Spencer Tracy, Unleashed

The court room is the one reliable setting in the movies to find great call out scenes. In my opinion, the greatest courtroom movie ever made is Inherit the Wind, a thinly veiled dramatization of the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, which questioned the legality of teaching evolution in public school science classrooms. And since ignorance and stupidity apparently has the lifespan of a small galaxy, this is a topic as timely today as it was 80 years ago.

In this scene, the godly Spencer Tracy beautifully calls out an entire courtroom of yokels (and ultimately any fool that actually believes creationism should be taught in science classes). If you are someone that is turned on by brains and intelligence, you’re about to jizz in your jockeys while watching this speech. Spencer Tracy fearlessly turns passionate conviction into pure, eloquent fury.

Perhaps the saddest thing to keep in mind while watching this scene is the knowledge that Spencer Tracy loses this case. Seriously. Religious stupidity was written into the law books for over forty years in some states until 1968 (Inherit the Wind came out in 1960) when the Supreme Court ruled that teaching creationism while disallowing the teaching of evolution in schools violated the 1^st amendment because it endorsed a religious viewpoint (no shit Sherlock). And why are we still dealing with this today? Why is this still important? Well, in Mr. Tracy’s immortal lines:

“… Because fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy and needs feeding. And soon … with banners flying and drums beating, we’ll be marching backward – backward – through the glorious ages of that 16^th Century when bigots burned the man who dared bring enlightenment and intelligence to the human mind.”

Oh man, I need to change my pants.