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The Forsyte Saga: The Book and the Adaptations

When I finally set out to read The Forsyte Saga, a collection of three novels by John Galsworthy, I expected it to be entertaining and mildly thought-provoking, but something easily forgotten as soon as the last page is read and the book is placed upon the shelf.  Instead, I found the book to be a little creepy, but in a persistently disturbing way, so that my thoughts keep returning to it.

The theme of the first novel, The Man of Property, is completely revealed in its title, and Soames Forsyte is the man.  Unfortunately, among the many things he regards as his property is his wife, Irene.  This might not be so bad were it not for the fact she had an intense disliking for him from the very first.  When he impulsively kissed her arm one evening, she shuddered with revulsion.  Soames noticed this shudder, but he persisted in asking her to marry him.  Eventually she agreed, thinking she could stand it, but after they were married for a while, she finds Soames to be so repulsive to her physically that she asks for her own bedroom, by which it is understood that they will no longer be having sex.

So, why did Irene marry a man for whom she had such a powerful disliking?  The book gives us only a hint as to the answer, covered briefly in the space of a couple of pages.  It tells us that Irene’s stepmother, Mrs. Heron, was anxious to get Irene married off for two reasons:  First, she cost Mrs. Heron more than the fifty pounds a year that Irene’s father had left her.  Second, Mrs. Heron was anxious to get married again, and the men she hoped might propose to her kept being distracted by her beautiful stepdaughter.  As a result, Soames was able to enlist Mrs. Heron’s cooperation in courting Irene.  Nevertheless, these are not sufficient reasons for a woman to marry a man that repulsed her, and the novel tells us that Soames never could figure out why Irene did finally consent to marry him.  It should be noted that between Irene’s fifty pounds a year and the money she could earn giving piano lessons, there was no need for her to marry anyone.

Apparently, the various people who decided to adapt The Forsyte Saga found it as disturbing as I do that Irene would be willing to marry a man for whom she has such a strong, visceral aversion.  In That Forsyte Woman (1949), which is mostly an adaptation of The Man of Property, Irene’s revulsion for Soames before she marries him is suppressed. Instead, she is portrayed as making the mistake of marrying a man she didn’t love and then regretting it afterwards.  In other words, it is easy to understand a woman’s making that mistake, so the movie is essentially making excuses for Irene.

In the 1967 television mini-series, Mrs. Heron has a prospective suitor for herself.  He is a lecher, and he gives Irene to understand that she is the real object of his sexual desires, which he intends to pursue once he has married Mrs. Heron.  This would certainly explain why Irene would marry Soames as a way of getting away from her future stepfather.  But there is no such character or situation in the book.

In the 2002 television mini-series, the two reasons given in the novel as to why Mrs. Heron would like to see Irene married are adhered to, so it comes closest to being a faithful adaptation on this point.  However, both reasons are dramatized and given more intensity than is indicated in the book.  In particular, Mrs. Heron acts as though her financial situation is desperate, owing to her need to support her stepdaughter, whereas in the book, there is no indication that having to support Irene is an inordinate burden.  And there is also a scene in which Mrs. Heron becomes furious when the man she was hoping would propose to her expresses an interest in marrying Irene instead, following which she tells Irene she will not support her for another year.  Irene replies that she cannot support herself on her own, though that is exactly what she does do later on.  In other words, this adaptation is consistent with the book on this point, but takes pains to make explicit what the novel only suggests.

The point is that each of these three adaptations is determined to make Irene a sympathetic character, whereas the book leaves us a little perplexed as to why Irene ever consented to marry Soames.  Furthermore, the 2002 adaptation portrays Soames as being more vehement and angry than in the book, at one point almost maniacal, as if to make Irene a more sympathetic character by virtue of her being terrified of his scary behavior.  In fact, the entire mini-series becomes increasingly maniacal, with people yelling and getting physical in a way that never occurred in the book.  The 1967 adaptation, which includes material from the sequels as well, is more faithful to Soames’s character in this regard.  He is still an unpleasant fellow who raped his wife, but this earlier version is content to allow Soames a bit more self-restraint, much as he is portrayed in the book. And Irene is not afraid of Soames in that version or in the book, but merely filled with revulsion at the thought of him. In fact, with the exception of the bit about the man who intended to marry Irene’s stepmother, the 1967 is far more faithful to the book than is the 2002 version, which really takes liberties with the story. On the other hand, That Forsyte Woman has one thing the two mini-series do not: star quality.  Actors Errol Flynn, Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, and Janet Leigh give this movie a vitality that the television mini-series seem to lack by comparison.  But let us now set these adaptations aside and consider only the book from here on.

Irene has a friend named June Forsyte, who is the daughter of Soames’s cousin, and a woman whom Soames dislikes, for he suspects she puts ideas into Irene’s head. To get her away from June and other such people, he decides to build a house in the country where he can have Irene all to himself. Then it would be just the two of them, side by side.  And this at a time when there was no such thing as television!

Soames hires Philip Bosinney to build the house for him.  Bosinney is an architect, and the fiancé of June.  Boy, if that is not asking for trouble!  When it comes to business, I always prefer to deal with strangers.  You may think you are going to get first class work at bargain rates when doing business with friends and family, but as often as not, there is a misunderstanding that leads to grief, and thus it is in the novel as well.

To make matters worse, Irene and Bosinney fall in love and have an affair. Soames suspects as much, which only adds to his frustration at being estranged from his wife, and so one night he decides to exercise his conjugal rights by force.  In short, he rapes Irene.  (Note:  In That Forsyte Woman, Soames does not rape Irene, but only slaps her.) Now, Soames is a bit of a stuffed shirt and not very likeable, but we do not expect something like this. The result of this violation is that whereas before, Irene had merely been repulsed, now she is thoroughly devastated.  Soames feels guilty and ashamed, but at the same time, he believes he was in his rights, and that Irene was just being unreasonable.  When Bosinney finds out about it, he becomes so distracted that he walks into the path of a carriage and is run over and killed.

It is interesting to observe that in this novel, which is written by a man, a man rapes his wife and traumatizes her, whereas in Gone With the Wind, which is written by a woman, a man rapes his wife, and it is just what she needs, satisfying lusts she never knew she had.  You would think it would be the other way around.

Irene leaves Soames, and years later they get a divorce.  She then marries “young Jolyon,” June’s father.  Speaking as a man, if my best friend had an affair with my fiancée, and then after she died, he proceeded to marry my mother, no one in my family would ever see me again.  So, this must have been pretty rough on June, but she manages to hold up reasonably well.  In any event, Jolyon and Irene end up living in the house out in the country that Bosinney had built for Soames, just the two of them, side by side.  And still, television had not yet been invented. However, this marriage turns out to be idyllic.  They eventually have a child, whom they name “Jon.”  Soames remarries, hoping to have a boy, but his wife has a girl instead, after which she can no longer have children.  They name her “Fleur.”

