Sunday, July 31, 2016

American in the Nexus of Race and Guns Part 6

I don't remember if I saw Cat Ballou in the theater or on television. The second run movie house could have had it as a feature for a Saturday afternoon matinee.

It isn't impossible for me to have seen it on the big screen.






I would not have known about Nat King Cole's music career. I probably was trying to figure out why Sidney Poitier was not in the movie.

Sidney was in dang almost every movie I could think of in the 1960s.

I did like my westerns with the shooting and and killing of bad people. I was heavily invested in the killing of bad people.

But change came. New ideas were seeping into the general consciousness. I remember being in the audience with John Wayne type movie.

There comes a point when the Union army general or scout refereed to Native Americans as savages.

The audience, 99.5% black responded with jokes and booing. When the indigenous land owners were killing up said Union army there was cheering.

So that is probably why there was a whole lot of Clint Eastwood movies at my local cinema. Less wear and tear and not so much popcorn boxes chucked at the screen.

I digress.

Kat Ballou wasn't that kind of movie. It was a western comedy.

Plucky young woman returns home with her dad only to find out that a bad man is causing trouble.

Still got your Native American in service and white guys doing pretty much what they want.

And if you think about it the movie does kind of carry the meme that the only power anyone has it is the power of the gun to invoke change.

You want justice, do it yourself.

You want wealth, take it.

You want self-respect in an unfair land, fight for it.

Cuz real good so-called G-d fearing/loving citizens don't give a damn about anything other than their own self interests.

Yeah, yeah. I'm putting too much into it. Just a comedy movie.

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