Suicide takes pleasure in the suffering of others.

In “The Devices of Suicide: Revenge, Riddance, and Rebirth,” Maltsberger and Buie describe ideation that travels through the realm of fantasizing.

Would-be suicides often daydream of the guilt and sorrow of others gathered about the coffin, an imaginary spectacle which provides much satisfaction. While the contemplation of such a sense is a pleasure in itself, the patient may also consciously entertain the illusion that after the act of suicide he will be present as an unseen observer to enjoy the anguish of those who view his dead body.[1]

This phenomenon was theorized by Zilboorg in his 1938 essay, “The Sense of Immortality.” Though death is inevitable, the individual will not “consent entirely to acknowledge it.” “So he devises a compromise”: conceding death but refusing annihilation. Thus, the individual invents his own ghost to witness and oversee the life he leaves behind.[2]

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[1] Maltsberger and Buie, “The Devices of Suicide: Revenge, Riddance, and Rebirth.”
[2] Gregory Zilboorg, “Sense of Immortality,” Psychoanalytic Quarterly 8 (1938).

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The role of Curly and the Oscar he received for it were especially poignant for Mr. Jack Palance. His looks were chiseled but in a menancing way. His eyes were beady and sinister instead of twinkling and romantic like the movie stars he played opposite of. He was always the badguy, the gangster, the heavy, the character lurking in the shadows until there was violence to be done.

In fact in his breakout movie role, five decades before City Slickers, he played the sadistic hired gun brought to town by cattlemen to cow a herd of range farmers into submission, and by cow I mean literally to kill them in cold blood. This movie is called Shane and it is an intimate and well-drawn portrait of these farmer-families struggling to get by and to stay together in an unforgiving land. And of course there is the mysterious figure of Shane and the little boy who is wondrous in his wonder. Shane, he calls out, and you have to hear it to understand. Actually, if you don’t know what I’m talking about it’s pointless to explain. Just watch the movie. Or don’t. I don’t really care. And while you’re not watching these movies don’t watch High Noon, which is the portrait of an entire town too cowardly to do the right thing for the sake of the community they built and live in when the personal cost might be too high, and My Darling Clementine, which is about the selfish brute violence that forged frontier towns that now needs to be stamped out by civilized brute violence and, of course, tempered and tamed by a pretty girl.

In fact the very best Westerns locate real human conflict and dire choices amid compelling characters in harsh conditions to tell a captivating story. This is why Mr. Akira Kurasawa could import the very best of Western movies into feudal Japan and then science fiction could export Kurasawa to outer space. Monument valley. A remote village in Japan. Galaxies far far away. Anyway, this is all well known and it’s not really the point.