BOX-OFFICE QUAKERS
Mayer, Milton
Box-Off ice Quakers by MILTON MAYER T HAVE a concern, which is what -¦ a Quaker has when he has a squawk. I am not a Quaker, but I have a concern. I am concerned about a movie called Friendly...
...Pa gets to the fray, but it's over...
...They identify Quakerism with no-church and no-minister and no-sermons, and that appeals to them...
...They sit silent in their Meeting when a Union recruiting officer comes in to persuade them to fight and gets so mad that he accuses them of using their religion to cover their cowardice, and specifically asks Pa's oldest boy, Josh, if he's afraid to fight...
...Didn't you like that...
...She makes the kids promise never to tell their Pa—proving that Quaker ladies are liars and unfaithful wives and teachers of lying to their children—but after the trouble's all over and everyone's home the little boy blurts it out and Pa smiles a big, broad smile...
...But by the time the picture ends, Morgan's Raiders are there and the Quakers are all fighting with outward weapons...
...Mommy got the gun out of his hand by saying it was time for bed and for coming in to say prayers...
...And because some of them will not hate and kill the enemy, their religion is famous when the war is over and the enemy are starving and the half-stricken conscience of the winners produces postwar relief...
...And it was Dicken's bed-time...
...You don't have to be anything...
...said Dicken...
...They won't fight with outward weapons...
...It sounds very liberal to them (and they like liberalism), but they thought, they say, that Quakers objected to war...
...But while Pa and the boy are down at the carnage, a band of Raiders comes to the farm...
...Some of the latter are shopping around and they like the unpreten-tiousness of Quakerism—its nay-saying to the outward show of religion...
...By gosh, they're more than O.K...
...But he's Dicken, aged 11...
...You wouldn't fight to save anybody, from a burglar or a Russian . or anything...
...So then there'd be two sons dead, and I guess the other father would love his son as much as I loved mine...
...Not," I say, or said, "as I understand it...
...Why not...
...I'll bet you didn't like the part where the father goes to war to save his son...
...I didn't say anything...
...The early scene in the Meeting House, when the recruiting officer comes in, and the scene at the fair, when the bullies clip the Quaker lad, show how manfully the Quakers hold to their faith against glancing taunts and glancing blows...
...But not Ma, the Quaker minister...
...The reason that Hollywood movies are terrible and Italian movies great is that Hollywood has a solution: The ending is happy, and on the road to the ending principles are scuttled in every reel without penalty or pain (oh, a few tears), every obstacle scuttles itself, and the heroes emerge miraculously reprincipled and rich...
...said Dicken...
...Then it found, as I understand it, a Quaker novel by, as I understand it, a Quaker lady named Jessamyn West...
...The experience is common, in and out of Quakerism, of the parents' inability to get their children to take hold of parental ideals—or to hold on to them themselves...
...The last thing Pa's Methodist friend Sam says to him, before setting out for the fray, is, "We need a few men like you to show us that there's a better way...
...Hollywood couldn't find a mill to grind up Quakerism until almost three hundred years later...
...His sword is better and his arm surer than those of the Romans...
...I'm ashamed to say that I haven't read it yet, but I'm even ashameder to say that I haven't yet finished Gibbon...
...Then come the two big, symbolic scenes that prove to the audience that Quakerism is a pious fraud, but a pleasant one...
...And then, in the penultimate scene, he is crucified, flailing and killing all the while, but, by gosh, he is only scratched on the Cross, and he comes down, along toward the Ninth Hour, which is supper-time in southern Indiana, and his Kingdom is established right here and right now, his granaries full again, in case the Roman Raiders raid again and have to be bought off, and he smiles lewdly at his brethren, who smile lewdly back, and says, "Come on, Veterans," and, proud, rich, successful, popular, and rosy with fighting good health, Christ leads the way to Meeting...
...Some of them are religious people, and all of them say that they are interested in religion...
...They hold out a little, kind of slow to enlist...
...He was looking hard at me...
...Rocky, who's almost 16, and is a pacifist, but is only almost 16, didn't say anything...
...You're liable to be, that's for sure, but some Quakers are pacifists and some are swordsmen, and some are sword-swallowers, and some are this, that, and the other thing...
...Good Hollywood...
...The Reb comes up unsuspecting, Pa jumps him, gets his gun away from him, shoves the muzzle into the Reb's tenderloin— and then, with the Reb at his mercy, remembers his Quaker principles and lets him go...
...Nor do they understand it when they are told that there is no Quaker position on war or on anything else...
...Friendly Persuasion is a story about a southern Indiana farmer and his wife and their almost-grown son and daughter and a smaller son, in 1862...
...So Quakers are pretenders, just like the rest of us, who will play dead to save their lives...
