Smokey and the Bandit

When I first began teaching in my current position some 31 years ago, America's youth, or at least the youth of the American South, were entrenched in a country-western phase. Boys sported moustaches and wore wide brim Western hats and wide leather belts. Trans-Ams were the rage. Girls had big hair. Chewing tobacco, unfortunately, was in style. My wife and I attended a Doug Kershaw concert, and the "yee-haws" echoing back and forth across the coliseum were deafening. Partially responsible for this phase was the film Smokey and the Bandit (1977), starring Burt Reynolds and Sally Fields. My recollection, which admittedly might have become exaggerated over the years, is that the film played for at least a year in the town where we live. It was wildly popular.

Another cultural phenomenon from those years was Coors beer, manufactured in Colorado and not yet distributed east of the Mississippi River. Because of its unavailability in the eastern United States, Coors beer acquired a mythic reputation—manufactured from the pure clear waters of the Rocky Mountains, better tasting than any beer in the world, etc. People who traveled to Colorado would bring back cases of the beer for themselves and for friends. In Smokey and the Bandit, the Bandit is hired to transport four hundred crates of Coors back east. Supposedly such importation was illegal--at least in the film it was--but in reality such transporting of beer was entirely legal.

All of this is to suggest that in its day Smokey and the Bandit and its two lesser sequels were a cultural phenomenon in and of themselves, and part of a larger cultural phenomenon that had to do with the American South, the election of Jimmy Carter, the ascendancy into mythic realms of CB radios and truck drivers, and of course the career of Burt Reynolds, who during the 70s and 80s specialized in good ol' Southern boy roles in such films as Gator, White Lightning, The Longest Yard, W. W. and the Dixie Dance Kings, Deliverance, and others.

Early on Smokey and the Bandit establishes the main character's profession as a "bandit," one that exists outside the normal boundaries of law and order. Although his real name is "Bo Darville," he is hardly ever referred to as anything other than "Bandit" or "the Bandit"—his CB handle. The use of bandit—as opposed to criminal, outlaw, or crook—suggests facility of movement, a tendency to feint and parry, to flirt with lawlessness as opposed to rebelling against it, and as opposed to outright hoodlumism. This is banditry in the sense of Robin Hood, in the sense of moonshiners who insisted on breaking the law and manufacturing their product simply because they felt compelled to do so by the fact of the law that demanded they should not. We can recall here the specific example of the film Thunder Road (1958), where resistance to law and order becomes a matter of principle for the bootlegging character Lucas Doolin played by Robert Mitcham.

In Smokey and the Bandit, banditry has given the Bandit legendary status. He is known across the southern regions of the nation, at least among those who drive trucks and listen to CB radios, for his exploits—for the most part these exploits go unexplained, but we can guess what they were by what happens in this film. Of course, as the film begins, it appears that the Bandit has either retired or been co-opted or both. He is appearing as a paid attraction at a stock car fair, and we first see him lolling in a hammock, apparently sleeping beneath the western-style hat that covers his face. The film implies that the Bandit has given up his wild days, but the prospect of driving 1800 miles in 22 hours, hauling 400 crates of Coors beer back from Texas, and earning $80,000 for his efforts lures him from his lethargy.

Regardless of the mild and benign connotations of banditry, a bandit is still a bandit, a renegade individual at odds with the law. What defines this Bandit, making him both the hero and the erstwhile moral center of the film, is what he opposes. One aspect of the opposition is the law that forbids importation of Coors Beer. In fact, such a law did not exist when the film was made, or at any time before or after, but in the film the law helps place the Bandit in the same league as other purveyors of illegal goods that the general public desires: moonshine, tax-free tobacco, marijuana, other drugs. Even though these substances may be forbidden and even dangerous, they make the public happy, and the Bandit stands up for public gratification. A more obvious aspect of the opposition is Smokey, Sheriff Buford T. Justice, played in the film by Jackie Gleason in an excessive and over-the-top example of flagrant overacting.

Although the Bandit is broadly portrayed by Bert Reynolds, he still seems an occupant of a real world. Justice, on the other hand, is a cartoon caricature on the same level as any number of characters from the Lil Abner comic strip, though less realistic. The ironically named Sheriff Justice is boorish, corrupt, racist, venal, vain, and wholly without scruples. His ineptness, along with that of others around him, especially his son, mitigates to an extent his numerous character flaws. Justice pursues the Bandit not because he is transporting illegal beer over the state border, or for reckless driving, but because the Bandit has picked up along the way the would-have-been bride of Justice's son. She has decided not to marry, and Justice intends not to allow her to get away with this affront to his honor. As the Bandit constantly outwits and outdrives Justice, the insult to his authority and character becomes all the more irksome, and Justice's resolve strengthens as a result.

