THE VOICE
There is a very popular short film available for free on YouTube. It’s called “The Gunfighter.” The Gunfighter is a film about a gunman walking through the swinging saloon doors of a typical movie western saloon of the ‘cowboy era.’
The gunfighter goes up to the bar and orders a drink, while the room full of regular barroom attenders of usual collection of such barroom attenders sit and stand around, also drinking. A voice comes down from above the characters, beginning to tell blatant truths about the gunfighter and eventually everyone in the saloon. Everyone hears the voice and even questions what it could possibly be, but the supposed ‘truths’ the voice speaks out unendingly and seemingly unerringly cannot be anything but weakly denied. Eventually, everyone in the saloon ends up shooting just about everyone else in the place. The short film is highly entertaining, hilarious, and extremely well written, acted, and great fun. There is no question why the film is so popular.
The screenwriters were writing about a projection power, seemingly coming from above, or all over, that claimed to be telling the truth by using revelations of supposed truth and recitations of things that had happened in the saloon attender’s lives. The voice even corrected itself on several occasions during the course of the film and admitted it was wrong, thereby building its credibility while it continued on, ceaseless, relentless, and unquestioned as to its own origin, ownership, or any of that. The Voice simply was there and constantly listened to and followed with little question about the true veracity of whatever was being said.
Very few people having watched the film, and there are now millions of them, ever consider that the Voice in that short film is the new combined and expressed “Voice” of the mass media and the Internet of today. Go on YouTube and watch the short film for free. You will laugh and be more highly entertained by this short work more than you think before seeing it. What has been slowly and developmentally becoming the Voice in all of our lives might be considered as definitive in delivering its results, inside that mythical saloon, and in our own daily lives of today. The voice isn’t everywhere today, as it is in that saloon. But the development and building of its existence is a long way from being done.
The ‘news’ of today was, in its early embodiment, an expression of what was happening around us. It wasn’t originally reported in order to change our behavior, but that changed too. Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, Sociobiology, and the rest of what were considered the arts in earlier advanced education institutions and systems have been quietly and without fanfare sidelined or simply modified to become parts of other arts and sciences or simply shut down across the nation and the world. The real power of life and death is so well exemplified in this seemingly comedic short film, but the Voice we are all beginning to understand that we must live and contend with is little or no different. In the video presentation of the Gunfighter everyone dies in the end.
Please believe me when I write that by giving you the ending that I am ruining the experience for you. You will still enjoy that art of what the screenwriters were able to apply to a screen presentation. The writers had to know what they were writing and you, after reading this, will not be able to escape the message I am writing about with respect to it right this minute. Telling the ‘truth’ about other people has always been an attractive pursuit and pastime for all humans. Having the ‘truth’ told about ourselves by others who cannot even be reached for criticism, comment or apology is quite another…and it is that another the Gunfighter is really all about.
When you watch The Gunfighter, please think about the fact that you are represented by him, not the Voice. The Voice will still be in the saloon when everyone is dead and gone, simply waiting for more gunfighters and regular people to come through the double doors.
