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From Captive Narratives to "COPS":
The Dark Side of America's Divine Drama
JimmyO's review of Bowling for Columbine covers most
of what I'd like to say about the movie itself and Moore's
theme of fear and paranoia fueling America's culture of violence.
We know that Moore can be a hypocrite, but he's the only liberal
with any balls right now, and (to break with JimmyO) had Al
Gore ran farther to the left and gave the Green Party a reason
not to throw away their votes, then we wouldn't be
dealing with the environmental crisis we are now. But that's
beside the point. I would like to address the idea of fear
as the foundation of American culture and the myth of the
black criminal. Moore cites piles of statistics that show
that America disproportionately imprisons a far higher percentage
of blacks than whites, and I'm pretty sure that anyone whose
understanding of criminology and crime statistics extends
beyond "COPS" would agree. Moore also shows, rather
successfully, how the media perpetuates the myth of the black
criminal. Mind you that the "myth of the black criminal"
doesn't mean that blacks don't commit crimes, but the idea
that the Black Man is a bogeyman from which White America
needs protection. Moore claims that Americans pull the trigger
because of this culture of fear, rather than because of the
usual culprits of video games, lax gun laws, etc., and that's
why the murder rate is so much higher than in Canada or Britain.
Moore makes his point, but by saying that these ideas are
ingrained in a culture of fear, we have to extend the idea
to the roots of the culture. Is there something in the American
cultural history that distinguishes us from the Canadians,
British, or Germans that can be pointed to as a cultural legacy
passed from generation to generation?
Personally, I'm not of the opinion that Americans are inherently
paranoid racists, but there is something to Moore's idea that
there is something deeply ingrained in the American culture
concerning fear and demonization based upon skin color. When
we talk about being "ingrained in the American culture,"
that inevitably takes us back to the Puritans. Plymouth Rock
is the foundation stone of the culture; many of our most defining
customs and ideas are rooted in their traditions: The Puritan
Curse of self-improvement (to the extent of self-loathing),
for one, but the idea that I have always found most telling
is the Puritan notion of America the Promised Land. The Puritans
saw themselves as performing, literally, the Divine Drama
of Genesis and Exodus. Essentially, God guided the Mayflower's
ostracized band of God's Chosen People from the sin and slavery
of Europe as God parted the sea for Moses and the Israelites,
the wilderness of the New World the New Eden by which the
Puritans would famously build their City Upon a Hill.
For the Puritans, this was no metaphor: Typology was an ingrained
mode of thought, leading Cotton Mather to declare John Winthrop
the "Puritan Moses" in God's Design, in which no
facts were too small or insignificant not to be a sign of
His work, understood even four centuries pre-Shyamalan. Of
course, it's this Divine providence that eventually gave us
the worthy concepts of Manifest Destiny and the American Dream.
These ideas are evidence of remarkable imagination, but when
we think of the phrase "Puritan Literature," we
think of the sparse, meditative poetry of Anne Bradstreet
or the Awakening fire of "Sinners in the Hands of an
Angry God." Yet the most passionate, imaginative, and
influential literature of the time is found in the New England
Captive Narratives.
The Captive Narratives are the intense morality plays of
the not-unfounded Puritan fear of being captured and tortured
by the Savages, or the Indians of the woods just beyond Plymouth.
If the new colony was the stage upon which the Divine play
was to be performed, then in the untamed world of darkness
lived the Savages, whom the Puritans saw as, literally, Satan's
minions. Puritans were sometimes captured, tortured in Indian
settlements, and returned to the colony presumably as a warning;
but in the Puritan typography, this was seen as man confronting
Satan in that "howling wilderness." King Phillip's
War spawned many narrative accounts of Indian capture, in
which man suffered and eventually sought salvation from cruelty
described with words reserved for demons. As with the burning
of Anne Bradstreet's house becoming an allegory for the forsaking
of earthly goods, Mary Rowlandson's (and others') captive
narratives became allegories of salvation.
To declare the native peoples "hell hounds" is
obviously reductionist, but the power of the myth lived on
in the American gothic tradition and is still American Literature's
essential sermon. Still, the Puritans lived in ever-present
threat of the Indians, as the Indians did them, and as the
captive narrative has been passed on through the traditions
of American literature, thus the culture of fear seeped deeply
into the American unconscious. It's perhaps beside the point
that the Indians and the Puritans had much different skin
colors, but the physical difference is the eye's, and thus
the mind's, most distinguishing characteristic, and thus it
was that Satan's minions were dark skinned. Again, in the
Puritan's literal-minded typology, no detail is not a piece
of God's Divine Plan, and so it must be no mistake that the
Evil Doers were not white-skinned and fair-haired.
Am I trying to say that Bowling for Columbine is "right"
because of the Puritans? No, I'm not. My point is that those
critics who dismiss Moore's viewpoint that fear and paranoia
of skin color is deeply entrenched in the American culture
are missing the larger picture. It's not a popular idea, and
maybe it's not patriotic, especially in these jingoistic times,
but the most noble ideas of America are deeply rooted in our
national myths, as are our most embarrassing failures. And
we know that the Puritans ruled by fear: fear of God (as Sinners
in His Angry Hands), fear of the Devil (the witchcraft trials),
and fear of his minions (the Indians). Considering The
Crucible's place in most American high school curriculums,
Arthur Miller has informed much of our perception of Puritan
culture, and his research seems right: staunch and pious,
yet passionately and deeply felt. His allegory of the witchcraft
trials for McCarthyism seems fair, even if his human drama
is forced, Tituba's spellmaking as feared as Communist infiltration.
Even beyond that 1950's witchunt, what possible reason, other
than blind, almost supernatural fear, could the white folks
of the Mirage casino in Las Vegas have had to ask the hotel
to drain and refill the pool after Duke Ellington swam in
it?
So what does the Captive Narrative have to do with America's
gun culture? Let me allow Mrs. Rowlandson to answer that in
her words from 1682:
"On the tenth of February 1675, Came the Indians with
great numbers upon Lancaster: Their first coming was about
Sunrising; hearing the noise of some Guns, we looke out; several
Houses were burning, and the Smoke ascending to Heaven....he
begged of them his life, promising them Money (as they told
me) but they would not hearken to him but knockt him in head,
and stript him naked, and split open his Bowels."
Now think of what might have happened if Mr. Rowlandson had
to fiddle with the trigger-lock on his musket, wait on a background
check, or battle Indians with semiautomatic muskets. Because
if they're Satan's Hell Hounds, then God and the Second Amendment
give you the right to pull the trigger.
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