Children of the Corn Response

            Children of the Corn is a movie set in the small town of Gatlin, Nebraska in the 1980s.  Burt and Vicky, a couple from a midwestern city, travel through Nebraska to visit Seattle for Burt’s job interview.  On their way to Washington, while traveling through the corn-filled state of Nebraska, Burt and Vicky spot a young boy who seems to have been murdered.  In order to report the murder and find out what is really going on in this strange town, they wind up in what seems like a ghost town, Gatlin.  Seeing that all buildings and houses were empty, the couple further explored the town and saw that there seemed to be some sort of cult of children.  These children killed all of the adults in Gatlin and worshipped their god, “He Who Walks Behind the Rows.”  After the children captured Vicky, Burt and the two children that were not part of the cult tried to save her and knocked some sense into the children of the corn.  Once they rescued Vicky, Burt killed the evil monster in the corn and turned the children against their leader, Isaac.

            While I first thought this movie had nothing to do with what we have studied about Great Plains history other than the fact that it was set in Nebraska and there were cornfields, I later realized that they actually did have many similarities.  Both the children in Children of the Corn and the Comanche Indians worshipped false gods, had ritual ceremonies, and made sacrifices. Like the kids were “children of the corn,” Hamalainen notes in The Comanche Empire that the Comanches were “children of the sun” (278).  Their religion was focused around the sun, and all rituals centered on it.  Similarly, the Gatlin children worshipped the corn and based their whole religion on it.  Rituals were practiced by Comanches in sacred sites, just like the children practiced rituals in the cornfield.  Comanches sang and danced at rituals, resembling the phrases that the children recited.  Both the children and Comanches defied the beliefs of the Christians from Spain and the many people of the modern world.  Like Isaac was the leader of the children of Gatlin and spread the word of their God, Isatai was a medicine man who spread his vision to the Comanches.

            The main message of Children of the Corn seemed to be that corn was evil, and city people were heroes.  In Grassland, Manning remarked that corn destroyed the Great Plains because of the great amounts of irrigation and fertilizer that was needed to upkeep the corn damaged the environment.  Additionally, he claimed that the fertilizers used for corn can cause cancer or kill babies when they get in well water.  Manning believed that the grasslands and prairies were the essence of the Great Plains, and corn destroyed everything.

            The film Children of the Corn was quite a bizarre movie, but it did depict Great Plains life.  The pagan religious beliefs, ceremonies, and sacrifices displayed in the movie are comparable to the religion of the Comanche Indians.  Like the children of the religious cult in Children of the Corn believed that corn held special powers and was to be worshipped, the Comanches considered the sun to be a spiritual figure.  Moreover, Manning’s thought that corn was evil and destroyed the grasslands of the Great Plains is similar to the thoughts of Burt and Vicky in the film.  They believed that the corn had corrupted the children and caused them to go crazy.  While this horror movie did have some odd ideas, they represented the Great Plains well.