The Southern Movies series explores images of the South in modern films as well as how those images affect American perspectives on the region.

The dramatic thriller The Badge from 2002 tells the story of a small-town Louisiana sheriff whose folksy but mildly corrupt ways come into conflict with state politicians when their involvement with transsexual prostitutes might be revealed. Despite his status as local good ol’ boy / tough guy, the sheriff finds himself fighting wars on several fronts as he tries to navigate that precarious situation alongside a divorce from his wife and family conflicts that involved his daughter, father, and brother. Ultimately, we see a Southern man in a position of authority whose powerful allies want him to ignore the injustice of a murdered trans person. Written and directed by Robby Benson and starring Billy Bob Thornton and Patricia Arquette, The Badge is a surprisingly honest film about closeted sexuality, sexual exploitation, and LGBTQ rights, given its release date in the early 2000s.

The Badge opens in relative darkness, and we see a scantily dressed woman running through woods and swamp. We sense that she is running from something. By the time the credits finish rolling, she reaches an isolated two-lane highway where a trucker is driving through the night. After she dashes in front of his truck, it overturns into a flooded ditch alongside a cypress swamp.

Next, we meet our main character Sheriff Darl Hardwick (Billy Bob Thornton). He has passed out in his sheriff’s SUV in front of the local bar. The female bartender wakes him up when she takes out the trash in the morning sunlight and suggests that he come inside for some eggs. Inside, a handful of locals are still knocking them back, and our hungover lawman tries to shake out the cobwebs. While he does, another younger female bartender wanders over and seems to be hitting on him, but he waves her off, saying that she is underage and shouldn’t be there anyway. She swears she’s 21 and seems undeterred. That’s when the phone call comes in, about the overturned truck. (Right away, we see that the deputies know to call the bar early in the AM, if they want to find the sheriff.)

Out on the road, the few local deputies are gathered around the wreck. They only know about the truck, not the dead woman, then find out that the driver doesn’t have insurance. He insists that he wasn’t drunk or anything— a woman ran out in front of him, out of nowhere! Darl then seizes on the opportunity to use the trucker’s uninsured status against him, and they begin to invite everyone in the small town to come get free shoes, which have fallen out of the rig and are scattered all over the swamp. As they gather the shoes, they find the dead woman, laying face up a little further into the woods. She has no ID, no purse, and is dressed in sexy lace clothing but also has a Jesus tattoo on one of her breasts.

Darl’s first effort at finding out who the woman is takes him to a small rural church, half-built and still under construction, where he inquires with the old-hippie-looking female pastor Sister Felicia whether the woman had been around her congregation. No, she doesn’t know the woman. Their main concern is gathering the forces of religion to stop plans to build a fancy casino in their town.

Next stop in the hunt for information carries Darl to a local convenience store, where the proprietor asks him to shoo a group of teenagers who are running off his customers. Outside, we see one boy riding a skateboard around, while several surly girls hang around a car. One of them is Darl’s daughter, whose somewhat-goth style we understand to be a turnoff to her otherwise-redneck dad. Instead of shooing her, he puts her in his car to take her home. That’s when we learn that Darl and his wife – the girl’s mother Carla (Selah Ward) – are getting divorced. The girl smokes cigarettes and asks her dad if she can get a tattoo, typical teenage rebellion kind of stuff.

In the next scene, the twist in the plot comes. Darl is called to the morgue, where the dead woman’s body is being examined. And it has been discovered that “she” has a dick. Breasts and a dick. The good ol’ boys are quite confused by this, and the medical examiner explains what a transsexual is. Their half-witted responses amount to an “OK, whatever.” The quizzical banter is interrupted by the arrival of Darl’s ex-wife Carla, who is also the district attorney for the area, and she wants to know why the body was removed in what should be a murder investigation. The ill will between Darl and Carla is palpable, she doesn’t stay long after being rebuffed, then the fellas return to razzing the examiner about how he knows so much about transsexuals.

The few moments that follow give us more context. Darl is followed to his truck by Deputy Jackson, the only black man on the force, and is questioned about why he isn’t following Carla’s directives. Darl ignores him and looks for his sunglasses. The younger man is quietly miffed by being written off, and soon we see him stopping by the home of the local judge (William Devane), who is playing with his grandson by the waterside. Jackson and The Judge speak off the record about how the elder man wants the case kept quiet, why the seemingly inept Darl should remain on the case, and how this could look bad for the governor in an election year. Jackson doesn’t love it but says OK.

At the station, there is a pretty blonde woman (Patricia Arquette) waiting on Darl, and his first inclination is to hit on her. She isn’t interested in his cheap charm, but has come because her friend Mona was last in La Salle Parish – where the story takes place – but didn’t come home to New Orleans. Mona is the dead transsexual, so the woman, whose name is Scarlett, identifies her. Darl tries to ask her some questions for his investigation but is so clumsy and inconsiderate about it that he doesn’t get good answers. Mona was a stripper/model who “did parties,” and Darl is stunned to find out that Scarlett is his/her wife, legally married.

