August
2003
Guest
Editorial: Sometimes You Just Need to go “Billy Jack”!
By Lawrence Carter-Long
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She was called “God’s Gift of Sunshine,” but you wouldn’t
know it by looking at her. Blinking and sullen, the little Indian girl’s
face was covered in white flour, which had been dumped on her face
and
therefore made her worthy of being served.
The kids—a motley crew of Native Americans, cast-offs and runaways—had
dared to enter the store in an attempt to buy ice cream. Like the counter
sit-ins of the South, they climbed on stools and waited. The store
owner,
a white man behind the counter refused to serve their kind. In the
midst of the stand-off, a group of cocky, younger white guys arrived.
Their
ringleader laughed, mockingly suggesting he had the perfect solution.
He took a scoop of flour and poured it down the face of a teenage girl;
then approached Sunshine.
Another young man, a pacifist who had risen to the girl’s defense
and attempted to leave to avoid further violence, was doubled over after
repeated punches to the stomach. He had flour dumped on his head as
well. The chuckling perpetrators joked that the kids waiting at the
counter were now “white” and, as such, could be served
ice cream.
Outside the store window, a jeep pulls into view and parks. The attackers
pause, suddenly nervous. The jeep’s driver steps inside. After
surveying the scene before him, he sighs deeply, rubs his tired eyes
and shakes his head in disbelief.
“I just want you to know,” the man says in a low, exasperated
voice, “I try…I really try to be nonviolent like the pacifists.
But when I think of the years this girl will have to carry around the
savagery of this moment in her memory...” He pauses, his voice
cracking, more emotional with each word.
“I...just...go...BESERK!” He barks, as the biggest assailant,
aptly nicknamed Dinosaur, is karate-chopped at the knees before crashing
through the plate glass window.
When reviewing my personal “aha” moments; those seminal
events when the flare of awareness first dawned on my consciousness;
it was after watching this scene from the movie Billy Jack I
made the conscious decision to be one of the “good guys”—at
the innately wise and still inquisitive age of six.
Numerous other factors shaped the focus and direction of my activism—and
indeed, my life—but it wasn’t philosophy that introduced
me to bigotry, injustice and prejudice. It was a movie. Yes, a movie
that first awakened me to the importance of fighting for what you believe
in. Long before I knew enough about history to ask “What Would
Gandhi Do?”, a movie first broke my heart and fueled my activist
indignation. More importantly, the movie described above afforded me,
at the tender age of six, a potent understanding of how powerful philosophical
concepts can be when they manifest as action.
When the film opens, the mysterious Billy Jack—a half-Indian/half-white
ex-Green Beret, who wants nothing more to be left alone—confronts
a group of good ol’ boys determined to illegally slaughter wild
horses for dog food on Indian land. As the movie continues, and controversies
escalate, Billy finds himself at the epicenter of clashing values that
eventually explodes between the peace-loving “Freedom School” and
the privileged white guys struggling to keep control of the nearby
town.
Made in 1971, Billy Jack was made for $350k, and became the
largest grossing independent film in history, bringing in $98 million.
The film shamelessly capitalizes on late-60s anti-establishment ideas
about peace and war, the slaughter of innocent creatures, the rape
of
society (both figuratively and literally) and the explosive impact
of racism. Billy’s tortured struggle between the longing to live
up to nonviolent ideals, or simply throwing up his hands as if to say,
“Screw it…” and kicking the bejeezus out of the jerks
he encounters is timeless. A struggle, I suspect, many activists identify
with.
I rewatched Billy Jack while preparing this editorial and
was struck by the sense of…inevitability the film has. Immediately
following the pivotal scene above, Billy seems to know what’s
in store for him when he heads out for a showdown with the local town
boss and his cronies. He’s outnumbered, outmatched and is certain
to get beaten up himself if he follows through with the scenario he
finds himself engaged in, but he goes anyway. When the local baddie
asks him if he’s sure he wants to do this, Billy responds, “It
doesn’t appear I have much choice…” as he glances
at the dozen or so men now surrounding him.
Then, just because he can, Billy kicks the town boss—who, not
coincidentally, is the father of the bully who poured flour on the kids
in the ice cream parlor—upside his hateful head.
It still brings a tear to my eye over 30 years later.
The cathartic release of watching the bad guys get what is coming to
them is the cinematic equivalent of instant gratification. On a deeper
level, even though Billy knows violence is not the ideal response (and
he is confronted by the consequences of his actions later in the film)
he is caught up in the anger, the outrage of witnessing injustice—and,
because he can, he lashes out.
I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I felt that way sometimes
myself. But, thankfully, all of us can, if we try, manage to feel anger
and, unlike my film hero, choose how we respond to the injustice around
us. It was not therapy, not philosophy, not debate, which first helped
me realize that important point—it was a movie.
Moving Pictures
Imagine sitting in a theatre nearly 90 years ago and marveling at a
moving picture for the first time. Pictures that, until that point,
had been fixed; frozen in time; dependent on either our imaginations
or background knowledge to bring them to life. The potential to stir
audiences with film—or in more modern times, video—is impossible
to gauge with any kind of accuracy, but the influence motion pictures
have on our lives is undeniable.
D. W. Griffith first sparked cinematic controversy with 1915’s Birth of A Nation,
a racist retelling of the Reconstruction era from a segregationist,
white supremacist point-of-view. In a strange,
controversial twist, Griffith’s film was the first ever screened
at the White House. President Woodrow Wilson added fuel to an already
explosive situation when he remarked the film was “like writing
history with lightning” and “my only regret is that it
is all so terribly true.”
Protests met Nation in many cities. Groups called for boycotts
and state censorship boards, which were rare at the time, organized
to deal with complaints. Still, Birth of a Nation’s $18 million
box office enshrined the movie as the highest grossing in history for
over two decades. Soon, images not only moved (movies, get it?), but
talked as well. And another means for entertainment, education—even
propaganda was realized.
Spend some time reviewing how movies have influenced history (both
the world’s and your own) and it’s likely you’ll
never watch any film the same way again.
This issue of Satya examines the ability movies have to shape
our awareness, our thinking and, ultimately, our behavior. Perhaps by
utilizing and developing our own moving pictures, we too can influence
society in ways that incite and educate. Not only because of the actions
we encounter on the screen, but also due to the shift that occurs internally
when the stories we witness, in turn, move us.
Lawrence Carter-Long is a regular contributor
to Satya. Among his prized possessions is a Japanese movie poster for
Billy
Jack, autographed for him personally by the film’s writer, director
and star, Tom Laughlin. Despite his quest to remain nonviolent in the
face of injustice, Lawrence still has the urge to go “Billy Jack” almost
daily. To date, therapy and copious amounts of Tofutti have managed
to quell, but not yet vanquish the desire. Rumor has it he secretly
hopes they never do...
