Why Don’t He Write?
We all remember Dances With Wolves, that wonderful Kevin Costner epic about life on the plains for a post-Civil-War soldier who befriends the local Indian tribe and realizes that they are better people than most western settlers he knows. Costner gets to his lonely and desolate frontier fort by means of a buggy ride from a noxious frontiersman who eats pickled eggs and farts loudly. He has one great line as they pass the remains of some random sun-bleached human remains at the derelict remnants of a Calistoga wagon. He ponders the events that transpired and says that someone back East is wondering about the lost soul, “Why don’t he write?” He cackles to himself before he moves on and the image for the old expression that the dogs bark and the caravan trailers move on in the dark comes to mind.
Such is the pioneering life. I have said many times that my lot is most likely among those dry bones by the side of the trail. I have no understanding of why that is except that I inherited an adventurous spirit and am always inclined to be a first mover more than a follower. There is little or no logic to it. Rational risk/reward analysis almost always tells you the optimal action is to be the second adopter. Let the guy walking point take all the arrows, but jump into the breach right after to maximize bang for the buck.
It makes we wonder what I would have done on the prairie back in the day. I just watched a Robert Mitchum and Marilyn Monroe movie called River of No Return. This was a 1954 Otto Preminger film shot on site on the Bow River in Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada. It’s a simple story about a frontiersman who is victimized by a gambler who steals his horse and rifle, leaving, him and his son, along with the busty blonde saloon singer who is unclear who and what she wants in a man, at the mercy of the Indians and wilds. He has no choice but to tempt the River Gods by rafting down the river with woman and child. It made me wonder why having one rifle was a quantum better against God-knows how many bloodthirsty savages and how Mitchum was able to do that calculus on the fly. If I were on a land claim, trying to farm it in the great north, I might want more security than a horse and rifle, especially with a child along. It’s somehow different if you are a pioneer and can keep moving and duck and weave, but to be a sitting duck with a plow and vegetable garden seems more than a little risky.
Mitchum starts by confusing us by being the guy who sends for his ten-year-old boy to come to this wild country with him. He seems unconcerned that the boy is under the care of the saloon dancehall girl, running beer for the bartender and getting shot at for fun by drunk cowpokes. That seems tough enough, but then taking him into Indian country where the smoke signals and Tom-toms are beating a warning is darn-right irresponsible. The only white men they see in these remote lands are the gambler and girl and then the two guys looking for the gambler. Small world. Additionally, for tough Indian-fighters, they all get easily tricked out of their guns in a swift heartbeat. Again, not a good sign that they can stand up to the invading horde, and yet when the attack comes, Mitchum quickly dispatches with seven or eight injuns, He is a much better rifle shot that he is a cautious cabin-dweller.
Mitchum also shows us what men were made of in the Wild West and, indeed, in 1954. He actually cannot restrain himself on the trail and goes into full abuse and rape mode against the unenthusiastic Monroe. I can only imagine that the audience was supposed to still respect Mitchum on the theory that this vampy saloon girl was somehow encouraging these advances by mere existence of her ample bosom. Or maybe saloon girls were different by Preminger’s standards. Whatever the thinking, Monroe herself did not help her own cause in the end by still liking Mitchum enough to go with him into the wagon for the ride into the sunset after he caveman’s her over his shoulder out of the saloon.
But none of that is surprising. The reality is simply that we were less evolved as a civilization 65 years ago. This movie makes that point very clearly. And it’s not a point about 1880, it’s a point about 1954. When we watch movies with smoking and drinking, some censors blur the offending consumption to shield our sensibilities from such offensive acts. But TCM seems to feel that there is nothing inappropriate about showing Mitchum as the man he portrayed in all its misogynistic, Indian-baiting and child-abusing glory.
Why don’t he write? He don’t write because real me don’t write. They are tall, dark and quiet. Expressiveness is a sign of weakness. What’s next if he writes, that he would shed tears? Watching old movies on TCM is a great way to kill a lazy weekend afternoon. It is also a great way to remember how close we are to manners and sentiments that seem impossibly anachronistic by today’s standards. He don’t write because maybe he couldn’t read or write. Or maybe, he’s a brute without enough empathy to bother to write home with any feelings of obligation. Or maybe pioneers shouldn’t be expected to write postcards from the edge as it were. And settlers like Mitchum aren’t even really farmers, they’re just pioneers who happen to have seeds with them, so we shouldn’t expect too much civility from him?
Maybe I’m overthinking one old movie and that’s not fair. Books and movies are glances at our past and deserve to be left in tact and to be read/watched as they are with the pre-agreed understanding that we do not endorse or agree with those sensibilities. That can’t be right. How can we educate our youth by showing them our worst attributes? This may be the ultimate reason why he don’t write. He’s too confused by balancing history and righteousness to want to commit his views to writing, where he will be plagued by them forever. That’s way too much to expect from a settler or farmer. Only a true pioneer would take that chance.