There are a lot of films that scared us as kids, and still scare us. Many of the films today are far too graphic for my tastes. Heck, most of television is, too, for that matter. So, I should say right at the outset that I’m not a fan of gore, not in any way shape or form. I know some folks out there are big on the stuff, but not me. Sure, I’ve seen some, the classic Herschell Gordon Lewis, Romero and Savini works, but none of the modern multi-sequel films that grace our theaters with single word titles. I don’t mind being scared. As most would agree, we all need a good scare every now and then. It’s good for you. It’s thrilling. But gore isn’t thrilling for me. It’s sickening. I like to be thrilled, I don’t wish to be sick. Besides, I’ve seen enough of the footage and descriptions of films like “Saw” and “Hostel,” which I rebel against, regardless of how “intelligent” or “clever” they are reported to be.

So, as I began to write this essay, as the wind and rain hit my window, I started to think on things that scare me. Matt Damon came to mind. Not because he’s scary or anything, of course, but because I noticed just the other day that the popular actor announced, quite out of the blue, that he’s not interested in working on films that have gratuitous violence in them.

He said, “I always look at the violence (in a script). I don’t want it to be gratuitous because I do believe that has an effect on people’s behavior. I really do believe that and I have turned down movies because of that.”

Wow.

I had to stop for a second after I first saw that, since I associate him with films which contain explosive, deadly violence. Right now, there are very few characters more lethal than Bourne for their efficiency in killing people to death, at least in the main stream. Obviously I wasn’t the only one who noticed the incongruity between his words and his roles. Damon’s statement that aside from Bourne, he has turned down many-a-script that contained violence could very well be true. I have to take him at his word, since I’m sure he receives tons of scripts every day that have him climbing, kicking and wrenching the feathers out of very bad good guys from Finland to Fuji. So, I asked myself why would he take this suddenly public stand? This was the first time I had seen an A-list actor, a very liberal A-list actor, at that, confessing such a view in public and to a news outlet, no less. Stunning. No other word to describe it.

Two days later, I saw a small news piece where Nicole Kidman was basically saying the same thing, not that she turns down violent scripts, but that she believes media influences behavior:

“Asked if the movie industry has “played a bad role,” Kidman said “probably,” but quickly added that she herself doesn’t. “I can’t be responsible for all of Hollywood but I can certainly be responsible for my own career,” she said.

Wait a minute.

So here were two very big stars, stating in no uncertain terms that media influences behavior, and can do so in bad ways, two days apart. This, after years and years of denying it and ridiculing those who believe media plays a huge part in influencing behavior, our culture, they come out with this. Two days apart!  As long as I can remember remembering, I’ve read and heard from professors, media experts, authors, artists and filmmakers, from friends and foe alike that media doesn’t influence. Period. End of story. Get over it, etc.

To be fair to those two actors, they didn’t deny it or ridicule others, but their industry, Hollywood, has made that denial, that firm stance, the unmovable rampart against the charges that their product, their message is increasingly detrimental, that it’s screwing up our kids and us.

So, I had to wonder why would not one, but two big celebrities come out with very similar statements mere days apart. All I could think of was they want to be on the right side of the facts when some soon-to-be-released study by an organization embraced by Hollywood, such as Harvard, Yale, or Jon Stewart hits the net or news stands. Who knows? But, as I looked out through the glass at the dark foreboding skies, I suddenly remembered something. I remembered the recent news on severely declining box office receipts and DVD sales. I remembered John Nolte’s essay and all the others on the subject. And then it all clicked. “I know what’s going on here,” I said to my reflection in the window. Fear is what’s going on here.

Which leads me to something almost as scary as Hollywood actors making statements to the press. A movie that scared me with very little more than fear. No blood or violence or graphic anything. Just good old fashioned fear.

