Granderson: Against vampires or tyrants, truth is the essential weapon
My favorite part of vampire movies is watching the protagonist realize the first weapon you need to kill a vampire is not a cross, garlic or sunlight. It's getting people to believe the truth. In 'The Lost Boys,' it was the ostracized who first tried to get the truth out and were ignored. Similarly, in Ryan Coogler's new movie 'Sinners' — which is set in the Mississippi Delta back in 1932 — it was the people society ignored the most who first gave warning to the masses.
Don't get me wrong, I love a good vampire flick with sex appeal and blood. However, I am also fascinated with which character a director chooses to introduce the truth to the masses — and what it takes to get people to believe them. Given the constitutional crisis the nation currently finds itself in, watching the men in 'Sinners' readily accept the leadership of a qualified Black woman felt like a cinematic mulligan.
The first weapon the founders established to protect against tyranny wasn't the right to bear arms. It was making sure the government could not stop citizens from speaking the truth. Corporate media outlets are a byproduct of capitalism, and so their primary concern is the bottom line. However, freedom of the press is a byproduct of the framers' desire to see democracy in this country survive. And having lived under the conditions of a tyrannical government, the authors of the Bill of Rights understood the primacy of free speech.
What has always slowed this country's march toward a more perfect union hasn't been freedom of the press, but an unwillingness to believe truth. And as with the throughline in all of the vampire movies I love, it matters who is telling the truth to the masses.
Back in 1938 the term 'gas light' was first introduced into the public lexicon through a play of the same name written by Thomas Hamilton. It tells the story of a wife who believes she is going insane because her criminal husband continues to lie to her. In 1944, a film based on the play was released. In one scene the husband has ensnared his unsuspecting wife in a web of lies so extensive that she questions her very upbringing with her mother. What freed her wasn't guns or laws. It was the truth. The psychological thriller was so influential that society continues to reference its premise in modern life — from personal relationships to politics — more than 90 years later.
In storytelling, hiding the truth is one of the most effective ways for some characters to maintain control over others. Vampires in movies, deceitful husbands in plays, corrupt elected officials in office — their survival depends on the masses not knowing the truth.
They also rely on people not believing those who are willing to speak out. The reason President Nixon was reelected after the Watergate scandal became public is that the masses were not willing to believe the truth.
The thing about the truth is that it doesn't need acknowledgment from the public to exist. But to be of use, truth does need people willing to call it by name. That is the first weapon in the battle for good. Not surprisingly, it is also the first weapon evil tries to take away.
@LZGranderson
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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