But their conversation is interrupted by a deputy named CB, who needs Darl to come to the construction site for the new casino. Darl’s father, who was once the sheriff, has a shotgun and is dancing around, hollering inane things, and blasting into the air, all while wearing a Native American headdress. Sister Felicia’s church – the half-built one – had organized a peaceful protest, but old dad showed up with other methods in mind. Darl tries to get him under control but can’t; however, The Judge shows up, stands him down, and takes the shotgun. The situation is diffused, and Darl must take his humiliated and deflated father home. There, we find out that The Judge used his political influence to end the elder man’s career in law enforcement and has more recently been trying to buy his property for the coming casino. Lots of ill will.

Meanwhile, Scarlett has left the station and is investigating on her own. She is at the bus station, where she finds out that Mona never bought a bus ticket to come home. Darl shows up and tries to be cute again, which leads Scarlett to get angry and tell him to “put aside your prejudices” and get to work on solving the murder. A bit scolded, Darl says that he will.

The next scenes tangle up the plot and the conflict a good bit. At a campaign event for Joe Breraton, the handsome young governor who is running for re-election, Darl finds himself isolated among forces beyond his control. His ex-wife shows up at the event, and out in the parking lot, he runs into that young bartender from the early scenes. She is drunk and aggravated that they won’t let her into the event. Darl brings her in anyway and sits her down at the table with his deputies and their wives, but she acts a fool and laughs while doing it. In the bathroom, he is confronted by the business owner whose shoes were in that overturned truck. The guy is pissed and intends to use his connections to get revenge for the massive theft. Here, Darl finds out that the other politicians plan to kick him off the Democratic ticket. Darl comes out and gets in the faces of the other guys, but they blow him off. At the end of the night, he takes the young bartender home but just puts her in the bed and sleeps on the couch himself. As he lays in the dark, Scarlett calls him and gives the local phone number that Mona called from, on the night of the murder. Darl tells her that he is writing it down but doesn’t. He’s got his own problems, and that dead transsexual isn’t one of them.

In the morning, after a trying unsuccessfully to get his ex-wife to let him come over for Christmas, Darl storms into the local campaign office to find The Judge, his lawyer, and Deputy Jackson there. Darl tries to incite a confrontation to clear the air, and The Judge tells him that “the party” – the Democrats, that is – will be running Jackson for sheriff. Darl won’t give up, though, and he goes to the courthouse and gets the petitions to run as an independent. While he does get some signatures, others have already signed for Jackson. To culminate this effort, he asks his deputy CB for his signature but receives a chilly avoidance. Darl reminds CB that Jackson will garner “the black vote” and when he does will probably replace CB with a black deputy. Then CB drops a bomb on him: he found Darl’s sunglasses, the ones Darl is always looking for, in his wife’s back seat. Over at the convenience store, he tries to get Ornell the tow truck driver to sign the petition, but he’s too busy looking through dirty magazines. Out on Main Street, Sister Felicia prefers passing out Jesus fliers to supporting a man who steals shoes and ignores the Sabbath. Darl tells her that he liked her better when she used to smoke weed and have sex with him in her Pinto.

At this point, nearing the halfway mark, Darl is in dire straits and knows it. As he ponders his next move, his father appears and tells him that The Judge probably killed Mona and is setting him up to take the fall. Darl then tears off down the road and stops at the site of the wreck. He parks and walks into the wooded swamp where he finds Mona’s red high-heeled shoe. Tracing that path, he ends up at Tidewater, a hunting club for the affluent locals. There, he runs into the old black fellow tending the dogs and remembers that one of them had been skittish at the scene where they’d found Mona. Then, up on the porch, The Judge appears with two other men, and they share intimations about what may or may not be happening behind the scenes, things Darl may not be glad about.

When Darl returns to his truck, a state policeman, Deputy Jackson, and another deputy are going through his truck. He objects, but the state policeman tells him that he is under arrest for statutory rape. The charge is that he slept with that young bartender, who it turns out is only fifteen years old. The problem for Darl is that he has slept with so many women in town that his reputation makes people think he has slept with this girl, too. However, The Judge lets him off with his own kind of warning. If Darl will plead guilty to contributing to the delinquency of a minor, they’ll drop the sexual charge. They all saw Darl fix drinks for her, so he’s sunk. Now, having a felony record, he can no longer be sheriff and part of his probation will be that he can’t leave the county without permission.

Although he is defeated in real life, Darl is neither a man who will quit nor a man who knows when to quit. On the street, he is approached by a young black dude in a suit, driving a classic Cadillac. The fast-talking hipster works for the Republican Party and wants to help Darl, since the GOP smells blood in the water. This death has been swept under the rug and sealed away, and they want to know more about why.

