The South simply needs to replace its old, inaccurate story with a better account of its past and present.
There must be a better way to tell the truth about the southern past, to start to dismantle white supremacy while allowing Americans who live in today’s multicultural South the pride of place that all people everywhere need and deserve. It would be depressing to live in a part of the country whose pride was so humbled that all it had to offer the world was apologies and repeated acts of atonement, like Germany after denazification. Communities across the South are correct to start taking them down at a more rapid pace.īut what comes next? Without its old story, will the South be left with no story at all?Įmpty pedestals from New Orleans to Richmond represent a vacuum that people will fill, if not in real life, then at least in their minds. Today, white people across the nation and around the South are finally learning what most of their black neighbors have known since Appomattox: statues of Confederate generals are not monuments to heritage but symbols of hate. The myth of the Lost Cause was a lie that justified continuing white supremacy and helped bring on 150 years of Jim Crow, lynching and the Klan’s reign of terror over black southerners. Lee nobly fought to preserve a doomed but beautiful way of life where kind masters watched over contented slaves, where mint juleps were drunk on marbled porticos by gallant colonels and belles in hoop skirts and where the air was scented with magnolia flowers. And what bad history it turned out to be - the “Lost Cause” myth in which latter-day cavaliers like Robert E. Unfortunately, back then, the winners let the losers write history for once. The South has faced this same dilemma about foundational myths since Reconstruction. “Does the place begin to disappear when its foundational myths are challenged?” “Is it possible to love a place and to also disclaim its history?” asks the New Yorker in a story about icons of the Old South coming down.
Avoid the two vastly inferior sequels.Jackie Gleason and Burt Reynolds in Smokey and the Bandit (1977). A good choice for those who want to relive the glory days of CB rebels, long sideburns, plaid western shirts, and black Trans-Ams with "screaming chicken" decals on the hood.
Stunt coordinator-turned-director Hal Needham stages the action competently, and the actors, who supposedly improvised much of the dialogue, obviously enjoy themselves. Sally Field, as a runaway bride who thumbs her way into Reynolds' car, brings charm and a welcome sense of irony to the macho proceedings. The tissue-thin plot has good ole boy pals The Bandit (Reynolds) and Cletus (a surprisingly good Jerry Reed) running a load of Coors cross-country on a tight deadline while trying to avoid an assortment of less-than-bright cops, led by pompous blowhard Buford T. One of the first films to tap into the anti-authoritarian aspects of the Citizen's Band (CB) radio craze, "Smokey" is basically a movie-length car chase and a pleasantly insipid slice of late-'70's Americana.
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