...The big symbol in this scene is Samantha, a vicious old goose whom Ma loves (like a good Quaker) and (like a good Quaker) never despairs of redeeming from a life of almost human vice...
...This is a travesty upon Quakerism (which doesn't matter) and a travesty upon the Christianity of Christ (which does...
...What isn't a matter of manners in Quakerism is peace, and all the suffering and sacrifice that go into the making of peace, or at least the keeping of their own...
...important manners, still observable in the Quaker tendency (not universal among them) to live simpler and less showily than their neighbors, and to keep away from fat living, two-dollar restaurants, and booze...
...Of course they say, "Peace," but that's all right, as long as there's peace...
...Tragedy is the choice between two unhomogenizable goods, each seen differently every time they are looked at...
...I don't know," I said, breaking training again, "I just can't imagine Rufus Jones with the drop on anyone...
...The moral of Friendly Persuasion is irresistible: The Quakers are a little bit queer, but it doesn't mean a thing...
...These friends are all discriminating people...
...What is really, and criminally, misrepresented is the human condition, which is tragic...
...And behold...
...I'll bet I know what you didn't like," said Dicken, as he was getting into bed...
...said my son, Dicken, with something much less than admiration in his voice...
...The house and/ the barn and the smokehouse are full of goodies, which she ladles out, and the Raiders stuff themselves, "enough to eat for a week," and ride on, leaving the farm and Ma and her daughter and smaller son untouched...
...But," say my friends (or said they before they saw Friendly Persuasion), "don't you have to be a pacifist to be a Quaker...
...Usually the Quaker doesn't have a gun, doesn't pretend to be dead until he is, and doesn't fight a man...
...Then a Reb snoots at Pa from the wood, nicks him, and Pa pretends to be dead...
...But, brother, let those intercontinental ballistic missiles start dropping, or a burglar break into the house, and watch them fight...
...As long as they say, "War," when there's war, and that's what they do in Friendly Persuasion, they're O.K...
...Rocky, praying and prayed over, was sweating it out with the Quaker boy Josh, his own age, who was taunted and taunted and even (at a county fair, in the picture) beaten up unresisting by bullies, but who couldn't last the course and grabbed for a gun and killed a downy-cheeked boy like himself and then cried—but comes out at the end happy as can be and unreconstructed, a "veteran," a killer, loved, as a good killer should be, by his Quaker mother and father and confirmed in his ways by the fact that they, too, when the chips are down, grabbed a gun...
...I guess it's because a Quaker usually doesn't pretend to be dead and then fight a man to get his gun and threaten to kill him and then let him go...
...He wants to dance and to have a harmonium in the house, and his wife, an old-fashioned Quaker, is literally hell on dancing and music...
...So as long as there aren't too many of them, and they say weekdays what the rest of us say Sundays, and they don't impede the war effort, and they get in there and kill in the clinches, what's wrong with them...
...he likes to race horses, can't resist it even on First Day (the old Quakers wouldn't use the pagan names of the days...
...What shots...
...By the time Holly wood got through with it, it might have been anything, except for the fact that Hollywood sent for Mrs...
...So Mrs...
...Well," I say (or said before I saw Friendly Persuasion), "I reckon everybody objects to war...
...These friends, who wanted me to tell them what I thought of the movie, all thought it was wonderful...
...She welcomes them, overcoming her fear with God's love and their evil with God's good...
...I'll do the killing for both of us...
...Not very much," I said, not wanting to say it, but, because I'm in training for truth, having to want to...
...They don't like churches and ministers and sermons...
...That was in 1660...
...Quaint people, too...
...Big, strong, tough, unbeatable fighters with their hands and their guns...
...But the Quakers are brave—it takes more courage to be set upon, as they are in this scene, than to set upon somebody else...
...Quaint talk, with their "theeing" and "thouing" and "thying...
...But Pa gets him away and takes him home, where he recovers and is as good as new...
...They said I must see Friendly Persuasion, and take my children to it, and report my reaction...
...You see, son," I said, "it wouldn't help my son if I did, or maybe it would, but probably not, and I'd have to shoot somebody else's son...
...West must have liked, or at least stood for, the Hollywood account of Quakerism...
...Er—no, I guess I didn't, much," I said...
...West to consult, or advise, or supervise, and her name appears in this position on the screen, and not just as author of the book...
...That's the part I liked...
...You wouldn't go to war to save your son, would you...
...The officer leaves, properly baffled...
...I suppose that there isn't anything that Hollywood doesn't figure it can grind in its mill...
...some Quaker meetings have ministers, who may be women...
...It's 1862, and the war is coming close to the border of the Ohio in the form of Morgan's Red Raiders...