I’m not a huge fan of “The Blair Witch Project,” but I do give the filmmakers kudos for their idea, for their execution of it, and for their spunk. I hate spunk (No, just kidding, I love spunk, but I can’t hear that without thinking of Lou Grant’s famous reply to Mary). Anyway, the filmmakers of  “The Blair Witch Project” mentioned some of the things that inspired them in their “fresh approach” to producing their now famous hoax film. Among the lot was an overlooked little film of the 70s.  I had noticed the similarity of the film that they mentioned and their own hugely successful project right off the bat. I noticed it minutes into their wooded project. So, I was glad to see they acknowledged it at least.

The Legend of Boggy Creek

This little gem scared the dickens out of me as a kid.  For those who haven’t seen it, I won’t ruin it, if that’s even possible, with any spoilers. But I will give you a very brief rundown of it, just so you know where I’m coming from and why.  To a boy, it aroused tremendous fear; to an adult, I wonder about where that fear comes from.

The film starts out with a disclaimer that “This is a true story.” Right there, you got me. I’m already hooked. I’m not sure why that is – undoubtedly an expert psychologist can explain it with some long words that will take another expert psychologist to interpret. I’ll leave the business of that to them and just be satisfied with knowing it’s a swell gimmick with a set-up that can’t lose.

After a few dark, and yes, boggy images of a swamp, dead trees and scenes of late Autumn, a scene Andrew Wyatt or Charles Sheeler might paint on a depressing day, we get a young boy in denim overalls, the kind Opie would wear, and looking like a lot of kids looked in the 70s, running across a golden, sunlit field. He’s not goin’ fishin’ and he’s not havin’ fun. In fact, he looks terrified. We hear howls and hoots of various animals echoing off in the distance as he runs along. He makes it to a country store where the local gentry, the older men are sitting around chin wagging. Out of breath, he blurts out that his mama sent him to get help, because “there’s some kinda bayou man down by the woods and the creek.”

The men laugh it off and send the boy on his way, certain it’s just the overactive imaginations of mother and child. He runs back home across the same fields with the sun now setting and the spaces between the trees getting gloomier by the minute. Suddenly, he stops when he hears a sound echoing in the distance. We hear it too. It’s the angry howling of the beast.

In a narration reminiscent of Earl Hamner Jr., a comforting male voice-over describes his little town and how it was when he was a kid, that kid. The scenes are of pleasant fields, trees, and woods. It’s a picturesque though remote “neck of the woods.” Playful country music is used to make us feel at home, down home in this place known as Fouke, Arkansas, population 350. This, he tells us, is his recollection of what happened to that town back when he was seven years old. The comforting voice of the narrator goes on to welcome us in, in a neighborly way, describing the post office and the gas station, the school, garage, motel and a couple of cafes “where the men stop-by to discuss the fish they caught, or the duck, quail or deer they’ve hunted.”  He then introduces some of the good sturdy folk of Fouke and how most are “farmers or ranchers.” Not exactly the kind that scare easily. Again, a good set-up.

He sums it up with the killer line: “Fouke is a right, pleasant place to live… until the sun goes down.”

What happens after that isn’t so picturesque at all. We get a documentary style format showing a variety of the characters, real or imagined, that the story presents as true. All sorts of recollections of dead animals, mauled hogs, pet dogs and others that were either found scared to death, ripped apart like rag dolls or just plain disappeared. The characters whose names are displayed on screen all seem trustworthy and basic, simple folk, not the kind who want publicity. And it’s all shot as if it came off the same reel as that Paterson big foot footage we’ve all seen.

We are then treated to a variety of episodes where the creature, the Fouke Monster, as it came to be called, terrorizes the locals in various ways. These “reenactments” based on our trusted narrator’s words along with the very amateur quality of the production add to its realism. Descriptions by farmers of 200-pound hogs carried over barbed wire, dogs and cats slain wet our appetite setting us up for the real big hit, which doesn’t really strike us so much as it dampens, like wet socks or a soaked sleeping bag on a camping trip.