When they grow up, Fleur and Jon meet and fall in love.  So we have a Romeo and Juliet story, in which the two feuding families are two main branches of the Forsyte family, that of Soames and that of Jolyon.  Both sides of the family try to keep them apart, but at the behest of his daughter, Soames visits Irene and assures her that if their children marry, she need have no fear of having to meet him again socially.  He promises her that whatever else happens, she will never have to see him again.  He offers to shake hands, but she refuses. It is here that my sentiments begin to change. In the beginning, Soames comes across as a monster, while Irene is a sympathetic victim. But by this point, I find myself feeling a bit sorry for Soames, while Irene is beginning to make me feel uneasy.

Since this is a Romeo and Juliet story, I expected Jon and Fleur to marry or die trying. Instead, we have a very different outcome.  Jolyon writes his son a letter, in which he explains why he and Irene object so strenuously to his marrying Fleur.  He tells Jon that if he marries Fleur, it will “utterly destroy your mother’s happiness,” that it will be a “nightmare,” causing her “pain and humiliation,” and whatever children Jon and Fleur have, they will be a constant reminder of the “horror and aversion” that she can never forget. And in the end, since Jolyon knows he will soon die from a bad heart, he tells Jon that his mother would be all alone.  As for the part about Irene’s being all alone, I guess that is what happens when you betray your best friend, marry her father, and then move out to the country, where you practically never see anyone but your husband, your son, and the maid.

The result is that Jon breaks off his engagement with Fleur, and subsequently buys some land in British Columbia where he and his mother can live, just the two of them, side by side.  He says in a letter that he thought about moving to California, but it is too nice there. This is supposed to be a joke, but that is the only reason given in the book.  In other words, Jon and Irene could have moved to, say, San Diego, where Irene could get out and make some friends, or, since friendship does not seem to be her thing, at least she could socialize and find some activities she might enjoy.  Instead, Jon buys a farm in a part of the world where they are likely to be snowed in six months out of the year. And they wouldn’t even have television!

If this situation between Jon and his mother seems a little strange, it is made all the more so by the oedipal adumbrations in Jon’s youth.  As a child, he tells his mother that he does not want to go to school:  “I want to stay with you, and be your lover, Mum.”  And this is followed by a protracted scene in which Jon, finding out that his father will not be in his mother’s room that night, asks if he can sleep with her.  All right, I know that children sometimes sleep with their parents, although it was never something I wanted to do.  And I know that little boys sometimes say they want to marry their mothers.  But real life is one thing, and novels are another.  John Galsworthy would not have written these scenes into the novel if they were not important.  At the very least, Jon is a mama’s boy, something Fleur clearly sees when she tells Jon he is tied to his mother’s apron strings; for Fleur was ready to get married anyway, their parents’ problems be damned. Knowing how Irene betrayed June, Fleur regards Jon’s mother as someone who will not hesitate to destroy the lives of others, and I’m inclined to agree with her.  But in the end, Fleur is defeated.

So Jon and his mother live happily ever after.  Well, not quite, because Galsworthy wrote another trilogy years later, in which Jon and Irene move to North Carolina, where Jon finally gets married, almost as if Galsworthy realized what he had written in the first trilogy, and then came to regret it. A lot of readers, me included, have been bemused by the fact that Jolyon, who was appalled at the idea of Soames’s attitude that a wife was the property of her husband, and Irene, who was the victim of that attitude, should end up enslaving their son to his mother.  In the preface to the first trilogy, Galsworthy makes the following remark:  “A criticism one might pass on the last phase of the Saga is the complaint that Irene and Jolyon, those rebels against property—claim spiritual property in their son Jon. But it would be hypercriticism, as the tale is told.”  He points out that Irene said to Jon, “Don’t think of me, think of yourself!”  But she approved the letter her husband wrote to Jon, and that single sentence, especially in the way she says it, is more likely to augment Jon’s feelings of guilt than diminish them.  Today we would call it being passive-aggressive.

There is a theory in literary criticism that rejects authorial intent as being the final word concerning the meaning of a novel.  I never paid much attention to that theory until now, but here it seems especially apt. Galsworthy may deny that Jon’s parents have enslaved him, and he may have subsequently tried to undo the oedipal implications in the first trilogy, but at the expense of being charged with “hypercriticism,” I think it is there in the way “the tale is told.”

The Naked Jungle (1954) and Three Violent People (1956)

One day my coworkers and I were sitting around bored, and we got to discussing movies. At one point I asked if any of them had seen The Naked Jungle.

“What’s it about?” David asked.

“It’s based on a short story,” I said, “Leiningen versus the Ants, about a man in South America who finds out that army ants are on the march and headed toward his plantation. Everyone else in the area is fleeing, but he is determined to stand his ground and fight them.”

David said that he had never heard of it, and the two other coworkers, Judy and Kevin, did not recall having seen it either.

“Well,” I continued, “this guy, Leiningen, tries all sorts of ways to block the path of the ants, but the ants figure out ways around those obstacles, until it looks as though he will be overwhelmed by them and eaten alive.”

“Were they giant ants?” Judy asked.

“No,” I said, “just ordinary-sized ants, but billions of them.”

They all were shaking their heads, indicating that none of them had ever heard of the movie. Suddenly Kevin spoke up. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Is this the movie about a guy who has a mail-order bride, but then he finds out she has been married before, so then he doesn’t want her because she’s been used?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said, “that’s the movie.”

“Oh!” Judy said, “That’s the one with Charlton Heston and William Conrad.”

“I’ve seen that movie,” David said.

I was bewildered. “I didn’t mention that part of the movie,” I said, “because I didn’t think it was important.”

David laughed. “Yeah, John, you thought this was a movie about ants, and it was really about damaged goods in the mail.”

Well, the short story had nothing about a mail-order bride in it, so I guess that was the reason I had dismissed that part of the movie as just melodramatic filler.  But I saw the movie again recently, and now I realize that it is not until the movie is half over that the Commissioner (William Conrad) utters the ominous word marabunta.  The first part is devoted to the conflict between Christopher Leiningen (Charlton Heston) and his wife Joanna (Eleanor Parker) over the fact that he is getting another man’s leftovers.

