The Catholic times. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1951-current, 1958-10-03
JOSEPH BREIC
Those
Western Movies

There is one tremendous thing that nobody can
take away from cowboy movies. They show men
standing, up for principle, refusing to compromise
with evil.
The heroes cannot be bribed, cajoled, seduced
doubletalked or terrified into surrender to the forces
of darkness
In the final showdown, they prefer death to
dishonor-and ii you attempt to dismiss that phrase
as corn, / have an answer for you. you're another"
Unless. you have a better argument than name
calling, you deserve no better reply than name cali
ing. But if you wish to discuss the matter reasonably
MUCH OF WHAT passes for thinking NOWADAYS
is as gooey as mush. Much of what poses as virtue is
as sloppy as uSh-and yet as prissy as a fop.
There are people who not only talk as if violence
were almost the only wrong.
These bleeding hearts are always pointing to
what they like to call the gentle Christ. The truth
is that they know hardly anything about Christ.
They forget that Christ denounced scoundrels
in language Of such power that its equal cannot be
found in all literature.
BLIND GUIDES, who strain out a gnat, and
swallow a camel! Woe to you scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites, because you make clean the outside of
the cup but within you are full of rapine and UNI
cleanness.
"You are like the whited sepulchers, which out
wardly appear to men beautiful, but within are full
of dead mems bones, and of all filthiness!
"You serpents, generation of vipers, how will
you flee from the judgment of HELP"
Where else, in history or even in fiction, can
be found words so like blows of a fist-or a club?
THE GENTLE CHRIST indeed! He was gentle
with the humble-those eager to learn Gods will
and embrace it-but not with the others. as
With the others He was brutally honest because
nothing else held hope of SCATTERING their ~self-pride
or of breaking their hold upon the people. ss
The gentle Christ so drooled-over by the senti-
mentalists, was the Christ who fashioned a whip and
in terrifying wrath drove the money-changers-who
were as tough as they come-out of the temple.
OUR LlLLY-LIvERED times seem clearly to call
for at least some modicum of cowboy stories, or their
equivalent.
Something manly, something masculine must in
fluence our younger generations, lest they grow up
too softheaded to hit a man to stop him from tortur-
ing a child.
l realize that the fightin' and feudin' of the
cowboy movies can be overdone. But / welcome the
piece written the other day by William EWald, critic
for United Press international, about Studio Ones
TV play called 'No Place to Run Wrote Ewald:
THE PLAY WoULNT be worth devoting much
space to, except that / think in SOM future time it
will make a fascinating study for some s~ociologist
interested in contemporary attitudes. The man of
rigid standards, we were told, was wrong. Integrity
can be carried too far bellows his father-in-aw, and
when it is, it becomes destructive
The wife of the man with standards agrees. So
does his son. And in a climatic scene, the hero gives
.. No Place to Run typifies the growth of
what one sociologist, David Riesman, has called the
'other-directed' man. He is the man who is sensi.
tized to the demands of his group, who conforms to
it.
g" He stands in opposition to the heroes Of
most TV westerns. The western hero is an inner
directed man. He stands hard and sometimes alone.
He is a reorganization type man who carries his
values with him.
In a way, ] think this may partially account
for the success of TV westerns. It's probably a COM
individual who refuses to surrender himself or his
values"