Letters to the Editor
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Wish I Watched
I never have watched more than five minutes of the Sopranos or Godfathers or any Mafia movies since Elliot Ness. Before you dismiss me as a male freak or heretic, here me out.
Mafia violence on the screen or in real life always seemed to me to be a meaningless cop out from reality. You needed a moral code that drove feelings below consciousness. Real violence can be very necessary, yet it’s use should start you walking on a tight rope of uncertainty even though you may not realize it.
My exploration of violence, other than cowboys and Indian movies, began in earnest when I visited my grandparent’s farm in North Dakota in the ‘50s. My grandfather and uncle needed violence to stay alive, whether killing game for food or familiar cattle, chickens and pigs. It didn’t bother me laughing at chickens running around without heads. But when I threw for silly fun some soon to be hatched hen house eggs against the barn wall, that decision greatly bothered my grandparents and my behind.
Because they had no TV, one escapist violent amusement when my grandfather or uncle had some rare down time from farming was riding around in the Ford pickup shooting gophers. We killed at least 40 each time and left them to die without bothering to even examine the corpses. I kind of felt sorry for those gophers and also felt they were stupid for not stuffing their curiosity and staying in their holes. Then one day a robin changed everything about my view of gratuitous violence.
I was not on the farm but home in Grand Forks in my back alley and had just nailed a robin perched on phone line with my Roy Rogers Daisy BB gun. This time I went over to the kill and saw the robin writhing on the dirt alley. I couldn’t save it. That was my first reality look at death. From that moment on, although I have watched innumerable human death in movies and TV shows, I see unreal death for what it is, nonsense. I want my deaths to mean something. I want to understand the human condition that causes and can prevent it. I want to be sure violence is my only recourse.
Before I read Gary’s explanation of the Sopranos, my brief sojourns into Mafia movies only showed me a boring king-of-the-mountain game that ends up with the deaths of people I didn’t care much about. Now I wished I would have watched the Bravo re-runs. I hope the people who support our president and his “ends justify the means” ignoring of real human consequences watched it. I hope Tony finally started them to question their moral certainty like I did when I watched that robin. Judging from Gary’s explanation and Bush’s polls, he may have.