Guilty as Charged

I was thinking about guilt today – no, not mine, since I,unfortunately, have little, unless you want to equate regret with guilt, in which case I have a tonne – and realized that Kevin Costner’s “Dances with Wolves” is the ultimate movie example of white guilt (and bad facial hair).

Our societies (white and Western) love to apologize. We apologize for that misdeed hundreds of years ago, and this one decades ago. Yeah, we’re sorry. And we, the generations that follow, inherit that guilt even if our families weren’t in the country to begin with – the assumption is that somehow the country where you were before contributed somehow (unless your German, in which case our guilt over blaming innocent masses who came after takes over and cancels it and you win). We hang our collective head.

“Dances with Wolves” tapped that zeitgeist and unleashed a massive orgasm of guilt, taking it to the top of the heap at the Oscar’s and thereby inflicting us with “The Postman” a few years later – which is something we should really feel guilty over.

And I was one of those suckers. I was even in film classes at the time, but my naïve university sensibilities were outraged, outraged I say, by the injustices the whiteman visited upon the poor and saintly natives.

Now, I feel guilty about liking the movie at the time even though I paid my debt by having to watch Tom Petty try to act. “Dances with Wolves” isn’t a guilty pleasure either, like say “Ten Things I Hate About You”, or anything with Julia Stiles except for that dancing movie, to which depths even I cannot sink.

Generally, I try to avoid films that are geared to riling up those emotions with a clutch of button-pushing moments. I still haven’t seen “Schindler’s List”, partly because of my dislike of Spielberg’s message movies, and partly because I don’t need to put myself through that. Same with “Monster’s Ball”, and that has Halle’s naked berries in it.

I am self-aware, and movie literate, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to get all weepy when the schmaltz is turned on. Those movies are like that sonic device which is reputed to make people shit their pants as an unconscious reaction. Can anyone withstand the last bit of “Old Yeller” or how about the hanging in “Dancer in the Dark”? No, way, or at least it’s a good test to see who’s a replicant. Fuck the turtle in the desert, go with Disney.

Filmmakers know that emotional reactions sell and guilt is a damn powerful emotion and we all have it at some level. Sure, it might not be about genocide, but that is just a good catalyst to stir things up about, like, the time you callously dumped your girlfriend for whatever stupid reason it was, which just might remind you of your last breakup or the divorce of your parents or the time little Jason next door took your Lego and hit you on the head with a shovel so you cut off his right pinky just like in those movies you watched at noon while your mom was passed out from too much vodka. Maybe stuff like that.

Once you push a button, you never know what’s going to happen.