Mississippi Burning is a 1988 critical and commercial success that was exceeded in the number of Oscar nominations received that year only by eventual Best Picture winner, Rain Man. While the movie’s cinematographer was the only nominee to actually go home with gold the night of the Academy Awards, for a brief time it was considered the front-runner to win the big one. Ultimately, of course, the members of the Academy decided—as is their wont—to play it safe and hand out its top honors to a film that is—arguably, of course—inferior in every conceivable way. If that is so—and, of course, it is certainly arguable—then what happened to reverse the tide and shift the momentum which Mississippi Burning has been slowly building as a result of being honored as the best film of the year by nearly all of the most prestigious critics’ awards?
Controversy, of course. Rain Man was a much safer bet than a film which even as it was earning awards and building up steam to power its winning streak right through the Golden Globes and straight to Oscar gold was also coming increasingly under the glaring critical eye of the African-American community. A film about one of the key moments in the Civil Rights movement that did not feature one single prominent black character made itself all too easily open to charges of being yet another in the “white savior” stories of that period. That initial criticism essentially lit a wick that exploded in the face of the film’s momentum as charges of historical inaccuracies began to join the outcry against the film by such high-profile detractors as Spike Lee, Coretta Scott King and even the mother of one of the two white men murdered alongside a young black man which forms the basis for the narrative.
While surely all these criticisms are valid and do call the film into question as an artifact of history, they do not undermine the artistic value of the film. What is more disconcerting, actually—and should well be considered the central point of controversy surrounding Mississippi Burning—is an off-shoot of the critique espoused by the African-American community. The heroes of the film are not the black citizens of Mississippi who refused to simply accept defeat and move on nor are the heroes those Civil Rights leaders who followed in the steps of political activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. One of the complaints levied against the film is that it situates without any room for doubt or other consideration the members of the FBI as the heroes.
This is unnerving as both drama and history not because of factual errors, but rather because even what is presented on-screen has been tamed down significantly from what actually occurred. And what did occur? Events which form the turning point of the narrative when the by-the-book methodology of the younger agent played by Willem Dafoe prove to be getting nowhere and a strategic decision is made to apply the far less legally responsible methodologies advanced by Gene Hackman’s older agent.
The white rednecks running things in the county are devoted racists and members of the Ku Klux Klan. Their strategy for trying to keep the blacks from assisting or believing that change is possible are clearly defined and exhibited as terrorist tactics: burning crosses, physically beating potential witnesses and generally instituting an atmosphere of pure terror among the black community. The KKK members—that include members of the police force as well as municipal government, prominent businessmen and ordinary run-of-the-mill redneck morons—engage in behavior that under any circumstances would be considered the actions of clearly defined sociopaths It is not just crosses that are burned, but homes, farms and even black churches and the blood of farm animals, farmers and innocent children paints the town red. Not to mention flagrant engagement of the racist’s favorite form of terrorism: lynchings.
Only those clinging to scientifically disproven notions of racial superiority could view these acts by the Klan as anything other than terrorism plain and simple. And yet, when the turn in the narrative comes and the FBI decides to employ a new—tougher—strategy, they remain the good guys. Even though over the course of the last half of the film, the tactics that comprise this strategy can also only be described by any objective viewer as one thing: terrorism, pure and simple.
By the time the film concludes, the number of abuses of power and violations of civil rights committed by the agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is at least equal to that of the Klan members. The FBI physically intimidates and causes physical harm to Klan members, including those on the local police force. Another important figure in the cover-up of the murder is literally threatened with castration at the hands of a black man; what could possibly be terrorizing to a white supremacist? One may even venture to argue that the single most excruciating example of abuse of position by the FBI is the—fictional—near-seduction of the racist deputy’s wife by the Hackman character. After all, one can easily forgive threatening an ignorant hick spouting stupidity as ideology and taking part in a criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice in the investigation of a triple murder. Rationalizing the comprehensively corrupt intentions of Hackman’s character in this seduction is—or should be, anyway—a trickier proposition.
And therein lies the answer as to why the FBI can come out of Mississippi Burning as both historical figures and cinematic heroes with very little trepidation within even the most liberal of viewers. The excessive abuse of power and persistent violation of civil rights by the FBI agents is forgivable for just one reason and one reason only: the viewer knows beyond a reasonable doubt—beyond any shadow of a doubt, in fact—that their victims are guilty. Begging the not inconsequential question: did the FBI know this to be true at the time?