Instead of accepting the help from a new team, Darl does what he shouldn’t: go to New Orleans to investigate. Mona had a “JA” stamped on her hand, and that was from a club called Johnny Angel’s. In New Orleans – where isn’t supposed to be, because of his probation – Darl knocks around and can’t find anything, until he ducks into a little gay porn video store. He has gone there to see his brother. The two men have been estranged, and the tension is clear. Darl just wants to know where Johnny Angel’s is, and his brother tells him. (We’ll find out more later.)

At the club, Darl finds Scarlett singing on stage, and after she is done, they talk. Darl shows her the red shoe, and she says that wasn’t Mona’s. He is confused, because: whose could it be then? They share a few tense words, and Darl has a minor altercation with a man who bumps into him. Scarlett is frustrated over the lack progress in Mona’s case, and Darl is frustrated about trying to save his own skin. He storms out, sensing that the conversation is pointless, and she follows him into the alley outside. There, Scarlett lets it out that the cops often let gay bashings and killings go unpunished, seeing it as something that the “freaks” deserve. Darl and Scarlett come to an understanding that each is not what the other initially thought, and they can begin working together on something that can benefit them both. They both know where these stripper parties are happening, and each has an interest in bringing the perpetrators to justice.

Across town at another strip club, Scarlett introduces Darl to another dancer who has been to the parties. She tells him that the women are all paid well to keep their mouths shut, but she lets it out that prominent people, including the governor, attend. The details that we get here are that the girls left La Salle Parish to head back to New Orleans about 1:45 AM and that this stripper saw Mona walking from the place, instead of riding in a car with someone.

At a very different kind of event, Carla is shmoozing with the governor, who seems like her. However, she wants to know more about the situation with Darl, sensing that he might be a flawed character but probably didn’t sleep with that underage girl. The governor claims to know nothing about it, then reminds her that there may be a place in political life for her . . . but there isn’t a place for Darl.

Back in New Orleans, Darl and Scarlett are drinking and talking at the bar. Darl doesn’t understand how Mona could have been a lingerie model, since people would notice the lump in the panties. Scarlett laughs it off and explains how one would tuck it under as to go unseen. In talking seriously about Mona’s case, Scarlett reminds him that she gave him the phone number Mona called from. Darl lies and says that it’s in the files that he can no longer access. But Scarlett has it, so they call from the bar, and the tow truck driver Ornell answers. The number is for a roadside pay phone outside of his gas station and shop. We’ve already gathered that he’s slow-witted, so he isn’t much help. She made the call at about 3:00 AM, and he doesn’t open up until 8:00 AM. Also, when Darl was letting people take all those free shoes, Ornell didn’t get a pair. He mumbles about it unhappily and seems miffed with Darl about the slight.

As the night winds down, Darl and Scarlett have a heart to heart, both drunk. Scarlett asks him to tell something personal about himself, and Darl lets out that his mother died when he was young and that his brother is “off.” He also confesses that, when he was about to run for sheriff, local leaders said they’d back him if he made his brother leave the parish for good. Of course, after the scene in the gay porn store, we know that “off” means gay. But Darl doesn’t share that here.

The pair get back to Scarlett’s house, and there are a few moments when it appears that they will be end up in bed. Yet, Darl thinks better of it and goes outside to sleep in his truck. In the morning, Scarlett finds him and tells him to go in the house while she runs out for coffee. Inside and unsupervised, he discovers Mona’s and Scarlett’s wedding photo, which shows his brother among the wedding party. This epiphany lets him in on the fact that there is more going on than he is being told. Then, before Scarlett returns, an older man in a suit appears for his “appointment” with Mona. Darl is disgusted by the idea of what might be happening, and by the time Scarlett returns he leaves after an angry exchange about unconventional kinds of sexuality.

Darl then returns to Tidewater to tell The Judge and his cronies what he intends to do. He spills the beans about all he has learned, and his opponents speak in vague terms about the parties and what might happen at them. The Judge also counters Darl’s timeline with his own timeline, adding that they’ll have alibis because they were home with their wives by the time Mona was killed. Darl is unimpressed, though, and says that if he isn’t reinstated as sheriff then he’ll go to the press. As he is driving away, the men come out and agree – vaguely again – to his terms. But they must know where to find Scarlett. Darl now has a choice: save his own skin by turning on Scarlett, or going it alone with little to no hope.

But that decision has to wait. Instead, he goes to see his father, who is riding his bicycle down a dirt road. The strange man speaks cryptically to his son, and Darl wants to know about his mother. His father claims that she killed herself, but some believe that he killed her. The possibly insane man insists that she committed suicide with a pistol to her own head during a heated argument. And though he did nothing wrong, but in fact tried to stop her, he was ousted from his old position as sheriff due to the suspicion.

