Meal Ticket from The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

I was watching a movie called The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, I had previously seen several scenes of this movie on YouTube. Those were some selected iconic scenes from the movie. And those were really, really good that’s what compelled me to watch the movie in the first place.

So, the movie is directed by the Coen brothers, it is set in the wild west. The movie is different because it is not a single story throughout a movie, rather it is a collection of six vignettes. The vignettes were usual stories from the west where shootings, hangings, robberies were going on until I reached the third vignette which was quite different from the first two and even the upcoming ones. This really did catch my eye and slipped under my skin and stayed with me for several times. It was hard to let go.

I’ll quickly write the summary here, and then I’ll move on with my analysis.

The third vignette starts with a man driving his cart into a small town, once there the man puts up an announcement of some sorts saying that some performance is going to be organised that night. At night, the man converts his cart into a makeshift stage, when the curtains are lifted we see a man with no hands and legs on a chair. The man is a performer, and he recites literary piece from Shelley, Shakespeare, Biblical stories and Abraham Lincoln’s speech. He is quite impressive and there are good number of audience enjoying the show. He ends his performance with impactful lines, and the man who drives the cart collects money from the audience.

The sequence goes on, the performer and the impresario travel to various towns and perform however, as they move to smaller towns, people show less enthusiasm for such literature and dramatic monologues. Time comes when there are only two or three audiences and they also do not give any money. The impresario sees a mob of people watching a chicken solving a simple addition, subtraction calculation by tapping on the numbers. People are enthusiastically take part in this and also pay the chicken man for the chicken to solve their calculations.

The Impresario buys the chicken from the man, thinking that he could earn a lot more with the chicken than the performer. The performer is sad seeing the chicken. They begin their travel to some other town, on the way the impresario crosses a river and an idea strikes his mind. He throws a rock in the river to judge the depth of the river and then comes smiling at the performer who is sitting in the wagon.

The throwing of the performer is not shown in the scene, but the viewers can guess what happens next. This was the most powerful story of all the stories, and it really struck me hard. It left me with some dwindling thoughts that continued to linger with for some days. Being a student of literature, it was very relatable to me, considering that the value of poems and literature per se is fading gradually. People prefer visual form of entertainment more and generally have less time to invest in reading text, which is unto itself is a demanding task.

We the students of literature are getting as irrelevant and devoid of any real value as the performer became at the end of the story. The show did not get any money to the impresario, so he decided to change his trade and bought a chicken which was more relevant to the general masses than a dramatic performance of world classics. In that exact manner, we are losing our relevance in a world which has no time to read books and learn something by reading a book. There is abundant information and entertainment available at the tips of the fingers, then who’d take the pains to go through word by word and page by page.

Literature and literary studies by extension is gradually being drowned in a river and the world is slowly adapting to the chicken which though it is popular has no real value or is far from being ideal or helpful in the long run. Time will come when the literature will be thrown completely in the river and the world would not care. It would continue to go on as always.