James Arness’ death brought back many memories of his TV show “Gunsmoke.” I think of that show as one of great morality plays and typifying the morals of the Greatest Generation. Share the movie or TV program that exemplifies the morality of your peer group.
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June 5, 2011 at 3:50 pm
Hey, that’s you, isn’t it Tony?
Movies and TV Shows work at several cultural levels. My take is that the TV show Gunsmoke was another celebration of the American frontier myth and mono-myth.
I usually think of Clint Eastwood movies when in the genre. In HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER we have a different narrative. The ‘protector’ of the town is a loner, stranger. “A gunfighting stranger comes to the small settlement of Lago and is hired to bring the townsfolk together in an attempt to hold off three outlaws who are on their way.”
For interpretation of popular culture about the frontier, I pick up Richard Slotkin’s GUNFIGHTER NATION. He sees GUNSMOKE as a take off from the movie, HIGH NOON, called a ‘town-tamer’ Western.
David Sirota talks about his latest book “Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explains the World We Live in Now – Our Culture, Our Politics, Our Everything” on BOOKTV: http://www.booktv.org/Program/12391/Back+to+Our+Future+How+the+1980s+Explains+the+World+We+Live+in+Now+Our+Culture+Our+Politics+Our+Everything.aspx
GUNSMOKE can be read as a sort of ‘trust you local cop’ genre. As in, trust your national security state.
Frank C
June 6, 2011 at 4:27 am
Frank, It’s Keith who started this thread.
My reference was not to the plots, but rather to the character studies. Matt Dillon was a righteous man, a source of law and order in a disorderly world. I believe the Greatest Generation saw itself in a similarly righteous light having restored law and order to Europe and Asia.
The police and detective shows that follow a few years later feature characters who are more ambiguous in their righteousness and villians who are more devious. Morality shifts from a gray scale to Chromacolor.
Perhaps the next great moral figure on television is Archie Bunker, an anti-hero who is none-the-less beloved and who is reformed by that love amid a cultural revolution.
Peace,
Keith