more. Their
deliverance frees them to live . . .the naturally good life
they would have lived had nothing previously intervened.
From the height of the classic (Western) drama to the
anti-Western of today, the externality of evil remains a
consistent characteristic of the American belief
system...
"The problem that (threatens) the present . . .is a break
in meaningful social relations . . .The threatened unit is
usually the family or its larger counterparts, community ,
and nation. There are several regular sources of this
threat." The family may be threatened by extramarital sex,
or disease, or an unscrupulous landlord. "Communities are
disrupted by… criminal elements who take what they want
by force, rather than abiding by the standards of 'law and
order.'" They could be bankers, industrialists, syndicate
criminals. "Nations are threatened by foreign armies and
alien ideologies. However diverse, all these sources have
one thing in common: they are external to the community, or
to the group within the community that they attack."
3) The Source of the Good: Who Will Deliver Us from
Evil?
"If the townspeople are impotent or afraid, who will
deliver them? The predominance of American cultural faith is
in the individual messiah. Where all institutions fail, from
the police to the Catholic Church, the individual will
succeed. Not just any individual, but one whose
individuality combines the essentially human (and good) with
some special power source unavailable to ordinary humans."
The power is not necessarily superhuman or supernatural, but
can be some human ability honed to razor-sharp efficiency.
And it is usually combined with an "imperturbable
self-control in the face of evil incarnate." Dirty Harry,
John Wayne, Luke Skywalker, to name a few. "In any case, it
will always be necessary for the individual hero to dispatch
the villain with an act of violence. This is justified by
the righteousness of the cause and the combined inability of
the official representatives of law and order and the
recalcitrant stubbornness of the evil one (who always draws
{his gun} first). This individual deliverer in the ritual
drama has a mysterious past, is unmarried and therefore
'free' to come and go at will, and invariably male. Finally,
the individual's deliverance of the community is a
self-sacrificing deed. Either he dies or his way of life
dies. Who needs a fast gun when " all the bad guys are
destroyed?
4) To what are we delivered?
In the classic form, it is to "the family and the
family-community, stabilized and promoted by schools and
churches, by law and order, by peace, tranquility, and
domesticity. Women make it possible. Their strength and
centrality in family life is the mark of civilization. The
adolescent irresponsibility of men makes deliverance
necessary. The responsible life is the married life." For
this reason, the hero must ride off (alone) into the sunset,
so as not to disrupt the newly delivered community with his
wild and uncontrollable independence. Though he is a man's
man, if he stayed around he would threaten the domestic life
of men who would be tempted to follow him as disciples
rather than stay at home, work, and take care of the wife
and kids. Though he is necessary to deliver the community,
he could also become a threat. For he is the Essence of
Freedom, and as you remember, individual freedom and family
are two tenets of ACR that are held in tension.
5) The way of salvation:
Since the community, or family, is basically good, once
the threat is removed, perfection is restored. No other
victories need to be achieved. Yet in reality, we all sense
this lack of perfection, so we look to the idealized
individual who is always and in every situation totally in
control (James Bond). Individual fulfillment is one of the
marks of salvation, a happy family another. The use of force
is a recurrent theme of our deliverance. Rather than
pacifism, superior force and violence is seen as the only
way for the threats to be totally and completely removed.
Evil is finally and completely eradicated when the
Magnificent Seven shoot up the banditos or the Terminator
polishes off the criminals. But although necessary force is
part of almost every ritual drama, the good guys only resort
to violence when all other attempts and entreaties fail. In
short, the good guys are forced to resort to violence by the
recalcitrance of the bad guys. The character of evil makes
the use of force necessary.
The Classic American Ritual Drama: The Western
We might ask ourselves why we love "Westerns" so much.
They are almost always alike. They have the same plot, the
same story, with just a few variations in characters, time
and place. But whether it is Gary Cooper, John Wayne, or
Shane (Alan Ladd), it is the hero who comes to set us free.
In the face of hostile enemies who threaten to rob us and
take the lives of innocent women and children, we know that
the hero must eventually take up that weapon he put away so
many years ago - the one he vowed he would never use again -
and use it to deliver us from evil incarnate. We know the
end from the beginning, so why do we love it so much?
