Episode 70: Patrick Huey

Baddies to be Overcome.

I’m a child of the 80s – well, actually a child of the 70s. I remember going to see Star Wars in a packed movie theater over and over again, with what felt like thousands of wriggly youths, and teens who in the parking lot of the movie theater sneaked cigarettes and stole kisses with one another. I went to that galaxy far, far away so many times that I could recite the dialogue word-for-word with Hans Solo, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia and C3PO as they fought against Darth Vader and his Storm Troopers.

Darth Vader! He got the best costume with that long A-line black cape and the broad black chest plate with matching black boots. And forget about his theme music – the Imperial March. His is the best theme music out of anyone else in the film – maybe in filmdom! Listen to the Imperial March today and I dare you not to want to plot world domination and crush the do-gooders with the all the power of the Evil Empire. I kind of routed for Darth Vader. He was fascinating. He was complex. Large hordes of people fell into line behind him – with understood if not actual genuflection. He could shake the entire galaxy with the mere sweep of his black, gloved hand. I wouldn’t have had the vocabulary at six-years old to say that Darth Vader was the villain we loved to hate, but I certainly thought he made the movie, the movie. And maybe I could cheer for this ultimate baddy, because even before I entered double-digits, I knew that in the movies, at least, the good guys always win.

Back then, we understood who was good. We knew who was bad. Even as dope as Darth Vader’s costume was, and all the fanfare of long-shot entrances set to militaristic marches, we knew that somehow, somewhere, he was going to get his ass kicked by those raggedy protagonists in busted spaceships. We knew that good and truth would prevail.

Because that was the order of the universe that we inherited as kids of the 1970s. Our parents protested in the 1960s so we could actually sit, all races mixed up together, in those movie theaters in the 1970s eating popcorn and milk duds and spilling sodas onto already sticky floors. Living in the suburbs of Houston, I went to school with many Vietnamese kids who had come to America when Saigon fell. They had names I didn’t recognize, but they were a part of us. They were Americans. They had been the good guys escaping communism on that muddy Peninsula thousands of miles away. Our grandparents had fought and defeated fascism and the Nazis in the 1940s, so we knew a whole other level of right trumping wrong. In school we actually read books, learned about history and slavery. How the Civil War was a fight against the evil and the tyranny of slavery. That it was wrong for another person to own and beat another person and separate their families just because they were black.

The facts, the truths, were clear. No one of credibility was arguing that slavery benefitted black people. Or that the Holocaust was a fabrication. It just wasn’t done. The word I am searching for is verboten.

In season two of At the Podium, the power of speaking and owning your truth came up in all 34 interviews of the show. As I asked each guest about their journeys to finding their own voices and what they wanted to say with the immense platforms they had, they all expressed the need to use their voices to help others, but also to speak truth over their own lives and lived experiences. Perhaps because we live in a time when the truth, when facts, when basic humanity are under threat by villains far more lethal than Darth Vader, the ability to speak and own your truth becomes the ultimate act of resistance and heroism and is more precious than gold. I say that it is more precious than gold, because for so many of my guests, speaking the truth was the light that led the way to healing the broken places of their lives. As they spoke their truths, the shackles of shame, guilt, regrets fell away. When those baddies fall, reconciliation can begin. Grace and forgiveness find a home.

I say I was a child of the 1980s because in my teen years, John Hughes’ films like The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off movies like Weird Science (as weird as it was) drew me in at that beautiful time as my consciousness of who I was becoming began to emerge. These movies captured the truth of the sweet, sometimes awful, and many times hilarious angst filled years of teenage life in the 80s. A struggle for love and acceptance in the cutthroat world of high school society. These movies documented a time and place of right versus wrong, where goodness still prevailed, and heroes trumped villains. Where we as the audience could easily discern who we should be routing for.

 Footloose (1984) was another film that captured me. Romeo and Juliet set in a small town where the two young lovers only wanted to be together and dance. The stumbling blocks – a small town’s parochial thinking about outsiders, and the outlawing of rock & roll and dancing itself. And, of course, the biggest bugaboo, the girl’s father who was also the town reverend. All baddies to be overcome. The soundtrack was and remains a banger. Bonnie Tyler, with her raspy contralto voice sang one of the films biggest songs – Holding Out for a Hero. It seems appropriate for a time like these when the heroes seem missing, and truth is on the run. And baddies to be overcome.

Where have all the good men gone
And where are all the gods?
Where's the streetwise Hercules
To fight the rising odds?

Isn't there a white knight upon a fiery steed
Late at night, I toss and I turn
And I dream of what I need

 I need a hero
I'm holding out for a hero 'til the end of the night
He's gotta be strong, and he's gotta be fast
And he's gotta be fresh from the fight

 I need a hero
I'm holding out for a hero 'til the morning light
He's gotta be sure, and it's gotta be soon
And he's gotta be larger than life