The Films of Celine Sciamma: Girlhood

 

                The third film in my analysis of the films of Celine Sciamma is the complicatedly intersectional film, Girlhood. The confluence of race, class, gender and sexuality are palpable in Sciamma’s final coming-of-age story that rounds out her disconnected trilogy. Yet, throughout the film, Sciamma seems to disingenuously vacillate between vigorously engaging in these ideas, to only finding interest in them as a performative aesthetic garnish. This brief paper engages in Sciamma’s attempt, success, and failure to engage with these sociological concepts both at a distance and at half measure, culminating in a story that attempts to subvert racially gendered classist and sexual stereotypes while simultaneously relying upon them.   

 

PLOT

            In a poor Parisian suburb, Marieme (Karidja Touré) is told that high school is no longer an option for her and seeks solace in the local gang led by the illustrious “Lady” (Assa Sylla). With this new crew, Marieme finds sorority, solidarity, and sisterhood. But when the realities of home and her surrounding community increase their pressure, Marieme must decide to fall into the stereotypical path that lays before her, or forge a new one, breaking the bonds that social institutions, family members, and community expectations have efforted to restrain her.

 

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

            To understand Celine Sciamma’s decision to write and direct a film centering around the lives of Black girls, a contextual foundation of racial politics in the 2010’s needs to be laid. This then will serve as a backdrop for a discussion of the film’s production.

            Since the French Revolution of 1789[1], France has never had a significant identifier around race, only the State and “man” (intended to mean humans, ala, mankind, but also cisgender men). This leads to a lack of recognition of racial and ethnic minorities, which in turn leans towards the validation of whiteness through its association with capitalism and patriarchy. Because there is a lack of visibility and validation of ethnic and racial minorities, whiteness becomes the default, the norm. The appeal to human rights, or broad unspecified inclusion, has been a tactic of oppressive systems to obfuscate their domination. This is the discrimination of omission. Broad inclusivity without specification assumes that both the experiences and needs of all people are the same; each with the same level of access to opportunities and resources. It’s framing equality without an understanding of equity. This causes non-white people to be judged by white standards and minimizes the scope of institutional barriers, reducing perceived inequality and injustice; to be viewed only through the lens of individual choice and personal responsibility. This keeps an understanding of the complexities of race relations perpetually elusive to both the French Government, and its citizens.

            This country wide ignorance of the importance of race continues to obscure the normalization of whiteness even among its people. In the context of this film, this can possibly account for Celine Sciamma’s hypocritical statements during the Press tour for Girlhood.

In an interview for The Independent in April of 2015 Sciamma states that:

“…she intentionally cast Black actresses because of her concern over a lack of opportunities for Black women in France saying that she was shocked how Black people are never on screen [In France] and how there are no Black actresses famous in France.”

Incongruently, in an interview with The Observer that same year, fielding a question about being a white woman crafting and telling a story about Black girls, she states:

” I’ve always lived on the outskirts, [But] I wasn’t making a film about Black women, I was making it with them. It’s not the same. I’m not telling you what it’s like to be Black in France today. I just want to give face to the French youth I am looking at.”  

Additionally, in an interview with Indiewire, Sciamma stated that the film was not from a ‘White Feminist Gaze’ as the interviewer prompted, but from the vantage point of “…what it’s like just being a girl…it’s not about race or racism.” Yet, later in the interview she sates:

“With few [Black] representations [in film] [Girlhood] takes on a new responsibility…It’s a lot on my shoulders. But I knew that going into it. But, I mean, I didn’t know how messy it could get…I can tell this story and Black Female directors cannot.”

 

There is a lot to unpack here.

            Firstly, by doing a simple internet search anyone can easily find any number of famous Black French female actors that existed either before or contemporaneously with the actors in Girlhood; as well as a long rich history of Black French female actors and directors creating art since the 1950’s. Sciamma’s comments illustrates her obliviousness to the history of French Black Cinema and the centering of whiteness in French film culture.

A Variety article in 2021 corroborates this normalization of whiteness and ignorance of white feminism to the plight of Black creatives, recounting the backlash experienced by Aïssa Maïga after she counted aloud the few Black People in the audience at that years Ceaser Awards. The article goes on to discuss that of the few known Black directors at the time, their success was hard fought; and while several studios, under renewed pressure from the Black Lives Matter Movement, installed inclusion riders and greater diversity quotas, it hasn’t taken hold in part because of France’s reluctance to count race as an indicator. This skews the data and allows the industry to engage in Color-blind Racism in the film industry.

In this context, Sciamma’s hypocritic confluent commentary on race and racism during the press tour for Girlhood is understood as a symptom of the imbedded structural racism of Color-blindness in France. Unfortunately, this also frames her ignorance of Black cinema and willingness to tell Black stories (as a white woman) to be a gross invocation and specter of the history of French Colonialism in areas like Senegal and Haiti.   

SOCIAL ANALYSIS

Sciamma has stated that the inspiration for this film came from the girls that she would regularly see hang out in the Paris area or in shopping centers and train stations. This limited sample, and the original title “Girl Gang”, both points to her voyeuristic fascination with the culture of Black women without attempting to interrogate the failure of institutional mechanisms like the economy, education and the criminal justice system that shape those lives. Instead, she seems more interested in how girls adapt to these ever-constricting pressures and whether they recreate stereotypes, or rage against them.

Race, Class, and Education

The triptych of the demographic intersections with the clearest overlap is between race, class and education. Since the historic moral failure of the transnational slave trade, Black bodies have been given economic value in their ownership and exploitation. After emancipation (April 2^nd, 1848, in France Jan 1^st 1863 in the US), there was a period of sharecropping that was designed to return Black people to as close to the status of slavery as possible. This was the first in a long line of practices seeking to disempower Black people. Outside of the historic overt violence used to economically subjugate Black people at the turn of the 20^th century in the US (Tulsa Massacre) there have been efforts by various government agencies to eliminate the ability for Black people to accrue generational wealth. This lack of generational wealth translates to an inability to afford substantive education. The lack of education forces Black people to be reliant on low wage and often service industry jobs.

 According to Kendall (2020) this confluence of problems between race, class and education often gets ignored by a majority of social and political movements, even those that are well meaning. Consistently, there are social issues that exclusively affect Black people that are largely ignored or antagonized by the institutions of any cross-national society[2]. There is a lack of support that these issues receive when Black people are the focus, and a lack of understanding as to their amalgamated impact. Sin the US, since most K-12 schools are primarily funded by the property taxes of the surrounding neighborhoods, lower income area schools have less funding than those more affluent. Considering the history of systemic housing discrimination against Black people from emancipation forward, most of the poorly funded schools are the ones Black kids attend (Rothstein 2017, Kendall 2020). Meanwhile, many of the houses in these areas are “unfit for human habitation, (because they are zoned for commercial in addition to residential use) but Black residents have no other option” (Rothstein 2017 Kendall 2020:207). This negatively impacts the functioning of schools and the student’s ability to learn. Desmond (2023) reminds us that poverty can be both the cause and the result of institutional failures like education. This cycle of collapse is additionally obfuscated by the structure of an individualist society and the deflection of “personal responsibility” that gets unfairly leveed at Black people, particularly Black women, while framing it as a strength of character (Kendall 2020).