The narrator further sets the tone with his ominous, “I doubt if you could find a lonelier, spookier place in this country than down around Boggy Creek.”

Sure, there are some sudden shocking moments, some classic fright magic, but it’s all a consequence of the set-ups we were treated to. Without them, the frights would not last much longer than the frames they took to show, which are minimal. The film really doesn’t show much at all, actually. But the implication of what is “out there” and “running on two legs” is clear and never far from our minds. A monster is stalking the woods at night. Is it man or beast? What does it want? Is it going to hurt us?

There’s no teen angst, no sex scenes and no hot tubs. There are no rowdy bullies who get their just desserts after picking on the cute couple. No car chases or explosions. No special weaponry or resourcefulness to make any. There isn’t even a gruff and disbelieving sheriff who always finds out the hard way how wrong he was to dismiss the whole thing. Nope, none of that stuff. What there is are very average, simple, vulnerable people in cabins or mobile homes, far from telephones or neighbors who all alone, or in small groups, get the stuffing scared out of them by something outside. There’s also fierce hunting dogs whimpering and turning back at the first whiff of the monster, motorists narrowly missing the creature as he runs across the road and more vignettes adding to the overall feeling of fear. There’s also a very odd musical segment that might very well be the scariest thing in the movie! The entire film is really nothing more than a loosely connected string of “documented” incidents described in a fashion not unlike a darker episode of
“In Search of…” (which by no strange coincidence was another inspiration to the filmmakers of “The Blair Witch Project”).

I saw this film with my brother and sisters. I was a small boy, not unlike the lad depicted. And even though I exited the theater into a hot, hazy and bustling normal afternoon in the city, bereft of anything wooded or rustic, I was still very anxious to get home as fast as possible. I was certain that the Fouke Monster, that “huge hairy creature watching from the shadows” was somewhere out there, behind a parked car or hiding in a dark stairwell waiting to rip my neck out like he did those dogs, which we never actually saw him do. I really didn’t see much, did I? But, boy did it scare me. And perhaps, sometimes, when the sun goes down and the wind howls, like the now all grown-up little boy says in the film, “and it scares me now, too”

IF YOU’RE A FEMINIST–MAKE UP
IF YOU’RE A CHAUVINIST–CATCH UP
IF YOU’RE A MODERATE–FESS UP
IF YOU LEAN RIGHT–STRAIGHTEN UP
IF YOU’R A LIBERAL/PROGRESSIVE…
WHATEVER-GIDDY UP & MOVE ON

Fear

First the author suggests audience identification as the main factor: we are interested in zombies because according to the mythology, we could become them ourselves (should we die after being bitten by one):

“There’s a sadness,” said S.G. Browne. “They used to be us. But they’re tragic and comical and they want to be friends, but we run. Vampires are Brad Pitts. Zombies are more like the Steve Buscemis. We can relate.”

That natural sense of sympathy, however, conflicts with an even more fundamental urge: the drive to stay alive, as the latter absolutely requires that we kill every zombie we can find. That’s a rather poignant situation, and I think it does indeed account for some of the power of zombie stories.

Thus the Tribune story quotes Dr. Steven Schlozman, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School:

“What happens in zombie movies is important,” he said, “because we shoot zombies in the head, then we start to enjoy it, then we feel sheepish. We can learn a lot from a scenario like that.”

The Tribune story also considers the question of why the zombie phenomenon speaks to contemporary America in particular, suggesting that the answer is that people today are extraordinarily fearful, as a result especially of the 9/11 attacks (as I noted in 2004) and (much less persuasively or even plausibly) the recent reports of a coming swine flu epidemic. The Trib story quotes Max Brooks, author of The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z as making that claim:

“Because with swine flu and everything else, it strikes a chord, it helps work out apocalyptic anxieties without getting too real,” Brooks said.

