Okay--I love this book and this movie. Doesn't everybody? It does (as most of the pundits say) give you faith in community, and karma, and eventual justice.
But watching it tonight, with my children, I was compelled to take a look at the darker side of the movie. I'm not sure why--maybe it was age, maybe it was circumstance, or maybe it was just the early dark of November and being stuck in front of the television with my foot up, (fascaeitis again) and feeling particularly helpless about stupid things like cooking dinner or playing with the short people or going to the bathroom--either way, two cold, hard truths smacked me in the face like big bear steaks as I watched it tonight.
The first was that Atticus lost.
Yup, you heard me. Atticus lost. We've all raged against the injustice, and we've all felt for Atticus the hero, devastated by that loss, but what about Tom Robinson? Yup. The falsely accused, the victim of the prejudice, he ended up dead--dead for (as the movie points out) no reason. For something as small as wanting to help someone, wanting to make his community a better place, the guy ended up having a warning shot fired into his head--nineteen times. *shudder*
The second was that Atticus' children almost paid the price for Atticus' stand against injustice.
And Atticus kept believing in the best of the world, and yes, Atticus' faith was eventually rewarded but Goddess... it was a near thing. It was a near thing, and the forerunners of the next generation, the people who would carry the word that all people WERE people, would have been dead at his feet, and the tragedy would have been downright Greek, wouldn't it?
I can't tell you all why this hit so hard tonight, except to say that the UN just told us that gay people weren't people in terms of genocide, and I was challenged to reflect on young girls in developing countries and the things they needed in order to have life choices, and I still can't bear to read "Reading Lolita in Tehran" because the odds of THAT ending well are just not good, and... and... the list goes on.
And people like Atticus Finch (or Harper Lee's actual lawyer father) fought injustice every day, and very often lost. And the world hasn't changed that much, and, in the words of Victor Hugo, innocence is still the worst crime of all.
I remember the end of Bitter Moon II. Some of you (and Goddess bless you!) told me that Yarri had to live at the end, even the projected end, thirty years after the bulk of the action, because to find out that she was dead at the beginning of the book was just too hard--it threw into shadow all of the other blood sacrifices made in the name of freedom. We just needed hope at the beginning, that eventually it would end well, and, well, Yarri was that hope.
I think it was that moment when I realized that I could be okay with writing romances, where the potential to pull the trigger on my lead characters were minimized by the genre's need for a Happy Ever After. (Yes, that is in capital letters... trust me. Always.)
And there are times I want to pull out the flaming verbal sword of justice and just annihilate all of the horrible hypocrisy, and the blindness, and, yes, the injustice that crosses my path. I yearn to be Atticus Finch--oh, Goddess, I do. But then I remember Atticus' Finch's children, and how they almost paid the price of his dedication, and I falter. Oh yes--I falter. I fear.Okay--I love this book and this movie. Doesn't everybody? It does (as most of the pundits say) give you faith in community, and karma, and eventual justice.
But watching it tonight, with my children, I was compelled to take a look at the darker side of the movie. I'm not sure why--maybe it was age, maybe it was circumstance, or maybe it was just the early dark of November and being stuck in front of the television with my foot up, (fascaeitis again) and feeling particularly helpless about stupid things like cooking dinner or playing with the short people or going to the bathroom--either way, two cold, hard truths smacked me in the face like big bear steaks as I watched it tonight.
The first was that Atticus lost.
Yup, you heard me. Atticus lost. We've all raged against the injustice, and we've all felt for Atticus the hero, devastated by that loss, but what about Tom Robinson? Yup. The falsely accused, the victim of the prejudice, he ended up dead--dead for (as the movie points out) no reason. For something as small as wanting to help someone, wanting to make his community a better place, the guy ended up having a warning shot fired into his head--nineteen times. *shudder*
The second was that Atticus' children almost paid the price for Atticus' stand against injustice.
And Atticus kept believing in the best of the world, and yes, Atticus' faith was eventually rewarded but Goddess... it was a near thing. It was a near thing, and the forerunners of the next generation, the people who would carry the word that all people WERE people, would have been dead at his feet, and the tragedy would have been downright Greek, wouldn't it?