“The Strong Black Woman” has been a trope in the media since Black women began gracing screens. Along with other racist and sexist stereotypes like the “Mammy” and the “Jezebel”, “The Strong Black Woman” has been created as an archetype for Black women to be judged by the white supremacist patriarchy. Yet, unlike the other tropes, “The Strong Black Woman” is consistently internalized by Black women themselves, further obscuring the need for systemic solutions and minimizing the acknowledgement of systemic racism altogether.

According to Jones Harris and Reynolds (2020): “The Strong Black Woman” has been characterized by three components: emotional restraint, independence, and caretaking. In this trope, Black girls and women must hold back their emotions to avoid appearing weak, portraying themselves as strong and independent while being responsible for the problems of others. They are supposed to have a psychological resistance to the oppression within society; therefore, under this framing, Black women aren’t supposed to get tired or ask for help.

Kendall (2020) reinforces the dangers of this trope:

“Being strong or being fierce or whatever appellation is usually applied to the ones who get brutalized, who sue, who wind up on the ground with those she leaves behind begging the world to #sayhername, sounds great, but the labels are cold comfort if we don’t do more to solve the problems they are fighting… This becomes “a millstone around the neck [of Black Women], dragging them down and endangering their chances at survival.” (Kendall 2020:133-134)

The trope of “the Strong Black Woman”, a racist caricature built from the roots of cataclysmic injustices that forced Black women to “do it themselves”, has now been weaponized against them in the media that they consume, especially those pieces of content that are said to be about them.

In Girlhood, Sciamma leans into the stereotypes associated with the interlocking mechanisms of race, class and education, while exalting “The Strong Black Woman” trope in the most whitely feminist way possible. When we first meet Marieme, she is playing football for her school and embraced by a sorority of her fellow teammates and students. As they all walk back to their respective houses (various apartment complex high-rises), each of the girls taper off in different directions toward their dwellings. Finally, Marieme is left alone and when she gets back home, we see that she is mostly responsible for the care of her two younger sisters because their mom is constantly working. Immediately, this is invoking flavors of the “Strong Black Woman” trope in the way that Marieme finds ways to feed and bring money into the home to supplement her mother’s income. Later, in a conversation with the school counselor, we learn that even though she is 15, Marieme is still in “middle school” looking to finally make it to “high school” despite already being held back to repeat the grade. This is regardless of the clear fact that her poor grades are not a symptom of ignorance or laziness, but because of her mounting family obligations, and living within a generally racist and sexist system. The counselor denies her another chance to improve her grades or take the grade a third time, and instead, suggest vocational schools[3]. This systemic failure is the catalyst for her finding solace in the gang. Throughout the rest of the film, at every barrier, Marieme triumphs, when she experiences a setback, she does not fall to the dangers of vice all around her. On the contrary, she perseveres and charts her own path.  

In this depiction, Sciamma is clearly valuing the bootstrap pulling ruggedness of “The Strong Black Woman” trope and framing it as individualistically feminist, messaging to the audience that “empowered women can do anything despite the economic and social realities that they face” (Kendall 2020:131). As Kendall (2020) rightly assesses: what about the people who can’t? From the images that Sciamma gives us in Girlhood, those are stories that are not worth telling. Additionally, when tropes like these are reproduced by self-described feminist filmmakers, it continues the unnecessary internalization of these ideas in their audience. White women see this film and they accept the trope as truth. Concurrently, Black women feel even more compelled to follow these assumptions making them more likely to reject various forms of self-care and accept support lest they be criticized and socially sanctioned for not being superhuman. In this regard, Sciamma is the typical “Karen” who believes they can tell Black girls and women how they should exist. Never falter, never succumb, or surrender. Yet, what makes this seemingly empowering message racist when applied to Black girls and women is that it assumes equal access to resources, thereby judging Black women by white feminist standards. Sciamma, however, goes a step further and presents a racially transcendent feminism which posits that regardless of the social conditions and a variety of systemic barriers, “girls will [still] get it done”. This is a white feminist’s racist benevolent sexism that focuses on the messaging of empowerment without an interrogation of the harm these distorted images could cause.  

  

 Gang Subcultures

            One of the basic concepts of Sociology, peer groups, are an endearing and necessary part of the process of social learning called socialization. They are unique out of the other “agents” of socialization that shepherd individuals through various life-course “rites of passage” in that they are the individuals that help understand and shape reality by going through it with us contemporaneously. An understanding within the same social, historical and political context is a rare and precious resource. Unfortunately, this also means that individuals are judged by following a menial trajectory of the life-course as determined by the average. Anyone who doesn’t reproduce the same narrative arc is in danger of being sanctioned. Marieme invites this sanctioning when she is unable to follow her cohort into “high school”. The loss of this peer group creates a void which Marieme fills with the gang she sees outside of school.

Gangs, in the sociological sense, operate as a counterculture in most societies, often with a hint of religious flair mixed in.  A Sociological “subculture” is a microcosmic group within a dominant social group that holds their own ideals, values, beliefs and norms along with their own hierarchy structure, competitions, and clothing. Typically, a “subculture’s authority is superseded by the dominant culture’s authority when applicable (regardless of your subcultural status). A counterculture is a specific type of subculture that is characterized by the challenging of the dominant culture’s authority by simply existing against the norm, or actively seeking the supplication and removal of the dominant culture’s structural supremacy, replacing it with their own ideals and values. This is commonly referred to as benign and malignant countercultures.[4] Commonly, both subcultures and countercultures express some attitudes and behaviors that are reminiscent of religions. Both gangs and religions ritualize becoming members, have their own sacred text and special garments that distinguish them as being different than other groups.

In order to be a part of the gang, Marieme has to slowly break herself of the norms of general socialization to adopt the goals and ideals of the group through the incremental but escalating breaking of social and cultural rules as well as established laws. Through these behaviors (intimidation, stealing, and violence) a sense of solidaric camaraderie is formed. By participating in these ritualized behaviors Marieme becomes a gang member, and a lasting sisterhood is created.