Charlton Heston had the right screen persona for this role, fearless of physical danger, his only weakness being his pride, especially when it comes to women.  This is summed up nicely in another movie he was in, Three Violent People (1956).   There he stars as Captain Colt Saunders, a Confederate Civil War veteran, who falls in love with Lorna (Anne Baxter), not realizing she is a prostitute.  Another woman, one Ruby LaSalle, who owns the saloon and hotel where Lorna is staying, and who knows her from back when, warns her of the danger of marrying Colt while pretending to be a lady, saying of him, “Because men who aren’t afraid of guns, Indians, or rattlesnakes are afraid of a little laughter behind their back.  And there’ll always be some man with a weak mind and a long memory who’ll remember a girl who worked at Selma’s in Baton Rouge or Tess’ in Frisco.”

Meanwhile, back in the jungle.  When the Commissioner warns Leiningen of the ants, Leiningen says the reason he does not want to temporarily leave his plantation until the ants are gone is that he is afraid his workers will return to the jungle and never come back.  But that seems to be a stretch.  If the workers preferred the jungle, they would have left a long time ago; if they prefer working on the farm, they will return.  We suspect that Leiningen is just stubborn

He is also stubborn in the short story, but for a different reason than the one given in the movie.  When the District Commissioner is unable to convince Leiningen that nothing can stand in the path of the ants, he tells Leiningen his obstinacy endangers himself and his four hundred workers.  And this obstinacy arises out of Leiningen’s “lifelong motto: The human brain needs only to become fully aware of its powers to conquer even the elements.”  Of course, it was primarily his brain that he had in mind, for he was contemptuous of much of his fellow man, whom he refers to as “dullards,” “cranks,” and “sluggards,” who invariably folded when confronted with any kind of danger.  “But such disasters, Leiningen contended, merely strengthened his argument that intelligence, directed aright, invariably makes man the master of his fate.”

The Leiningen of the short story had prepared in advance for all sorts of problems that might threaten his plantation, and eventually did, including flood, drought, and plague, and he had defeated them all, while his fellow settlers merely caved.  And he had prepared for the ants.  A moat surrounded three sides of the plantation, while the river protected it on the fourth side.  The Indian workers had such confidence in Leiningen that they received his calm announcement of the coming struggle with complete confidence:  “The ants were indeed mighty, but not so mighty as the boss. Let them come!”

And just to show how easy it would have been for everyone to step aside until the ants passed, this Leiningen of the short story moves the women and children, as well as the livestock, to the other side of the river where they will be perfectly safe.  Not that they were in any danger, as far as he was concerned, but they might be a nuisance:  “‘Critical situations first become crises,’ he explained to his men, ‘when oxen or women get excited.’”

For whatever reason, then, both in the original story and in the movie, Leiningen is stubborn.  And this too fits with that same persona Heston had in Three Violent People, as Ruby makes clear to Lorna:  “He once chased a rustler all the way into Mexico for 20 scrawny cows, when he owned thousands.”  Speaking of the whole Saunders clan in general, she continues, saying, “They’re always willing to get killed or kill, if they think they’re right.  And they always think they’re right.”

In the beginning of this movie, we see a brawl taking place in the street between a bunch of carpetbaggers and veteran Confederate soldiers, still in their uniforms, on crutches, missing an arm here or a leg there.  It is noted that these fights break out several times a day, with the crippled Confederates being the ones that get arrested and put in jail.  Clearly, we are supposed to sympathize with the Confederate veterans and regard the carpetbaggers as a scourge.  And just as it’s the ants that are coming for Leiningen’s plantation in The Naked Jungle, so too are the carpetbaggers, under the authority of the provisional government, coming for Colt’s ranch in Three Violent People.

Colt’s brother Cinch (Tom Tryon) wants to cut and run.  He says they still have horses in the hills that have been hidden from the provisional government, which already seized the Saunders’ cattle.  He argues that they could sell the horses elsewhere for a fortune, and then move on and buy a new ranch somewhere else.  But just as Leiningen refuses, against all reason, to run from the ants, so too does Colt refuse to run from the carpetbaggers.

When Leiningen finds out that Joanna has been married before, he arranges for her to return to the United States.  As for Lorna, that man with a weak mind and a long memory does indeed show up.  He tells Colt about Lorna’s past.  Colt tells Lorna he will arrange for her to go back to the town where he met her.  As he explains his reason for doing so to his gran vaquero (Gilbert Roland), he says, “A man must do what he must do.”  That’s right.  He really said that.

At this point, the plot of Three Violent People becomes more involved than that in The Naked Jungle, the details of which need not detain us.

In the end, Leiningen’s plantation is more destroyed by his fighting the ants than would have been the case had he simply left until it was all over with and then returned:  all his furniture is burned to create a fire barrier, and the dam is destroyed to create a flood.  So too in the short story is it a pyrrhic victory, where lives are lost by fighting the ants, while nothing is gained by defeating them.  But at least Leiningen can say he stood his ground.  Colt manages to defeat the carpetbaggers and keep the ranch he would have otherwise lost, so in his case, his refusal to retreat seems to have been worth it.

Finally, regarding what I have been informed is the most important part of The Naked Jungle, Leiningen manages to get past his disgust at having married a widow, and he and Joanna live happily ever after.  And in Three Violent People, Colt manages to get past his disgust at having married a whore, and they live happily ever after too.  But let’s be clear about the significance of these situations and their implications regarding the manliness of these two Charlton Heston protagonists.  A wimp could have remained married to either of these women without the slightest misgivings about her past, allowing himself to be cuckolded ex post facto.  But a real man is justifiably proud and cannot so easily set aside his dignity and self-respect.  Only after he has been victorious in battle, demonstrating his manhood before all the world, can he then find it within himself to be magnanimous and forgive a woman for being less than sexually pristine.

They Died with Their Boots On (1941)

The theme of They Died with Their Boots On is that glory is of greater value than money. And George Armstrong Custer (Errol Flynn) is all about glory. Right at the beginning of the movie, when he arrives at West Point, he announces that he wants to be a cavalryman in the army for the sake of glory, to leave behind a name the nation will honor, noting that there are more statues of soldiers than there are of civilians. We shrink from positing glory as a motive for anyone in the twentieth or twenty-first centuries (we prefer to say that soldiers fight for our rights and freedoms), but for any story set prior to the twentieth century, glory seems to be acceptable as a reason for going to war.

Custer makes this statement about glory to Ned Sharp (Arthur Kennedy), who will prove to be his nemesis. But at this stage of the movie, he appears to be just a prankster, playing a trick on Custer on account of the fancy uniform and entourage of dogs and a servant he brought with him, a trick Custer seems at this point to deserve. Eventually, Sharp will come to represent the evils of capitalism, which values money above all else. But this side of him must wait until after the Civil War.

