Classic Hollywood Liberalism

I recently viewed the 1960 film production of Inherit the Wind, with Spencer Tracy as the Clarence Darrow character, Frederic March as William Jennings Bryan, and Gene Kelly as H.L. Mencken. This was my first exposure to the work, as I have never seen or read the play.

It's a very strong film. I'm sure some of you have seen it. What I'm interested in writing about here though is not a review of the work but rather an exploration of the politics behind it.

I find old Hollywood liberalism amusing. Spencer Tracy films are emblematic of this work. Take Bad Day at Black Rock where soldier returned from Europe Tracy goes to the town of his fallen Japanese comrade after World War II only to find that locals had taken advantage of anti-Japanese prejudice after Pearl Harbor to kill his friend's father. Or of course Guess Who's Coming to Dinner where Tracy and Katherine Hepburn play well-meaning wealthy liberals who discover their daughter is dating a black man. Really, you don't see too much of this anymore, despite what conservatives say. Sure, Hollywood is as liberal as ever. But you don't see it too much in the films. Maybe studio executives are too worried about offending touchy conservatives.

Inherit the Wind is a perfect example of old Hollywood liberalism and the differences between the 1960s and today. One can see this through how the play and film change the story. Some changes are normal. William Jennings Bryan died about a week after the trial's conclusion. In the film, he dies immediately after. A sensible transition. To humanize both Darrow and Bryan, Darrow gets to express his disgust for Mencken's mocking of Bryan after he died. In reality, Darrow made fun of Bryan just as Mencken did, and publicly too.

More interesting is how the relationship between John Scopes and the local residents is portrayed. In the film, Scopes is standing up for what he believes in. The locals are Bible-beating bigots who want to lynch Scopes and Darrow. The reality is quite different. Scopes was a pretty non-descript young science teacher in Dayton, Tennessee. Local business elites, concerned that their little town was losing population to bigger nearby cities like Knoxville, Chattanooga, and Atlanta, set up the case to attract publicity to the town. Dayton's residents hardly wanted to lynch Scopes. They were just glad someone was paying attention to the town, even if many of them did not want evolution taught in the schools.

Today, it would be much harder to portray Christians as idiots, which is what Inherit the Wind basically does. That classic Hollywood liberalism had little problem saying that large groups of people and their beliefs were wrong, backwards, and out of step with enlightened thought. Today, you'd have to tone down the criticism significantly. There would have to be some locals who are really humane and want peace. Moreover, the film could not attack evangelical Christianity in any way.

Some years ago, I would have been a bit offended at the film's portrayal of Southerners. This was a time when I cared a lot more about ideology than partisanship. I would have blanched at making the South look like a bunch of hatred-filled backwards bigots. I've always been sensitive to anti-Southern propaganda, or at least since I first lived there in the late 90s. But now, not so much. It's pretty much this simple. If you believe that evolution is a hoax and that God created the world in 7 days, you're stupid. Whether that's ignorance or willful, I don't know. But the point stands. If Hollywood wants to make "the good people of the United States" look like backwards morons, so be it. Because a lot of them are. The same goes for racists, homophobes, sexists, and other purveyors of hate, stupidity, and ignorance. If Hollywood wants to produce films pushing their own viewpoint, good. Let's hope they can stand up to the Bill O'Reilly's of the world, not to mention their own accountants and executives worried about how their film will play in rural Mississippi.