Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is a tome teeming with violence. 

Sticky, bright-red blood gushes forth from billions of bullet holes; characters are killed off before they're even introduced; hot viscera pours out onto the dusty earth, mixes with it, and becomes caked on the undersides of desperado's boot heels. 

And it's all so terribly exhausting. 

The film opens with a credit sequence that intercuts the execution of one of its central characters, Pat Garrett, along with real footage of half-buried chickens being used as target practice. By the time the first shootout starts (the very next scene), you might already be experiencing some level of gun-fighting-fatigue, but the film never relents, and its entire runtime is replete with the type of violence that comes only from the smoking barrel of a screaming six-shooter. 

While some might find this approach rather boring or excessive, I can't help but feel the film's construction is composed entirely to inspire these kinds of emotions. Rather than romanticizing the lives of killers on either side of the law, Peckinpah instead intends to drown his audience in an ocean of gore, so that they might have sympathy for another who's already sunk beneath the waves. Namely, Pat Garrett.

James Coburn embodies Pat Garrett, portraying him as a man who is paradoxically tired of killing, yet knows no other way. Every bullet he fires is like another nail in his coffin; another act condemning him to isolation and a confinement inside his own mind. With every life he takes, he severs ever more the threads connecting him to humanity, until finally-- there's only one left. His thread. And Billy's. He hesitates for a long while-- the entire runtime of the movie in fact-- but in the end he cuts this cord as well; perhaps only from the force of habit. 

His reluctancy, his weariness, and his introspection are the only aspects which separate Garrett from Billy. They share so many other traits that at times the pair can seem like mirror images of each other, separated only by time. At one point Pat says simply:

"There's an age in a man's life when you don't wanna spend time figurin' what comes next."

And you get the feeling that this is the only major difference between the men; Billy's not at that age yet, and he'll never live to reach it. 

At times, it can be difficult to grasp the significance of the bond between Billy and Garrett, particularly in regards to how they treat their other companions. In truth, I was being perhaps a tad too poetic when I referred to Billy as Pat's final connection to humanity. The reality is that neither man truly holds much respect for humanity-- excluding, of course, their own-- a trend which probably holds true for most men that make manslaughter their occupation. Both are more than willing to sacrifice or kill those they deem to be 'friends' if doing so will prolong their own existence. In their circles, both men strut about and act almost like kings; sending forth pawns onto the battlefield as offerings to stave off their own demise. 

Perhaps then, it's fitting that Billy should find himself on the other side of such a bargain; being sacrificed by Garrett in a bid to ensure that man's employment. 

Perhaps that's what's really surprising to Billy-- not that Garrett went straight and joined a law outfit-- but that somebody who knew him personally would be willing to sacrifice him for personal gain. Billy makes the sacrifices; he's not the sacrifice. 

Or maybe, he's hurt that something he regards as trivial and arbitrary and unimportant as 'law', which, back then, was little more than the wills of a few local, wealthy ranchers (not to say it's much different today), could come between himself and Garrett. That he could be worth so little to his fellow man as to be valued beneath the wishes of a few fat-cats. 

It isn't so much that he hates 'the law' or Pat Garrett for enforcing it; after all, he was once in the same position. The law is a "funny" thing, as Billy sees it; one day you can be one side of it and the next the other, just depending on the opinions of the affluent and the influential. How could you ever respect or hope to abide by such an intemperate system? None of the people living in the towns where 'the law' supposedly governs actually recognize its legitimacy; when Billy breaks out of jail all he needs to do is go into the town square and ask for help and all the citizens come running. That's because Peckinpah takes pains to point out how the law protects the wills of the ranchers, not the people. How could someone value upholding the legitimacy of such a frivolity, such a nuisance, over the existence of their friends? Of all the reasons Pat Garrett might have to kill his friend, Billy can't help but feel injured that he's chosen perhaps the worst, most meaningless, most nonsensical one. 

Billy is to die for a whim; and not even Pat Garrett's whim for that matter. 

When it finally happens, Peckinpah doesn't shroud the scene in subtlety; Garrett fires first one shot that enters Billy right beneath his neck, then a second shot which shatters the mirror in which Garrett's reflection is housed. The metaphor is not intended to be understated or easily missed: 

Killing Billy is as close as a man like Garrett could ever come to considering suicide. 
 

I got a new job recently; I’ve been working as a nighttime security guard at a food processing plant.

And that’s been kind of rough for me, ideologically speaking. 

You see, I’ve been an ACAB kind of guy for a while now, and while I would in no way confuse my job with a cop’s, I am disturbed by certain similarities between them. To simplify it, I would say that if you define police as ‘people who protect the property of the wealthy from the poor’ as I do, then there is some crossover with what I do on a nightly basis; patrol parking lots and buildings and harass any homeless people trying to sleep on the property. 

We’re required to wear a uniform for the job, which I can’t help but think of as more of a costume– complete with a fake badge and all. Everything about it is meant to resemble a police uniform without actually getting you arrested for impersonating an officer. It’s a costume intended to intimidate, or at least rouse up memories of interactions with cops past. I’m 5’5” and I look goddamn ridiculous in it– like David Byrne in his big suit– but it still bothers me to wear a costume that’s intentionally aping the uniform of a group of people who I view as oppressive to the poor. 

And I hate now being a part of that oppression.

I try not to be, as much as I can. For better or worse, I’ve interacted with more homeless people in the past two months than I ever have in the last 24 years of my life. I’ve made sort-of-semi-friends with the folks who live on the street behind one of the buildings I patrol, and I’ve even helped some on occasion. 

For instance– a couple guys who live out on the street in a tent decided to start a fire for themselves one night. Not unusual, not bad right? It’s cold, who am I to tell them not to stay warm? Only problem–

They started the fire inside the tent.

I got to them before they passed out from smoke inhalation and after I reassured them I wasn’t telling them to move their fire outside but merely suggesting that they do so, they agreed. 

But any examples I could come up with to reassure myself I’m not ‘one of the bad ones’ would just be me trying to rationalize taking and staying in a job that I find conflicts with my morals. I know I see the world too much as a matter of black and white, but I can’t help but feel that unless you’re actively fighting against a system, you’re upholding it. You can never change a system from the inside, and every night I go to work I know I’m helping to maintain it.

But I lie to myself. I tell myself that I’m really there to protect the employees, not the company’s expensive equipment. I tell myself that I’m not there to hassle the homeless people– just to make sure they don’t set themselves on fire or some shit. And I can recognize this same exhausted self-deception in Pat Garrett when he tells the kid:

"Don't matter what side you're on, you're always right."

A line which I believe receives its answer at the end of the film, wherein Garrett is told by an old friend:

"When are you gonna learn that you can't trust anybody, not even yourself, Garrett? You chicken-shit, badge-wearing, son-of-a-bitch."