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 19th 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 20th 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 26th
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:
·
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 (3/5th- “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 6th 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.
[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.
