I was not a committed moviegoer as a youth -- punchball, basketball, softball, stickball in the street all having more appeal. But often enough, on a Saturday, especially when the weather was bad, there were double-feature matinees at the Leader Theater on Coney Island Avenue. =Admission for children was fourteen cents when I first started attending; I think that by the time I reached high school the price had risen to as much as a quarter. It was a harmless way to spend a long afternoon. The theater was usually over-crowded with noisy ragamuffins who threw popcorn at each other during the love scenes. There was an impotent "matron" with a flashlight who had the frustrating job of maintaining a modicum of order.
Musicals mystified me-- I remember waiting for the dance numbers to end so that we could get on with the plot. I loved westerns and detective stories and tolerated, though I was frightened by, the war movies.
In the cavalry-and-Indian movies (Stentorian voice : "In the Years Following the Civil War...") there was a recurring scene that made quite an impression on me. Indians have attacked an "isolated farmhouse" or a wagon train. The colonel who has just come from West Point to take command of Fort Apache or Fort Bragg or Fort Collins summons the wizened scout who has spent his life on the frontier. The fresh-faced colonel tells the experienced old buckaroo that he's heard that there are Indians camped down by the bend of the river, and that he's going to send a detachment of troops to teach them a lesson. The scout looks at the arrow that the colonel shows him, and says, "But colonel, them Indians down by the Brazos (or Snake or Powder or whatever river it happened to be that particular Saturday matinee) are Comanche; this here's a Kiowa arrow." But the bull-headed, ignorant colonel won't listen. As far as he's concerned "they're all injuns," so he orders an attack, and soon the whole frontier is in flames and before the movie comes to an end, settlers are hatcheted and the Kiowas are decimated.
Now I'm sure that George Bush went to see the same movies as I did. But he couldn't have grasped their point; it was far too subtle for his intelligence. He must have thought that the stubborn colonel analyzed the situation correctly when he said that "injuns is injuns," because nowadays we have a foreign policy that says, if we're attacked by Al-Quaeda, let's just turn around and revenge ourselves on the Iraqis. After all, Arabs is Arabs. The result: the entire frontier is in flames.
There was a recurring scene in the war movies as well. An American soldier, or a French resistance fighter, has been captured by the Germans. He refuses to talk; won't spill any secrets. The German colonel says to him: "ve haf ways of making you talk. I'll haf to turn you ofer to him." And then the camera would focus on an obvious sadist in an SS uniform, licking his lips. Next there was a brief but terrifying shot of the captive sweating and screaming.
In dozens of films, the villainous Germans routinely employed torture. Americans and their allies, on the other hand, were brave and upright and honorable and played by the rules.
I can guarantee that at this moment there are movies being made all over the world in which the colonel is American and the sadist is CIA. And these films are going to be watched on Saturday afternoons by generations of children.
What has George Bush done to us? What have we allowed him to do?
Wonderful writing.
Posted by: Al Marilyn Dantonio Heitzer | December 11, 2021 at 11:53 AM
Nice post. Reminds me of a joke: the Lone Ranger and Tonto are out riding in the wilderness. Suddenly they find themselves surrounded by hosile 'injuns'. The Lone Ranger turns to his trusty sidekick and says, "Well, Tonto, what are we going to do now?" Tonto turns back to the Lone Ranger and says, "What do you mean 'we', kemosabe?" :)
Posted by: pagost | September 26, 2006 at 03:03 PM