And then me!

Swiss Family Robinson is on the tv while I'm working (what can I say? I like James MacArthur) and it's gotten to the scene where they're building their hill-fort to hold off the pirates, and my least favorite bit of dialog is still, somehow, in the movie (I keep hoping it'll vanish, somehow, but it never does).

"We'll keep the muskets for our last defense, and I'll give the order when to use them. Of course, if anything happens to me, Fritz will take charge, and then you, Ernst."

"And then me!"

"Yes, and then you, Francis."

Yes, Francis, then you, because after all a grown woman and an 18-year-old girl couldn't possibly be next in line before a ten-year-old boy.

Of course it's you.

And there's more to it than the blatant relegation of the women to the status of less than children. What a hideous burden to put on a small boy, if it were to happen.

I remember a moment in Shake Hands With The Devil, where Dallaire was talking about how he'd tossed that at his son, telling the fourteen-year-old boy that he'd have to be the "man of the family" if anything happened to him ... and how terribly that weighed on the boy when it became clear from the newscasts that Dallaire was in palpable, deadly danger. He wished he'd never laid that burden on a boy.

It's a cliché, of course, and I'll bet most people who say it or see it in movies don't take it seriously. It's all about bucking up the boy, and no one ever thinks about the damage to him - or to the women who are being treated as no-account.

But it's a piece of dialog I've never been able to stomach.

Someday, it'll be gone...