Speaking of which, the Civil War breaks out while Custer is still a cadet. He is given his commission early and sent to Washington. And then he is made a general through a clerical error. Most Hollywood movies take liberties with history, and this one is no exception, there being so many it would be tedious to list them all. But this one deserves special comment. The reality is that he was made a general because there was a shortage of generals needed to command the ever increasing number of brigades, and Custer seemed to be suitable on account of his superior qualities as a cavalry officer. By making his promotion to general be just a lucky break instead, the movie is telling us that chance is the only difference between us and a man like Custer. That way we will like him better.

Lately, people have begun to object to statues of Confederate generals and to army bases named after same, calling such men traitors.  But this was hardly the attitude when this movie was made.  Because the Confederacy lost and was eventually reunited with the North, for a long time Confederate soldiers and the civilian population that supported them were regarded as basically good Americans, a magnanimous gesture on the part of the North, made for the sake of unity.  In The Birth of a Nation (1915), that unity of North and South was their “Aryan birthright,” illustrated when Yankee veterans protect southern white women from being raped by a mob of recently freed black men.  In Gone With the Wind (1939), the southerners are first portrayed as noble, but later as tragic victims of war.  Confederate soldiers are almost always portrayed as honorable, as in The Red Badge of Courage (1951), when a rebel sentry on one side of a river warns a Yankee on the other side to move back into the shadows so he won’t have to shoot him.  And Confederate veterans are likewise favorably depicted, as in The Searchers (1956).  We might have expected the South to portray itself in this flattering light, but it is interesting that there are no movies from this period of comparable status that show the war from the point of view of the North.  Young Mr. Lincoln (1939) and Abe Lincoln of Illinois (1940) honor the president who presided over the Civil War and ended slavery, but both movies stop before we get to the war itself.

In the spirit of unity and reconciliation then, They Died with Their Boots On never lets us see a single Confederate soldier being killed, and only one wounded Yankee is seen after a battle. We see Custer leading a charge, and we expect to see what we usually do in such cases: men on horseback slashing and shooting the enemy soldiers as they break through the ranks of the opposing infantry. But the camera stops filming just as they approach the Confederate soldiers. Then another charge is led, and we think that this time we will get to see some bloodshed; but once again we are denied such a scene. And then a third charge is led, and we think, “All right, the first two charges were just a tease, but now we are going to see a complete battle.” Nope.

But this makes sense when we recall that the theme of this movie is glory.  I have never seen a movie in which killing Confederate soldiers is represented as something glorious, comparable, say, to killing the Redcoats during the American Revolution or killing the Nazis during World War II.  And so, while we do see movies in which Confederate soldiers are killed, there is always a sense of the futility of their cause, of the tragedy that such a war had to be fought at all.  It would have been unthinkable in this movie to have Custer and his men gloriously slaughtering Confederate soldiers.  And so it is that just as the Lincoln movies stopped before the beginning of the Civil War, so too does this movie stop before Custer and his men reach the point of killing Confederate soldiers.  His glory during those charges must be inferred.  But that’s all right, because later in the movie, when war breaks out with the Indians, we get to see lots of killing to make up for the bloodless presentation of the Civil War.

Just as Sharp kept turning up wherever Custer was during the war, as a thorn in Custer’s side, so too does Sharp seem to show up everywhere Custer is after the war, except after the war it is always about money. Sharp and his father approach Custer about having him lend his name to a corporation, so that they can all cash in on his renown, but Custer is insulted by the suggestion. Later, when Custer is assigned to the Territory of Dakota, he arrives to find Sharp selling guns to the Indians and liquor to the troops, who spend all day in the bar.

Custer closes down the bar and runs off the Indians. Then he decides to get the regiment in shape, to make them a fighting unit. To this end, he has them learn the song “Gary Owen,” which they all sing, except for that one fellow in the back who was reportedly singing “Mr. Custer.” I guess songs go more with glory than with money, which is why Sharp doesn’t have a song to go with his money-making schemes. In addition to the song, Custer tells his men that their regiment will be immortal, even should they die in battle. And later, he tells Sharp that unlike money, which you cannot take with you when you die, glory stays with you forever.

The Sioux Indians sign a peace treaty, giving them the Black Hills. But when Sharp and his associates want to get their hands on the land for development purposes, they start a rumor that there is gold in them thar hills, hoping to cause a gold rush that will overwhelm the Indians with settlers, who will then be supported by the government. Actually, it was Custer who started the gold rush by announcing that he had found gold in the Black Hills, but that would not be in keeping with the movie’s simplistic opposition, which is that Custer wants glory and Sharp wants money, and so the story about gold is attributed in the movie to Sharp instead.

And it is also in keeping with another simplistic opposition, which is that Custer is good and Sharp is evil.  After Custer’s death, his wife Libby (Olivia de Havilland) presents a letter to General Sheridan, written by Custer in anticipation of his death in the coming battle against Crazy Horse (Anthony Quinn).  Libby sums up the most important part of the letter as follows:  “The administration must make good its promise to Crazy Horse (Anthony Quinn).  The Indians must be protected in their right to exist in their country.”  How fine and noble must Custer have been to express such sentiments about the Indian chief and his tribe who would soon kill him and his men!

To this, Sheridan assures her that Custer’s final wish will be realized:  “I have authority to answer that from the administration, the president himself.  Come, my dear.  Your soldier won his last fight after all.”  Certain detractors would have us believe that Sheridan said that the only good Indian is a dead Indian, but this movie informs us that he cared as much about Native Americans as Custer did.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Before the battle, Custer kidnaps Sharp and brings him along to the Little Bighorn. Custer figures they will all be killed in the coming fight, and by bringing Sharp along, he will bring about the demise of the one person in the movie in whom all the evil seems to be concentrated. Instead of running away, however, Sharp redeems himself in the battle, and dies telling Custer he was right about glory after all. And apparently he was too, because in the last scene of the movie, we see the images of Custer and his 7th Cavalry Regiment riding to the tune of “Gary Owen,” thereby reassuring us that the regiment and its glory are immortal, whereas we do not get to see any final images of Ned Sharp engaged in his various profiteering schemes, stuffing money into his pockets as he puffs on a big cigar.

But Custer did not go to all this trouble so that we could imagine him and his regiment singing a song.  As he stated at the beginning of the movie, it is the physical manifestation of glory in the form of a statue that he cared about.  And for a while, it seemed that he got what he wanted.  But there is now a petition to remove the equestrian statue of Custer in Monroe, Michigan, on the grounds that he and his 7th Cavalry were responsible for the genocidal slaughter of Native Americans.  Sic transit gloria mundi.

Swept Away (1974)

In Swept Away, Raffaella (Mariangelo Melato), who is a rich woman, her husband, and their rich friends rent a yacht and go sailing in the Mediterranean. She and her husband carry on screaming arguments about political ideology, with Raffaella expressing her fascist views with much vehemence. We all expect Italians in movies to be passionate, but we have never seen anything like this. Gennarino (Giancarlo Giannini) is a deckhand and a communist, whom she treats like dirt.