In fact, “The Zombie Survival Guide” was born of pre-Y2K hysteria, he said, not unlike the zombies of George Romero’s zombie classics, born of Vietnam and racial anxieties (“Night of the Living Dead“) and zoned-out American consumerism (“Dawn of the Dead“).

Thus Brooks correctly observes that a widespread sense of anxiety has prevailed in American society for several decades–which coincides with the rise of the zombie as a cultural phenomenon, I would add. The phenomenon started with the unexpected popularity of the low-budget zombie film Night of the Living Dead in 1968, a year of great turmoil in the United States.

The Trib story goes on to quote the author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies with his idea about what makes zombies especially fascinating today:

It may be a cringing irony that the current zombie craze coincides with a deadly outbreak of swine flu. But it goes beyond that, said Grahame-Smith.

“We live in a time when we think a lot about big faceless groups of people in the world who mean to do us harm and can’t be talked to, and so it’s not surprising we would take comfort in the zombie.”

As opposed to other times when there weren’t big, faceless groups of people meaning to do us harm? No, none of these explanations gets to the essence and explains the enduring appeal of this cultural phenomenon over the past four decades.

I think the causality is the other way around. Both the zombie appeal and the swine flu fears are caused by two things: the news media’s increasing use of scare tactics in trying to lure audiences, and the socialists’ continuous use of fearmongering to press for political power. In their neverending quest to wrest more power by creating what H. L. Mencken correctly characterized as an endless series of hobgoblins requiring a socialist elite’s powers to destroy, the socialists and their media satraps continually raise fears of everything conceivable:

• medical and public-health scares from Alar in apples to Gulf War Syndrome to Asian flu to swine flu
• all-out nuclear war (it never happened because both sides indeed knew it would be catastrophic and wouldn’t get them what they wanted)
• a housing “crisis” that could hit innocent homeowners and investors (as opposed to being the necessary consequences of irresponsible actions by lenders and borrowers) and bring down the entire economy
• the earth overheating and killing all life on the planet

. . . and so on and so on for decade after decade.

This habit of the political elites and mainstream media is quite sufficient to account for the dominant sense of unease and constant fear one can see among much of the contemporary American public.

The irony is that for the public to give in to this scam would be the one sure way for the zombies to win.

-S. T. Karnick

I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and earth, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live… — Deuteronomy 30:19

It’s 11:57 in Hadleyville. The movie is “High Noon.” Marshall Will Kane (Gary Cooper) seals an envelope containing his last will and testament. He writes, “To be opened in the event of my death,” on its front panel. A train carrying a freed murderer, Frank Miller, who wants to gun Kane down will arrive in just three minutes.

Marshall Kane has been abandoned by everyone. All that he believed is tarnished. He stands alone without a badge, with only his conscience. His new bride, the church, the state, old friends and allies have all turned their backs.

Suddenly, the train’s shrill whistle shrieks through Hadleyville’s deserted streets with the fury of a raging beast. Its engine passes the town’s church. Under its neat white steeple, the Parson and his flock sit in silent vigil, the congregation perched on their pews like black crows on telephone lines awaiting a hanging. 

The engine passes the barbershop. A carpenter hammers a nail into a fresh cut coffin. Kane’s coffin. Next door, in the Ramirez Saloon, mud crusted cowboys, Miller’s boys, hear the whistle. They pine for the return to the lawless debauchery they enjoyed when Miller ran things.

Sam Fuller, an old friend Kane thought he could trust, cowers in his house in his wife’s shadow. When Fuller hears the whistle he casts his eyes down with shame.

Every man who capitulates to evil has a rationale. Each rationale is a response to a basic human instinct. In Hadleyville, for those who turned their backs and hid, that instinct was fear.  

