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Warlock (1959) Dir. Edward Dmytryk

#warlock 1959 #warlock #henry fonda #anthony quinn #clay blaisedell #tom morgan #westerns #films #1950s #edward dmytryk #oakley hall #oh my god bro this movie....#it's had me in a chokehold since last month and it's still going strong #gifset #my gifs #my gifset #favorite movies #queer #happy pride month #pride month #gifs by me

Warlock (1958)

"And it's all so Girardean..."

Admiration traps a man. Reputation becomes the prison he inhabits, and cannot escape. Yesterday's shock, today's expectation. Yesterday's gift, today's obligation.

And Warlock (Oakley Hall, 1958) is a "claustrophobic" novel: "no epic of the wide-open spaces," its plot plays out in the town's nooks and crannies. Back-shooters in back alleys; panoptic casinos, with shotgun sentries like prison guards from the mezzanine.

Some of its residents try to leave and fail. Some of its residents say they'll leave, and never do. And some, in fact, make it out. They are invariably pulled back in. As if their doom were predetermined. "[Gannon] had fled this hard and aimless callousness where a human life was only a part of a game, and never, so far as he had seen, a fair game. He had thought he could escape it by fleeing it. But he could not…; and he could not escape himself…"

"And it's all so Girardean." Clay Blaisedell, our gunslinging hero, is a mimetic model nonpareil. Held up, only to be torn down. Posted on the cross. Envy bleeding down his fingers into hate. He who Has; He who Gets His; He who Takes His. The man of luck, and successful tactic. The man of admiration. His example triggers a behavioral cascade. His mimetic magnetism mutates local equilibria. Not an easy task; a task which mandates courage. As his prize, the Lady of the Town—for her place is to choose him; to anoint the knight, reward the reputation. And this—like rats, watching one of their own receive cocaine—inspires both courage and envy.

These are new words for old truths. It Is Known, this corrupted path which jealous desire may take: where men tear one another down, to have what could never, by such means be given them. Covetousness, we call it, or "scarcity mindset," or "zero-sum thinking." And this opposed to the pro-social ethos of self-improvement—the only righteous road to inheritance.

Blaisedell is a myth, a story, a reputation. His narrative not only precedes but supersedes the mammal. It is a story that changes the town. The real man is merely a means to the story, which has co-authors: his Lady, our Angel of Warlock; his Brother, the Black Rattlesnake; and his Child, the Boy Gannon. For Blaisedell is also a man of Clay, a humus being. Moldable, and fallible, they say: incapable of living up the myth, and envy pulling him down with crabclaws. Facts must be curated. The plot must be pushed into proper place. This, at least, is the opinion of his Lady. The supremacy of story will destroy the man. But this is the sacrifice expected for his Town. And it is the story she loves, anyway. Her own story, and His.

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Wood is scarce, in Warlock, but buildings keep burning. Structure destroyed by factional feuds, til the whole world's bare. Ruins. Corpses. Men are like corn. Cut them down, plant them again. What is it for?

"Murder done, there was kin to take it up and cut down the murdering dog," til no kin left. Or til kin—renouncing their role as kindling, and possessed by that idea we call Law—seek something higher. Not to escape the fire, but by their example, starve the fire of fuel. "So this old world remakes itself time and time again, each time in labor and in pain and the best men crucified for it."

Yes, in the Beginning "it was alright to stand up for your own, it was the first principle." Family and feud that first way of nature, feudal and futile. But nature searches for new stabilities—and certain allegiances, certain bindings, must be unbound, for new fabrics to weave. And just as a culture of milking of cows leads to the persistence of a lactase gene, so might an idea like Justice—blind and bescaled—forever alter the race.

Big shoes to fill, they say of men who set high expectations, for the role they have served. By the time Warlock ends, our hero Boy Gannon is halfway limping, for his starboots are far too tight for those feet of his. A standard—to which the wise and honest soul may repair...

But all that survives of Tombstone is Warlock. "We wake as if from a trance to realize we have been reading the history of a ghost town."

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