I can't tell you all why this hit so hard tonight, except to say that the UN just told us that gay people weren't people in terms of genocide, and I was challenged to reflect on young girls in developing countries and the things they needed in order to have life choices, and I still can't bear to read "Reading Lolita in Tehran" because the odds of THAT ending well are just not good, and... and... the list goes on.
And people like Atticus Finch (or Harper Lee's actual lawyer father) fought injustice every day, and very often lost. And the world hasn't changed that much, and, in the words of Victor Hugo, innocence is still the worst crime of all.
I remember the end of Bitter Moon II. Some of you (and Goddess bless you!) told me that Yarri had to live at the end, even the projected end, thirty years after the bulk of the action, because to find out that she was dead at the beginning of the book was just too hard--it threw into shadow all of the other blood sacrifices made in the name of freedom. We just needed hope at the beginning, that eventually it would end well, and, well, Yarri was that hope.
I think it was that moment when I realized that I could be okay with writing romances, where the potential to pull the trigger on my lead characters were minimized by the genre's need for a Happy Ever After. (Yes, that is in capital letters... trust me. Always.)
And there are times I want to pull out the flaming verbal sword of justice and just annihilate all of the horrible hypocrisy, and the blindness, and, yes, the injustice that I see on the planet. I yearn to be Atticus Finch--oh, Goddess, I do. But then I remember Atticus' Finch's children, and how they almost paid the price of his dedication, and I falter. Oh yes--I falter. I fear. I am not the man of my family-- I can not go out like John Proctor and expect Elizabeth Proctor to take care of my children and tell them my story. As rock-frickin'-awesome as Mate is, one of the things that Elizabeth Proctor did as she was being hauled away in chains was to make sure the bread would be baked and the children would be made unafraid, and that is my job as a mother, and I have just enough of a control freak in me to fear that I am the only one who could do that right, and as long as I'm on the planet, it's my real duty to make sure that I'M the one who gets to do it.
There is a scene in The Two Towers (the second Lord of the Rings movie) in which all of the men are preparing for the battle of Helm's Deep. I hate this scene. Old men are buckling armor on twelve year olds and women are in the back of the cave, preparing to defend the children to the death should the lines of defense break down. When I first saw this scene, Big T was ten,(but the size of a twelve year old) and I thought, "No way! I'll go out and fight that battle, and my children can be safe in the back of the cave.
The next LotR movie, I saw while nursing a VERY quiet Zoomboy when he was two weeks old. (He ate and slept the whole time--last time in his entire life he was that still.) I watched the movie and that scene stuck with me. I realized that Big T would HAVE to go out and fight with his father, and I would have to huddle in the back with the women and children, and I was rather affronted. I was going to have to be a woman with children. *I* was going to have to be a woman with children-- I was going to have to put people I loved on the front line and cower in the back. Well, Jesus, didn't THAT suck rocks, right?
But, I reasoned, I would not be in child recovery forever. But now I'm getting older, and my older children are getting to the age where I can no longer justify going out to die for them when I have younger children who will need me as well.
And that's when the imaginary role playing merges with the reality of my role as parent once again. I have raised my older children to the point where they want to go out and change the world, and, Goddess forbid that I don't let them. I need to let them. I need to rein in my flaming verbal sword of justice and keep my home a sanctuary where the next couple of warriors who will go out and change the world continue to flourish.
I need to remember that Bethen and Lane Moon stayed home and kept their home safe, as all of their children ventured out into the wide world, and there comes a time when that is a valid part of changing the world too.
I've never claimed to be an elf--I've always claimed to be a hobbit. Every time I've tried to venture out and be an elf has ended in disaster. But the hobbits kept the Shire home, and sometimes, it's that hope of the Shire that's needed for the warriors to go out and do their job. Sometimes the Atticus Finches of the world have to tell the public lie in order for justice to be served. Sometimes, the flaming sword of justice has to be sheathed, so our children can draw it when it's needed.
But that doesn't mean I don't watch that thing, as it flickers in the sheathe in my heart, throwing the darkness of my doubts into stark relief on the wall, and yearn to blind the world.