Smokey and the Bandit operates within the Southern tradition of tall tales, ring-tailed roarers, and exaggerated humor. Old 19^th century Southern humor emanated from the margins separating the frontier from more civilized regions—or from the memory of those regions, since much old Southern humor was written well after the frontier had receded. In 1977 the frontier is long gone. Highways, country roads, and rural areas in general have taken on the role of the vanished frontier. Instead of the hypocritical parsons and repressed elderly widows who populate old Southern humor, Smokey offers the character of Smokey himself—Sheriff Buford T. Justice--a corrupt law enforcement official. Two cultural and historical backgrounds affected the conception of Sheriff Justice's character. In 1977 the United States was still weathering the shock of the Watergate scandal and the resignation of President Richard Nixon. Georgia's former governor Jimmy Carter won election to the White House in part by appealing to the national desire for recovery and moral rectitude in the wake of the scandal. Politics in general was tainted with a fresh stench of corruption, and although the stench did not emanate from any specific geographical region, it was easy enough to focus on the American South as a place where corruption in law enforcement and government was more than familiar. The South's 20^th century legacy of demagoguery and racist leaders helped encourage this tendency. The 1949 film All the King's Men focused on this very topic, and numerous films about the American South feature corrupt politicians and demagogues. In his novel The Mansion (1959) William Faulkner satirized Southern politicians in the character of Senator Clarence Snopes, a bombastic and compromised demagogue. Faulkner also named two characters in his novel As I Lay Dying (1931) for corrupt Mississippi politicians. Sheriff Justice is simply one in a long line of corrupt Southern politicos. The populist film drama Walking Tall (1973) works against type in its portrayal of a Tennessee sheriff who risks and ultimately loses his life in his effort to combat crime and corruption in a small Tennessee town. There the exception serves to confirm the rule in the linkage of corruption and the American South.

Smokey and the Bandit does not argue that all Southern policemen are corrupt. To the contrary. An Arkansas sheriff in the film is African American, highly competent, and more than capable of doing his job. Buford T. Justice wonders "what the world is coming to" when he encounters the black sheriff, and this racist questioning is one of the factors that distinguishes Justice from other good and capable Southern policeman. It is a particular kind of Southern sheriff at which the film takes aim.

At most, we see only small towns in Smokey. Much of the action takes place on the highway, on back country dirty roads, and in rural regions of the states through which the Bandit and Cledus drive. The big Southern or American city—such as Birmingham or Atlanta or Charlotte—is merely an implied potential in the film. We know that no one like the Bandit could drive like he drives in the big city. It is the presence of the rural regions—the Bandit's territory—that allow his existence to begin with. In the city he would be an anachronism, and he'd be arrested as well. Moreover, many of the people who live in the rural countryside are allied in values and basic beliefs with the Bandit—they idolize and mythologize the Bandit because he acts for their beliefs and values.

Smokey and the Bandit followed by nearly a decade another Southern film, Easy Rider. That film portrayed the South as a brutal place of racism and oppression. The South in that film is the obverse of the freedom the two bikers seek for themselves. Other films of the late 60s and 70s also gave expression to a revolt against authority. In those films authority was vested in the U. S. government, or in conventional and conservative aspects of American society—such as the Southern states—in which respect for authority resided. Smokey perpetuates this distrust for authority, but reconfigures it in a significant way—authority now resides not in just any faceless law enforcement official but in a corrupt policeman, Sheriff Buford T, Justice. The film's opposition to authority is not opposition to an unpopular war but instead is opposition to corrupt authority that can arbitrarily trammel on the rights of the individual, and against purported laws that forbid the importation of a particular brand of beer.

The film is at its least interesting when it focuses on Justice, who is too much of a buffoon. Frankly, the film is not very interesting when it focuses on the Bandit's developing interest in Carrie, the escaped bride of Justice's son. In 1977, Reynolds and Sallie Fields were a romantic item, but from the perspective of 2007, wherein Fields shills for osteoporosis medicine and Reynolds struggles to keep his hair piece on straight, the power of three-decade old gossip has diminished. The film is at its best when Reynolds and his sidekick Cledus Snow (Jerry Reed) joke around together, drive fast, and engage in carefully scripted one-liners.