When Raffaella and Gennarino get stranded on a deserted island, he decides to reverse roles with a vengeance. He beats her into submission, forcing her to call him Signor Carunchio, while calling her Raffaella (when not calling her a bitch or an industrial whore), instead of Signora Lanzetti, as he did on board the yacht. Then, when all this verbal and physical abuse has finally made her want him to ravish her brutally, he says that is not enough. She must tell him she loves him, kiss his feet, and worship him like a god. She actually does kiss his feet and submit to him totally, falling madly in love with him. But he still beats her whenever she misbehaves, as when she presumes to think instead of doing what she is told.

This may be a minor point, but it is odd that Gennarino, the communist, believes that women should be totally subservient to men, which we would be more likely to associate with fascism.

Anyway, the day finally arrives when a boat comes within sight of the island. Raffaella does not want to signal them because she fears being rescued might spoil their happiness. But Gennarino believes that only if they are rescued can he be sure that she truly loves him. Once rescued, Raffaella might have been able to thwart public opinion and marry Gennarino, but when she sees him being greeted by his wife, who talks about their children, she has misgivings. But given Gennarino’s attitude toward women, why should he care about what happens to his wife? He wants Raffaella to go back and live on the island with him, but she decides against it. He reverts to calling her a bitch and an industrial whore.

Because this is supposed to be a comedy, we hesitate to take all this Mediterranean misogyny too seriously, but there simply is not enough humor in this movie to overcome the revulsion we feel at the way he treats her, especially since the movie seems to prove he is right in believing that a man can make a woman love him by degrading her and beating her.

Cries & Whispers (1972)

Cries & Whispers, a movie by Ingmar Bergman, would have been a good one for Mystery Science Theater 3000 to take up. After all, if this movie is going to have characters stand around not saying very much, and then have them sit around not saying very much, and then have one of them lie in bed dying of cancer and not saying very much, and then have two women talk to each other without giving us the benefit of hearing what they are saying, the MST3K team might just as well have supplied some dialogue and commentary.

I can just imagine Joel Robinson, Crow T. Robot, and Tom Servo giving us the benefit of their riffing.

Two sisters seem to have a thing for each other.

[Joel:  Lesbian incest!  My favorite.]

A man plunges a dagger with a six-inch blade into his abdomen because his wife has humiliated him by having sex with another man.  Then, with the blade still in his gut, he asks his wife to help him.

[Crow:  “Could you give me a hand, Dear?  I’m stuck.”]

A woman tells her maid to quit looking at her just before she gets completely naked while her maid looks at her.

[Tom Servo:  “She’s just begging me to watch.”]

The maid gets half naked, gets in bed with the cancer victim, and holds her head to her breasts.

[Joel:  But she doesn’t do windows.]

A woman picks up a piece of broken glass and shoves it up her vagina.  Then she goes into the bedroom, gets in bed, raises her nightgown, spreads her legs wide open so her husband can view the bloody vulva, while she smears blood all over her smiling face.

[Crow:  “You don’t mind making love to me while I’m having my period, do you?”]

It would be just another fun-filled episode on the Satellite of Love.

Sanders of the River (1935) and Wee Willie Winkie (1937)

In the 1930s, the movies were doing their part to take up the white man’s burden, depicting the way that various parts of the world were benefiting from being colonized, in spite of their objections.  A couple of movies in this genre are notable for being rather ludicrous in the way they justify imperialism, one produced in the United Kingdom, another here in the United States.

In 1935, London Film Productions came out with Sanders of the River, in which the title character is Commissioner R.G. Sanders (Leslie Banks), a British officer who has made Nigeria a better place for the Africans that populate it. We know they are happy, because they are always singing. The British do not sing, however, because running an empire is serious business.

Bosambo (Paul Robeson) is a good African chieftain who loves being ruled by Sanders and the British Empire.  He sings a lot.  Mofolaba (Tony Wane) is an evil African chieftain who hates being ruled by Sanders and the British Empire. He doesn’t sing at all.

When Sanders goes on vacation, Mofolaba spreads a rumor that Sanders is dead.  Apparently there is a cult of personality surrounding Sanders, because the place just falls apart as a result.  We see lots of animals running about, so even they are upset.

War breaks out, and Sanders has to return. (See what happens when the British step away for just a moment.)  While Sanders was gone, a couple of smugglers had been selling gin and rifles to the natives, which is against the law. But the rifles don’t seem to do the natives any good, because they continue to use spears. Bosambo is captured by Mofolaba.  As the boat Sanders is on races to save Bosambo, an officer commands an African worker who is operating the boiler to put more wood on the fire for more speed. The African replies that the boiler will blow. But the British officer is not cowed by mere physics, and he contemptuously dismisses the warning. The boiler backs down and humbly submits to British authority, just like everything else.

Thanks to British assistance, Bosambo is able to kill Mofolaba.  Sanders names him King of the Peoples of the River, and they all sing happily ever after.

Set in northern India in 1897, Wee Willie Winkie is a movie directed by John Ford and based on a story by Rudyard Kipling, in which Shirley Temple picks up the white man’s burden and brings peace to that part of the British Empire. She plays her usual role of warming the hearts of almost everyone she comes to know; and, of course, the movie is filled with the usual silliness that is supposed to pass for humor in a John Ford movie.  Most of that can be left to the imagination.

Shirley Temple plays Priscilla, and is later given the nickname in the title.  She and her mother travel by train to stay with her paternal grandfather, Colonel Williams (C. Aubrey Smith), commanding officer of a British outpost.  Their reason for doing so is that it has been a struggle for them financially ever since Priscilla’s father died.  Her mother is beautiful and becomes the love interest of one of the officers.  That too can be left to the imagination.

When they arrive, they are greeted by Sergeant MacDuff (Victor McLaglen).  While waiting for MacDuff to help her mother with her luggage, Priscilla witnesses the arrest of Khoda Khan (Cesar Romero).  He is the leader of the Pathans, with whom the British are at war.  He was caught when some of the British rifles he was smuggling out of the village fell off the camel that was transporting them.  She sees Khoda Khan accidentally drop something, and she picks it up. Her mother explains to her that it is a talisman, a sacred charm, and MacDuff says it is supposed to protect the person who wears it from harm.  They, of course, regard that as just silly superstition, but Khoda Khan believes in its power, and is upset when he finds he no longer has it.  Later, inside the compound, when Khoda Khan is being put in jail, Priscilla returns it to him, for which he is grateful, asking Allah to bless her for that.

