This is a leftover observation from an article I’m just wrapping up. It’s really just a “look at this interesting little thing” kind of observation – it doesn’t really go anywhere in particular.

In Burt Reynolds’ first film as a director, Gator, Mayor Caffery is your garden-variety southern politician, the sort of guy who tells the crowd at his rally, “We gonna have the best city south of Baltimore. Who the hell gives a damn what’s north of Baltimore?”

At the rally, Mrs Cavanaugh, carrying “Cafferey is a pinky commie” sign, is escorted aside by a police officer. After hitting him over the head with her sign, she explains, “You must understand that I am not hitting you. I am hitting Mayor Caffery and all his corruption. And here’s another blow for freedom!” As she’s being dragged away she yells to the onlookers: “What about unemployment? What’s Caffery gonna do about that? What’s he gonna do about supporting the underprivileged?”

What’s odd about all of this is that Cavanaugh, who’s mostly a crazy person (to the point of crazy-cat-lady absurdity), is right about pretty much everything except Caffery being a pinky commie. Cavanaugh is Aggie Maybank’s (Lauren Hutton) source for an expose. Cavanaugh reveals that there are two sets of books – and he doesn’t pay taxes on the big earning book: “Apex Finance. Dixie Entertainment. All those gas stations. All of them owned by Caffery and McCall. And all of them exploiting the masses.” Cavanaugh she leads Gator and Aggie to the courthouse’s archive, and at the courthouse there’s a slapstick chase involving two house cats, two accounting ledgers, two local cops, and a stolen police cruiser. Aggie, Gator and Cavanaugh give the evidence to the Feds and it’s legit evidence.

There are two obvious readings of the pinky commie sign. The more obvious one is that Cavanaugh is using the “communism = bad” thinking that never fails, especially in the 1970s South. Or there’s the crazy like a fox reading of Cavanaugh using communism as a stick to beat the too-good-at-capitalism Caffery. Either way, Cavanaugh’s deployment of communism as a cudgel would be an interesting little piece of trivia were it not for another Burt Reynolds-directed film, Sharky’s Machine.

After getting busted down to the vice squad, Sharky’s sent out to arrest Mabel for prostitution. She demands fifty dollars from her potential John, which he finds a little bit pricey. Her response: “I’m a trained professional and I demand a decent wage.” All of this transpires in a long shot that keeps Mabel’s book – and its KARL MARX cover in frame. Then, in the police station after the arrest, Mabel makes a systemic critique of the criminalization of prostitution – and the approach that imprisons the women and lets the men go free. And, after that, it is Mabel’s reaction to a pimp under questioning that leads Sharky’s Machine to their first set of leads to a Big Case.

In both cases, women who, though they are marginalized both within the narrative and by the film’s director, are proven right in the end.  It seems odd that one of Burt Reynolds’ signatures as a director would include women having a grasp on Marx and the essential information for the narrative.