It is often assumed that outlaws—men and women who commit crimes and willfully dodge the long arm of the law—are not right. Something snapped in them, went wrong at some point in their lives. While a limited point of view, literature and film often bear out the same belief that outlaws have somehow broken away from the societal rules that govern the law-abiding majority. Perhaps they are on the run from the law because they prefer it. A lifestyle choice. One film and one short story in particular highlight these traits: Badlands, written and directed by Terrence Malick; and “The Man Who Knew Belle Starr,” by Richard Bausch. Both tales portray outlaw characters who dwell in mobile fantasy worlds built upon delusion and supported by companions who come to realize that they are not cut from the same unlawful cloth.
The stories of these outlaws and their partners unfold plain as day, but it is the mystery behind the obvious that makes them compelling narratives. The real stories and characters are discovered between the lines, in the words that go unsaid. It is not surprising, then, that both Malick and Bausch utilize minimalistic dialogue, sparse scenery, and narrators as spectators, to tell of characters whose pasts and motives remain uncertain or vaguely hinted, making them more compelling as mysteries and the legendary outlaws they strive to become. Linda Costanzo Cahir, author of Literature Into Film: Theory and Practical Approaches, writes of this artistic practice in her chapter titled “Short Stories into Film.” Put simply, she describes the three basic elements of short compositions: “brevity, single effect, and beauty” (188). Originally a concept developed by Edgar Allan Poe in “The Philosophy of Composition”, brevity is important to completing a story in one sitting, which in turn emphasizes the single effect of the story (188). The beauty is that which reveals “the excitement or pleasurable elevation of the soul” in the work (188).
A film that comes in at 1 hour and 33 minutes and a 19-page short story are both perfectly suited for this approach. A pair of late scenes—one from the film and one from the story—highlight the effectiveness of such brevity and to-the-point story-telling. In Badlands, Kit has driven and killed his way from the suburbs of South Dakota to the badlands of Montana with his girlfriend, Holly, in tow. They are driving across the prairie one evening, Kit talking to Holly, who is absorbed with a magazine and doesn’t pay attention. A straight-on shot from within the car shows them moving through a dark land with only their headlights to light the way, and even the dim lighting in the car interior is limited to Kit, the steering wheel, and Holly. They are lawless, lost. Beyond the honeymoon phase. As Holly puts it: “I made up my mind to never again tag around with the hell-bent type, no matter how in love with him I was” (Badlands). In the same scene, Holly reaches to change the radio dial but is swatted away by Kit. “Hey, don’t touch that,” he says. “Nat King Cole” (Badlands). The next two shots are, as David Laderman writes in Driving Visions: Exploring the Road Movie, “gloriously road movie-esque” (122). Kit and Holly slow dance on the prairie to Nat King Cole’s “A Blossom Fell”, lit only by the headlights of their car. Holly is confined by the whims of a bizarre outlaw as a light is literally shined upon everything that has occurred. In “The Man Who Knew Belle Starr,” Belle and her captive, McRae, are driving along an empty highway in the dark. “There were no other cars now, and not a glimmer of light anywhere beyond the headlights” (Bausch 127). They are heading toward an unspoken but clearly suspected conclusion: she is going to shoot and kill McRae. He is neither accomplice nor companion. The third-person narrator provides chilling and distant insight into McRae’s thoughts (does he live to tell the tale?) much the same way that Holly does with her voice-over. Unlike Holly, however, it is clear that McRae is afraid of—and unclear about—Belle’s motives. “Why are you doing this?” he asks. “You’ve got to tell me that before you do it” (Bausch 128). Later, when a tractor trailer provides cover for McRae to make his escape (similar to the helicopter assault that provides Holly with her escape cover), he falls over an embankment. Afraid, battered, and lost, McRae is trapped. He considers his life and his choices as many characters on journeys have done. Belle stands a short distance away, shining a light as she searches for her prey. She will not abandon McRae as readily as Kit left Holly.
Another strange quirk to the outlaw personalities in these stories is their arbitrary adherence to rule and order. The notion of honor among criminals is not new, but one gets the sense that neither outlaw in these stories has a true sense of lawful order. While staying in the mansion of a homeowner and housekeeper whom they’ve locked away in a storage room, Kit spends time “playing with the dictaphone” to record trite words of civic responsibility for some unknown audience (Badlands). There is a strong sense of irony in the scene as Kit lounges in a chair and stares into the camera, first in a close-up and then a medium shot. Is he serious, or is he joking? Perhaps, as Holly tells their captives: “… there’s something wrong with his bean” (Badlands). Belle’s reserved nature makes her seem timid or secretive, but as her indifference to murder is revealed she becomes far more sinister than she originally seemed. Later, when she and McRae are driving to run out the gas, she comments on the speeding motorists around them. “I think they ought to get tickets for speeding, that’s what I think. Sometimes I wish I were a policeman” (Bausch 124). It is again difficult to believe that someone as ruthless as Belle could be on the side of the law, but in her case there is a connection between her actions and words. Her murders before she meets McRae—all five of them—can be construed as acts of justice or vengeance against men who wrong women. The final killing of a dog “who must’ve got lost,” however, appears as unnecessary cruelty, and one must wonder if there is something wrong with her bean as well. Just as they play out the role out the outlaw, Kit and Belle may also be playing out other roles that suit their whims.
