Smokey and the Bandit, and the Red State/Blue State Divide

Regional differences are a feature of the American experiment, not a bug. They are the spice in the melting pot. They are the reason why we have both Chicago style pizza and New York style… the reason why we have hoagies, grinders, subs and po-boys… the reason why some Americans drink soda or pop, while my Southern relatives “have a Coke” even when they’re drinking Sprite or Dr. Pepper. It used to be that when people said “diversity is our strength”, this is the kind of diversity they were talking about.

But now, as we seem to be careening headlong towards an ugly national divorce, one that may make the Depp/Heard kerfuffle look like afternon tea at Tavern on the Green, those same regional differences have become just another budget item on the long list of irreconcilable differences in the divorce filings. Regional diferences are no longer a charming reason to get out there and see the rest of the country… they are a casus belli… the reason why the center cannot hold… insurrectionist activities to be rooted out and destroyed in favor of some vast homogenized Progressivism.

Often times, these regional differences are literally the root of all evil, as the LA Times sought to prove last week in an article on the Buffalo Shooter that was typical of the kind of “let’s visit the zoo” style coverage that so often results when cossetted big city reporters dare to step out of their comfort zones and visit rural America.

Actually… “sought to prove” is giving the Times much more credit than they deserve. The truth is they did no such thing. You will not be surprised to discover that the LA Times blames the small “mostly white” town where the buffalo shooter grew up for spawning the racism that fueled the shooter’s crime. It was, the Times assures us, “the air he breathed.”

Not that there is much evidence in the article to support this claim, of course… unless you think that a bar with kitschy wall signs that say “This place is politically incorrect” and “here we say Merry Christmas” and… horror of horrors… “one nation under GOD” is no more than a half step away from a full on Klan rally.

Does the Times really believe that it was the “War on Christmas” that the Buffalo Shooter was thinking about as he tortured and beheaded the family cat? Can they even prove that the shooter was ever in that bar? That he was even dimly aware of those signs… wall signs that only the kind of person who would become a highly credentialed LA Times reporter could ever manage to describe as racist? Or was it simply a matter of the snobs at Los Angeles’ largest newspaper being unable to pass on an opportunity to dunk on exactly the kind of uneducated flyover boobs that they already hate anyway?

Believe it or not, the LA Times notwithstanding, there was a time when Hollywood actually cared about getting Red State Americans from flyover country into theaters and worked hard to make movies that treated them and their values with dignity and respect. Country Mouse/City Mouse used to be one of the most common “hooks” in Hollywood romantic comedies. There was even a time when Hollywood made movies that celebrated America and her institutions, even while they were criticzing them… sometimes obliquely, often directly. Movies like ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN, THE RIGHT STUFF, and THE CAINE MUTINY come to mind.

Sadly, here in in the early 2020’s you cannot find a redneck Southern man in a Hollywood offering who isn’t a caricature of an irredeemable racist. But that wasn’t always the case. Way back in 1977, 45 years ago this summer, Hollywood somehow managed to give us SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT, and its stars, Cledus and The Bandit… just two lovable but irresponsible good ole boys looking to win a bet and have some fun.

Unlike the residents of the LA Times’ fever dream version of the Buffalo shooter’s hometown, there’s not an offensive bone in either man’s body, and they don’t hate anyone, at least not until they’re given a good reason to do so. And even then, The Bandit seems like a man who is very slow to anger.

Which is not to say that bigotry is not a part of SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT… because, obviously, Sheriff Buford T. Justice is also in the movie.

Sheriff Buford T. Justice of Portague County (his actual credit in the end titles) is a bigot, that’s true. But his bigotry is less essential to his character than the fact that he is an asshole… to everyone… even his son. His bigotry is just another tool in his arsenal of assholery. When Sheriff Justice happens upon four white kids breaking down the stolen car in which his son’s bride-to-be escaped their wedding, does he let them go just because they’re white?

No, he does not.

On the contrary, he subjects them to what I think even the BLM folks would agree is a little light police brutality. He so terrifies them, that none of them are willing to leave the scene even after the Sheriff has departed, with no plans to return.

The entire movie, like much of the country at the time, is infused with a certain healthy disrepect for the law that would warm the hearts of even the most violent AntiFA footsoldier. And, as the movie goes on, The Bandit and Cledus become something like pop culture heroes… their exploits are broadcast across the CB bands, relayed from trucker-to-trucker… and crowds of fans, Black, White and Other, stand alongside the road cheering for them, and sometimes intervening on their behalf, as they zoom by with three states worth of Lawmen on their asses.

