Search www.satyamag.com

Satya has ceased publication. This website is maintained for informational purposes only.

To learn more about the upcoming Special Edition of Satya and Call for Submissions, click here.

back issues

 

August 2003
Guest Editorial: Sometimes You Just Need to go “Billy Jack”!

By Lawrence Carter-Long

 


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...

 

 


© STEALTH TECHNOLOGIES INC.
All contents are copyrighted. Click here to learn about reprinting text or images that appear on this site.