Yes, this is dumb, but it’s a slow evening.
So I read this over at one of my favorite blogs, Pam’s House Blend: one of the Christian “news” sites is running a story about Ben Jones being upset about the new Dukes of Hazzard
movie because, as he puts it, the Dukes never really hurt anybody and
the good guys always won in the end whereas the movie is, one would
assume, largely a study in cleavage. In the comments to Pam’s
post, a commenter took great pains to dissect the notion that the Dukes
were good role models or that the show - the old one - had any
redeeming value.
OK, I have to step up to the plate on that one. I say The Dukes of Hazzard had a strong and very important message, and like my love of Dawn of the Dead as the 2nd best ’70s/’80s transition movie ever made, I will defend this one in detail.
I do not believe that we have to look for a “moral” in everything we
watch, but if one chooses that as the crime to prosecute I think Dukes of Hazzard has a respectable defense to be assembled. My comment is below:
I’m afraid I have to disagree with sticker-shock. Yes, it had
“light sexuality” in every episode, and yes, the town was controlled by
greedy & corrupt locals. But the show’s heroes, the actual
protagonists, were of high moral calibre. The show had a very
strong subversive element. The Duke Boys and Girl - raised and
living in (oh yes, I will say it) a non-traditional family -
generally saved the day by figuring out a clever way to get around the
arbitrary and unfair rules imposed on them by their local authorities
and, in so doing, set right some otherwise tragic misdeed. They
had no qualm with those whose religion, skin color or sex were other
than their own and they would work to aid anyone in need without first
making sure they fit any profile of what was acceptable or unacceptable
in their local culture. Also, in an era when the token woman on
an “adventure” show would be nothing but eye candy, Daisy was a very
powerful female character who was often smarter than the Dukes, often
more clever and completely unafraid of her own sexual power. She
was much more than just a sex object - she was bringing down villains
in her own right. As a relic of the past, it’s easy to view her
as nothing more than talking T&A. At the time, she was about
as close to Buffy as the ’70s weekly adventure series could get.
Yes, there were crimes in every episode, commited by villains and
heroes alike, but the Dukes always had fairness as their guiding
principle, not the letter of the law, and their infractions were always
more minor than the wrong they sought to right. It was more
important to them to see someone else saved from suffering or given a
fair chance than to say they had never gotten a wreckless driving
ticket.
As for ol’ Cooter, he’s a former Congressman, yes. He’s a progressive Democrat. Last year he wrote a pretty fabulous editorial piece
about Zell Miller after Emperor Millpatine’s performance at the
RNC. He described Zell as “Zig-Zag Zell” and derided the thought
that anyone could take Zell seriously anymore after Jones spent his
whole life watching Zell switch positions at will in an effort to climb
the ladder of Georgia’s government.
Are there still Dukes of Hazzard fans? I hesitate to call myself
a fan - I’ve tried watching it again a few times and had to do so
through half-closed fingers - but as a child I was fascinated by a show
set in a place that looked like the place where I lived.
As a teen, learning just how corrupt were a lot of the local authority
figures around me, I would remember their example. I don’t TiVo
it every day, now, but I’m still a fan of the strong moral messsage of the show and, clearly, CMT thinks it’s worth rebroadcast.
It sounds corny, sure, but the moral of the story in nearly every
episode was that even if the local sheriff or the county commissioner
are on the take there are still ideals worth fighting for -
worth going to jail for, if necessary - and the greater crime would be
to sit idly by and let corruption wash away everything one values about
the place one makes a home. Their whole daring-do schtick never
made them rich and it ruined a few cop cars, but at the end of every
episode the message was clear: do what makes the world a fairer
place, reach out to another in need, and let no puffed-up blowhards in
fancy cars or wearing shiny badges or holding big sacks of cash coerce
you to do otherwise. If you ask me, very post-Nixon.
Which message would you rather have broadcast in your living
room? That, or the “lessons” in yet another episode of The Simple Life?
So okay, here I am, crazy queer leftist, defending The Dukes of Hazzard on
one of my favorite blogs. What a strange day. At any rate,
“Cooter” is no conservative and I have to agree with him that the
movie’s message will almost certainly be inferior to that of the
show. One will tell kids that it’s a good idea to stand up for
equality and thumb their nose at corrupt and arbitrary tyranny every
chance they get, while the other will probably say they should try to
get laid as often as possible while on the run from the cops. One
is a moral; the other, amoral. To me, it’s as simple as that. (more…)