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Western film-makers have frequently been blamed by liberal-minded critics for creating a large body of work with reactionary content, but as "Gunsmoke" amply proves in many fine episodes, the critics couldn't be more wrong.
"The Prisoner" features Jon Voight as a condemned murderer rescued from hanging by Miss Kitty because she is grateful to him for saving her own life. Even though the young cowboy openly admits to killing a rich man's wife, Miss Kitty believes in his innocence so much she rigs a poker game to steal custody of him from an abusive bounty hunter. Then she hides him just long enough for Marshal Matt Dillon to stop a rival sheriff and his violent boss from going through with the hanging. The poor cowpoke protests his innocence, finally gets a fair trial and is set free.
This episode of "Gunsmoke" may have been seen by more than twenty million devoted fans in one night, which makes it difficult to equal its achievement in propagandizing effectively in favor of liberal doubt. Although western movies and TV serials have often been attacked by left-wing pundits for promoting right-wing values, in fact the show "Gunsmoke" may have done more to persuade its audience to oppose the death penalty than a string of full page ads in The New York Times. The makers of this show said "give a condemned man another chance" so entertainingly and so convincingly that most of its millions of loyal viewers probably agreed.
In another episode of the show, featuring Carroll O'Connor as a poor farmer who steals back thirty dollars he lost to a rich gambler later robbed and murdered by a trio of feckless drifters, both the Marshal and Festus, believing that the simple souled farmer would never commit murder or lie to them, ride down the real culprits to prove he's not guilty.
How much more plainly could a point in favor of defendants' rights be made? Yet when "Gunsmoke" was pulled off broadcast TV along with most other western entertainment, pundits of the left were foremost among those who celebrated the occasion, as if westerns, like Wall Street capitalism and the Ku Klux Klan, were a cause of society's ills rather than one of its cures. Well, the pundits had it wrong, this type of show should never have been taken off the air. Westerns are no more to blame for reactionary thinking than Marshal Dillon is to blame for the actions of an angry lynch mob.
score /10
mbuchwal 11 April 2006
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1339320/ |
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9-10-2020 07:13:07