Winter, 2009, Washington, D.C. It is 11:57 once again. Our new President, Barack Obama, must now choose how he will lead us in our continued response to the menace of Islamic terror.  Will he appease the pacifists who believe the road to peace is paved with inane bumper stickers, humane treatment of savage killers, and good intentions?  Will we capitulate to a world view which celebrates terrorist regimes while demanding that our true democratic allies in the war on terror, who have defended themselves, be tried for war crimes? Or, will he lead us to choose darkness and evil? Will he allow his new attorney general, Eric Holder, a man who orchestrated the release of convicted Puerto Rican terrorists, to prosecute the very people who have risked their lives to successfully protect us these last eight years? Or will President Obama lead us to stand tall and fight, choose light and life?

Will we cower or will we fight? As Marshall Kane straps his holster and gun onto his hip a lonesome cowboy sings…

Do not forsake me,
Oh my darlin’
On this, our weddin’ day.
Do not forsake me,
Oh my darlin’
Wait,
Wait along.

The train arrives at the Hadleyville station. Marshall Kane’s new bride, Amy Fowler, a woman who turned pacifist and Quaker, who turned the other cheek after watching her father and brother gunned down by outlaws, boards the train as outlaw Frank Miller, the paroled murderer Kane arrested, steps onto the station’s platform and meets up with his brother and their men.

Will President Obama order the release of enemy combatants, who value death over life, to rejoin the fight to kill us and destroy our way of life?

Amy had pleaded with Kane to leave town with her, to run. She told him that he did not have to be a hero for her, told him that Miller and his outlaws were no longer his concern, and told him that they had time to get away, run, and move to a new town so that they could open a store and start a new life. She pleaded, “I don’t care who’s right or who’s wrong, there’s got to be a better way for people to live.” There is … if all humankind repudiates evil. However, inasmuch as the choice to do good or evil is the most definitive quality of a free human spirit, the choice will be ever-present, people will choose – freely – to do evil. They worship evil.

Will we allow our great tradition of choosing between right and wrong and fighting for what is right to be wasted by those who avoid evil by turning their backs to it?

The cowboy continues his lament…

The noon day train
Will bring Frank Miller.
If I’m a man
I must be brave
And I must face that deadly killer
Or lie a coward,
A craven coward
or lie a coward in my grave

In the bliss filled moments after their wedding ceremony, Will Kane promised Amy that he would try his best, that he would hang up his badge and his gun and live a life of peace. After hearing the news that Miller was coming back, Kane acknowledged her feelings and agreed to run. But on the road out of Hadleyville Kane’s conscience caught up with him. He turned their wagon around and headed back to town and his fate.

He would not betray himself.

We now face the deadly threat of modern Frank Millers, fiends and murderers who have and will – if given the opportunity by our foolishly relaxing the anti-terror network constructed over the last eight years – sacrifice our lives for their vision of a world dominated by a macabre faith that like a cancerous tumor destroys everything in its path.

After receiving the telegram announcing Miller’s arrival, Kane believed he could call upon his “friends” in Hadleyville, form a posse and run Miller and his gang out of town. As Kane could not depend on them we should not depend on our international “friends,” nor shape our national defense policy to placate any other nation on earth. Why? We have liberated peoples from every nation on earth!

Marshall Kane walks alone and shadowless down Main Street to Judge Merrick’s storefront courtroom. The Judge has ripped the Stars and Stripes from the wall and is packing his saddle bags when Kane strides in. Upon seeing that Kane is back, the judge says, “You shouldn’t have returned Will, it was stupid.”

Will answers, “I figured I had to, I had to stay.”

In First Samuels, Chapter 2 Verse 3, Hannah, mother of Samuel, prays for her son:  “Talk no more so very proudly, let not arrogance come from your mouth for the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed.” Will Kane will be judged by his actions as we will be judged by ours. Evil feeds on equivocation, on appeasement, on the failure to recognize it and on the cowardice that prevents people of peace and goodwill from acting to swiftly destroy it. Will Kane was a man of action and not of words. Will President Obama’s actions speak louder than his words?