...These were manners...
...They're useful, saying, "Peace...
...The Quakers won't fight...
...What they say they don't understand—or didn't, until they saw Friendly Persuasion—is the Quaker position on war...
...What winners...
...West is a fine writer...
...Because everybody believes in peace, and Christ was the Prince of Peace, you know that...
...Pa's got the old Adam in him, but, with the help of his wife, he's always chopping it down (cutting it back, rather...
...I am concerned about a movie called Friendly Persuasion, to which friends persuaded me to take my children...
...But there is a very strong feeling in Quakerism that people shouldn't do what they object to doing...
...They're all in it together—all killers, all Quakers...
...it's time to go to Meeting, First Day, and Pa says, "Come along, Veterans...
...Maybe I couldn't help myself, but I hope that I wouldn't...
...There is resolution—in death or in madness—but there is no solution...
...He had the drop on me...
...It's a passing peculiar religion...
...Migh-ty fine people, do our worshipping for us and ready as rain to get into the killing when the killing has got to be done...
...Pa, having let the Reb go, goes on across the bloody ground and finds his boy, wounded alongside a young Reb he has killed...
...The trouble is that the Quakers aren't quaint any more...
...They're Quakers, and the wife is a Quaker minister (that's historically correct...
...What's wrong with that" said Dicken...
...Who's Rufus Jones...
...In one word, what the Quakers no longer are is preserved in Friendly Persuasion, while what they are they are shown to have abandoned...
...They won't kill...
...They will fight with redemptive love...
...The Quakers have been on the Hollywood agenda since they said to Charles II: "The Spirit of Christ which leads us into all truth, will never move us to fight and war against any man with outward weapons, neither for the Kingdom of Christ nor for the kingdoms of this world...
...deviltry and the hand of the devil...
...Did youT' said Dicken...
...She may have written a fine novel...
...no creed, no dogma, no sacrament, no liturgy...
...Gosh," I said, breaking training, "I hardly know...
...The Reb, not too badly injured, retreats and Samantha is saved, but Ma breaks all the way down when she realizes that she has taken an outward weapon, the broom, and used it outwardly on the Reb Raider, in whom there is that of God...
...the audience stays, properly enthralled...
...They're just like the rest of us, "only human," and we can count on them to admit they're only human, and behave like brutes, when the time comes to do it...
...Friendly Persuasion is not a misrepresentation of a Quaker family or of any family...
...Gee," said our Dicken, who's 11, and a fighter whose parents want him to want to be a Quaker, "that was good...
...But when young Josh doesn't come back from the skirmish—he has prayed and been prayed for, but still he goes to kill—and his horse comes back riderless, Pa gets out his gun and goes out to kill the Rebs...
...And their plain dress—let's have a song, says the producer, about love in a bonnet...
...But Pa's full of beans...
...He sure had the drop on him," said Dicken...
...And what fighters they are...
...He could of killed him, and he let him go...
...so common, indeed, as to indicate the real misrepresentation of Friendly Persuasion...
...And their prejudice against music and dancing, that's good for a rise, a wonderful rise, because everybody's worried about what Elvis Presley is doing to their kids...
...Their plain talk and their plain dress and their dread of music and dancing are long since gone...
...It portrays the Son of God containing himself until the Romans close in on him—then he seizes his sword, with Peter, and mows them down...
...So usually he's not in a position to let him go...
...I didn't want to train or break training...
...They've burned down some farms roundabout, and the farmers have tried, in vain, to fight them and save their houses and barns...
...Well, son," I said sweating haid, "I'm afraid I hope that I wouldn't...
...First he finds his best friend, Sam, dying of Rebel wounds...
...Especially non-Quaker friends, and it is very important for the delineation of my concern that you understand that most of my non-Quaker friends think I'm a Quaker because I hang around with the Quakers and make Quaker sounds...
...And he is rich (like the Quaker farmer, in Friendly Persuasion, who has enough hams in the smokehouse to satisfy the hungry Rebs), and with his worldly riches he buys off the attack of the Romans...
...Since social and economic injustice is war, and the cause of worse war, the Quakers are famous for good social works...
...He sure did," I said...
...If he were a Quaker, he would have let me go then...
...But still manners—the talk and the dress and the dread of worldly passions...
...A Quaker," I said...
...One of the Rebs grabs the goose and is going to wring its neck, when Ma comes out on the porch, just in the nick, grabs a broom, and beats the daylights out of the Reb...
...The boy is crying and he won't let go of the young Reb's jacket...
...But when the Rebs approach, their faith fails them and they go violent, and when the Rebs reach the house and go for Samantha, Ma grabs for the broom...
Vol. 21 • June 1957 • No. 6
