Wednesday, August 19, 2020

The Final Solution: Sea of Grass

If you’re not a sexual athlete locked in the throes of an almost Flaubertian chasing of computer generated apparitions by the sheltering-in-place mandates, then you may very well find yourself returning to the old television shows of the 50s and 60s, Lassie, Bonanza and Little House on the Prairie which may better reflect your homebound life. Now that there are no restaurants to go to and if you can afford it, no cleaning personnel, dry cleaners or laundries, you are living the hand-to-mouth existence of the early settlers. Remember Jeff on Lassie and the chores he was expected to do on the farm? Sure the reality was that Jeff probably had his first sexual experience with one of the sheep, with Gramps taking a tumble in the hay in the barn, with a neighbor. But these kinds of shows advertising the myth of life on the great plains were not known for their cinema verité approach. Strangely the rather circumspect world of a television show with its covered wagons, farming and dangerous drunken cowboys or stagecoach robbers (read viruses) neatly encapsulate the very world that many isolated families and individuals are living as they attempt to make ends meet under difficult conditions and with increasingly limited resources. The Lone Ranger is almost a meaningless appellation today since most municipalities are requiring their townsfolk to wear masks. However, whether it was herdsman or farmers (and the antimony between these two elements was dramatized in Sea of Grass, (the l947 the Spencer Tracy/ Katherine Hepburn vehicle), life was often harsh and lonely for those trying persevere in the Old West, much as it is today in the age of coronavirus. 

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.