We love it because it is a ritual. We act through the
same story, the same drama again and again. The story is a
drama that reaffirms our cherished values. By hurting with
the hero, fearing with the townspeople, and by rejoicing in
the final victory of good over evil, of right over wrong, of
the good guys over the forces of injustice, we partake of
the Great American Ritual and the great American belief
system. We relive the struggle for the triumph of justice.
We tell again and again our American Story through this
ritual drama. And this rehearsal of the American story,
helps us to define ourselves and our beliefs. It doesn't
matter whether the story takes place in 1776, 1890 in the
West, or "long, long ago, in a distant galaxy, far, far
away. . ." it is still the American Western in a variant
form, with the same heroes and the same villains. And as we
go to the movies, or watch the same TV show each week, we
worship as our favorite story is told and retold - just as
each Passion season we cry as we hear the story of the
killing of an innocent man and rejoice in his resurrection.
For this reason, the Western is the "High Mass" of American
Popular Culture.
Elements of the Western:
The Setting:
Always on the edge of civilization, where the wild
frontier and the forces of law and order meet. The town
represents the growth of civilization, but it is usually
populated with people who are struggling themselves. And
when the threat of violence or injustice comes, the forces
of justice and law are usually inadequate to meet the
threat. The town is beyond the reach of the judge and the
army. The "frontier" is the reminder of our own past and our
own history, it therefore does not represent a quest for
some future fulfillment for our nation, but rather it is a
rehearsal of our story, of our identity as a Nation:
"Significantly, we do not doubt the outcome. . .We
already know the outcome; it is part of our
self-understanding as Americans. The victory of the hero
over the villain is not . . . a surprise . . .It is the
reaffirmation of what we believe as Americans should happen,
and therefore must always happen {the good guys always win}.
It is the ritually repeated drama of how . . . we seized the
moment, defeated the enemy, and became who we are today.
"
The Adversaries:
The Good Guy(s): A man of integrity. Pure in morals,
burdened by the necessity of duty and a love for justice. He
always abides by our sense of fair play - he would never
shoot the villain in the back. A man of peace, who would
never choose the course he has been forced to take (Just as
we would never start a war.), but who must finally respond
to the threat. Finally, he is willing to risk his life for
the sake of others (Messiah, deliverer).
The Bad Guys: Men of low morales and ill-repute, who take
what they wish by force and threaten basically innocent
people with violence. The people, who are like sheep, are
unable to deal with this threat. They may terrorize the
town, and threaten to kill the women and children in order
to make the people surrender passively. Often the bad guys
will kill without provocation; and their corrupt character
is usually so ruthless, they represent evil incarnate.
The Rest of the Cast:
The Women: of two types - 1) the wives and mothers
representing civilization and all that is good in society -
they are the sources of stability and order, and 2) the
fallen women - who, though of questionable morales, are not
basically bad. Usually, they have had miserable misfortunes
that have pushed them to their professions. Whether they
live in the town bordello or are the girl friends of the
outlaws, with the hero's compassion and the town's people's
respect, they can be redeemed.
The Sidekicks: the marginal people, the minorities, who
help the hero by their faithful obedience - trusted
companions who would die for the sake of their master.
The Inheritors of the Torch: those secondary characters
who support the hero, when the rest of the town is
questioning the need or the advantage of having him around.
These are usually married men who, often against their wives
wishes, follow the hero into battle and offer support. Men
of courage, they are the disciples, who remain to lead when
the hero rides off into the sunset.
All the above are basically good people, who are the
victims of the unwarranted assaults of the evil ones.
The Corrupt Politicians and Bankers: The only source of
evil or weakness in the community itself - all the rest of
the evil is external to the community itself. Usually
self-interested, and unscrupulous in business, they may have
hired the outlaws to make a land grab. Even if not, they
usually resent the hero, who represents a threat to their
power and authority in the town. The loyalty of the people
shifts to the hero, and by his ability to get rid of the
outlaws, gives the townspeople enough freedom to consider
getting rid of abusive bankers as well. These corrupt
authority figures represent what we realize is wrong with
civilization and the American Dream: they represent the
oppressive and sometimes bureaucratic authority that we all
must face everyday. They represent those who limit our
freedom with needless laws, taxes, and other restrictions.
They also represent our fear that out freedoms will be taken
away, not by an outside aggressor, but by the very
institutions and economic powers we have created to secure
our freedom.
