Movie idea: PC Western.

Alexander 'Sasha' Chislenko (sasha1@netcom.com)
Mon, 28 Dec 1998 22:33:01 -0500

I get a bit irritated at times with this increasingly "kindergarten society" where one's tiny steps are regulated, and want to suggest a little idea that may be implemented some day as a movie or a cartoon. Suppose we have a traditional Western film with proud cowboys, Indians, gold seekers and such (Americans still believe they carry forward the ideas of liberty these people started). And then, there will be all kinds of things that are currently accepted as good and useful and socially necessary, set up in that environment.

So we'll have fines for riding horses without a helmet, regulated traffic, sensitive gay cowboys, men watching kids while their wives go to the women's empowering meetings, saloon bouncers carding everybody who looks under 30, half of law enforcement busy spying over what stuff people smoke and throwing them in jail for 10 years if it's the wrong stuff, people sitting at the side of the town doing nothing complaining that the society didn't motivate them enough to learn to do anything, so sheriff now has to take money away from hard workers and hand it over to the lazybones, immigration authorities that may allow you to come into the country only 8 years after you got a certified invitation from your first-degree relative, burglars suing people for injuries they incurred while breaking into their unsafe house, etc., etc. I am sure one can come up with lots of interesting contrasts here.

Some of that may strangely fit, some may seem funny, some grotesque and ridiculous. In any case it can be a fun movie that could invite people to think to what degree their current laws actually correspond to those great traditional values.

Or maybe it has already been done?



Alexander Chislenko <http://www.lucifer.com/~sasha/home.html> <sasha1@netcom.com> <sasha@media.mit.edu>