A child old enough to grasp the events and meaning of a movie is getting a philosophical tutorial, one which neither the child nor the parents usually recognize as such. He is seeing a world familiar or alien, inviting or hostile, a world where human abilities and values are possible and are achieved, or where they are thwarted and made not possible to achieve, where life is possible and people able to attain happiness or squalor, defeat, and dissipation. Most of the movies of the past few decades have been the latter alternatives, and very notably the Western feature films.
A kid takes his ethics lessons from the movies to the home and to his life. I know from multiple experiences in my own life that movies really register on the conscious and subconscious portions of a child's mind, and they integrate into his emotional system as well. They help him form his own metaphysical view of life and his values.
No single movie makes or breaks a kid. However, enough movies of certain kinds alter him or her profoundly. That comes via the incredible human need for art and the incredible power of art. For example, see enough of video-game-like movies of today, and you will likely passively take on this world-view and values as part of the fundamental basis and values of life--unless you consciously reprogram that crap out.
By the 1930s, nihilism did not have a dominant foothold in American culture; what came from movies likes these Westerns was a snapshot of cultural attitudes and values. These movies did their part to anchor these attitudes and values in the kids of the era, who lived them later as adults. And, yes, to be sure, many scripts were mediocre with some bad, along with other production, acting, and directing features. However, the enormous volume enabled a wide spectrum of presentations, and each kid picked his favorites to follow.
In addition, most of the Western movies of the 1930s and 1940s, because they were "B" class films, were only about an hour long. That is a good time for a child to sit and absorb. These movies were "formulaic," say the cynics. Why? Each had a protagonist and cadre, and they fought for right and the good. Each major protagonist had a sidekick to assist via slapstick comedy or more productive actions. Always, the protagonist fought the antagonist and his cadre, and these people were always no good and well represented evil. This is what the nihilists called "formulaic." Afterall, said the critics, why should movies have a plot, morality, a protagonist, and an antagonist--those "formulaic" elements? These people showed the world how movies should be, starting from the late 1950s and blossoming in the 1960s and 1970s; they were "formulaic" presentations of the contents of garbage cans.
Western movie stories were simple, which made them easy for children to grasp rather completely. If you sat in the theaters, you heard them groan at the antagonists and cheer on the protagonists, sometimes with standing ovations when good triumphed.
The target audience of latency age kids knew first-hand from their own lives about "fair" versus "unfair," about "right" versus "wrong," and brute force used on the innocent versus retaliatory force from thinking person(s). By that time, he had been to enough school to have felt these on his skin, and these were extremely important issues to him. He knew rule of law versus savagery from the playgrounds, and he certainly knew about bullies, from observation or from direct persecution. These were the elements in those old Western movies as well.
In a later article, we will delve into the symbols and principles presented by those old Westerns. For now, we will indicate some of them without going into great detail.
1930s heroes like Ken Maynard, Buck Jones, Tex Ritter, Bob Steele, and the early John Wayne fought the moral fight, and good triumphed, from the early 1930s through the rest of the era. However, the Western heroes of the 30s and 40s seldom spoke about the specific moral principles behind their actions. I my view that was a big negative. Their actions made that meaning implicitly clear, but so much more could have been done with a few of the proper, explicit words in most films. Certainly any preaching would truly have been a huge minus.
When those moments did come when the hero or those on his side spelled out the moral meanings, they were magic moments, and these lessons sunk deep into the kids. They already had the metaphysical value world of cleanliness and sharpness of living by principle and doing whatever was necessary to preserve and protect against evil people and events.
Taking those breaks from the outdoor labors during this dry summer period around here, I came across two brilliant examples of making morality explicit. Back in the times these movies ran, these examples would not have stood out because there were too many examples like this. Today, they are nuclear in their impact. Here are two excellent examples of making morality explicit from actual Westerns.
1. In a 1950 Gene Autry program made for early television, Autry and his sidekick ride up on an outdoor gunfight between two groups. The sidekick asks Autry which side they should assist. Autry says very matter-of-factly, "Whoever is right."
2. In the 1948 film "The Gallant Legion," starring William Elliot, the film ends with words the likes of which no one hears today. First, some background; the movie is set in the early 1870s when the Texas Rangers are being reinstituted because their replacements, the Texas State Police, had become like jihadists of today with extreme corruption and extreme bullying. Tom, the son of the Ranger commander, has been killed in the combat between the Rangers and State Police. Elliot, the protagonist, tells the commander at the end about his son:
"Tom died for everything that makes life worthwhile."
The lady protagonist with Elliot adds:
"Liberty can never compromise with tyranny or dictatorship. Neither could Tom."
Let these two examples sink in: Ask yourself, when is the last time you heard such talk in a movie?
These two examples are explicit statements of the "metaphysical values" implied in most all of the "B" Westerns. These made deep impressions on the kids of the 1930s and 1940s. Ask yourself, what made the Greatest Generation earn such a name? They fought for VALUES. It would be overstatement to credit these films with making the Greatest Generation possible, but clearly they made their contribution in forming these young men and women through the 1930s.
Those of us coming along in the late 1940s were very, very lucky. We got to see the last of the era, and the era just petered out. We really had no idea that all of these matinee Westerns were about to go away, however. We had had William Elliot, the Lone Ranger, Durango Kid, Hopalong Cassidy, Gene Autry and many others on the screen, and we had Matt Dillon of Gunsmoke on the radio, along with the Lone Ranger, Gene Autry, and others. All of this flickered briefly on the silver screen of the new medium of television, and the baby boomer kids love it for the short time that it lasted. Then it all went away.
The "B" Westerns seemed to go overnight. The decent "A Westerns" began a "slow dissolve" over time. The replacements seemed to arrive with great suddenness.
Taking the place of the 1930s and 1940s Westerns came nihilism, the "poisoned kool-aid" Westerns and other movies, the anti-heroes, the filthy and angst-ridden heroes, the murky morality, and the opposite sense of life that came from our vanished "B" Westerns. We got out just in time.