The romanticized version of gangs depicted in Girlhood is a part of the legacy of cinema constantly depicting disreputable denizens duplicitously doing despicable deeds; reframing these deplorables into the anti-hero because protagonists are humanized, and the audience often doesn’t want to follow “a bad guy” without redeeming qualities. Yet, Marieme, Lady, and the rest of the gang never fall into this trope laden trap; they always skirt the surface of something darker, rightfully not getting in too deep.

This gang glorification in Girlhood also carries within it an element of racialization. Racialization is the process by which nonwhite groups are consistently discriminated against for different purposes throughout history. From the annihilation of native people and slavery, to separating children at the border, flying migrants to Martha’s Vineyard and removing Black Studies as a discipline on college campuses, every nonwhite group has been racialized and systemically discriminated against for a variety of purposes; whether that be for: property[5], profit, politics, or popularity. This exercise in power has been an aspect of race and foreign relations since its inception. The media representation of nonwhite races has been a valuable tool in this process given its penchant for leaning into racist stereotypes and depictions that allow certain groups to be racialized and then discriminated against. To that point, Celine Sciamma’s use of Black girls to tell a story about criminality and poverty adds to the racialization of the criminally poor as being exclusively Black. This criticism is compounded by her use of an all-Black cast, expressing, intentionally or not, that crime and poverty in France is an entirely Black problem. Thus, through the narrative, we are supposed to revel in the way that Marieme avoids the pitfalls of her peers, or works a situation to her advantage, which further removes her situation from being properly perceived as a systemic social problem. Instead, Sciamma wants us to marvel at the perseverance of her protagonist without contemplating its contribution to the larger context of the racialization of Black girls and women.    

    

Gendered Restrictions  

            There is a consistent consolidation of the feminist movement around a white ideology. This normalization of whiteness is diffused in such a way that the desires and needs of white women became ubiquitously synonymous with feminism itself. This solidification assumes that the needs and struggles of Black women are the same as white women. This myth echoes the central tension that threatened to break up the solidarity of Black and white feminist during the second wave feminist movement. This tension still exists today as we continue to establish a unifying emulsification of feminisms that represent every demographic. Hubbard (2022) mentions that even Black feminist have a difficulty accepting all demographic groups into the fold, specifically those of the LGBTQAI community[6]. Because of these deficiencies in acceptance, there needs to be focus on restorative justice frameworks. As a part of this restorative justice, there needs to be a harm repairing stage between all demographics, but especially between white and Black women for the isolation and appropriation of the feminist identity into whiteness. During this stage, there needs to be sincere apologies, the taking of responsibilities, and reparational support for Black women’s struggles by white women (Hubbard 2022, Kendall 2020). Once there is restoration of what is “broken”, only then can there be a reintegration of feminisms into a cohesive movement that is all inclusive.

            Sciamma’s portrayal of the intersections of race gender and sexuality in Girlhood are still coming from a colonialist framework; painting the experiences of Black teens from the standard white feminist perspective (with a dash of the white savior complex mixed in). She only hints at Mariene’s burgeoning sexual expressions for Lady and her experimentation with gender nonconformity (through binding) as mechanisms to propel the plot or relationships forward rather than fully explore them as aspects of Mariene’s character. Because of this, the audience is left to infer intention through brief montages and single lines of dialogue that Mariene’s sexuality might be more complex than originally thought. While some might look upon this misguided attempt as genuine inclusion, the lack of interrogation of these ideas on the part of the writer/ director not only reinforces the otherness of gay and trans representation of Black girls, but by using it as a simple narrative device, it demonstrates a lack of compassionate creativity by the filmmaker.  

 

CONCLUSION

            Girlhood is a faux-feminist film that consolidates the Black feminist ideology down into a reproduction of the individually focused “Strong Black Woman” trope. This sadly continues the long history of judging Black women by the appropriative white colonialist standards without contemplating what makes the Black experience different. At the same time, Sciamma praises herself for helping to elevate Black voices, even though Black female directors have been doing the same thing, with little recognition, for over a generation prior. This is yet another example of a white woman co-opting Black women’s experiences in order to be praised as an ally, rather than a racially exploitive opportunist.    

 

REFERENCES

Desmond, Mathew 2023. Poverty, By America New York: Crown Publishing

Kendall, Mikki 2020. Hood Feminism: Notes From the Women that A Movement Forgot. New York: Viking Press

Hubbard, Shanita 2022. Ride or Die: A Feminist Manifesto for the Well-being of Black Women New York Legacy Lit Publishing

Jones, Martinique K., Keoshia J Harris, and Akilah A. Reynolds 2020. "In Their Own Words: The Meaning of the Strong Black Woman Schema among Black U.S College Women". Sex Roles. 84 (5–6): 347–359. doi:10.1007/s11199-020-01170-w  

Rothstein, Richard 2017. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How the Government Segregated America New York: Liveright Publishing   

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[1] A water shed moment for the development of Sociology as a discipline. It is often cited as one of the rapid social changes that August Comte used to determine that there needed to be a new type of science that studied society and its social changes.

[2] Kendall exclusively looks at the Feminist movement in the United States and the way it has left Black women behind. This paper and its author see value in extrapolating Kendall’s point to a broader focus

[3] Vocational schools are often the two tier systemic split that helps to minimize institutional racism  

[4] In is important to note that regardless of the cancerous analogy, the use of the adjectives refers only to the desire for a change to the dominant cultural and structural system, and should not be implied that Benin is benevolent and malignant is infernal.

[5] Of which it is either about or adjacent to

[6] Looking for a great film about Queer black Teens? I recommend Dee Rees’ Pariah

The Prophetic Racialization within John Sayles' Lone Star

 

The culture of the United States does not abide nor reckon with its history. The US cultural mindset is one of future facing fanaticism, to the point that there is little desire or regard for what has come before. This perspective, coupled with the stark individualism that is birthed from the chrysalis of capitalism, has allowed for “progress” and “prosperity” to advance, though not for everyone, and certainly not in equal measure or based upon need. These gains are usually economic in focus and technological in tangibility. Through this lens, history then becomes the ends that justify the means that society never looks back on; unless the goal is to sanitize the past to justify current social, political, or economic conditions. Then, the interlocking institutions of power and knowledge production merge like Voltron, to support the pro-capitalist narrative. Film and popular culture can be a part of this institutional “mech-ination”, especially, if it is any content that is coming out of the five major media conglomerates, as they usually toe the line for the purpose of profit. However, independent, self-financed auteurs usually have greater latitude to resist the regurgitation of such wretched refuse. John Sayles’ 1996 film, Lone Star, challenges our cultural understanding and teaching of history: especially of border town immigration, while simultaneously providing an allegorical illustration of the history of Racism in the US through its fictional town’s three sheriffs.