Mohammet Dihn is Colonel Williams’ parlor maid.  I didn’t know such a term could be applied to a man, but so it is. But then, he doesn’t come across as being much of a man either.  He is funny-looking and irritating, played by Willie Fung, whose role in most movies is to be the butt of some ethnic humor, usually as a Chinese character. In any event, he is also a spy.  He gives Priscilla a message, which he says is a prayer, to take to Khoda Khan, saying he is always glad to see her. Actually, it is a message telling of the plan to free Khoda Khan that night, with an attack on the arsenal being used as a diversion.

The plan works, and Khoda Khan escapes, but a tribal chief is captured.  They bring him to the colonel’s office. Mohammet Dihn translates for the colonel, telling the chief he will be given the lash if he refuses to give them the information they seek.  The chief says something, and Mohammet Dihn tells the colonel he refuses to speak.  They take the chief away to be whipped, as expected.  But then something strange happens. MacDuff grabs Mohammet Dihn and throws him rudely out of the room. Now, we know Mohammet Dihn is a spy, but MacDuff doesn’t.  So, why would he treat Mohammet Dihn as though he was a worthless human being?  Well, he is a Muslim, after all.

Shortly after, the colonel tries to explain the Priscilla and her mother the need for strict discipline:

Priscilla, up in those hills there are thousands of savages, all waiting for the chance to sweep down the pass and ravage India.  Now, it’s England’s duty—It’s my duty, dear—to see that they don’t.

It is indeed fortunate for the people of India that they have the British there to protect them from the likes of Khoda Khan, especially now that hostilities are breaking out. When a patrol is sent out, they are ambushed, and MacDuff is mortally wounded.  On his death bed, he reminds Priscilla of the recruiter’s motto:  “Fear God, honor the queen, shoot straight and keep clean.”  Words to live by, for sure.

Priscilla becomes upset.  She goes to the colonel to find out why MacDuff had to die. The colonel tells her he died for his queen.  But that only leads her to puzzle over the war in general:

Priscilla:  Why is everybody so mad at Khoda Khan?  Why do they all want to shoot him?

Colonel Williams:  We’re not mad at Khoda Khan.  England wants to be friends with all of her people.  But if we don’t shoot Khoda Khan, Khoda Khan will shoot us.  Now come here. Let me try and explain it to you. It’s our job to keep the big pass open so that trade can flow through it. You know what trade is?

Priscilla:  Yes, Grandfather.

Colonel Williams:  Good. And bring peace and prosperity to everybody, even to Khoda Khan.

Priscilla:  Couldn’t you go and explain all that to him?

Colonel Williams:  It wouldn’t be much use.  For thousands of years, these Pathans have lived by plundering. They don’t seem to realize they’d live much better if they planted crops and traded and became civilized.

But all Priscilla knows is that she wants the killing to stop.  She decides to go see Khoda Khan. She runs into Mahommet Dihn, who agrees to take her to to him.  He brings Priscilla to Khoda Khan, who is with his men in their rebel fortress in the mountains, which is impregnable, owing to the narrow pass that must be crossed to reach it. Khoda Khan is ecstatic. He realizes that the colonel will bring the entire regiment to try to rescue his granddaughter, and the British soldiers will be slaughtered to a man. It’s the chance he has been waiting for all his life.

So, he has two of his men throw Mohammet Dihn off a cliff.

You see, although Khoda Khan is glad that Mohammet Dihn helped him escape from jail, and then brought Priscilla to him as a hostage so that he can have complete victory over the British, Mohommet Dihn had served his purpose, and Khoda Khan didn’t need him anymore. Perhaps you are wondering why anyone would be loyal to such a leader, why it doesn’t occur to his other followers that one day they may be of no further use and be thrown off a cliff.  But empathy is not to be expected from a Pathan.  That is precisely why they need to be ruled by the British, which in the end they are, because Priscilla warms the heart of Khoda Khan, bringing about an end to the war. Well, she was an adorable little girl.

Women in Love (1969)

Women in Love is one of those movies that under normal circumstances I would have quit watching after about twenty minutes. But since it was based on a novel by D.H. Lawrence, I persuaded myself that it must be important somehow, and since I had not read the book, I thought maybe I could get myself a little culture on the cheap.

Eleanor Bron as Hermione does her usually marvelous job of playing a woman you could not stand to be around even if she were rich, which she is. This is important, because the other characters in the movie are the sort you would not want to be around either, but compared to Hermione, they seem fairly tolerable.

But not very. In addition to being an all-round unpleasant fellow, Gerald (Oliver Reed) enjoys being cruel to his horse, whipping him furiously and digging his spurs deep into the animal’s flesh, simply because the terrified creature refuses the cross the railroad tracks while a freight train speeds by. Gerald has a bisexual friend named Rupert (Alan Bates) with whom he wrestles, all naked and sweaty, but Gerald is not quite ready to put Rupert in that special hold Rupert longs for. Rupert does not do mean things like torment horses, but he does have some irritating personality traits, such as acting as if anything he does is justified because it is spontaneous.

Central to the movie are two sisters, Gudrun (Glenda Jackson) and Ursula (Jennie Linden). They witness Gerald’s mistreatment of his horse and seem horrified at the time, but they continue to socialize with him as if nothing is wrong, and so it is hard to like these women after that, especially Gudrun, who ends up having sex with him. Ursula takes up with Rupert, and she has the naïve idea that marriage should simply be based on the love between a man and a woman, and she never does quite understand why Rupert thinks it should involve other people as well, especially men.

The four of them take a vacation to Switzerland, where Gudrun meets a German artist. The artist tells of how he brutally beat a woman to make her pose properly for the picture he was painting. Women are like horses in this movie: you have to beat them until they submit to your will, which is what turns Gudrun on, because she soon decides to go live with him. This makes Gerald homicidal, and then suicidal, wandering off into the snow so he will freeze to death. Rupert’s thoughts upon looking at his dead friend was how Rupert had offered himself but never had a chance to have that special experience with him. Ursula still does not quite know what to make of Rupert’s strange ideas.

Shakespeare in Love (1998)

There are people who will respond to criticism of a movie they like by saying, “Well, it’s just a movie.” Rather than answer the criticism, they indicate their lack of interest in discussing the movie with that dismissive remark. But then there are those who will respond to criticism of a comedy by saying, “Well, it’s just a comedy.” Somehow, this seems to be a more defensible position, for they are saying that serious criticism may be appropriate for serious movies, but a comedy, by its very nature, is not serious, and thus is exempt.

In reality, the only thing that makes a comedy immune from criticism is laughter. When a comedy makes us laugh, no criticism can touch it; when a comedy does not make us laugh, however, it deserves all the criticism we care to bring against it, even though the absence of laughter says it all. And Shakespeare in Love is just such a comedy.

