PHENOMENALITY: (1) *naturalistic* (2) *uncanny,* (3) *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: (1) *good,* (2) *fair*, (3) *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological, sociological, metaphysical*
“Alethea” is a complex meditation
on the interrelationship of “truth” and “error,” which flies in the face of the
themes usually propounded on network television shows: that truth is a discrete
thing whose revelation can banish error—as in, say, a murderer being exposed so
as to save the life of an accused innocent.
Wandering through the forest,
Caine hears the music of a mandolin, being played by 10-year-old Alethea
(Jodie Foster). The little girl is on
her way to a stagecoach-station, to take the stage to the town of Cardiff, for
a visit with her uncle, Sheriff Ingram.
The priest and the precocious child take a liking to another, as she
remarks innocently on his “funny” eyes. Caine follows her on the remainder of
her journey to the station.
The stationmaster passes a less
than innocent remark on Caine’s ethnicity, but Alethea defends her new
friend. Moments later, when Caine drinks
from a water-dipper, one of two cowboys—actually a pair of road agents waiting
for the stage—objects to his drinking from a white person’s water-source. The stationmaster echoes the road agent’s
bigotry, refusing to let Aletheia drink from a dipper that a “Chinaman” has
touched. Then the stage arrives, and the
road agents draw on the guards, provoking a shootout. One of the stage-guards throws a pistol to
Caine seconds before the guard is shot by one of the thieves. Alethea, confused by the eruption of
violence, thinks that Caine shot the guard, and she tells her uncle and the
townspeople of Cardiff that Caine is a killer.
Caine, though he protests his
innocence, is so in tune with nature that he does not seek escape from being
tried by the bigoted townspeople -- except once, when a pair of lynchers are
prepared to kill him extra-legally.
Caine then flashes back to his Shaolin days, when Master Po entrusts
young Caine to deliver a sacred scroll to another monastery. The scroll also concerns the confusion of
truth and illusion, relating the famous Taoist parable of “Chang Jo” (as the
show’s script calls him), a man who could not decide if he was a man dreaming
himself as a butterfly, or vice versa.
However, while on his errand young
Caine is attacked by two Chinese “road agents” (thus putting him in the
position of the murdered stage-guard in the main story). An itinerant magician named Shangtzu (whose
name is very close to the common rendition of the butterfly-dreamer) happens
by. He drives off the thugs with his
kung-fu movies. Caine, though sworn not
to disclose the nature of his errand, allows his unctuous rescuer to learn the
nature of the prized scroll. Shangtzu
pretends to teach Caine a magic trick by having him immerse himself in a
lake. While the boy is out of sight,
Shangtzu steals the scroll, thus teaching Caine a vital lesson in deception.
Adult Caine, as always professing
an indifference to death, is prepared to let the townspeople execute him,
because he respects the purity of Alethea’s wish to speak the truth, even
though she does so in error. But when he
goes to the gallows, Alethea retracts her testimony, lying to protect
Caine. In a clever twist that shows her
awareness of her elders’ prejudices, she claims she lied “because he’s a
Chinaman.” Caine tells her that for all
she knows, her lie has freed a murderer.
He determines to give her back her “truth” by seeks out and capturing
the road agents.
In parallel fashion, the flashback
story reaches its conclusion. After
young Caine confesses his failure to Master Po, the Chinese police come to the
monastery, bringing both Shangtzu and the recovered scroll. Shangtzu protests that he did not steal the
scroll, that young Caine lent it to him.
Because young Caine owes Shangtzu his life, the boy monk does lie for
the thief. Master Po knows better but intercedes for the life of the scheming
magician, and then meditates on the loss of Caine’s “innocence.”
In this episode Caine does not
perform any metaphenomenal feats.
However, the next one, “The Praying Mantis Kills,” shows him once more
exercising his Taoist charisma to call a stallion mourning its dead mate.
“Mantis” takes its name from one
of Caine’s anti-killing parables: when a character kneels to pray prior to
fighting for his life, Caine reminds him of the praying mantis, an insect that
looks as if it is praying just before it kills.
As always, Caine’s attempts to avoid the ethic of retribution, as seen
in the episode "An Eye for an Eye," cause him to be labeled a coward by those who believe
that retribution is the answer to life’s difficulties.
Caine happens to be in a town when
the Darrow Gang robs the bank. The
Darrows warn the people in the bank that they’ll kill anyone who identifies
them. One of the customers, Mrs. Roper,
defies the thieves and they shoot her before the eyes of her husband. Caine sees the criminals leave and gives their
descriptions to the sheriff, in contrast to Mr. Roper who, like the other
townspeople, fears the Darrows and will not testify.