   

PLOT

            When the skeletal remains of a miserably racist former sheriff get uncovered on a sunsetting military base in a small border town in Texas, the current Sherrif, Sam Deeds (Chris Cooper) begins the investigation in earnest. Soon, the evidence begins to implicate the town’s previous Sherriff Buddy Deeds (Mathew McConaughey), Sam’s recently deceased father, local hero and town legend.  As questions are asked and dark truths are uncovered, Sam then needs to decide if the legacy of his father is worth protecting; even if he knows that the man the town reveres, is more complicated than the stories tell.   

 

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

            Background

            Director John Sayles is often the overlooked contemporary of the more famous 1970’s Hollywood darlings: Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese. All were students of “The Rodger Corman film school”. This colloquially refers to the collection of writers, producers, actors, and directors that got their start working for director Rodger Corman, who legendarily told every one of his new protégés that if they work hard and are successful, they will never work for him again, recognizing himself as a steppingstone for up-in-coming auteurs. What makes Sayles stand out amongst the overinflated film giants revered by incel adjacent film bros, is his commitment to social justice storytelling. Most of Sayles work in which he both writes and directs includes politically left themes: blacklisting, unionization, political corruption, pan African -Ideals, cultural assimilation, Disability,  and Immigration and Racism. While Coppola and Scorsese may have obscured their themes with dynamic editing, catchy needle drops, and entertaining action, illustrating their mistrust in the audience’s ability to sift through the exposition to get to the symbolic gold underneath, Sayles wears his commentary on his sleeve with every frame, (at times painstakingly) leading the audience to the conclusion and messaging that he has laid bare before them. While subtle in its execution, there is no questioning as to what a John Sayles movie is about.

Conversely, Sayles’s Corman colleagues heavily relied on depicting graphic violence with social commentary so obtusely muddled, that film audiences would have to pan for it, as if they were a 19^th century prospector. When the audience did manage to find little nuggets of deeper meaning, they often misinterpret it. Travis Bickel, Michael Corleone, Tommy DeVito, and Benjamin Willard are not intended to be emulated, but much of the young (usually white) male theatergoers continue to embrace these aggressively toxic hyper masculine portrayals as paragons of a mythological libertarian utopia.

 Karyn Kusama recognizes John Sayles as her mentor and one of the influential people that allowed her feature film debut to get off the ground.  After graduating from New York University, Kusama took on a few babysitting gigs to make ends meet. One of those jobs was for John Sayles’s assistant. According to Kusama, Sayles recognized both her talent and her potential as a filmmaker and decided to help produce her freshman film, the indie drama: Girlfight. Like Rodger Corman[1] before him, Sayles elevates those directors that he recognizes as exceptional; and with any luck, they will also not work for him ever again.

Production   

        Director John Sayles originally conceived of Lone Star after he viewed the Texas Mexico border during a cameo shoot in 1978 and went to visit the Alamo. Sayles was fascinated with the adherence to the Alamo’s white cultural mythology and the way that such an event could be purposefully misinterpreted and weaponized to maintain the legacy of white cultural appropriation and colonialism, embodied through the refrain “Remember the Alamo.” This became the catalyst for the story in the film (Sayles, 2024).  Sayles wanted to consciously challenge the established history that supports the white supremacist slave owning narrative; adding nuance to a subject that is often as bifurcated as the border itself (Perez 2024). The irony of this, as Sayles points out throughout the film’s plot, is that much like the complicated nature of those living at the border, the border has historically been fluid; moved and repositioned to best suit the needs and desires of those that currently hold power and use the border as a mechanism to exercise it.

Shot on location in the cities of Del Rio, Eagle Pass, and Laredo, Texas. John Sales sent the script out to the locals to get both their feedback and to employ them as background actors to add verisimilitude. This went a long way in both maintaining the authenticity of the story, while increasing the likelihood that these cities will embrace the production; thereby minimizing their perceived level of inconvenience during shooting days.     

One of the film’s cinematic achievements is its use of real time, in-camera scene transitions. The film takes place in the same town along two parallel timelines: The 1950’s past, detailing the events leading up to the disappearance of Sherrif Charlie Wade (Kris Kristofferson), and the film’s present day (1996), in which the investigation of skeletal remains, commence. Since both timelines exist in the same geographic place, often using the same setting 40 years apart, Sayles and his crew decided to transition from the past to the present in real-time; rather than the less interesting traditional options of cuts, fade outs, or blurring effects.  Instead, the camera would fixate on an object in a scene, say a basket of tortillas that was just brought to the table in the present, then, in the same shot, without a cut, a hand opens the basket and there is bribe money in it…and we are now in the past. Some of the best transitions that Sayles and DP Stuart Dryburgh make, are the transitions where characters from the past or present enter the frame where they typically are not supposed to be. A shot may be holding on young Otis in the foreground, and the actor playing Otis in the present, enters the frame in the background in the middle of a conversation, as if he’d been retelling the scene we’ve just watched. The camera pans quickly to him and we leave the past for the present. Several of these exquisite compositions are of characters in the present peering back into the past. As Hollis finishes telling a story about Buddy Deeds, the camera pans back away from McConaughey, to center on his son Sam Deeds (Chris Cooper) in the present, looking over his shoulder. This happens again when Sam gazes down at the water after his conversation with Pilar. He stares into the past just as the camera moves to reveal their younger versions.  Sam is thinking about the last time they were in this spot together. Masterful work.

           A section on the production of John Sayles’ Lone Star would not be complete without at least a passing mention of the brilliance of the recently released, director approved, 4k blu-ray release from The Criterion Collection. Digitally remastered into a 4k restoration from the 35mm original negative, a transfer supervised by John Sayles and Stuart Dryburgh themselves; this film is crisp while still retaining the feel of film grain. The image on the 4k is so sharp that this is one of the few 4k Criterion discs that I can see a noticeable difference between the 4k disc and its simple blu-ray companion. The clarity is so apparent on the 4k, that the blu-ray looks like B-roll stock footage.

Another reason to buy the 4k restoration blu-ray is the insert essay “Past is Present” by Dr. Domino Renee Perez, Professor of English at the University of Texas.   After reading this essay, I questioned the validity and efficacy of this one. Perez (2024) engages with a lot of the same/ similar ideas the rest of this essay will interrogate. While they do not strictly engage with the material from a Sociological perspective, their use and understanding of history I build on and branch out from in the social analysis section. Dr. Perez’s work is foundational to an understanding of this film and should be considered part of the lit review for the rest of this analysis.

