01 Duel in the Sun

        The thing about the unconcious is that by definition it remains hidden from us.

    To the degree we recognize it it becomes something else, and the premise of psychoanalysis is this something else is less powerfull and hence less able to control us in ways we may not care for.
       A lot of what this website is about is about just that. There are professions where this sort of knowledge comes in handy. We take it as axiomatic that the master is aware of things consciously that the servant only knows in a subconcious way and that, of course, is how the master gains control over us and convinces us to give them our money and/or to kill those who rival the masters domination of our ability to think.

 There's no trick to it in the sense that it can be used for good or evil as long as the basics are covered - and the most basic of these is the illusion that we are retaining free will even as, all the while, we are subject to the will of the illusionist.

       Quite often as well there is the sense of the truth having been "hidden in plain sight." For instance for me it's a good idea if I leave my wallet in the same place always. Or otherwise I will lose it, even if it is right before my eyes.

   The same thing holds true with subliminals, for instance the line "semolina pilchard climbing up the Eiffel tower" is easy to decipher once you realize the pilchard is a small fish. Not that even that need be known. The semen climbing the tower ought be sufficient.

     Anyway I am a fan of old cowboy movies because in their heyday the villains and good guys had easily identifiable motives; it didn't take a rocket scientist to understand greed. Then there was the second great era of cowboy movies, the fifties, when color came in and the films began to get very heavy, philosophical even, which is understandable since every other theme had been covered by then.

    A film I saw this weekend is called "Duel in the Sun" and it's very sophisticated.  There is no gun duel per se. The dual is about the dual personality of the leading character, Jennifer Jones. She has a dual or split personality  which we see in the beginning.
     Her mother is a saloon dancer and her father a fancy gambler. He shoots the mother when the mother is in arms of another man. Then instead of running, in a case which in those days was almost justifiable homicide, he insists on taking the death penalty.

  So little Jennifer grows up to have a crush on Joseph Cotton, who is the nice guy, but she gets caught one night by Gregory Peck, who in a role that must have given his agent conniptions  assaults and practically rapes Ms Jones.in the next scene Peck is seen taming a particularly wild horse and the parallel is obvious since the girl just looks on and doesn't say anything.

     The nice guy realizes that somethings going on an he decides to go back east. Life goes on theres a subplot where the ranchers band together to hold back the railroad, and an open range war is narrowly averted by the arrival of the cavalry. Again there's basically only one story here - love verses lust. Civilization verses the individuals instincts.

   Jennifer gets a dress. The nice guy returns from the east with his new girl friend in tow.This infuriates little miss split personality because   she wants, so to speak, to have it all. It also sends Peck into a fury because he thought he'd gotten rid of the sissy for good.

       Peck calls out Cotton one day in the middle of town. Joes not going to fight, Pecks a crack shot. So Gregory Peck throws a pistol at Joe Cotton but Cotton still won't take the bait. So Peck just shoots him in disgust and rides off.

      A little while later   the girl climbs the mesa where she knows the shooter was hiding out. She shoots a rifle shot. He comes out and shows himself.  At a along distance she shoots him through the chest. He stumbles down, rights himself up and shoots her.

      So now the girl has to climb the mesa to be with the man she loves, which she does.   Just as she makes it to the top they take each other in each others arms and die.

       Now that's nice consistent plot work.  Selznick produced it an I've long felt hes underrated because he had a real ability to get the right film at the right time - most famously GWTW. King Vidor directed and he was one of that great class of european directors that showed a puritanical America that theres more to sex then tight sweaters and socks in your underwear.

     The sun is, of course, usually masculine, yang, and sometimes like in "The Sun King" by the Beatles an object of ridicule. Very rarely does one see solar imagery used in a pure sense, uncontaminated by other factors.
The sun is presumptuous and in the characters who identify with it they are often only allowed to do so because they overbearingly  force those who contradict them into submission.