As a Yankee, born and bred in the heart of America’s elitist, communist, terrorist-embracing, tree-hugging sodomite wasteland (a.k.a. “Taxachusetts”), I grew up with a certain prejudiced view of the South that pretty much disappeared when I actually crossed the Mason-Dixon line for the first time. Driving cross-country with friend and Screengrab colleague (and Hick Flick scholar) Scott Von Doviak after college (and later relocating for a time to George W.’s old stomping ground of Austin, TX), I was pleasantly surprised to discover how generally nice and friendly the residents of the Confederacy seemed up close.
Now, back on the East Coast, the inescapable maelstrom of election coverage has got me shaking my fist at the Red States again on a daily basis...so I was pleasantly refreshed when my lovely Polish bride (in the midst of a recent spate of Dolly-mania) rented The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, which reminded me again of some of the nicer parts of Southern culture, while making me wonder afresh why, to paraphrase Rodney King, we can’t all just get along. Whorehouse, for those who’ve forgotten or never had any reason to know, is the story of the Chicken Ranch, a brothel tolerated (and frequented) by the citizens of a small Texas town for decades until a sanctimonious self-appointed TV crusader decides to improve his ratings by launching a campaign to shut the place down.
The laid-back, no-nonsense charm of the eccentric locals (and the deep-fried chemistry between Southern icons Burt Reynolds and the irreplaceable Dolly Parton) is a far cry from the typical closed-minded, dimwitted, backwards, racist, homophobic, sex-fearing redneck stereotype. In the happy singing, dancing world of Whorehouse, the characters are perfectly happy to live and let live, co-existing with an establishment that may not technically match their ideas of morality or legality, but where, as Parton cheerily warbles, there’s really “nothing dirty going on.”
That is, until Dom DeLuise’s glory-seeking, opportunistic muckraker makes an issue of it, forcing people to choose between their theoretical beliefs and the common sense reality of their day-to-day lives. Frustrated by the cognitive dissonance of the situation, Reynolds attempts to save the Chicken Ranch with the power of fact and logic: i.e., prostitution has existed since the dawn of time, and Parton’s quasi-legal operation isn’t hurting anyone...in fact, he reasons, a regulated, female-run brothel is safer and healthier for both the employees and customers. But sadly, as Charles Durning’s Texas Governor elucidates in his catchy showstopper, “The Sidestep,” politicians are swayed by polls, not logic, leading to an official result that benefits absolutely no one (except, of course, DeLuise’s comically odious pundit).
Election year politics can be maddeningly nasty and manipulative, but The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas (the top-grossing movie musical of the ‘80s, according to Wikipedia, and much better than I remembered) is a charming corrective, offering a pleasant vision of a world where Red State values are represented by sensible, positive, loving and loveable uniters like Parton rather than certain divisive barracudas I could mention.