A Very Brief and Incomplete Summation of US Mexico Relations and Immigration

The State government has imposed police power to secure (and expand) the geographic region of what would be the United States since its inception. Whether that be the securing of land from indigenous people, the adoption of racist slave codes that began to clearly draw the line between white and people of color populations, or the acquisition of land as a spoil of war with the Treaty of Paris relinquishing sovereignty of Puerto Rico to the US after the Spanish American War in 1898. The United States internalized manifest destiny, fueled by white supremacy, consumed the continent of land, its resources, and its people (Perea, 2021).

At the end of the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) The Treaty of Guadalupe Hildalgo and later the Gasden Purchase of 1853 acquired most of what is now the American Southwest from Mexico. Mexicans that were living in areas that were now another country were promised citizenship, full civil and property rights that were scarcely enforced; many of them being perceived as “illegal foreigners” when the reality is, as so many Mexicans astutely profess: “They didn’t cross the border, the border crossed them.” (Sayles, 2024).

Those in support of the confiscating of Mexican land as a war time trophy were, unsurprisingly, motivated by the economic boon it would produce, and thereby perceived Mexicans and Central Americans as a reserve labor pool. This became strengthened during the early part of the 20^th century when poverty and revolution caused Mexicans to come into the United States for work. In 1924, the US Government exempt the National Origins quota for Mexicans. This allowed Mexican Immigrants free entry and return, so the US economy could capitalize upon their desperation (Perea, 2021). This set a hundred years of immigration precedence that saw the building and thriving of entire industries (specifically in agricultural farmwork) from the manual labor of Mexican Immigrants, and Mexican Americans. Yet, Mexican migrants were only as valuable as the stability of the economy and the industry in which they worked.

The acceptance or rejection of Mexican migrants, the recognition of their human rights, and their citizenship status is often determined by the economic need of their labor. During the Great Depression, when the reserve labor was not needed as desperately, and the economic justification could no longer hold the white supremacist hegemony at bay, the US instituted a period of “Mexican repatriation” where 1 million supposed Mexican migrants were forcefully expelled from the US. During this process, about 60% of those expelled were American Citizens including US born children of Mexican Immigrants. This was later followed by “Operation Wetback” in 1954 deporting another 1 million people, again many of them citizens (Perea, 2021).  This has been the Mexican immigration cycle for generations. The acceptance or rejection of Mexican Immigrants based on economic prevalence. As the economy improved, the border opened, as the economy declined, the border tightened.

In the mid to late 90’s (the time when the film was both shot and released) then US president Bill Clinton expanded deportation and demanded detention for those that were undocumented before removal. This resulted in 12.3 million deportations and 870,000 formal removals during his 8 years in office (Perea, 2021). The difference in this number is the legal difference between returns and removals. “Removals” are those that are deported from the United States under a formal order, whereas “returns” are those migrants that are “allowed to leave voluntarily”.[2] The language of being “allowed to leave” is far more authoritarian which would perceive “voluntary” as a simple lack of resistance rather than an actual desire. Clinton also initiated “Operation Gatekeeper” which began the militarization of the southern border with more fencing and armed Border agents.

The Militarization of the southern border[3] of the US has compounded in the years since 9/11, the border becoming a symbolic threat to anything within the United States (Balko 2021, Perea 2021).  The US-Mexico Border was considered an ineffective barrier in the thwarting of the 2001 terrorist attacks. Thus, “The War on Terror” saw the increased tightening of US control over the region, culminating in a litany of anti-immigration policies that began in the early 2000’s under George W. Bush. This included Operation “return to sender” where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conducted a massive sweep of undocumented migrants on May 26^th 2006. In the near 20 years since, border agencies and immigration enforcement have been given an obscene amount of warrior style training and weaponry to “better secure” the southern entry point into the United States.

Political conditions also impact the flow of migrants. During President Obama’s term in office there was a steady flow of migrant workers moving into the United States. In curbing this flow, Obama was later dubbed: “The Deporter and Chief” for the high rate of removals during his Presidency. When Donald Trump became President after using anti-immigrant rhetoric, one of his first Executive Orders was the institution of travel bans, and later, separating families at the border. These harsh and inhumane consequences caused fewer and fewer migrants to attempt to cross during his term (Goodman, 2021). The limiting of migrants has become politically advantageous for Donald Trump in the current 2024 presidential election; as this rhetoric is highly valued amongst those in his party, especially his base. Therefore, many Republican voters will stomach his openly racist bigotry, even if they don’t agree, because fewer migrants mean more jobs in times of economic crisis. Since 2020, both Trump and President Biden have used the economic instability caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to restrict entry into the US almost completely. This is why capitalism will always support fascism over socialism; because fascism does not require capitalism to change its dehumanizing view of people to thrive; and capitalism does not require fascism to be self-reflexive. Contrarily, fascism thrives when profit is put over people.  

Immigration in Lone Star

Immigration is the backdrop of Lone Star. Set on a fictional Texas border town of Frontera, the film figuratively straddles the line of those who live on either side. The film’s depiction of immigration (outside of the racism in its enforcement) can be seen in the character arc of Mercedes Cruz (Miriam Colon) a wealthy businesswoman who lives on the banks of the Rio Grande. The film opens with her both benefiting from unlawful immigration and imposing federal rules. Mrs. Cruz, once an undocumented immigrant from Spain, is the owner and operator of one of the most successful Mexican restaurants in town and it is implied that she employs undocumented labor. However, when she is pressed about it by her daughter, Pilar, she confidently declares that all her workers have “green cards.”. That same evening, while she is out on her veranda, she notices a couple emerge from the river and begin to run.  She proceeds to call border control. Later in the film, when she catches one of her workers helping the mother of his child across the border, Mercedes has a change of heart and helps them into the United States, though still insisting they speak English.  

  

SOCIAL ANALYSIS

            John Sayles’ Lone Star, like the border town in which its set, deftly balances the line between the nuances of race and necessary revisionist history that allows for broader perspectives beyond just the anglicized “log line” of mythical heroes and patriots; a subject that has become increasingly salient in our current socio-political context, given the changes in Education law in Texas, Florida, Alabama, and Arkansas schools.

Public Schools and the necessity of Revisionist History

                 Early in Lone Star, Pilar is overseeing a small PTA meeting of the textbook committee to discuss course content in the school’s History class.  The white parents “express concern” with the changes that are being made to the course materials. The proposed curriculum, which add the perspectives of the indigenous and Mexican populations, conflict with the whitewashed colonialist version of history the parents are more familiar with, especially the differences between the legend and the reality of The Alamo. In this small scene, many of the white parents express fear about the potential dangers of changing history to be more inclusive, while using “the children” as justification for their position and a shield against criticism for their opinions.    

Some of this rhetoric includes the lines:

“History is written by the winners… its bragging rights.”

