Inherit the Wind \"Give Me That Old

¶ … Inherit the Wind

"Give me that old time religion," proclaims the first strains of the soundtrack of "Inherit the Wind," a 1960 Hollywood dramatization of a Broadway play of the same name. Yet the film "Inherit the Wind" is not about the revivalist tent revival meeting that opens up and sets the scene of the film's narrative framework. Rather "Inherit the Wind" is primarily a courtroom drama that pits faith against reason in the form of two esteemed lawyers. The film's plot thus revolves around the John Scopes 'Monkey' trial and the issues the trial raised about science, faith, and religion in the American educational system. This real-life event took place in the Bible Belt of America during the turn of the century.

A biology teacher named John Scopes at a local high school in the small town of Hillsborough had the audacity to teach evolution to his high school class, and was thrown into jail as a result. Thus, the main topic of the film asks the viewer the teacher was right to violate the statute of his locality. One way to view this issue, as suggested by the film, is that parents have a right to have some local control over what their children learn in their local schools -- the ordinary people of Hillsborough have a right to be ordinary, and to teach their children about religion as they chose, as guaranteed by the First Amendment's protection of such a freedom. However, the defense attorney portrayed by Spencer Tracey, Drummond, sees such local ordinances as violating both the teacher Scopes' own freedom of expression and also the ability of human intellectual progress to penetrate the consciousness of the small town. No American town can live in the past, Drummond believes.

Ironically, although the town defends its right to set local standards, it ferries in a well-known progressive but religious attorney, named Brady, to lead the prosecution of the teacher John Scopes. The noted politician and former Democratic Progressive Presidential contender says that he fears the moral impact that teaching evolution to impressionable minds will have upon the youth of America. The plot film begins with the first days of the trial, and the publicity the Scopes trial has drawn for 'Heavenly Hillsborough, the buckle of the Bible Belt.' Thus, ass well as dramatizing the subject of evolution, the film also shows the ability of a small town to capitalize upon media attention within its district, to draw money and tourism to the tiny municipality. Some parents may cry out that they wish to protect their children from the larger world, but everyone seems to want publicity and money, and not to be sheltered from national celebrity.

Suddenly, all of Hillsborough is agog at receiving such eminent guests as Drummond and Brady, and does its best to solicit the attentions of the media, embodied by the cynical Northern reporter played by Gene Kelley. Most of the media and even some of the ostensibly religious townsfolk do not seem to care very much whether the teacher is thrown in jail or fined for attempting to exercise his freedom of speech and bring the minds of young people into a more questioning engagement with their faith and with the nature of modern science. They are merely excited by the prospect of money, scandal, publicity, and above all the nature of spectacle, as dramatized in the courtroom.

The film itself presents the question of evolution like a drama, to frame the human dilemmas about the morality of the place of a teacher as an educator, the relationship between one's personal faith and community, and the morality of show trials. The teacher does have a fiancee, but the relationship is given short shrift in the film. Rather, the towering presences of the attorneys dominate the issues, especially when Drummond puts Brady on the stand as an expert witness on the Bible. Even those individuals who agree with the pro-evolution teacher and his advocate might blanch at the sensationalist aspect of this element of the trial, although to be fair Brady himself was no less sensationalist in his condemnation of the teacher's supposed lack of faith, merely because he taught one theory of human development to his class. The film argues for a more balanced and reasonable approach to contesting issues that are important to the American polity, beyond the theatrics of the show trial.

Conclusion -- What does the film teach?

The film ends with a reflective note, not so much pondering the expansion of human knowledge, but the limits of human knowledge, even in light of new knowledge about human evolution. Although the teacher loses, Brady ends the film a broken man, sorrowful about his evident inability to really 'show up' Drummond in the latter's examination of his beliefs. According to Lewis L. Gould's text America in the Progressive Era 1890-1914, the 'real' prosecuting attorney in the Scopes Trial was a model for Brady, and similarly ended his life a broken man, a failed presidential candidate whose attempts to rebuild his reputation as an advocate for America's heartland met with a dismal failure.