As the film winds down, it turns into something more of an action film. Darl returns to New Orleans and finds that the police are after him. He storms into the strip club, looking for Scarlett, and gets his butt kicked by the bouncers because he went into the dressing room. While he’s bleeding in the parking lot, Scarlett comes out to help him but the two plain-clothes cops appear, wanting to arrest her. Darl jumps up, gets his pistol, frees her from them, and a car chase ensues. Bullets fly, of course. They get away, but the police now know his truck. So they get away on foot, make their way to Darl’s brother’s porn shop, and borrow his Volvo. Their next move is unexpected, taking their story to the Republican Party headquarters to procure the promised help from that young black dude in the Cadillac. But it won’t turn it as they thought.

Inside the offices, the man they’re looking for is in consort with The Judge and his cronies. They are sitting, waiting on Darl and Scarlett. It turns out that the young guy, whose name is Gizmo, had been at Tidewater that night. He was trying covertly to get pictures of the governor with a transexual prostitute, and it was his picture-taking that caused Mona to flee on foot. Did Gizmo kill Mona then? Nope. But it’s not over. Darl and Scarlett want their story told, and they want justice for Mona.

Back in La Salle Parish, the story culminates at Ornell’s gas station. While Darl and Scarlett are paying for some candy bars, Scarlett asks to use the bathroom, and Ornell tells her that women’s restroom has not been cleaned and is thus unavailable. She asks, Then what about the men’s room? Without looking at her, he says no, because that’s not right. He thinks she might be one of those people who try to use bathrooms that they shouldn’t be using. This comment perks Darl’s ears. He goes outside to the women’s restroom and kicks in the padlocked door. Ornell protests but doesn’t act to stop him. In the restroom, Darl finds a peep hole and walks around the building to find out what one would see on the other side. It gives a view of the women’s restroom toilet. And all around the peep hole are pornographic pictures of women, with a jar of vaseline on the table. Darl figures it out. Ornell watches women use the toilet while he masturbates, but that night, when Mona pulled up here skirt, Ornell didn’t see what he thought he would see. Perhaps embarrassed, perhaps enraged, Ornell attacked Mona and shot at him/her with his pistol. Mona ran through the woods with a .22 bullet lodged in her back and fell dead right after the truck just missed.

The movie ends with a funeral service, of sorts, for Mona. Scarlett is giving away Mona’s clothes, and friends are gathering to remember. Here, Scarlett confesses that she knows Darl’s brother and that it was his idea to seek Darl’s help in the murder case. During the get-together, Darl and his brother reconcile, and the small-town sheriff is a changed man. The ending seems to hint that Darl and Scarlett might end up together— might.

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To run across The Badge was an interesting find for me. I don’t remember the movie from the time of its release, but its cast probably garnered it some attention. It came out six years after Billy Bob Thornton’s 1996 hit Sling Blade, so the lead actor was a known commodity by then. In terms of raising awareness about an issue, its 2002 release date puts it on the heels of the murders of Matthew Shepard in 1998 and Billy Jack Gaither in 1999. Though same-sex marriage is one of its lesser themes, The Badge predates the Obergefell ruling by a dozen years.

As a document of the South, this film shows a side of the culture that mainstream audiences would rarely see. Some moviegoers may have encountered this subject a few years earlier in 1997’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. This is gay New Orleans (instead of Savannah), and in The Badge, closeted sexuality and the transgender subculture meet the small-town South (instead of high society). We see the South’s sexual undercurrents, which are often populated by people who claim to be straight-laced and “normal” but who actually lead alternative – some might say deviant – lifestyles. We’ve got characters who transcend or defy heteronormative and binary conceptions of gender, and those elements are troubling or disconcerting for more traditionally minded characters. It is noteworthy that the governor and other politicians are purported to be involved with transsexual prostitutes, while the small town’s sheriff struggles with the idea of it and its tow truck driver can’t abide it. This might imply that the ignorance and closed-mindedness of working-class Southerners is the true dividing factor between mainstream Southerners and the LGBTQ community, since the well-educated elites are participating in same-sex relationships. (The question becomes: if you’re involved in same-sex relationships and are hiding it, why are you hiding it, and who are you hiding it from? ) We also have the statement at the end that being run out of their small town was the best thing that ever happened to Darl’s gay brother, because it forced him to find a place where he could build a life. This “blessing in disguise” motif might be true for some LGBTQ Southerners, but certainly not for all: to have to choose one’s identity and sexuality over one’s family and hometown. The film doesn’t answer any looming questions, but it does open some doors and raise some important issues.

One last  thing I was curious about: was using the name Darl a throwback to the William Faulkner character? Readers of Southern literature will recognize the name of one of the Bundren siblings in As I Lay Dying. I don’t see parallels between the two characters, but the use of such an unusual name prompts me to wonder.