“It’s the way it happened vs. Propaganda.”

“It’s tearing down everything in our history that we fought and died for.”

“If we are talking about food or music, that’s ok. But when it comes to teaching children…” 

“We are just looking to provide children with a more complete picture” [Parent interrupts] “And that is what has to Stop!”

Almost Prophetic in its accuracy, many of these phrases and commentary on history could have been lifted from more recent debates over the teaching of history, diversity studies programs and Critical Race Theory (CRT).

The most recent reformation on inclusive teaching and an equitable understanding of history began back in 2010 with Arizona Bill 2281. This bill attempted to outlaw Chicano Studies programs in the wake of the Tea Party declaring a reformation on the election of President Barrack Obama as they tried to “take the country back.” This regressive politically fueled educational backslide continued in 2015 with the discovery of  a Texas geography Textbook that refers to Black slaves as  Immigrant “Workers.” With the election of Donald Trump the following year, there began a concerted effort to distance and deconstruct diversity programs across the country. In 2020, Donald Trump banned certain types of diversity training and in the wake of the Breonna Taylor and George Floyd Protest against police brutality, set his sights on Critical Race Theory.

Critical Race Theory (CRT), a multi-faceted theoretical framework in which multiple disciplines intersect, began in the field of Law to revive activism after the 1960’s Civil Rights Movement. From its inception, CRT recognizes the law as a type of knowledge that constructs and reinforces our understanding about race (Ray 2022).  Therefore, it also influences how race and racial power are constructed and distributed respectively.  This is done by allowing a critical examination and challenging the traditional epistemology. CRT’s focus is to upend the historical centrality and complicity of law in the upholding of white supremacy and the additional hierarchies (those based on gender, sexuality, class, age and disability) within the larger social structure.

The foundational components of CRT are as follows:

·         Race is a social construct.

·         Racism is a part of the social structure.

·         The understanding that there is little incentive to eradicate racism because those in power gain privilege in this system.

·         Differential racialization- The concept that identifies and explains how every single racial and ethnic group was marginalized and oppressed at one time throughout American history for the betterment of people in power.

·         Intersectionality. The valuing of the complicated entanglement of identity between race, class, gender, sexuality, disability and how they impact access to opportunities and resources.

·          Anti-Essentialism/ Anti Tokenism. This is the idea that there is no singular racial identity, and that people should not be called upon, or be considered representatives of their entire demographic identity group in which they belong.

·         There is importance in every racial and ethnic standpoint. All racial perspectives hold some insight into the understanding of racism.

In 2020, Donald Trump through an executive order, called Critical Race Theory “Unamerican” (Ray 2022). Almost immediately, Trump loyalists and other sycophantic shrills, emerged to carry this thinly veiled bigotry to unfathomable depths. The prime targets of this irrational incandescently incendiary ire were the foundational texts of Kimberlie Crenshaw, and more recent firebrands Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, Robin Deangelo and Ibram X. Kendi. Without often reading or understanding the text, elected lawmakers at the federal and state level became Donald Trump’s foot soldiers; attacking school curriculum, education leaders and even future Supreme Court Justices.

Ray (2022) portends that this attack against CRT later “metastasized into a series of broader nationalist attacks on who belongs in a multi racial democracy” (127). As of this writing, 29 states have either entered bills, or passed legislation attacking Diversity and Equity Initiatives (DEI), Ethnic and Diversity studies Programs, or anything they consider “anti-woke.”[Read as “anti-white”].   Some of the more egregious of these bills and laws came out of Texas and Florida, through the binary Sauronic mouthpieces of Governors Greg Abbot and Ron DeSantis.  Senate Bill 17 in Texas calls for a sweeping ban of DEI programing in public schools and universities, while eliminating race and gender based affirmative action initiatives. In Florida, the companion bills of Senate Bill 266 and House Bill 999 along with House Bill 7  have a litany of educational impacts:

House Bill 7:

·         Regulates how race issues can be taught in the K-20 educational system and imposes stiff sanctions for violations.

·         Bans Critical Race Theory

·         Schools can teach about slavery and the history of racial segregation and discrimination in an “age-appropriate manner,” but the instruction cannot “indoctrinate or persuade students to a particular point of view.”

·         Encourages the removal of any material that makes white people uncomfortable.

Senate Bill 266 and House Bill 999 go even further:

·         It demands a post tenure review policy for public institutions.[4]

·         Calls for the elimination of DEI programs.

Recently, Florida removed Sociology from the list of core courses for graduation at their public colleges and universities. As with Black studies programs in Alabama and Arkansas before it, one of the first steps in the elimination of a program, is eliminating its usefulness to students in obtaining degrees. Soon, as the number of students taking Sociology courses in Florida diminishes, low enrollment will be used as a justification for the dissolving of the program altogether. A fundamental part of Behavioral and Social Sciences, will soon evaporate in the “Sunshine State” because white people feel threatened. This epitomizes a white supremacist ideology.  

  According to Perez (2024), the irony of the parallels between these regressive educational restrictions and  John Sayles Lone Star culminated in 2021 when Texas passed the 1836 project. The brainchild of Gov. Abbot, the 1836 project establishes an advisory committee designed to promote the state’s history to Texas residents, largely through pamphlets given to people receiving driver’s licenses. Part of this project was also to promote the Christian heritage of the state as well as the suppression and removal of any material that is considered anti-patriotic to the state of Texas. Critics also fear that the law’s enforcement limits the way that race can be taught in schools.

Perez (2024) provides an example that incorporates the film Lone Star:

In July 2021, the Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin abruptly canceled a promotional event for the book Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth. In it the authors, Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Standford argue that the desire to preserve the institution of slavery served as a primary driver of Texas’s bid for independence- an idea that parallels the claim made in Lone Star by Danny Padilla (Jesse Borrego), a reporter covering the parent teacher meeting: “The men who founded [Texas] broke from Mexico because they needed Slavery to be legal to make a fortune in the cotton industry.” Pilar criticizes Danny’s claim as “a bit of an oversimplification.” But the incendiary reaction of an Anglo father, who sees Danny’s perspective as “propaganda,” reflects the deep investment many have in the prevailing views of the Alamo.

It is in these moments, Pop culture is not only soft power, but it is prophetic.

            3 Sheriffs, 3 forms of Racism

            As mentioned, Lone Star is set primarily within two time periods, the 1950’s and the 1990’s. During this time, there are three (possibly four) sheriffs of Frontera, Texas. Each of these men represent the historical perspective of racism at the time in which they were in power: Charlie Wade: the 1950’s, Buddy Deeds: the 1960’s through the 80’s, Sam Deeds: 1994-1996, and possibly Officer Ray beyond that.

