The Reluctant Vigilante

Many a man would face his gun

And many a man would fall

The man who shot Liberty Valence…

He was the bravest of them all.

Song by Burt Bacharach and Hal David

In the 1962 film classic, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, the audience is convinced to side with The Duke’s Tom Doniphon version of the lawless American West. It becomes clear that “out in these parts” a man needs to solve problems on his own and that resolution is best enforced with the business end of a six shooter.

In my experience, I would say the vigilante theme, taking the law into your own hands when all else fails, is popular around the world. But in America this theme takes on an almost cult-like following. This theme is not about misguided gangs or groups of ignorant thugs who lynch innocents from a tree to prove some immature or unjust point of view. It is about our citizens yearning for an unexpected hero to stand up and fight against injustice when our courts and our society fail. In our movies, literature, scores of depictions of American life, the lone vigilante fighting injustice is the strongest and bravest hero of them all.

Some may argue that theme is inspired by a complex modern age where the law seems intent on protecting the rights of the guilty criminal instead of the innocent victim. Others may argue that it comes from more simple times in our past when people had no choice but to deal with the Liberty Valences of the world in their own ways.

Whatever the beginnings, there is a basic quality of our Hollywood vigilante hero that we all recognize.

Typically, the vigilante is a perfectly muted masculine actor. Whether the character is Charles Bronson, Stephan Segal or the many vivid portrayals of Clint Eastwood, we also know by our passion plays that the true vigilante hero is a reluctant one. He does not go looking for a fight. Not at first, at least. He spends most of his days suffering the bullies of the world in silence like most of us do.

But then a dramatic injustice happens. Usually his loved ones, family and friends, are threatened directly or even harmed. At that point, frustrated by society’s institutions which are unable to deal effectively with the threat, he realizes he must take matters into his own hands and he unleashes his rage on the criminal instigator.

And the audience applauds. We love it when somebody good “goes all Billy Jack” on the bad guys.

It comes to my mind that we are comforted by this action in different ways. We are happy to believe that we can, if pushed, overcome all the bad intention of men on this earth. We also want to believe that seemingly otherwise good laws of society can be occasionally broken by capable individuals for the benefit of the many.

We know we break the rules all the time. That’s just the way it is; we are all sinners to some degree in that regard. We just like to be told that it’s ok to break those silly rules when it’s really necessary.

And it’s important to say that we want this kind of thing to happen every now and then. If you haven’t seen Liberty Valence in a while, I highly recommend you review it again. At the most riveting junctures, you can sense the tension among the townsfolk of Shinbone every time Liberty Valence enters the scene. They sheepishly look at each other, suspiciously wondering who will be the one to bring an end to his madness.

But, as with many other things in life, it is the timing of it all that is so significant. If Tom Doniphon had just said, screw it, enough is enough, and he’d gone out in the middle of the day, hunted down Lee Marvin’s Liberty Valence and boldly shot him dead in the street, it would have been a different story. But he didn’t do that.

Instead, our courageous Doniphon did it under the cover of night, from the shadow of a darkened alleyway, with the help of his trustworthy slave Pompey. Doniphon didn’t do it because he wanted to do it. He waited until he had to do it. And then he did it quickly and with little apparent remorse.

In the end, we learn, he silently suffered for the rest of his life with a different evil, the secret truth of what he’d done.

As a nation of people, we Americans like to think we do things just like old Tom Doniphon. The good Americans we know don’t go looking for a fight, they wait until it happens and then they deal with it righteously, collectively and efficiently. We enjoy a good cause, the kind of cause that can push us right over the edge of lawlessness. Curiously, we remember those grand causes and honor them and we tell our children about them endlessly.

We remember The Shot Heard ‘Round the World, The Alamo and The Maine. We suffered the historical pain of poor choice, the global humiliation of being caught with our pants down time and time again, and we overcame all of that. Admittedly, we may have a perfectly good cause staring us in the face today, one that hopefully our children will find something good to tell their children about in the years to come.

We are now constantly reminded of the last great cause, the battle against Hitler’s army in World War II. By my reading of the books of the dead, a connection can be made between the reluctant vigilante hero and America’s reluctant engagement in that war. But we may be having a bit of trouble characterizing the scenes of the modern play, who shot first and so on, possibly due to an overindulgence of our European roots. The words “Hitler” and “fascist” and “devil” are being tossed around rather casually these days and those general issue memories may be faded to the point of being unrecognizable.

