Learning from Gunsmoke

I read voraciously, sometimes more than is good for me, because I will choose to employ it as an escape. I pray daily, sometimes more than is good for me, because I'm not always sure what I'm praying for. I go out of my way to be kind, sometimes more than is good for me, because I don't necessarily know how to be helpful.

I also have a love and hate relationship with film and television. It can be a wonderful form of art, one I am grateful to have had the opportunity to experience in my life. At the same time, it can be a terrible way to numb and mislead my conscience, one that encourages me to confuse what is good in my life.

Like all things in this world, the benefit or the harm is not in the thing itself, but in my use or abuse of the thing. What am I taking away from it, and how am I letting it help me to become wiser and better?

Does it help me to watch movies and shows that deliberately glorify violence and hatred, or reduce love to lust, or paint life as a struggle to be won by lying, cheating, and stealing? For ever two minutes of a story, do I really need another one minute of advertising that sells me this product that will make me more popular, or that service that will make me more attractive?

We all find our own worth in things, in our own ways, and we all take out of things what we are willing to put into them, from our own sense of values. Still, I have myself grown tired of dwelling on people or situations that debase all that is truly human. Why am I gawking? Why am I paying attention? I can do better. What I choose to let into my soul will color the very content of my soul.

One day, I decided I would skip keeping up with this show about post-apocalyptic flesh-eating zombies, or that movie about building a bloody drug empire, or even making it through the bickering and posturing on the evening news. I was instead going to watch old episodes of Gunsmoke, one at a time, whenever I felt the need to turn on the television.

That show ran for twenty years, with over six hundred episodes, so it would take me some time to get the job done. It was certainly not time wasted, because when I finished it all, I walked away a better man. No, Gunsmoke didn't make me a better man, but it helped me to make myself a better man. The worth in it was learning about characters and conflicts that inspired virtue, compassion, and courage.

Marshal Dillon had grown up with a streak of bad in him, yet he had chosen to nourish the good in him. Doc Adams was as stubborn and ornery as a mule, even as he was happy to stay poor so he could serve Dodge City. Miss Kitty was tough as nails, and her profession was always questionable, but she had a heart of gold.

There was Chester, and Quint, and Festus, and even the old drunk Louie, and all of them had their many flaws. Still, at the end of every episode, they all had done their best, they all had learned something, and they all had faced tragedy to do what they knew was right. The story didn't always end well for everyone, though it always taught a hearty lesson.

Yes, you may laugh at how corny it seems to our fashions. I will insist, however, that this was not a white-washed show at all. It had a dark side to it, and a realization that all places and times face the very same troubles. There were scoundrels, players, bigots, thieves, rapists, and murderers back in this version of Dodge City, just as there are scoundrels, players, bigots, thieves, rapists, and murderers outside of your door right now. What the story suggested was that even the smallest people could try to make a difference, and that justice was worth fighting for.

No, it did not embrace despair and nihilism, and in this sense it is hardly trendy. Good could be found, even in the darkest of places. Human beings were capable of decency, even in the face of loss and death. The center of the narrative was the building of character, not the glorification of misery. There was a hope in living the day well, whatever may come to pass. There were harsh consequences, and there was always the chance for forgiveness and redemption.

"Oh my God, did you see that new episode of Los Angeles: Death Squad last night where Dakota cuts off three of Brandon's fingers, and then eats them? That was so sick, man!"

"No, sorry, I was watching an old episode of Gunsmoke where Dillon and Doc help defend a cowboy falsely accused of murder, and also give a drunken prostitute and her son a new chance in life."

That, my friends, is how to clear the break room at work.

Written in 12/2016

This was one of those early scenes that got me hooked:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqyojnM9tlc