The Academy is hesitant about handing out the award of Best Picture to a comedy, because that would seem to be beneath the dignity of the institution. Shakespeare in Love, however, being about the title character, insulates the Academy from being thought lowbrow, thereby permitting its members to embrace such a comedy. The fact that the movie is not really funny did not bother them. All that mattered was the glow of culture that radiated from the Academy when they voted for this film. In short, a movie about Shakespeare is Oscar bait, and the members bit.

Nietzsche once said that Homer would never have created an Achilles, nor Goethe a Faust, had Homer been an Achilles, or Goethe a Faust. This goes contrary to the way a lot of people think. They like to imagine that an author must be like the characters he creates. Shakespeare in Love plays off this notion, for it would have us believe that Shakespeare’s inspiration for Romeo and Juliet was that of a real life love affair that he had, with all sorts of parallels, balcony scene included, between what happened to him and the play he finally wrote. But to paraphrase Nietzsche, Shakespeare would never have created a Romeo had he been a Romeo.

The movie dares us not to be amused, even if we cannot bring ourselves to laugh. Bits and pieces of Romeo and Juliet, along with some of Shakespeare’s other plays, are strewn throughout the movie in a disorganized way, the idea being that the elements of all these plays just need to be put together in the right way, as we know they eventually will. Every such reference flatters us for catching the allusion, and we can display our sophisticated familiarity with these quotations from plays not yet written by chuckling, whereas if we merely sit there in the movie theater without exhibiting the slightest bit of mirth, others may think us lacking in culture and refinement.

When we watch a Shakespearian comedy being performed today and find ourselves not laughing, we are willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. We allow that it might have been funny when it was first performed four centuries ago. With Shakespeare in Love, we know better.

Speaking about the Speaker

With all the turmoil in the House of Representatives over who will be the next speaker, several journalists and politicians have referred to the Speaker of the House as being third in line for the presidency.  That didn’t sound right to me, because that would mean that Barack Obama is first in line for the presidency, which makes no sense, because he is the president.  After hearing that expression, “third in line for the presidency,” again and again, I finally looked it up and assured myself that I was right, that the speaker is second in line for the presidency.

You might think that would be the end of it, that I would simply accept the fact that I was right and all those journalists and politicians were wrong.  But now I face the question as to how I will characterize the speaker’s position relative to the presidency should I happen to find myself in a conversation on that topic with others.  If I were sufficiently disdainful of the opinion of others, I would say it correctly, that the speaker is second in line.  But I am not, for as much as I hate to admit it, I do want the good opinion of others, and I would hate to have them talk about me after I was gone, saying, “He thinks he is so smart, but he doesn’t even know the speaker is third in line for the presidency.”  On the other hand, if I say it the way everyone else seems to, that the speaker is third in line, I might lose the good opinion of those few who know that is incorrect.  In other words, it is not enough to know the proper way to say something. You then have to decide what to do with the knowledge once you have it.

It should be noticed that this is not a dispute as to the facts, though it might appear that way at first.  The people who say the speaker is third in line are not mistaken as to the order of succession.  They know as I do that should the president die, he would be succeeded by the vice president, and should he be killed or incapacitated, the speaker would become president. This is a difference of opinion as to how to characterize the order of succession, not a difference as to what that order is.

One approach would be for me to announce that the speaker is not third in line, but only second in line, thereby making sure that everyone understands that I know the difference and that I am right.  But then I would be acting like a know-it-all, presuming to instruct others, hardly an endearing trait. Consider the case of Chris Matthews.  At some point along the way, he discovered that the correct way to pronounce Dick Cheney’s last name was \chee-nee\.  Now, I have seen Dick Cheney on television shows for years, and everyone always pronounces it \chay-nee\, and he never corrects them, either on the air or, presumably, before the broadcast.  So, Matthews apparently cares about this more than Cheney does.  But more to the point, Matthews did not have the courage to simply pronounce Cheney’s name the way he believed it should be pronounced, for fear we would all think he was an ignoramus.  Instead, he opted to instruct people on his show as to the proper pronunciation, even going so far as to express exasperation when they had the temerity to continue to pronounce it the way they wanted to.  In the end, Matthews, in his effort to display his superior knowledge on the subject, has only managed to make himself look ridiculous.

In short, instructing others first as a way of preempting criticism is a bad idea. It only makes things worse.  Matthews should have either pronounced it \chee-nee\ without apology, or he should have gone along with the way everyone else pronounces it and been done with it, which would by far have been the better choice.  After all, I’ll bet he pronounces Cicero \si-suh-ro\ and not \ki-kuh-ro\, regardless of how the famous orator actually pronounced his name.

In general, the dilemma is between being an elitist and capitulating to the masses.  There is a time to be pure and say the speaker is second in line for the presidency, and there is a time to capitulate and pronounce Cicero \si-suh-ro\. In the case of coup de grâce, for example, I do not hesitate to pronounce this \koo-duh-grahs\, even though most people pronounce it \koo-duh-grah\, leaving off the “s” sound.  I suppose they are misled in two ways.  First, their mispronunciation rhymes with coup d’état and foie gras.  Second, when they see the French word grâce, it reminds them of the English word “grace.” And they say to themselves, the French usually don’t pronounce the last part of their words, so the “s” sound should be dropped. However, they overlook the fact that in English, we have already dropped the last part of the word, known as the silent “e,” and so no more needs to be omitted in the pronunciation.  In any event, I pronounce the word correctly without hesitation or apology.

With the word “forte,” however, I begin to lose my nerve.  Back when I was in college, some fifty years ago, I learned that the word “forte” had two different pronunciations, depending on the meaning.  When the word means “strong point,” it comes to us from the French language, and thus should be pronounced \fort\; when the word means “loudly,” as a direction in music, it comes to us from the Italian language, and thus should be pronounced \for-day\.  In the last twenty or thirty years, however, I have noticed that most people pronounce the word \for-tay\ when using it to mean “strong point.”  I confess cowardice at this point.  I cannot bring myself to pronounce it that way for that meaning, and I haven’t the courage to pronounce it the way I originally learned to, for fear of sounding dumb. And so, I have dropped the word from my oral vocabulary. And would you believe, I just about cannot use it in my writing either, where you would think it wouldn’t matter, because as I write the word, I cannot help but struggle with the pronunciation in my mind, and I end up using some other expression instead.  In a similar way, I have struggled with “dilettante” and “archipelago,” for the etymology suggests one pronunciation while common parlance suggests another.