Representatives of the Classic Western Format: Shane;
High Noon; Stagecoach; Most of John Wayne's Westerns; Tom
Mix; On TV: Gunsmoke; Bonanza; Lone Ranger.
Representative Westerns in Other Settings:
Casablanca, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Star Wars Trilogy
(With Luke Skywalker and Han Solo); On TV:
Star Trek; Superman; Ninja Turtles; Super Hero
Cartoons.
The Anti-Western: Skeptics in the Community of
Faith:
In the Western, the community is always seen as the basis
of wholeness, health, and goodness. But in the Anti-Western,
the belief that the common men and women are basically
innocent and good is challenged. In the Anti-Western, we
have begun to doubt ourselves and to doubt the American
Vision of the World.
The Anti-Western genre of movies began to appear in the
1950's. Several political and social events made us begin to
question our integrity and our purity. McCarthyism made us
suspicious of people within our midst (evil within the
community itself?), the revelation of our racial prejudice
stained our lily white view of ourselves, the assassination
of Jack Kennedy, and our involvement in Vietnam; all these
events caused us to do some soul-searching and
self-reflection. We discovered we are not as virtuous as we
thought ourselves to be. In fact, we are perhaps as much the
cause of our evils as we are the solution.
Elements of the Anti-Western:
"The anti-Western contends that a particular belief in .
. .the Western form is untrue, naive, and/or self-serving. .
. (it) is . . . critical of a particularly popular view of
the meaning of American life. . . (it represents) an
increasingly widespread disenchantment with the classic form
of American self-understanding. . . . the anti-Western is
almost entirely negative . . .The mood is therefore often
pessimistic, despairing, and nihilistic. . . But while the
dominant belief system comes under attack in the
anti-Western, the subdominant system . . .of the hero
becomes proportionately more important. As confidence in the
American community as the content of salvation (of the good)
is diminished, interest has turned toward the self contained
individual as representative of what the fulfilled life must
be like" So, even in its anti American stance, the
anti-western cannot escape the American view of evil as
external to the self. It is Western (vs. Christian) in spite
of itself. While pretending to be Anti-western, it still
preserves the basic western belief system, by defining the
Good Guy, the hero, as a man pure and virtuous against a
corrupt and evil system: evil is still extrinsic to the good
guy.
Evil within the Community:
The primary characteristic of the anti-western is the
belief that evil is not an external force which threatens a
basically good community, but a force of corruption and evil
that is within the community itself. It may be hidden, or it
may be the open corruption of bankers and townspeople.
High Noon, Bad Day at Black Rock, Silkwood, Three Days of
the Condor, and All the President's Men, Sneakers,
represent movies that portray evil as a force within the
community itself: High Noon - the townspeople are
cowards who will not help Gary Cooper fight the bad guys.
Even though he is trying to save the town, no one wants to
be involved. In Bad Day at Black Rock - we find that
it is the "law-abiding," upright citizens who are the source
of evil, while the sheriff is cowed into helpless silence.
In All The President's Men - we also found it
necessary to root out evil within our midst. Nelson
attributes the growth of the anti-Western to the
urbanization of our society: no longer is evil a force on
the frontier which threatens to undermine decent,
law-abiding folk who struggle to maintain an honest town;
but with the growth of corruption, violent crime, Mafia
bosses, our image of ourselves as Americans is changing. We
are no longer pilgrims and pioneers, expanding ever
westward; we are prisoners of bureaucracy, alienated from
our families and friends, and we now must remain locked up
inside our houses at night for fear of the hostile forces
that dwell all around our doors. (Remember the TV News
belief - that virtue resides in small American Towns?) As we
change from an expanding, frontier society, to an urban and
settled one, our view of the source of evil must also
change. We are no longer threatened by Indians, now we are
threatened by lawyers, politicians, businessmen,
corporations, and by ourselves. The movie Silkwood,
may be the best representative of our new hostility and
suspicion - has the CIA become our enemy? Is our own
government in cahoots with big business to suppress the
truth and to lie to the American public?
Examples of the Anti-Western in TV:
Hill Street Blues, - The heroes themselves have
problems, however. The Captain has a drinking problem (now
conquered), JD is morally corrupt as is the chief of police,
Bobby Hill has a gambling problem. Yet even with all their
imperfection, they still attempt to hold the forces of chaos
at bay. Can this be an art form that has gone past the
Anti-Western to a new realism? Other Examples: LA
Law. In books: Brave New World, 1984.
