MovieChat Forums > Southern Comfort (1981) Discussion > I am on the side of the Cajuns

I am on the side of the Cajuns


Lets have it right, please.

-They ripped up a fishing net, thus destroying the livelihood of some poor unsuspecting local.

- They stole canoes belonging to locals

-They fired blanks at the locals (How in the hell were the locals supposed to know that they had blanks? I'm sorry, the cajuns did not have some sort of telepathic connection with Stuckey. For all they know, he was firing real ammunition at them)

- They beat the crap out of an innocent trapper, blew up his home and all of his possessions, and they abducted him.


I am sorry guys, but I side with the cajun locals 100%

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Its on uk tv now,and i agree with to all points,but not to the point of killing them,though of course the cajuns could have not known the bullets were blanks,but they did go a bit OTT imo

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I can sort of see where you are coming from with that. But i put myself in the cajun's shoes. the soldiers are arrogant, brutish, violent big city boys, whereas as the cajuns are nitty-gritty rural guys who are fine if you leave them alone. they are completely different worlds, and the cajuns unsurprisingly react with a lot of hostility towards these horrible, arrogant trespassers who are invading their homeland and treating it with utmost contempt and disrespect.

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It wasn't really about sides was it? It was about how wars can start for dumb reasons....... or something like that. Alien cultures, alien language, unexplained behaviour.

When the one-arm guy spoke to Spencer and Hardin, you could see that they could have got along. But things had gone too far...... Way too far.

But, to agree with you. No way the cajuns were the bad guys from our point of view, or at least no badder than the nut-case members of that national guard troop. I think that was why the director spent so long in the friendly Cajun hamlet - to make sure we knew that they was good folks, under normal circumstances.

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I appreciate your point-but to say the cajuns were innocent is to ignore how wrong their actions were.

NIce guys do not-

A) blow the head off of a leader of a group of men. They could have contacted state police or the national guard.

B) sic dogs, set traps, drop trees, dig up dead bodies to torment their enemies.

Not all the cajuns were bad, but Hill's point was to show that not all Cajusn were bad, and they were unlike the four or five that were hunting the soldiers.

You also missed the obvious points:

-that Stuckey was the only one who really instigated anything-and that was emant to be a joke.

-the canoes would have been returned.

-Spencer, Hardin, and the two black soldiers (T. K. Carter and Franklyn Searles) wanted nothing to do with the raid on Byron James's hut.

-Hardin committed fratricide on Reese defending james character, yet the Cajuns still kept coming.

So, no I am not for the Cajuns.

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reisbert, I appreciate your points, but still consider how the hell could the Cajuns have known all of this. Like I said they did not have telepathy. from their point of view, a crew of violent, arrogant soldiers invaded their homeland and created a horrible nuisance.

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NIce guys do not blow the head off of a leader of a group of men. They could have contacted state police or the national guard.
Nice guys don't bayonet a man in the groin and shoot and stab another two to death........
The soldiers could have contacted state police............
I think we'll forget the national guard shall we.....

NIce guys do not- sic dogs, set traps, drop trees, dig up dead bodies to torment their enemies.
They were certainly not nice guys.

Hill's point was to show that not all Cajusn were bad, and they were unlike the four or five that were hunting the soldiers.
Agreed

You also missed the obvious points that Stuckey was the only one who really instigated anything and that was emant to be a joke.
Was he the one who clubbed a one-armed man in the mouth? Or the one that blew up a one-armed man's home?

Spencer, Hardin, and the two black soldiers (T. K. Carter and Franklyn Searles) wanted nothing to do with the raid on Byron James's hut.
Even Spencer and Hardin who wanted nothing to do with anything, did nothing much to stop it though did they?

Hardin committed fratricide on Reese defending james character, yet the Cajuns still kept coming.
They had to kill everyone to prevent themselves being found out. We also don't really get told what was driving the Cajuns. Was it just vengeance or were they trying to free their presumed friend? The one-armed man 'let' Spencer and Hardin escape, but he warned them that his friends might not be so merciful. I also took a couple of 'watches' to realise that 'Coach' had hung himself. When I first watched it I thought he'd been murdered; but he couldn't have been otherwise Spencer & Hardin would have been killed in the night too.

Once war breaks out, being nice is no longer an option on either side.

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'They had to kill everyone to prevent themselves being found out. We also don't really get told what was driving the Cajuns. Was it just vengeance or were they trying to free their presumed friend? The one-armed man 'let' Spencer and Hardin escape, but he warned them that his friends might not be so merciful. I also took a couple of 'watches' to realise that 'Coach' had hung himself. When I first watched it I thought he'd been murdered; but he couldn't have been otherwise Spencer & Hardin would have been killed in the night too. '

Thats correct. a few people have attempted at a theory that the cajuns took bowden and left hardin and spencer sleeping, and then murdered Bowden, in order to torment hardin and spencer. but this is ridiculous, as the cajuns were solely interested in driving the unwelcome marauders from their property, they were not interested in playing mind games.

Furthermore rseibert, what responsibility did the locals have to be nice guys? After the soldiers committed criminal damage, theft, intimidation and destruction by bomb, I don't think the cajuns should have to think 'ah, they're just a bit pissed off, lets leave them alone to maraud our homeland some more'.

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I was just thinking though,that the cajuns must have been used to the national guard units doing playing war games round the area,they would have to get clearence to make sure no one innocent got hurt,the cajun did have telephones and did go outside there lands,so the goverment would have let them know im sure.

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***Spoilers***

It very well could have been the writers/director's intention to make you think that the government intentionally let the guardsmen loose on those Cajuns. The government probably didn't and still doesn't today like the idea of self-sufficient people living their life in their own lands. Perhaps they had problems with these Coonasses before, and now they were sending in some nutcases to teach them a lesson. Think about it. There was a faulty map leading right to the Cajun's canoes, only one helicopter sent to rescue, and not knowing which side of the war the military truck was on.

And sure, the guardsmen started it by stealing canoes and firing the first shot. The Cajuns were right to shoot back because they thought they were being fired upon. However, even though most people are blaming 4 or 5 bad Cajuns, it seems like the whole village was in on it, or were aware of what was going on. I don't think anyone would have thought twice to save the two or would have done anything about it after the fact. Only the one-armed guy showed any compassion, probably because his life was spared earlier.

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you could see that they could have got along.

Definitely not. They could have better communicated, yes. But the damage was done.

We've met before, haven't we?

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I agree, also. When you're going to start shooting at people, blanks or otherwise, then you're asking for trouble. I think that's part of the movie's main problem, the movie is supposed to be a metaphor for Vietnam but it's difficult to take that agenda seriously when the National Guard here started things by behaving like morons (at least some of them). The Cajuns' systematic killing was probably excessive, though.

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totally agree, the movie is probably a metaphor of Viet Nam, US going over there destroying the country and killing its people for no reason, like the soldiers' actions in the movie.

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Maybe that's why there are so many incarcerated in the US. This insane notion that killing is an appropriate response for loss of some property.

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Me too!

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