Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Silencing Rooster
Cogburn
True Grit appeared on the Orwellian telescreen the
other night, and I found myself watching that wonderful film yet again.
The climax of the film comes when John Wayne as Marshal Rooster
Cogburn confronts Robert Duvall’s Lucky Ned Pepper and his gang. After a few prefatory
remarks of ritual verbal abuse, Ned sneeringly demands that Rooster state his
intentions or get out of the way.
“I mean to kill you in one minute, Ned, or see you hanged
in Fort smith at Judge Parker’s convenience,” replies Rooster. “Which’ll it be?”
After some wonderfully Snidely Whiplash laughter from the
desperadoes, Ned taunts Rooster with, “I call that bold talk for a one-eyed fat
man!”
And then comes The Moment – The Moment, The Academy Award
Moment - when Rooster challenges Ned and his entire gang with perhaps the most
famous line in the history of cinema…
But the line was not spoken; The Moment never came.
The center, the axis, the climax of this great film was silenced
for television by some officious busy-body.
While Rooster spins his rifle in a menacing manner and Ned
and the lads are laughing at him, let us pause and consider the insensitivities
that have preceded this moment in True Grit:
1.
Tom Chaney murders Mattie’s father with a gutshot.
2.
Three prisoners are hanged on the courthouse
square before a mocking crowd which includes children
3.
A federal marshal repeatedly handles prisoners
with inappropriate roughness and occasional brutality.
4.
A Chinese character is stereotyped, although we
must admit that he gives the marshal a good what-fer when necessary.
5.
There is some casual stereotyping of American
Indians.
6.
The body count in the film would require a statistician,
and the deaths are gruesome.
7.
Several adults threaten the life of a child.
8.
A child shoots an adult.
9.
As for Mattie’s snide remarks about Texas
senators and bird dogs, we should let them stand with some sympathy for bird
dogs.
Dozens die in the film, but That Line, that Academy Award
line without which the story would fail to be true to the vision of the book’s
author and the artistry of the film’s professionals, must apparently not be
spoken lest it give offense to the delicate among us.
Look, the metaphor Rooster uses in the uncut version is
pretty rough, and on the lips of almost anyone else would come across as
adolescent potty-mouth-ness. But in the context of this great film and as
spoken by John Wayne, yep, it’s a work of art.
But what about the children who might hear it?
The prime duty in raising a child belongs to the parent.
Thus, the parent must guide his (the pronoun is
gender-neutral) child’s cultural experiences.
After all, it is pointless and indeed hypocritical to
give a child unrestricted access to a MePhone or the InterGossip and then demand
that a cinema, an author, an artist, a public library, a museum, or other
cultural milieux surrender their freedom of cultural exchanges with other
adults.
In sum, know when to turn off the television in your own
house. That’s your decision, not someone else’s
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