The sheriff tells his deputy/son
Martin to take Caine to their home to protect him from the robbers. Caine, who can’t help displaying his unusual
talents—horse-calming, shooting arrows to their targets without using his
eyes-- takes a quasi-paternal interest in Martin. Martin barely understands the Chinaman’s
enigmatic ways. He only wants to be a
courageous defender of law and order like his father, but recognizes that Caine
has unique strengths as well.
Caine also takes an interest in
Roper, mourning his wife and feeling guilt for having not had the courage to
identify his wife’s killers. Caine, remembering
the lessons of Master Po—that it is not cowardice, but rather “love of life,”
to avoid unnecessary battle, tries to counsel Roper. Roper, Martin, and Caine end up at the
sheriff’s house when the Darrow Gang attacks.
Roper, who has never fought anyone before, manages to wound the
gang-leader Hap Darrow. The sheriff
arrives and catches the gang in a crossfire, but before they flee one bandit
manages to shoot Martin’s father fatally.
The bereaved Martin locks up Hap
Darrow and waits for the other bandits to try to break out their leader. Martin believes Caine a coward because in the
previous scene Caine would not use a gun against their attackers. Martin tries to get Roper to be the new
sheriff, and though Roper agrees to help out, he admits that he’s a coward and
is at peace with it because “it lets you know where you stand.”
Despite his admission of
cowardice, Roper does stand with Martin when the robbers besiege the jailhouse.
The bandits are only beaten because of Caine’s skillful intevention. This makes it more than clear that Martin and
Roper would have died without him. Once
again Caine’s ethic—that it is wrong to futilely cast one’s life away against
hopeless odds—takes issue with the standard heroic ideal seen in the majority
of westerns.
“Superstition” is another
naturalistic episode, even though it deals with dispelling both the ghosts of
the past and the haunting spectre of capitalism. Caine stumbles across a mining-town that
seems almost deserted. Judge Stern and
his hirelings arrest Caine on a trumped-charge, so that he must join a
mining-crew. Caine learns that most of
the town’s original populace fled due to superstitious fear when it was learned
that the mine uncovered a tomb of Indian skeletal remains. Lacking a willing labor force, Stern and his
flunkies press-ganged both genuine outlaws and innocents into working the mine
for them, under threat of torture and death.
Caine also learns that Stern has no intention of releasing any of his
slaves. Whether the workers are innocent
or guilty of crimes, their enslavement keeps Stern's bank balance healthy.
Caine does not attempt to escape,
accepting in Christ-like fashion the ordeal levied upon lesser men. Sentenced, along with another man, to
punishment in a “hot box,” he teaches his meditational skills to the other
inmate, so that both survive the hostile temperature without suffering the
usual torments. “The prison is in your
mind,” Caine advises, and his flashback deals with how Master Po taught him to
transcend superstitious fears of death.
Stern recognizes that Caine is more than an
ordinary prisoner. This is further
proven when one of the miners dies in a cave-in. The workers attempt to rebel against the
judge and his armed men, but Caine refuses to fight, even though one of the
miners labels him a coward. The judge
realizes that Caine is a threat to his operation; that the most formidable kind
of leader is one who can infuse his followers with “hope and dignity,” because
that can dispel the fear by which Stern controls the men. Caine, in conversation with one of the
miners, preaches that the miners must seek not to think in an “either-or”
manner, that they must either die in the mines or by the gunfire of the judge’s
men: they must “claim” their destiny as men.
Fittingly, Stern decides to
propound a new “superstition” to dispel Caine’s power. Stern’s man Bannock commands Caine to dig in
a certain spot in the mine, knowing that Caine will uncover Indian bones. Bannock then plans to kill Caine so that it
will seem as though he died from an Indian curse, thus depriving men of a
potential leader as well as infusing the workers with a new superstitious fear. Bannock’s plan backfires: his attempt to kill
Caine foments a cave-in, trapping Caine, Bannock, and three other men in the
mine. Caine must teach all of them—even
his enemy—how to relax so as to not use up their dwindling air supply. Above ground, the other prisoners dig
furiously to reach the entombed men. In
so doing, in demonstrating their loyalty to men who may already be dead, they
throw off their fear of the judge’s actions, ignoring his commands that they
desist. Stern, unable to command men
with dignity, flees the mine. The
survivors are rescued. It’s mentioned
that a local marshal will be summoned to make sure the illegal press-gang never
re-organizes. But the essential struggle
here has not been that of law versus crime, but of life finding ways to stave
off death— which fittingly is twice represented by fears of premature entombment,
both in the “hot box” and in the mine.
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