American Political Theory

Lone Star

I hope you all enjoyed Lone Star. It's a favorite of mine, as are many of John Sayles' films (I especially recommend Matewan).

You may have been wondering why I included this film in this course. I thought I'd try to explain. Feel free to use this discussion thread to discuss any of these themes or any other aspects of this film.

Rio county, where the film takes place, can be understood as a microcosm for the challenge of the construction of a political community. Most early settlers in America came from Europe, and in particular European countries in which communities had grown into what they currently are for centuries. One of the great challenges of American political life was to construct a political community out of a number of different cultural and political communities who find themselves in close proximity to each other.

Of course, as with Rio county in Lone Star, these different communities didn't just suddenly find themselves living together--they came to be in the same place through a contentious , troubled history. That history--and the question of how to understand it and what to do about it--is one of the primary difficulties for moving forward as a community. (See, for example, the tensions at the history curriculum meeting early in the film). No one's quite willing to deny that great wrongs were commited in the construction of this community (it is telling that no Native Americans appear to be present at this meeting, and they may well have suffered the most significant and systematic harm of any group!)

The politics of simmering racial tension in it's post civil-rights era are on full display in this film, and what I'd like to emphasize about that is the complexity of it all. It's not black vs. white or privileged vs. underprivileged or anything that neat and simple. A theme of the film is the way in which racial groups are subject to internal tensions as well. Consider the encounters between a successful, disciplined, conservative black military officer and the private who tests positive for drug use, and the look of utter confusion on his face when she tells him "It's their country" (or, for that matter, consider the wide gap between the same military officer and his own father). These people have hardly anything in common with their view of what it means to be black in America. Or consider Mercedes "En Ingles, Enrique, En Ingles" Cruz. Her most important group identity, it seems, is her membership in the chamber of commerce. At the core of her identity is a conflict--her business needs and has always needed labor from undocumented immigrants, but she denies it and calls the Border Patrol at the first sign of stirrings on the Rio Grande.

Add into the mix Otis' mini-museum of the Black Seminole trackers (who went from fighting the US for their land in Florida to later joining the Army and hunting down Indians in their capacity as Army trackers) and we've got a remarkably complex racial picture. A theme that helps us make sense of this complexity is "re-invention." The black Seminoles were reinvented as an elite army group. Mercedes Cruz enters the country as an illegal immigrant herself, and later reinvents herself as a pillar of the local business community (having a long-term affair with the man who everyone mistakenly believed killed her young husband's murderer in the interim). Our protaganist is approaching 40 and still trying to figure out how to invent himself as someone distinct and different from his imposing father.

America was understood, even in it's early phase of constitutional contruction, as an invented community--intentionally so. This means, for many people, breaking the rules that governed communities and relationships in the past. That's why Sam and Pilar's discussion at the end of the movie is so important and in it's own weird way quintessentially American--they're contemplating a reinvention of the rules that represents a radical break from the past, to say the least.

I've got more to say, but I've got to go. Enjoy your weekend and let me know your thoughts on the movie or my comments in the thread below. Perhaps I'll post more on the film later, as well as Monday's readings.

posted by David Watkins @ 4:30 PM