Instead of grasping for hobgoblins, anxiously eyeing clouded demons like the suspicious citizens of Shinbone searching for their hero in the darkness, I find my vigilante comfort in recalling the troubling cause that pushed us into that war from the Far East, an event trumpeted to a captivated audience as “Remember Pearl Harbor.”

Comforting, perhaps, but still a troubling thought in more ways than one. Many of us today have friends who are Japanese citizens. If I were to stereotype the typical Japanese person, having lived in portions of Japan for a healthy time in my life, I would say he is humble, hard-working, and worthy of our national admiration and respect--hardly the evil doer who forces our reluctant hero to rage against him. Added to those honorable qualities, today we carry the guilt of shoddy treatment to our Japanese-American citizens during a difficult era in our history.

But it was a different story back then, not so many moons ago. Although today amends have been made by old warriors on both sides of the ocean, a thought that is probably more comforting and hopeful to me than any of this other blather you may be painfully reading here today, it’s still an era that we should never forget. And it’s important for me, I think, to say that with regards to the impetus of a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, within the framework of forcing our nation’s vigilante heroes to take matters in their own hands, our collective reaction at the time was just and correct. Given the context of the era, it is difficult for me to imagine any other response. And, given the result of that impetus, that heated response is something the world should give better attention.

It is the initial reluctance of that response which intrigues me and seems to make it the most righteous, the most American. Even now, with 20-20 hindsight on all the clues that led up to the Day Which Will Live in Infamy, a preventative attack by the US on the Imperial army would seem inappropriate. It would violate the basic rule of our Hollywood vigilante, contradict the honorable American spirit of “Don’t Tread on Me” and oddly limit the brutal retaliation. And we may sometimes shake our head at the brutality of that response but we want it just the same while the world around us does its part to help incite our vigilantes to action.

But, see, here’s where people thankfully forget the truth and are forced to live with that forgetfulness for the rest of their lives. Modern people don’t want to suggest that it was a hero who vaporized Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Concerned people don’t want to remember that it was an ominous danger hidden in the unique tactical success of Japanese aggression, misjudging an enemy so greatly that triggered the ultimate strategic failure of their Empire. Thoughtful people don’t want to believe that as Yamamoto may have feared he awakened “a sleeping giant”, at the same time the dumb Liberty Valence characters of our world foolishly united for a solitary, tragic moment in history to force the American vigilante into defending his friends and family and doing something that he didn’t really want to do, when he had no choice but to do it, and with little apparent remorse.

In a recent fit of sobriety, I wondered what we may have learned through these stories and if modern times have changed anything at all. I wondered if the Liberty Valence classic was updated, told again in our modern context, would it have a different ending today?

Suppose that James Stewart’s Ransom Stoddard stood trial for deliberately shooting Liberty Valence in today’s over-exposed and hyped up courtroom. Suppose, through the twists and turns of modern litigation, before the legend could be turned into fact, our Stoddard was a popular public hero in serious danger of serving time for his legal offence against society.

Suppose then that Tom Doniphon, being the crude but conscientious character that he was, stood up in court and revealed his secret.

“I did it,” Doniphon would say unceremoniously. “Liberty Valence was fixing to murder Stoddard so I shot him dead with my Winchester. This pilgrim couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with his pea shooter, so let him go. Pompey can vouch for the truth of my deed.”

Imagine then what would happen in the modern context. Would the Public Prosecutor not charge that Doniphon had acted beyond the rule of law? Would today’s Law and Order not prove that he had suspiciously hid in the shadows, keeping his direct involvement secret? Had Doniphon not spent endless hours in the local saloon drunkenly ranting on about how he would “get” Liberty Valence one of these days? He was not reluctant. He had plenty of motive. This was not an act of self-defense, this was not a way to honor the laws of society, this was an act of deliberate, premeditated murder on the streets of Shinbone.

Would the audience still applaud? And would the intoxicating image of the heroic American vigilante bravely fighting injustice for all not be tarnished forever?

Cheers,
Mb