Now on his horse, Judge Merrick says, “I’ve been a judge many times in many towns and hope to be a judge again.” He then turns once more in the saddle and adds, “Look this is just a dirty little village in the middle of nowhere. Nothing that ever happens here is really important. Now get out…what a waste.” He rides away. By choosing to run from town to town the judge has chosen to live his life as a refugee. Will we stand and fight or will we become feckless refugees?

And the cowboy continues his song…

Oh, to be torn
betwixt love and duty.
Suposin’ I lose
My fair-haired beauty.
Look at that bid hand move along
Nearin’ high noon

We too are torn between our love of life and liberty, the selfish pursuit of pleasure and the personal sacrifices life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness require.  

Some agonize over the perceived potential for the loss of liberty and will not set aside their selfish concerns in order that our freedom, the freedom so many have sacrificed so very much to secure, may be passed on to future generations. They demand protection from anonymous telephone taps while willingly allowing themselves to be searched every time they arrive at an airport to board a plane, go to a concert or court, or visit a sports arena.

In Hadleyville there are as many reasons for not standing and fighting as there are citizens.

Kane’s young deputy, Harvey Pell, arrives at the Sheriff’s office with an ultimatum, “You want me to stick, you put the word in like I said.” Pell is angry that Will Kane did not tap him to become Marshall and now will stand and fight only if Kane will tell the City Fathers, “The Board of Selectmen,” to anoint him the next Marshall.

Kane answers: “Sure I do [want you to stick], but I’m not buying it [your offer], it’s up to you.” Kane is duty bound – a hero relic of an old Hollywood that celebrated patriotism, the American spirit, and the precious artistic freedom Hollywood owes to it. Harv’ Pell is the French, the Germans, the Russians et al, who enjoy unparalleled freedom brought about by the United States but will join the posse only if their political and financial aspirations are met.

Kane’s next visitor is Deputy Sheriff Herb Baker who stops by to pick up his badge and tell Kane that he can be counted on. But when Baker discovers that he is the only deputy who has re-volunteered to stand and fight, he backs out saying, “This is plain just committing suicide. This town ain’t that low [that so many would refuse to fight]…I ain’t no lawman – I got no stake in this – if you get more let me know.”

And the cowboy’s lament continues…

He made a vow
While in state prison.
Vowed it would be
My life or his’n.
I’m not afraid of death but oh
What will I do
If you leave me?

Kane returns to the Ramirez Saloon, owned by Ellen Ramirez his former lover, where he overhears the bartender saying, “I’ll give you odds Will Kane will be dead five minutes after Frank gets off the train.” Kane dry gulches the bartender. As the bartender wipes the blood from his cut lip he looks up from the barroom floor and says, “You carry a badge and a gun Marshall, you ain’t got no call to do that.” Will Kane answers, “You’re right,” and then asks the men in the saloon to join his posse. They refuse.

Kane enters the church. The Parson greets Kane with a reprimand for his failure to attend regularly.  The Parson is making Kane the enemy, the bad guy, just as many in our nation have made our intelligence and military services the enemy. When Kane announces that Frank Miller has returned the Parson steps aside and allows the Marshall to speak his piece. Marshall Kane asks the congregation for assistance, begs them, but the Sanctuary of the church becomes a chamber of detraction and finger pointing like the misguided, ineffectual and oft evil United Nations.

A man stands in his pew, grabs his lapel with one hand and gestures with the other as he argues in great oratorical style; “Let’s make sure we know what this is all about – he’s [Kane] not marshall any longer – and there are personal differences between them.”  Another shouts, “We put him away once but who stopped him from hanging – the politicians up North. Let them take care of it.” This voice is not unlike those in our nation who demand we do nothing without the approval and consent of the United Nations, an organization with Syria, a known terror state, on its Security Council and Libya, a totalitarian dictatorship, on its Human Rights Commission.

