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Tag Archives: Clint Eastwood

Libertarian Josey Whales

29 Tuesday Mar 2016

Posted by danielwalldammit in Movies, Politics

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Clint Eastwood, Cowboys, Film, Free Markets, Libertarianism, Movies, Outlaw Josey Whales, Politics, Westerns

JoseyWDon’t get me wrong. I owe countless hours of entertainment, and many profound lessons learned to Clint Eastwood and his lifetime of utter brilliance. In this post, I will of course repay him by attacking his work on one of my all-time favorite films.

I guess I am feeling lucky.

…or maybe it’s just a blog post, but anyway, that’s not the film I mean to ramble about. I’m thinking about Josey Whales. There is one scene in this film that really bothers me. Maybe it’s meant to. Hell, probably, it’s meant to, but in this case the bother skips out of the bounds of the movie itself and starts to become a real-world bothertation.

I am talking about a scene in which Josey enters a trading post to find two men raping a young Navajo woman right there in the building. He grimaces a bit, and we get the impression he doesn’t really approve, and of course he does what so many of Eastwood’s characters do in this film; he goes on about his business, at least until the men become his business. This character is a reluctant hero after all, not some white-hat good-guy. When the rapists decide to try and take him prisoner, Josey, …uh, …SPOILER ALERT, …shoots them both dead, thus effectively saving the woman from sexual assault even as he saves his own life.

It’s great drama, and one of the things that makes it great is the moral ambiguity of its main character. Would he have helped the young woman if the two men hadn’t gone after him? We might hope so, but the film itself gives us no reason to suspect he would have. What we do know is that he walked right past them, and right past his first chance to help her. The whole scene ends with a disconcerting sense that Josey has put a stop to a number of bad things without ever really making a decision to do so.

It’s good storytelling. Hell, it’s great story-telling. So what’s the problem?

I think of this scene every time I hear of Clint Eastwood’s approach to libertarianism. His take on the subject is often described as “everyone leaves everyone alone” or some variant thereof. I actually rather like this expression, at least for a moment or two whenever I hear it. I can just imagine it being directed at some fussy bastard whose getting into other people’s business, in effect telling them to mind their own. I can get behind that sort of thing, sure I can. But then I find myself thinking that’s not really where this message is going, is it? Not in the grand scheme of things.

Time and again, we see libertarians in league with mainstream conservatives. On the topics of government aid to the poor and interference with the economy their messages are synchronous. On the topic of gender politics, their views clash, and near as I can tell the mainstream conservative themes win-out just about every time. This tells us a lot about the priorities at stake here, and I get damned tired of hearing a message that promises respect for individuals across the board only to see that message work consistently to the benefit of those already powerful at the expense of those struggling just to survive.

…which of course brings us right back to that scene from Josey Whales.

You could think of “everyone leave everyone alone” as a rule that might stop the rapists, albeit, it’s damned weak wording for a crime such as that. More to the point, I can’t help thinking it has more to do with Josey’s initial decision to go about his business, leaving the men free to hurt a young woman in his presence. I can’t help thinking that in that moment, Josey was minding his own business, just as the real Clint Eastwood seems to suggest we should all do.

Of course things work out in the end with Josey Whales, but they work out in the end because that’s the way the story is written. The bad guys go one step too far, thus triggering Josey’s own trigger, and it doesn’t hurt that they are foolish enough to let him get the best of them, just as all the other bad guys in that story do. Evil is vanquished in Josey Whales, but not because anyone has made a conscious choice to oppose it. Indeed, the movie seems rather set against the wisdom of such choices. No, the good that happens in this movie happens as if by accident, as Josey and his companions go about their daily lives, just trying to survive. And so the invisible hand of the writer seems to bring good  things from morally ambiguous behavior, much as the invisible hand of God in free market folklore.

It’s good storytelling, yes, but it’s piss-poor politics.

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The Man With No Game!

02 Saturday Jan 2016

Posted by danielwalldammit in Gaming, Movies, Narrative VIolence

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Ambiguity, Ambivalence, Clint Eastwood, Morality, Narratives, Role Pllaying games, Stories, Story-Telling, The Man With No Name

Who could forget the man with no name? It’s easily the most memorable character in Clint Eastwood’s acting career. After generations of protagonists so apple-pie obvious in white hats and chaps, always doing the right thing, and always winning in the end, there was something especially compelling about this antihero. You never quite knew what he was going to do. He might save the town, or he might kill everyone. You didn’t really know until right about the same time you learned the outcome of the conflict itself. This vision of moral ambiguity was a wonderful contribution to film.

As a character in a role-playing game, he totally sucks!

