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45 The Ballad of Divine Retribution Steven Lloyd Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. —Romans 12:19–20 (KJV) But affection and confidence once wounded, gratitude disappears through the wound, and the pain that remains is a severe and rigorous judge. —Alexandre Dumas (père), Georges Revenge sells. Such tales have enjoyed broad popularity almost since the origins of storytelling. Perceived indignities within daily life mount and unanswered insults accumulate, priming us to take pleasure in practically anyone else who wrests from his or her transgressors a satisfaction that we ourselves were denied. The standard revenge story operates by fulfilling the bloodlust of its vendetta-driven protagonist—encouraging, then gratifying its audience’s investment in base hatreds. This typical approach to vengeance plots can be viewed, in biblical terms, as pursuing an Old Testament stance: “an eye for an eye.”1 For decades, the global appeal of Western fiction and films was possibly tied as much to plots involving grim, bereaved westerners seeking their own justice for the murder of a loved one/relative/partner as to the enduring American love of gunplay. Sadly, for so many viewers (and especially nonviewers ), the enduring reputation of Sam Peckinpah’s art is linked to his particular way with gunplay. In a laser disc rental store a few years after the director ’s death, I once overheard another customer tell someone, “That’s why The Wild Bunch is great. It’s about getting revenge . . . and kicking aaassss!” (Exposure to such remarks is a cross that Peckinpah buffs have to bear.) 46 Steven Lloyd Though the eye-for-an-eye angle is common for revenge plots, Peckinpah almost never settled for creating mere common entertainments. This gifted writer/director consistently applied his beautiful crafts to the service of higher ideals: most often, morality plays examining personal values and integrity yet repeatedly criticizing the pursuit of revenge. Even his first produced television script—the 1955 Gunsmoke episode “The Queue,” adapted from series creator John Meston’s original radio version—has Dodge City marshal Matt Dillon struggling to deter a non-stereotype Chinese immigrant from avenging himself upon two recognizably redneck peckerwoods who severed and stole his traditional pigtail as an insult. By the time Peckinpah graduated from TV to theatrical features, it often would become a female character’s purpose to dissuade a male lead from his destructive quest for vengeance. This is a frequent key to survival in the Peckinpah universe, as almost invariably the men who will neither forget nor forgive their grievances earn the grave. Five of Sam Peckinpah’s fourteen features center on quests for revenge. If we include secondary characters or subplots, the count rises to nine: The Deadly Companions (1961), Major Dundee (1965), The Wild Bunch (1969), The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), The Getaway (1972), Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), The Killer Elite (1975), Cross of Iron (1976), and The Osterman Weekend (1983). But because nearly all Peckinpah films focus on character —and his stories are usually determined by characters’ specific emotional journeys—his revenge narratives pay less attention to the mechanics of getting even than to the interior pain of betrayal, remorse, or sometimes both. Amy Sumner in Straw Dogs (1971), for example, never forgives her husband David’s perceived betrayal in not directly confronting the likely killers of her cat, while in The Deadly Companions, Yellowleg’s guilt over his accidental shooting of Kit’s son overrides for a time his obsession with revenge against Turkey. And it is Pike Bishop’s tremendous burden of accumulated remorse (and not “kicking aaassss”) that is central to The Wild Bunch. Something less often noted about Peckinpah’s greatest film, though, is how Pike, despite his flaws, refuses to seek or endorse revenge. While he tells Dutch how not a day goes by that he doesn’t think about tracking and killing the man who long ago wounded him and murdered his lover (the other man’s abandoned wife), he also never did it, proving that this wish was plainly less important to him than making his one good score and backing off. When Thornton’s bounty hunters ambush Sykes, Pike declines to retaliate [3.138.69.45] Project MUSE (2024-04...

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