Lone Star Essay

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`The Normalization of Corruption in John Sayles’s Lone Star John Sayles’s Lone Star offers an insight into the growth of corruption in the small town of Frontera, Texas. Sayles demonstrates through various situations how corruption becomes a part of the small town by using the Sheriffs of Rio County, the blatantly corrupt Sheriff Charlie Wade and the not as blatantly corrupt, Sheriff Buddy Deeds. He uses these two characters as a foundation to show how corruption trickles down the system until it consumes and infiltrates everything it touches, and comes to the point where it is no longer viewed as corruption. Charlie Wade is the beginning of this crookedness with his “bribe- or – bullets” ways, either pay him his share or he kills you. Buddy Deeds is the continuation of the corruption and though he is not as obvious as Charlie Wade, it is his veiled corruption that causes the normalization of the dishonesty that exists in Frontera, and it is through him that the corruption spreads throughout the town. Sayles uses both Buddy and Charlie Wade, to demonstrate the evolution and normalization of corruption in the characters that are portrayed in the film. Charlie Wade’s era as Sheriff, is the beginning of the corruption that is found in the town. Charlie’s corruption is something that is palpable and causes fear within people because they know what happens to those who do not comply with what he wants. As Minnie Bledsoe, the old owner of the black bar in town, told Sheriff Sam Deeds, Buddy’s son, “them days you deal with Sherriff Wade or you didn’t deal at all.” This means that in order for anything to be done in Frontera, it had to be “approved” by Charlie Wade and if it was not, you would have to suffer the consequences. He was the upholder of the law, yet the law he spoke of was not the law that is established by the states, rather it was a version of these laws

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