Now, there are language nihilists who say, “Languages change all the time, and so it really doesn’t matter.”  Well, the way I see it, speed limits continually change too, but that doesn’t mean we can drive at any speed we like.  At any given moment in time, there is a speed limit beyond which we are not supposed to go.  And so, at any given time, there is a right way and a wrong way to speak.  On the other hand, there is the old debate as to whether you should never go over the speed limit, or whether you should keep up with the prevailing traffic, even if that traffic exceeds what is posted on the sign.  I am a purist who says, “All those other people are going too fast, and they are in the wrong.”  People tell me that I probably cause traffic accidents by refusing to keep up with the prevailing traffic. And maybe they are right. I have heard a lot of tires squealing and metal crunching as I drive along the road, keeping to the speed limit, and I have seen the wrecks piling up in my wake. But that’s just too bad.  What’s right it right.  And so it is with my attitude about language. Still, there are times when I wonder if I should be keeping up with the prevailing ways of speaking, despite the rules.

I was at a country-western night club one night, doing the twostep.  On leaving the dancefloor, my dancing partner asked me, “Is that Jim over there?” to which I replied, “That’s he.”  I was immediately ashamed.  Sure, my answer was grammatically correct, but totally inappropriate. First of all, if I was going to be that formal, I should have said, “That is he.”  The informal contraction just did not go with putting the predicate nominative in the subjective case. More to the point, I should have said, “That’s him.” There is a way to dress and a way to dance in a country-western night club, and there is a way to speak in such a place as well, and formal English ain’t it.

A special case in the question as to whether to remain pure or to capitulate is when your teacher or your boss mispronounces a word.  When I was a junior in high school, my history teacher was talking about the Boston Massacre, which she pronounced \mass-uh-kree\.  I looked over at my friend Charles, and he looked back at me.  Other surreptitious looks were being passed back and forth around the room.  I went home and looked it up in my dictionary. Sure enough, that pronunciation was not even listed as an option.  But now I faced the dilemma: how should I pronounce the word if called upon to talk about the famous massacre in class? Fortunately, I was able to go between the horns of that dilemma by keeping my head down whenever the topic was being discussed.  One girl, however, gave a report on the subject, which she read to us while standing in front of the classroom.  The little ass-kisser pronounced it \mass-uh-kree\, no doubt scoring brownie points with the teacher, but earning the contempt and derision of everyone else in the classroom.

There is also the special, very special case of one’s significant other.  A long time ago, my then girlfriend was telling me about a friend of hers, who had impressed her with her impeccable English.  As an example, she said the woman referred to herself as an alumnus instead of “an alumni,” which some people mistakenly do.  Now, I would have been happy to let that pass, but I could look ahead in anticipation of the how the discussion would develop, and I could see that I needed to make a decision.  If I referred to the woman’s status regarding her having a degree in a different way, my girlfriend might think I was trying to correct her in a sly manner.  So, I decided to get it over with and said, “Actually, she would be an alumna.”  Big mistake.  It was the better part of a week before she would let me kiss her again, during which time I had ample opportunity to reflect upon the fact that that my love life would have been much better had I simply capitulated and referred to the woman as an alumnus the way she did.  It was better than “an alumni,” after all.

I could go on with a multitude of other examples that plague me, but you get the idea. Knowing the proper way to speak is only half of it. Knowing when to stop being pure and just go with the flow can be the more worrisome half of the problem.  Regarding the proper way to characterize the order of succession, however, I have definitely decided to remain pure.  If someone asks me who is third in line for the presidency, I’m going to say Orrin Hatch.

Rise of the Dead (2007)

Though there is no such thing as karma in real life, yet there is plenty of it in the movies. In a typical movie, the good are rewarded and the evil punished, each to the extent that they deserve. In some cases, however, movie karma goes a little overboard, and people are punished way in excess of what little faults they may have, and that is what we have in Rise of the Dead.

When the movie starts, a couple is having dinner, with the husband, Sam Sherman (Patrick Pope), saying grace. He makes a semi-blasphemous remark about how God let their baby die. Uh oh. Sure enough, he must be punished, and the instrument of death is his own wife, Sally (Brooke Delaney). She goes all zombie on him and kills him with a fork. Zombies don’t usually use weapons, however, so this is our first clue that this is not your typical zombie flick.

Actually, just before the baby died, Sam and Sally were having an argument. He criticized her for not changing the diaper on the stinking baby, and she said it was his turn to do his part and change the diaper himself. So, maybe that’s it. Sam is being punished for sexism, imagining that diaper changing is woman’s work.

But there’s more. Sam had left his pistol on the table where the baby could get to it. As a result, while Sam and Sally are arguing, the baby puts the barrel in his mouth and pulls the trigger. And thus we have to wonder if Sam was punished for being negligent in leaving a handgun around where a baby could get to it.

It turns out that the baby was adopted, and the baby’s birth mother, Laura Childs (Erin Wilk), is being besieged by zombies, whom she manages to fight off or, in some cases, kill with the help of her boyfriend Jack (Stephen Seidel) or Sheriff Brown (Peter Blitzer). Her roommate gets killed, probably punishment for making a move on Jack. A sheriff’s deputy is killed as punishment for being a jerk. And so on. When her own mother turns on her and is put in an insane asylum, Laura notices that Sally Sherman, whom she knows to be the adoptive mother of her baby, is also a patient. Laura slips into her room, and Sally tells her that the baby’s ghost is inhabiting people as a way of inflicting punishment on those who wronged him, and Laura is big on his list of those on whom he wants to inflict vengeance.

You’d think Laura would get credit for having the baby and giving it up for adoption instead of aborting it the way her previous boyfriend wanted all along. Well, said previous boyfriend does get punished for that, right after the ghost baby inhabits the body of the woman he was bitch-banging and lets him have some axe in the face. But Laura still did her baby wrong by not keeping him, so he is still after her as his main target.

Somewhere along the way, we find out that a fanatical Christian couple were the baby’s first adoptive parents, and when Child Protective Services took the baby away, this first adoptive mother cursed it. Actually, the movie is thick with Christianity, and we regularly see crucifixes hanging on the walls of the rooms of different characters in the film. And thus it is that while ghost baby is going around wreaking death on those who wronged him, we sort of get the feeling that some of these people are being punished for excess of religion.

Anyway, Laura’s mother escapes from the insane asylum, and, finding Laura at home, tells her that the ghost baby just wants to be with his mother. But then ghost baby inhabits Laura’s mother again, and Laura has to handcuff her to the oven. Then Jack comes over, and he gets possessed by the ghost baby too.

But now Laura knows what ghost baby really wants. She tells him to come to Mommy, lays him on the floor and has sex with him. So, spiritually speaking, she has sex with her own son, through the body of her boyfriend, resulting in impregnation. Talk about returning to the womb. Anyway, it does the job. Ghost baby is satisfied and he waits inside his mother to be reborn. Presumably, she intends to keep the baby this time.

It looks as though everything has ended happily, but I have to wonder what movie karma thinks about incest.