            

            Prior to the Civil Rights movement of the 1950’s, racism, especially in small border towns, was overt in its manifestation. Overt Racism is a type of blatant, visible direct forms of racist beliefs (ideals), prejudice (assumptions), expressions (micro-aggressive language) and discrimination (actions) (Bonilla Silva 2021). This is often the type of racism that is individually focused, and therefore the easiest to both detect and to isolate. To call Charlie Wade a racist is an understated euphemism. He is a tyrannical egotistical white supremacist that embodies the capitalistic dehumanization of all people; especially those who are non-white. He is portrayed as not just the embodiment of this form of racism, but the personification of evil. His terrorism of nearly everyone in the town of Frontera, is designed to create a character that is undeserving of both empathy and compassion, given his fate. He regularly verbally accosts citizens and civilians, physically threatens them, brandishes weapons at them, and through police discretion, under the guise of justifiable homicide, murders people in cold blood.

In film, for racism to be correctly called as such, even in the 1990’s, required that the kinds of racist exploits depicted on screen, be such an exaggerated caricature that everyone in the audience would be able to identify it. The use of such an extreme image of racism, also gave the white audience the opportunity to distance themselves from any possible form of racist cognitive dissonance. In the case of Lone Star, by having Charlie Wade be the epitome of a racist white devil, it makes other white people’s drastically less intense form(s) of racism unrecognizable by comparison. This is played out in the context of the film when Buddy Deeds takes over as sheriff.

The power dynamics of Buddy Deeds reign as sheriff, personifies the transition from overt racism to covert racism after the Civil Rights Movement. Covert Racism is the invisible, indirect forms of racism that are often imperceptible. These forms of racism move beyond the individual into structural forms, where racism has been normalized and baked into the social structure through social institutions’ operation and by the culture that surrounds them (Ray 2022).  An additional aspect of this form of racism is the notion of “colorblindness”.  A term usually misused by liberals and (other) white allies to connote the lack of importance of race in the assessment of one’s character, “colorblindness” can also refer to the labeling of the unequal racist structure as egalitarian by assuming that it is applied to everyone equally, thereby making any visible disadvantages felt by people of color as being the result of an individual character flaw rather than something more systemic. This results in the obfuscation of the unequal structure. In the film, because Buddy Deeds did not overtly threaten or murder the townspeople of Frontera, not only were his forms of institutional structural racism undetected or ignored, but he was deified, becoming a legend in the eyes of the town, because he wasn’t as big as a monster by comparison. However, Buddy would regularly manipulate people of color to get their vote (to stay in power). He also dammed up a river to create a lake that cut off water to an entire town of mostly migrant people; and utilized migrant prison labor to build personal and community projects. There was even some indication that Buddy Deeds would have advised against interracial dating in the town[5]. Buddy was a hero, only because Charlie was a ghoul.

Sam Deeds is supposed to be a modern white ally, except his allyship only moves as far as his own self-interests motivate him. At the beginning of the film, Sam does not believe the hype about his father. This lack of belief is not motivated by a desire for the truth, but by the desire to prove his father wrong and to expose him as a fraud, vindicating Sam for a personal slight his father inflicted on him when he was a child. Sam cares about the displaced Mexican people, the use of prison labor, and the restrictions on interracial dating in the town only when he is still mad at his father. When Sam finds out the truth about Charlie Wade’s disappearance, Buddy’s relationship with Mercedes Cruz and Pilar’s true parentage, the value of exposing Buddy’s use of systemic racism to maintain power, is no longer personally advantageous; therefore, he ignores it. This ignorance is illustrated when Hollis tells Sam that his father will be blamed for Charlie Wade’s murder.  Sam blandly replies: “Buddy Deeds is a legend. I think he can handle it.” Thus, rather than white allyship, Sam represents the average non marginalized voter in the United States.

For many non-marginalized people (upper class, white, male, heterosexual, able bodied individuals), their care and compassion rarely extend past the people in their own private lives, and on the rare chance that it does, their outrage is often performative. The truth of this is evidenced by the way that many people do not fight for the social justice of others if they are not personally benefiting or impacted through relatives, friends or loved ones. Secondarily, these same people perceive a protest with the same importance and enthusiasm as a form of entertainment. In fact, those with one or many roads of access to power and stability often perceive civil disobedience as just another form of “activity “to stave off boredom.  This alludes to the way that the social structure socializes non-marginalized people (especially) into a practiced apathy that allows the system to continue without being challenged.

This apathy, motivated by convenience and self-preservation, becomes many people’s default setting. Our individualist capitalist culture has conditioned its people to be self-motivated, to see relationships as transactional and to acquire as much power, money, and status to generate social stability. However, that stability comes at the cost of collectivist unity and social solidarity. The more a system grants access to opportunities and resources for success, the less likely those that are granted access will want to change it; self-preservation, they have too much invested in the system to truly seek its change. Similarly, the quickest pathway to social apathy is through the development and maintenance of routines that anesthetize people into ritualized states of being which mirror lucid dreaming (Weber 2019). Thus, any break in such a routine is equivalent to shaking someone awake, which accounts for the myriad of examples of irrational outbursts by privileged people over the smallest inconvenience or disruption. They don’t like the world being reflected back at them. They’d rather be asleep.

We are only given a glimpse of the potential fourth sheriff of Frontera, Ray, the town’s first non-white law enforcement leader. While many of the white townspeople lament this inevitability, believing that it will be detrimental to their way of living, (inconvenience) one conversation with Sam Deeds dispels this racially charged unsubstantiated fear. When Ray makes Sam aware that Ray is being groomed to be the Next Sheriff by the white business leaders in town, Sam asks Ray what he thinks about needing a new jail (something that Sam currently opposes). After Ray gives Sam a perfectly political non-answer, Sam snarkily remarks that he thinks Ray will make a great Sheriff. This indicates that the powerful white business owners of Frontera plan on propping up a person of color in the position of sheriff to maintain, and with the new jail project, possibly expand their influence over the town; Ray being the tokenism that masks white supremacist power and authority underneath.  

 

Blackness in Lone Star  

            One of the central narrative themes of Lone Star revolves around fathers and sons. While the focus of the film’s engagement is on the relationship between Buddy and Sam Deeds, the film also elliptically includes the pair of Otis and Delmore Payne, through which the film engages with Blackness in the US and the often-forgotten Black indigenous population. In the present narrative, Otis (Ron Canada) is introduced in the film as one of the power brokers in Frontera. He is colloquially referred to as “The Mayor of Dark Town” who provides a safe haven for Black people in the border town including soldiers at a nearby base. His recounting of his experiences with Charlie Wade when he was younger becomes important to unraveling the mystery of Charlie’s disappearance. Delmore (Joe Morton) is introduced separately as the new Commanding Officer of the Army base that is slowly getting phased out. His introductory speech to his soldiers confirms that he is a tough but fair man, by the book. It isn’t revealed until later in the film that the two are related, and only through dialogue and exposition do we understand the nature of their relationship, which is strained. While they share little screen time, the exploration of Blackness is through these men’s relationship and interactions with two other younger Black characters: Otis with his grandson, Chet (Eddie Robinson), and Delmore with one of his soldiers, Athena Johnson (Chandra Wilson).

