to be included in erotie novels: “The tragic lives of these disturbedrnpeople will serve as a warning to all”—RobertrnAlzheimcrs, M.D., New York City.rnWhat the modernists really object to in a John Waynernmovie is the moral context. Old Westerns were, for the mostrnpart, moralitv plavs, in which good men did their best to defendrnthemselves, their families, and their communities against violentrnand anarchic outlaws and Indians. Bad men were not portrayedrnas victims of an insensitive world but as ruthless indi-rnidualists who knew what they wanted and would stop atrnnothing to get it.rnThis formula, of course, applies only to the serials andrnB-movies. The really great Westerns—The Searchers, RedrnRiver, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, High Noon, and ThernShootist—are among the most serious and complex films madernin America, and vet the moral lines were always etched inrncrystal. To consider only the last of them, Don Siegel’s ThernShootist, it is the stor of youth and age, of a nation growing uprnand perhaps growing old, but above all it is the storv of how arnoung man (Ron Howard) turns from the cult of violence forrnthe sake of violence as he learns to appreciate the code of therngunfightcr J.B. Books (John Wayne): “I won’t be wronged. Irnwon’t be insulted. I won’t be laid a hand on. I don’t do thesernthings to others, and I require the same from them.”rnhi the end. Books (who, like John Wayne, is dying of cancer)rnsacrifices himself in a gunfight, where he manages to kill all ofrnthe boy’s hoodlum heroes—Hugh O’Brian, Richard Boone,rnand Hugh McKinney—and the boy tosses the gun away, in anrnending reminiscent both of High Noon and Siegel’s own DirtyrnHarry, hi the gun fight, Sicgel had wanted Wayne to shoot onernof the gunmen in the back, but the old man refused: “Whaterner the cause, I would never shoot anyone in the back. It’s unthinkablernfor mv image.” The storv is told in Siegel’s recentlyrnpublished memoir (posthumous, of course), A Siegel Film: AnrnAutobiography (Faber & Faber).rnBut it was not a question of image so much as it was the codernof John Wayne—and John B. Books, and Clint Eastwood, whornalmost never observes the proprieties, makes his Wild Westrnshow hero Bronco Billy very tender of his image in front of thern”little pards” because he knows the influence he has overrnthem. John Wayne’s view of Clint Eastwood was necessarilyrnambiguous. When Siegel tries to argue that Eastwood’s filmsrncontain “very little gratuitous violence, sex, or bad language,”rnthe Duke explodes: “Bulls—t! His films are full of f—king,rng—amn obscenities. It’s a bad image to paint himself into. Arnf—king shame”—and Wayne insisted on having the profanityrnlifted from the script of The Shootist.rnIn view of the Duke’s own colorful way of speaking, Siegelrnfound his on-screen prissincss amusing, but Wayne knew somethingrnthat once upon a time we all used to know. He camernfrom an age when men, who could cuss a blue streak in saloonsrnor behind the barn, did their best to keep a civil tongue in public,rnespecially when there were women and children present.rnSetting aside pornography, the makers of movies and televisionrnshows have to assume that their productions will end up in thernliiiig rooms of American families. Then why should films notrnconform to the same rules that govern the family parlor? InrnTerry Southern’s script for Evelyn Waugh’s The Lored One,rnRobert Morley (playing a stuffy English actor) declares that hernwould never do in front of the camera what he would not do inrnhis own home. The line is pompous and absurd but truer thanrnSouthern probabh’ imagined.rnI cannot speak for the families of the 90’s, where fathers mayrnspend the evening flipping through Penthouse as their childrenrnwatch a retrospective on Madonna’s classic videos, but until notrntoo long ago, there were certain decencies and proprieties—rnperhaps too many of them—that had to be observed: “Please,rnnot in front of the children” could silence discussions of biblicalrninerrancy or the plays of George Bernard Shaw. As mostrnmothers know, it is better to be on the safe side. “Little pitchersrnhave big ears.”rnThen what are we doing, letting this flood of toxic wasterninto our very homes? Nude scenes, blood baths, smarmy sexrnjokes, repeated over and over with the mechanical efficiency ofrnSade. In despair, parents may choose to escape to the brainlessrnsitcoms and heartburning dramas of The Family Channel.rnWhat you will find, at the dinner hour no less, are advertisementsrnfor products relating to what we used to call female complaints.rn”What’s that for, daddy?” is an inevitable question,rnand I wonder how evangelical parents handle it. Rather thanrnface these commercials, I think I would prefer attending anrnerotic film festival or being strapped to a chair in front of a continuousrndouble-feature of Straw Dogs and Pat Garret and Billyrnthe Kid (arguably the dumbest film ever made by a serious director,rnif you exempt the complete oeuvre of Robert Altman).rnThis is no idle boast, since I once spent the night in an all-nightrnmovie theater in Manhattan, fending off aggressive queersrnand trving to shut out the horror of Li’l Abner and Jerry Lewisrnas The Bellboy.rnThe Athenians, who were a civilized people, did not portrayrneither sex or violence in their tragedies, even though thernthemes of these plays ran the gamut from incest to parricide.rnThe sex and violence were limited to lyric songs or messengerrnspeeches. Peter Arnott, who used to do puppet-theater versionsrnof the classics, told me that he once had occasion to put on arnrepeat performance of the Oedipus at a high school in Detroit.rnSophocles was a big hit, even the second time around, but onernof the students wanted to know if the principal had madernhim cut out the scene where Oedipus takes the brooches offrnthe dress of his hanged wife and plunges them into his eves.rnThe student had, of course, “seen” the episode recounted byrnthe messenger.rnWhy should words be less corrosive than live-action scenes?rnPerhaps it is because poetr’ turns even the reader or listener intorna quasi-artist, who makes what he can out of the material,rnand in recreating the dramatic stuff, we master it. Stage performancesrnand, even more so, films overwhelm our imaginationrnand fill our heads with the artificial memory of experiencesrnthat we have never had but cannot forget. They are like the artificialrnmemory implant that haunts the dreams of ArnoldrnSchwarzenegger in Total Recall (a film based on a brilliant idearnof Philip K.Dick).rnSex and violence are the stuff of life, and real human culturesrncircumscribe them with rituals and rules that make it possiblernto incorporate these basic forces into society. These proprietiesrnare infinitely varied, but they are observed in savagery and inrncivilization, by Calvinists and cannibals. We, of course, knowrnbetter, and think nothing of drenching ourselves in blood orrnsticking our noses into projection-screened copulations of thernmale and female prostitutes who win Academy Awards. Myrnstudents used to protest the barbarity of gladiatorial games, andrnwhen I pointed out the numbers of people thev saw murderedrnevery night on television and in mo-ies, they invariabl}- replied:rnJULY 1994/11rnrnrn