One parishioner seems to take Kane’s side: “If we don’t do what’s right we’re goin’ to have plenty more trouble – there’s only one thing to do and you know what it is.” But this man’s call for action is nullified by the next speaker: “Why didn’t you arrest those three [Miller's sidekicks]? Then we’d only have Frank Miller to deal with?” Had Kane arrested the sidekicks would these same people have protested that their civil rights had been violated inasmuch as they had yet to commit a crime? If Kane had arrested them would they demand release as the demand has been made for the release of war prisoners from Guantanamo?

These protests echo today’s. There are those who claim we should not be the world’s policeman. But, if we do not act in our own self-interest, who will? Who will fill the void? The Germans? Syrians? Russians? Japanese? The cowardly and ignominious French? 

A brave hearted woman in a back pew bolts up and protests, “Don’t you remember what this town was like? How can you sit there and talk and talk and talk.” But someone else stands and asks, “How do we know Miller is on that train anywise?” and the congregation erupts in a low grumble.

Kane looks to the Parson for help and guidance but religion in Hadleyville then was just as confused and misguided as religion is today. The Parson responds in pretzel logic, “Commandments say thou shalt not kill. The right and the wrong seem pretty clear here…If you’re asking me to tell my people to go out and kill or get themselves killed, I’m sorry I don’t know what to say.” In the ancient Hebrew text, the Talmud, it is written, “If your enemy comes to kill you then kill him first.” Of this there is no confusion.

Kane next visits his mentor, retired Marshall Howe. Howe’s response to Kane most illuminates the human condition both then and now. Howe’s a broken man who lives with a Mexican caretaker. On being a lawman he says, “You risk your skin catching killers and the juries turn them loose so that they can come back and shoot at you again. (NOTE: This is exactly what had been happening in Iraq until the surge) If you’re honest, you’re poor your whole life and in the end you wind up dying all alone on some dusty street for what? For nothing – for a tin star.” About Hadleyville’s citizens Howe says resignedly, “It [Miller's release and return] all happened so soon…people got to talk themselves into law and order before they do anything about it, maybe because down deep they don’t care, they just don’t care. Get out Will, get out. It’s all for nothin’ Will, all for nothing.”

Has anything changed? Since 9-11 have not multitudes of hysterical Americans identified with the enemy and attacked our lawmen.

As Will Kane walks out onto Howe’s “dusty street” the cowboy resumes his song…

I do not know
What fate awaits me
I only know
I must be brave
And I must face a man
Who hates me…

The Hadleyville clock strikes twelve, ours too will strike again soon. Will Kane stands alone, as we must. Kane relinquishes his badge and says that he is the same man with or without a badge. He must overcome his fears and harden his resolve. He must fight his enemy with or without allies, as we must now.

Don’t think of leaving
Now that I need you by my side
Wait along, wait along
Wait along
Wait along
Wait along, wait along, wait along.

Amy, seated on the train with Ellen Ramirez, hears gunshots, races into town, and finds a body in the middle of the street. It is not Will. She hears more shots and runs to the Marshall’s office but Will is not there.  Amy runs to a window. Will’s holstered six shooter and badge hang next to it. More shots are fired. Amy looks across the street and sees that her husband is pinned down by Miller and his last man standing. Miller’s man runs to the side of the Marshall’s building, takes cover next to the window and continues firing but does not see Amy. Amy, now caught agonizingly between her vow of non-violence and her love for her husband chooses life, as Deuteronomy instructs. She removes Will’s revolver and shoots the outlaw in the back.  

In our little corner of the universe, on our small planet, in our small nation, in our homes, and in our hearts we too are faced with a choice. Since time immemorial we have had to choose between light and darkness, life and death, good and evil.  

In the above passage of Deuteronomy 30:19, God speaks through Moses to his people as they are about to enter Canaan: “I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life so that you and your descendants may live.”

Like Kane and Amy, we must now chose life.