Jungle Jim

Some adventure shows we used to watch after school were Jungle Jim and The Last of the Mohicans. Then on certain days of the week Cheyenne and Cimarron Strip were on in the afternoons.  In the evenings we watched Laramie, Lawman, Hawaiian Eye and 77 Sunset Strip.  These were our action shows and when I compare to what is on television today I shudder.  1960’s crime was pretty tame compared to Law & Order SVU or Criminal Minds.

       No one in our games wanted to be the bad guy instead everyone wanted to be the detective, lawman or heroine of the story and of course no one wanted to be the victim so most of the time we had to have a pretend body and then we would assume characters from the different shows.  The main point of any games meant running around a lot and screaming at the top of our lungs “Freeze, buster”.  Once the villain was caught we were allowed to shake him up a little bit but there was really no rough stuff because that isn’t what we saw on the shows.  I was quite surprised when viewing some old westerns like Gunsmoke and The Virginian to notice that we seldom ever saw the shot body once it was dead. 

       Most of the things we watched on television were so wholesome that I find myself constantly amazed that our generation didn’t turn out much better than we did.  Saying that I find myself reflecting and thinking “most of us turned out pretty good; it’s our leaders that disappoint”.  Perhaps that is our problem, we were raised up to trust our leaders and so we continue to vote and trust that our elected officials are going to do well by us.  Images of Fred McMurray and Robert Young as the wise fathers pop to mind as they tell their sons in the last scene what they should do to be a model citizen, then all will be right with their little world for that week.

       The bottom line for me is that television does influence social mores and thinking.

Tarzan of the Apes

Now there is a heading to catch any girl’s eye, don’t you think? I happen to be re-reading this book. Edgar Rice Burroughs has a wonderful vocabulary and I understand why my father, an immigrant, had such a fantastic vocabulary of his own. He had read all 24 Tarzan novels, not to mention Burroughs other books!

But back to Tarzan. Tarzan is really the impossible ideal. Forget Rhett Butler. Forget Heathcliff and Rochester. Tarzan treats women with respect. He is noble, honest, faithful, intelligent, kind, fearless, steadfast. All the things a girl wants. She might not know she wants them, but that’s what she wants. I will tell you what I don’t want. I don’t want to be reforming some loser, I don’t want to be taming some kind of misogynist, I don’t want to be a mother, sister or friend to someone bent out of shape. But when you watch a romantic film you seem to get led down the garden path where the woman ends up having to fix the guy.

Tarzan is a very interesting character though I am rather dubious about his achievements in reading without language. I just think he is an interesting creation, rather in the same vein as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, sort of out of nowhere. Tarzan is a truly noble character who seems to know instinctively what is morally right. At our book club recently we discussed a moral compass and whether humans needed religion to give us that moral compass. Some of us were agreed that we didn’t think religion was necessary to know what was right or wrong. Children know instinctively what is fair. They can see when something is divided if it is even steven or if someone is getting a bigger piece of the pie. And that isn’t right (getting a bigger piece of the pie)! Tarzan figures out on his own that killing another man isn’t correct, even though the man is not “of his tribe”. I think that is real. I think we ought to be able to figure that out for ourselves.

And that begs the question, why is there war? Where is our moral compass? Some how we have lost our truth north. Isn’t that sad? Civilization isn’t at the level of a Tarzan.