To be a little more specific, he makes a terrible player character in an ongoing campaign. The Man With No Name has some potential as an Non Player Character, if the guy running the game uses him well, but in the hands of a player this sort of character can be a terrible buzzkill. That doesn’t stop players from creating characters with similar personae. Time and again players bring such characters to the game table only to they aren’t nearly as interesting as their cinematic counterparts. The difference illustrates a little about storytelling, I think. But of course the issue is larger than the man with no-name. It extends to any number of morally ambiguous characters, characters who inspire fear and hope in roughly equal amounts.

What makes such characters work is the extra tension they provide to the narrative. Instead of just wondering if the hero will beat the bad guys, a morally ambiguous protagonist leaves you wondering if he will even take up the right side of the fight. He might just as easily prove to be the biggest nightmare of the narrative. Done well, such personalities will leave you on the edge of your seat well into the third act, but of course resolution will come in the end. Sooner or later these characters do the right thing, even if reluctantly so, and perhaps with a trace of wrong mixed in with it for bad measure, but they will step up to the challenge and save the day.

The audience needn’t do anything but soak up the story.

And therein lies the difference. Role playing games (or at least the pen&paper variation thereof) are an inherently cooperative enterprise. The players must come to a series of agreements in order to make it work. At minimum this means coming to an understanding of the game rules, but it also requires some agreement on the essential features of the setting as well. Ultimately, the players will need to come to a shared understanding of the plot-line for a campaign. Failing that, an rpg can easily descend into an endless session of bickering over one tiny detail after another. Were things going right, these very details would be the icing on the cake, the features of the story that make it so much more vivid. But when the players aren’t on the same page, such details instead provide fodder for a series of arguments about imaginary things, and being imaginary, those things don’t admit easily of resolution by rational argument. This is of course what makes the old Summoner Geeks parody so brilliant. Most of us who game have been there at one time or another. ….A story that isn’t quite happening, its every detail becoming an excruciating source of pointless conflict.

The morally ambivalent character is just one more variation on this problem. It poses the dilemma of a character who may or may not accept the central plot-lines of the story. More to the point, it poses the challenge of a player who may or may not accept the central challenge of the story. Unlike a movie viewer, the other players must then actively contend with the possibility that his ambiguous loyalties will undermine their own efforts to resolve the central story line. They have to worry if the dark and mysterious character will piss off the one great side character whose help they really need; if he will start a random fight in a bar where they hoped to meet an important contact; or if he might simply wander off when the big battle is about to go down. The possibilities are as countless as they are frustrating. It’s a bit like watching a side-plot to a movie take-over the entire narrative. …except that you’re not simply watching that happen. You are actively trying to resolve the central problem for the storyline and the player running the ambiguous character has just derailed the whole project!

Of course a player running a morally ambivalent character needn’t do this. He can do as the writer of a movie or a book might and choose to let his character do the right thing, so to speak, perhaps grumbling a bit in the process or adopting an ironic reason for doing so. That can be fun. It can actually work.

For about a game or two.

What makes such characters really frustrating is the prospect of dealing with their ambivalence three, four, even ten games into an ongoing campaign. It can actually be kind of fun to figure out a mysterious character in the early stages of a campaign when the story-line is just beginning to emerge. If you are still worried about his likely course of action well into the campaign, and long after the central challenge of the plot has taken shape, the whole act is going to get damned old. Ironically, such characters eventually lose their bad-ass quality and start to seem more like pampered children or special snowflakes.

It isn’t just that such characters are frustrating (though they are). The problem is that the sense of mystery – the dramatic tension that makes them tick – fails over time and they simply become tedious, just one more detail that cannot be settled. Part of what makes ambivalent characters interesting to begin with is a sense of anticipation. What will he do? It’s an interesting question, but this question must eventually be answered to provide a satisfactory theme in a story. If a player leaves his or her character sitting on the fence umpteen plot twists into a narrative, that in itself starts to become the answer to this very question. He’ll stay on that damned fence and make you beg him to help out every damned time something needs doing.

It’s all a bit like watching unrequited love in a sit-com. It’s kinda fun for an episode or three, but it’s a bit old by the second season. By season three it’s a distraction from the cool parts of the series, and by season four it’s the reason you’ve decided to watch something else.

Ultimately, the mystery that makes such characters tick resides in a moment within a plot line, but that moment must eventually pass. A character who doesn’t know what side he’s on well into an ongoing plot becomes a source of irritation. When a player tries to make moral ambiguity a lasting feature of his character, he or she may well end up as a the buzz-kill that ended the campaign.

And the man with no name thus acquires one after all.

It just isn’t a good one.

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