The Anti-Western reached its peak in the 60' s and 70's.
As the wave of doubt has passed over our identity as a
nation, the causes of our self-suspicion lessened. We are no
longer in an unpopular war, we kicked out the crook in
office (Nixon), civil rights laws are on the books if not
totally implemented, the economy is returned to normal, and
the hostage crisis in Iran & the Gulf War gave us new
foci for evil: The enemy was once again external. Truly, our
self-examination was wearying, and we carried our cynicism
too far, but perhaps we shall never be as naive about our
own virtue as we once were. During the Reagan era, there was
a resurgence of faith in ourselves, our work, and our
destiny on the earth. The resurgence of patriotism and the
invasion of Grenada gave evidence of that. And the
predominant form of popular movie has once again become the
Western: the success of The Star Wars Trilogy, in
particular gives evidence of our wish to return to those
by-gone days where the good guys and bad guys were easy to
see and the line drawn between good and evil was easy to
make out.
But with all the good of self-confidence brings, as
Christians, however, we should retain a healthy dose of
doubt, so that we can examine from a godly point of view the
course our nation wishes to take. Caution is the Christian
watch-word, governments and nations are never as good as the
people believe them to be: their loyalties are divided
between serving power and serving God just as individuals
are subject to sin and false loyalty.
Other Notes:
Transition from individual-deliverer hero to Family as
Deliverer:
As the traditional definition of the Family is changing
in America, so are our heroes. Since the existence of the
Family as a primary value is part of our culture, we should
see it preserved in a new form: The Waltons, and
The Little House on the Prairie are shows which
hearken back to a simpler, less troubled time - when the
family was the source of good and wholeness. They represent
the traditional American Vision. But today, we see the
concept of Family, still a primary value, embodied in a new
form: M*A*S*H*, China Beach, Cheers, LA Law, Seinfeld,
and Hill Street Blues, are shows which have all
redefined the concept of family, and while it is still the
primary good, we see our relationships in community in a new
form: not nuclear families, but a group of surgeons and
nurses, struggling to survive as a (family) unit in a
hostile war. We weep and laugh with these our friends. On
Hill Street, our family becomes the good guys on the
police department, even if a few of our members are black
sheep. On Cheers, our family is our friends who go
through all sorts of trials and tribulations. Above all, we
do not want our community or family to be disrupted or
destroyed by argument and disagreements. And though Dianne
and Sam were separated (they were once live in lovers) to
the viewers they were still very much a couple - and
everyone waited for the day they would get back together. We
watched their banter and hidden feelings for each other, and
we yearned for their reunion.
The basic difference between these shows and the
traditional Western, is that the team or the family is seen
as the deliver-hero vs. the individual hero. This reflects
the subdominant theme of ACR: the belief in Family as the
source of Good in society.
Detective Story:
"the modern detective story urbanizes the Western,
creating a new form by placing the Western drama in an
anti-Western context. . .the embodiment of good is stained
and tarnished. . .The townspeople are no longer clearly
innocent and the villains now live in the community itself.
It becomes much more difficult to tell the good guys from
the bad guys. Everybody is guilty of something, but the
villain is guilty of a lot more than most of us (externality
of evil). The defeat of the villain does not mean the final
victory of civilization over alien anarchy. It only signals
a temporary reaffirmation of the presence and power of good,
and reasserts the belief that justice will ultimately
prevail."
However, the use of violence as the instrument of
redemption is again justified by the incarnation of evil,
and the hero-deliverer is embodied in an individual (though
he is human and somewhat fallible), who rescues perhaps one
individual or one family from the source of corruption vs.
the whole community. The Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade,
Bogart, Mike Hammer, Columbo, are all models of the
Detective genre.
"Our major thesis has been that popular culture is to
what Americans believe as worship services are to what
people in institutional religions believe. . .The primary
function of the ritual of worship services is to affirm
already-held beliefs and values, not to suggest different
options. . Popular culture, besides being entertainment, is
a dramatic ritual enactment of the dominant and subdominant
American cultural belief systems. It is where Americans
worship, where they get their values reinforced, whether
they know it or not." For this reason pop culture and the
study of pop culture is very important for Christians, so
that we can differentiate between what is truly Christian
about our belief system from what is simply American.
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