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What is it about our culture that celebrates killers, thieves, and ne’er-do-wells? Recently, I was looking at a photo of Billy the Kid playing cards with three of his accomplices. Reportedly, it is only one of two certified photos of The Kid. Henry McCarty, a.k.a. William H. Bonney, a.k.a Billy the Kid, was born in New York City. Orphaned at the age of 15, he was first arrested when he was 16.
The next five years would see McCarty kill 21 men in his short life. He headed west to avoid the law and cut a bloody path, including serving as a domestic terrorist in the New Mexico Lincoln County War, where he was charged with killing a sheriff and his deputy. Ultimately, as a result of his crimes, he was captured and sentenced to be hanged but escaped, killing two sheriff’s deputies in the process. Finally, two months later, he was tracked down and shot dead by Sheriff Pat Garrett. McCarty was 21.
Yet, even though there appears to be no redeeming factor in his life, over fifty movies and numerous television programs have told the story of Billy the Kid, often portraying him as a hero, or at least an anti-hero. In truth, he was a despicable human being who robbed and murdered his way through the last five years of his life.
But he is by no means the only one. When I was in high school, I saw the movie “Bonnie and Clyde,” starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. Clyde was handsome, Bonnie was beautiful, and, when they died in a hail of gunfire, one felt almost sorry for them.
Among our outlaw heroes are Jesse James, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, John Dillinger, and Al Capone, to name a few. Even Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday are among the famous outlaws who made their mark in violence, although Earp and Holliday are remembered for their later years. And all have been the subject of movies, TV programs, and books.
But our interest in people of violence doesn’t end with criminals. History, movies and TV programs have also extolled the greatness of Napoleon Bonaparte, Julius Caesar, Hernan Cortés (who decimated the Aztec Empire), and Alexander the Great. All are remembered as conquerors but forgotten is the wanton slaughter of innocents.
President Andrew Jackson is remembered as the victor of the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812 but forgotten as the man responsible for the deaths of 6,000 Cherokee men, women, and children who perished on the “Trail of Tears,” America’s own “Bataan Death March.” Over 60,000 Cherokee people and other Native Americans were forcibly ordered removed from their homeland by Jackson and marched over 1,200 miles west. This hero is celebrated on every U.S. $20 bill.
I wonder whose lives will be “celebrated” in the future? John Wayne Gacy? Jeffry Dahmer? Timothy McVeigh? Charles Manson? John Gotti? Wayne Williams? Ted Bundy? Think it can’t or won’t happen?
Several of these have already had movies or TV shows about them. There have been movies glorifying the exploits of criminal outlaw biker gangs. In America, if enough time has passed, we love our “bad boys.”
It’s really no wonder that much of the rest of the world sees Americans as “cowboys,” and that is not necessarily a compliment.
We are incredibly hypocritical about it all. Many of the Hollywood so-called “elites” demand stiffer gun control laws yet they make untold billions with movies that employ and glorify those very firearms. For example, one Hollywood hypocrite, Alec Balwin, has a history of opposing gun rights activists yet his stupidity with a loaded handgun on the set of a movie resulted in his shooting and killing a woman. Maybe a movie will be made about that too.
Our culture, that is, our American culture, has an obsession with violence and those who perpetrate it. We love it — just absolutely love it — as entertainment but we are shocked by it when it happens to us, someone we know, or the innocents in our lives are the victims of it.
When a culture glorifies violence, why do we act shocked when violence occurs? As Pogo said in 1971, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
[David Epps is the Rector of the Cathedral of Christ the King (www.ctk.life). Worship services are on Sundays at 10:00 a.m. and on livestream at www.ctk.life. He is the bishop of the Diocese of the Mid-South (www.midsouthdiocese.life). He has been a weekly opinion columnist for The Citizen for over 27 years. He may be contacted at [email protected].]
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