But yes, Sheriff Justice is bigoted… bigoted in all the ways that miserable sociopathic assholes all over the world are. They hate you before they even meet you, all they need is a reason. And it doesn’t even have to be a good reason. If it’s not your skin color, then it’s your accent, or your class, or your income level, or your education (ever heard a Southerner deliver that classic Southern insult “college boy“?). It doesn’t matter the reason, it’s bigotry in service of assholery. “Show me the man, and I’ll show you why I hate him”… to badly butcher a famous saying from the era of the Soviet Red Terror.

Oh and by the way, Sheriff Justice is also a coward. Like most bigots, he doesn’t even have the guts to stand by his bigotry when called on it. Late in the movie he happens upon a Texas police car that couldn’t quite keep up with The Bandit’s car-borne acrobatics and wound up in a river. As a black lawman sticks his head out of the driver side window, Sheriff Justice says “Hey boy… where is Sheriff Branford?” The black lawman responds indignantly “I AM Sheriff Brandford…” And Justice, having been called out on his assumption that the black man standing in front of him couldn’t possibly be the Sheriff, shrinks about four sizes before explaining that “for some reason or another, you sounded taller on the radio…” and then slinking away like the coward he is.

But here’s where the movie gets interesting. Sheriff Justice is not the only bigot in the film. Carrie (played by Sally Field) is something of a bigot herself. She makes all kinds of assumptions when she first meets the Bandit… she’s a dancer from New York and she thinks she knows everything there is to know about this Southern Redneck with the outrageous hat, the fast car, the weird slang, cocky attitude and the friend named Cledus.

The Bandit, for his part, does not object to her bigotry. Partly because he’s a Southern Gentleman, but mostly because he’s an extremely confident man and totally comfortable in his own skin. So, she doesn’t like him… so, she thinks he’s a hayseed rube… so what? (there’s a lesson here too for the easily triggered, but that’s an argument for another essay).

In a sense, I’m being unfair to Carrie… I’m using the langauge of modern cancel culture to describe her behavior. Carrie isn’t a bigot, not really… she’s just been culturally isolated from people who aren’t like her. It’s a blindspot that we all share in one way or another. It used to be geography that isolated Americans from one another, but now it’s the ideological silos created by the Internet and Social Media.

Luckily for Carrie, SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT turns out to be a redemption story. At its heart, the dynamic between the two main characters, Bandit and Carrie, is that old Hollywood standby the Country Mouse/City Mouse story or, if you prefer, Red State/Blue State.

Carrie is a Blue State Girl trapped in a Red State Scenario, and she eventually realizes she has seriously misjudged the Bandit and needs his help to navigate this strangely dangerous world in which she’s suddenly found herself.

Smokey and the Bandit is a story set firmly in the South, and Carrie, the bougie New York stage dacer, is very much the interloper here. Imagine Hollywood trying to tell a story like this in 2022… an entire movie told from the sympathetic point-of-view of a bunch of rednecks who have an almost Black Lives Matter level of disrespect for authority, who only want to be left alone by agents of the State and who think it should be legal to drive fast cars at whatever speed moves them, while smuggling Coors beer across the Georgia border (gasp!).

But this is where Smokey and the Bandit becomes an important parable about tolerance that has a lot to teach us about our politically fractuous modern moment.

Eventually, The Bandit and Carrie stop in a park to “stretch their legs”, and Carrie offers something of an apology for grossly misjudging The Bandit. Realizing that they are falling for one another other, she asks The Bandit if he thinks they have anything in common. She quizzes him on the cultural icons of her world… A CHORUS LINE and Elton John, and he quizzes her on the icons of his world… Richard Petty and Waylon Jennings. Neither one knows what the other is talking about. But the Bandit understands that these trivial cultural differences don’t matter when it comes to affairs of the heart. If they are meant to be together, he’ll learn to love “Rocket Man” and she’ll learn to love watching grown men turn left for three and a half hours. Love is love, as they say, and it shouldn’t matter whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat or a Black Lives Matter activist or a Back the Blue cop’s wife… we are all fundamentally American. Like Humans and Chimpanzees, we share 99% of the same politcal DNA.

Or, as The Bandit puts it. “When you tell somebody somethin’, it depends on what part of the United States you’re standing in as to just how dumb you are.”

And isn’t that the perfect rebuke to the political tribalism which is currently dominating our discourse?