It is interesting that the creators of these works chose to portray their road outlaws through the eyes and voices of their partners in crime. Kit and Belle, with their strange, antisocial behavior and penchant for violence, appear to be the stars of the show. Each comments on that fact. After his capture, Kit grandstands in front of the police officers and national guard, offering them keepsakes from his pockets to commemorate his capture. As Laderman writes:
“This scene articulates the road movie’s spectacle-ization of the driver … where a stable, passive audience in the film admires the mobile rebel” (125).
Having lost Holly as his “passive audience,” Kit turns to his captors to claim his place as the star outlaw. Belle is never caught by authorities in “The Man Who Knew Belle Starr,” but she does make sure that McRae, who is forced along as a captive / mule, gives her her due respect as the famous Belle Starr. “Bang,” she tells him. “What’s my name?” (Bausch 120). They even have clear, memorable images. Kit with the denim jacket and jeans, white t-shirt, and flashy cowboy boots. Belle with her shawl—reminiscent of the Mexican sarape common in Western films—and low-cut sneakers. Their companions’ uniforms, on the other hand, are either changed regularly (as any American teenager would) or have so little bearing on the story that it isn’t mentioned.
But who are the partners in crime? Holly, a 15 year-old with an eye for men who look like movie stars; and twenty-something McRae, an ex-con who hasn’t spent time with a woman in four years and would have been interested in any woman who happened along his path. In the beginning, the roles are a 1-to-1 match. Both Kit and McRae are the young males, and thus the drivers. They are in control of their mobility and are the characters who initiate the relationships with their female counterparts. They also choose to leave behind their responsibilities and journey to new horizons. Holly remains a passenger and bystander to Kit’s homicides until her choice to separate near the end of Badlands, but a reversal occurs in “The Man Who Knew Belle Starr.” Belle, having revealed that she was hiding a pistol underneath the shawl, shoots and kills a cook who “made a nasty remark … about the hot dog” (Bausch 121). She instantly claims the power in the relationship, if only through the threat of violence. McRae, the ex-con with violent tendencies, is left stunned and unable to do anything but mutter, “Jesus.” From that point on he becomes Belle’s lackey, not as passive or indifferent as Holly, but also at far greater risk due to Belle’s inherent distrust of men. Her description of the “obscene goings-on” (Bausch 121) provides a strong hint that she is a victim of sexual abuse, now reclaiming her power from the men she meets on the road. Men like McRae. Further connections between Holly and McRae include the loss of the father as the trigger for the journey (albeit at the hands of the outlaw she accompanies, in Holly’s case) and the absence of a mother figure, further indicating that just as there are similarities between the outlaw killers, there are similarities between their willing and unwilling companions. Holly and McRae have lost everything and find more than they bargained for when they choose to associate with mysterious strangers.
Additionally, both McRae and Holly both reflect on the journeys they have undertaken. Holly, at the start of the film, notes she couldn’t have known that “what began in the alleys of back ways of this quiet town, would end in the badlands of Montana” (Badlands). The narrator at the end of the short story comments:
“McRae was gone, was someone far, far away, from ages ago—a man fresh out of prison, with the whole country to wander in and insurance money in his pocket, who had headed west with the idea that maybe his luck, at long last, had changed” (Bausch 130).
Kit and Belle may be the loudest voices in the room, but the real, relatable journeys occur through Holly and McRae.
Consider the identities of the outlaws. Kit—described by Holly as “handsomer than anybody I’d ever met. He looked just like James Dean” (Badlands)—is a walking, talking tribute to a teen idol. He embodies not only the looks, but the spirit portrayed by Dean in his famous movie role as rebellious teenager Jim Stark in Rebel Without A Cause (Laderman 118). This characterization is in turn derived from the story that forms the basis of the film. Real life serial killer Charles Starkweather, who modeled himself after Dean, went on a murder spree along with 14 year-old girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate in December 1957 and January 1958 (“Charles Starkweather”). Similarly, Belle Starr takes her nom de guerre directly from the famous “Queen of the Oklahoma Outlaws” whose skill with a pistol and associations with outlaws such as Jesse James cemented her place among the legendary outlaws of the Old West (“Belle Starr”). Belle herself states the name is “so much better than Annie Oakley” (Bausch 120), indicating that the allure of the outlaw is the real guiding light.
Two young, enigmatic, and unstable outlaws whose existence is tied to their criminal exploits. Although richer in character than simple copy cats, Kit and Belle are nonetheless driven by their need to live up to the legendary status of their predecessors. They are like children playing pretend, lost in parallel universes in which they commit crimes and run from the law but are not fully connected to the real world in which they exist. They dwell on their secrets, their partners, and their inevitable epitaphs.
Works Cited
Badlands. Dir. Terrence Malick. Perf. Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek. Warner Bros., 1973.
Bausch, Richard. “The Man Who Knew Belle Starr.” The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction. Ed. Lex Williford and Michael Martone. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999. 112-130.
“Belle Starr.” Wikipedia. 6 Apr. 2014. Wikimedia Foundation. 28 Apr. 2014 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle_Starr>
Cahir, Linda Costanzo. Literature into Film: Theory and Practical Approaches. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2006.
“Charles Starkweather.” 29 Apr. 2014. Wikimedia Foundation. 29 Apr. 2014 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Starkweather>
Laderman, David. Driving Visions: Exploring the Road Movie. Austin: U of Texas P, 2002.