The Kickback of Grace: The Coen Brothers' TRUE GRIT

Daniel McInerny has written a great description of the moral concepts in the Coen Brothers' TRUE GRIT, paralleling it to Catholic author Flannery O'Connor's short story "A Good Man is Hard to Find."

He quotes something from O'Connor that I had forgotten. It's perhaps the best reason for violence in movies... assuming that the movie is about a true moral premise and not a false one. O'Conner's comment is her explanation for the violence in "A Good Man..." where The Misfit murders a whole family of Christians.  O'Conner writes:

I suppose the reasons for the use of so much violence in modern fiction will differ with each writer who uses it, but in my own stories I have found that violence is strangely capable of returning my characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace. Their heads are so hard that almost nothing else will do the work. This idea, that reality is something to which we must be returned at considerable cost, is one which is seldom understood by the casual reader, but it is one which is implicit in the Christian view of the world.

VIOLENCE and SEX are two topics that continue to come up as prohibitions among Christians. But it would seem that in light of O'Conner's comment, there might be a similarity. Certainly the wrongful use of either has consequences. 

Read Dan's post HERE.