Great Novel + False Hero = Spoiled Classic

Rating: 1/10 (8 August 2005)

The only two "classics" that still make the annual best seller lists are To Kill a Mockingbird & Catcher in the Rye. "Catcher" was spared from being made into a movie, and was also spared the liberal spin machine. Mockingbird was about the everyday life of kids growing up in the rural South. The focus was 80% on the kids. In the background, the father Atticus Finch was a lawyer who took on the case of a young black man accused of a sexual crime against a White. In the movie, the lawyer and the trial are in front-and-center focus, and with Gregory Peck's ham-from-hell overacting, Atticus Finch became the most phony hero in movie history. In the film, the accused black was anything but an Ice T (before he reformed and turned TV cop) menace. No, he was obviously a sweet and reserved person --- and everybody in town knew it. So this great lawyer hero had to take on alleged racial prejudice, not real prejudice but movie-style prejudice, twisting flimsy and virtually non existent "evidence" to get these nasty bigots "to see" through old Atticus Finch's liberal eyes.... The only thing less brave than Gregory Peck's paper hero were the filmmakers. Remember, liberalism was very much in mode when this movie was released. Real courage was to disagree with the liberal dogma while Time, Newsweek, et cetera praised it in lockstep. Spitting on the rural South was an active part of that dogma, the theme of dozens of movies, and a virtual guarantee of 4-star reviews. My advice: Get the book, read it; it's great.