            Regardless of the strained relationship between his father and his grandfather, Chet Payne seeks out a relationship with Otis when they first arrive in town. Through a series of conversations, Otis gives Chet a brief history of Black Seminoles; escaped slaves who fled to Florida, a free Spanish settlement at the time,  and fought against colonialization. Historically, similar experiences were quite common. Slave revolts were often bolstered by the indigenous population, and once free, former slaves would join native people in various assaults on the American Colonies, although some Southern Indigenous People were also slaveholders. The primary reason for this dissonance is the Indigenous people’s rejection of white supremacy, yet still associating blackness with slavery (Kendi 2016).  While hypocrifully incongruent, the fight against injustice often makes for some unlikely and strange bedfellows.  As the conversation continues, Sayles, as a writer, juxtaposes the importance of familial relationships, with how biology was used to dehumanize Black slaves as being literally perceived as less human (3/5^th- “one drop rule”) with Otis’s statement to Chet “Blood only means what you let it.”(Sayles 2024). Perez (2024) feels the weight of the history of that line, perceiving the untangling of history as akin to bloodletting: “the act can be healthy cleansing, liberating, or it can open an old wound, causing pain, anew.”

  This bloodletting is again invoked when Chet talks about Delmore being an overbearing father. “It’s like with each new medal he had to ratchet himself tighter, and that went all the way down the chain, to us.” (Sayles 2024). While Chet blames his father’s disposition on Otis’s absence from Delmore’s life, this also could be a function of living in racism and institutions of white supremacy. The most sociological part of an epigenetic argument for the impact of racism on the human body is the overall effect of stress it causes, called “weathering” , and the arc of Black decision making that has to account for racism. From deciding when to let your kids drive, to taking a particular job, racism permeates Black people’s lives, minds, and bodies. In this context, Delmore’s actions can be understood. Add to this the complication of the tokenism of a Black man in Military authority, and his actions are not just understandable, but justified.

Delmore’s disciplined demeanor is further explored and cracks through his conversations with Athena Johnson, a soldier under his command, who was a witness to a shooting at Otis’s club. Athena’s drug use at the club threatens her place in the Army. It is also alluded to that Athena joined the Army to get out of an economically impoverished, and possibly dangerous neighborhood. This is representative of Black people being historically overrepresented in poverty rates, and one avenue open to Black People to achieve a middle-class lifestyle is to join the Military and access the benefits afforded to them by the GI bill (Desmond 2023, Rosthstein 2017). Consequently, this also gave the Military Black soldiers that they could use as cannon fodder…an action that has historical precedence.

In the film, Athena clearly articulates this:

• Delmore Payne: With your attitude, Private, I'm surprised you want to stay in the service.
• Athena Johnson: I do, sir.
• Delmore Payne: Because it's a job?
• Athena Johnson: Outside... it's... it's such a mess. Um... It's...
• Delmore Payne: Chaos. Why do you think they let us in on the deal?
• Athena Johnson: 'Cause they got people to fight - Arabs, yellow people, whatever. Might as well use us?

A culture of White Supremacy is illustrated when, to escape economic strife and drug addiction, one of the limited avenues a Black person has for success is to join the military; thereby using their bodies to the benefit of the US government, with the promise that after your time is served, you will achieve financial stability. This is done with a duplicitous lack of acknowledgment that those same conditions that lead Black people to join were created through the compounding historical practices of slavery, sharecropping, the elimination and erosion of black wealth, and the criminalizing of nonviolent drug offences leading to mass incarceration.

 

CONCLUSION

            John Sayles’ Lone Star is an independent cinematic masterpiece. It weaves social commentary and complex themes with the pathos of a drama that grips you until its final frame. A lot of the arguments covered in this essay remain timely, in part because Sayles was interested in social justice issues at a time when many other mainstream auteurs were not, and because history rhymes. Salient social commentary is renewed whenever there is a novel context, usually sparked by a current event. This film, like a lot of pop culture, will remain a digestible way to engage with these ideas without full commitment to social Justice; but with a little luck, it can become a gateway.    

 

REFERENCES

Balko, Radley 2021.  The Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces. New York: Public Affairs.

Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo 2021. Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America 6^th eds. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.

Desmond, Mathew 2023. Poverty, By America. New York: Crown Publishing

Goodman, Carly 2021. “Unmaking the Nation of Immigrants: How John Tanton’s Network of Organizations Transformed Policy and Politics.” In A Field Guide to White Supremacy Kathleen Belew and Ramon A. Guitierrez. Oakland: University of California Press.

Kendi, Ibram X. 2016. Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America New York: Bold Type Books.

Perea, Juan F. 2021. “Policing the Boundaries of the White Republic: From Slave Codes to Mass Deportations.” In A Field Guide to White Supremacy Kathleen Belew and Ramon A. Guitierrez. Oakland: University of California Press.  

 Perez, Domino Rene 2024. “Lone Star: Past is Present.” In Current. New York: Criterion Collection. Retrieved on 4/26/24 Retrieved at: https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/8358-lone-star-past-is-present

Ray, Victor 2022. On Critical Race Theory: Why it Matters and Why You Should Care New York: Random House.

Rothstein, Richard 2017. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How the Government Segregated America New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation

Sayles, John 2024. Lone Star. New York: Criterion Collection

Weber, Max 2019.  Economy and Society A New Translation Cambridge. Harvard University Press.  

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[1] At the time of writing this sentence, Rodger Corman was still alive. RIP the legend

[2] It is unclear as to what “voluntary” means in this context. Preferably there needs to be a distinction between willingness and “not resisting” while the word implies the former, it is more likely that the legal definition also includes the latter.  

[3] colloquially referred to as just “The Border” because it is the focus of immigration policy and thinly veiled white supremacist ire

[4] It is heavily implied that this is implemented as a witch hunt for Professors with tenure protection who teach about structural racism and institutional sexism amongst other topics considered “Woke”

[5]  This could be a case of the unreliable narrator given that the individual in question may be referencing the way Buddy Deeds did not want his son, Sam, dating Pilar, assuming that it was because of their racial differences when the reality was that they both have Buddy Deeds as a biological father.