It sought to project an image of a “new” South, one defined by growing cities like Houston and Atlanta, not by the images of Bull Connor and the Klan. As historians like Bruce Schulman and Jack T Kirby have argued, the South began to take on an outsize role in American politics, society, and culture during the 1970s. Unlike Star Wars, however, Smokey and the Bandit represented a milestone in the history of the American South. Nowadays comic books, once considered the lowest form of lowbrow culture, provide the material for the biggest grossing motion pictures. Gordon creature feature done with greater care and professionalism, Star Wars and Smokey and the Bandit paved the way to the box office present. Following the runaway success of Jaws, which was basically a Burt I. Most importantly, both Star Wars and Smokey and the Bandit were genre pictures-space adventure and hot rod movie respectively-in genres typically assigned to “B movie” status. (Luke bulls-eyeing womp rats in his T-16 is the space equivalent of squirrel hunting.) Both involve a woman being saved from the clutches of a hate-filled authority figure by rebels. (Admit it, Han and Chewie are basically space truckers.) Both have rural hicks as heroes.
Both feature extended, masterfully executed chase scenes. Overshadowed in memory by Star Wars, the other big hit of that summer, it shared some DNA with that much more idolized movie-cum-phenomenon/religion.
The film I am talking about, of course, is Smokey and the Bandit. In the summer of 1977 a movie hit the multiplexes, twin cinemas, and dwindling drive-ins of America like a storm, making over a hundred million dollars (in 1977 dollars at that!) and leaving a lasting mark on the pop cultural landscape.
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