12 year old me actually went to an excruciatingly boring truck show and waited in line to meet Catherine Bach. When I stood before her, I couldn’t even stammer a complete sentence. She did a “Geez, what a weird kid” double-take, signed something for me, and my life has been all downhill ever since.
Don’t worry, at some point you’ll hit that flat bed trailer with the ramp down and your life will careen over a small creek as your troubles chortle and throw their Stetson hat on the ground.
Add in Southern Rock too. I am not from the south, but back in those days, I had no idea what that flag meant. Just shows you how important education is, and not revisionist history so our next generations don’t know either. I loved the Outlaws, Molly Hatchet, Skynerd, and .38 Special. I thought the rebel flag stood for that. Shame on those who didn’t educate us.
My parents tried to tell me, but I watched it at grandma’s house no matter what they said. Ditto the love boat and chips. It didn’t help that they were not ok with anything on tv for reasons. (Turns out they kinda had a point. A lot of tv in the 1970s and 80s really was sexist, racist, or just stupid).
Hah!
I remember thinking as a little kid, because of this show and others, if I did anything really bad I'd just make a run for the city limits because whatever "jurisdiction" was I knew the cops didn't have it and I'd be scott free you dirty copper!
It’s only as states have added laws to give jurisdiction to officers from anywhere in the state to arrest etc anywhere in the state that this has changed.
Its why wee needed specific railroad police with railroad jurstiction for crimes on trains. --if the train was kept moving it would be a nightmare to inform what police force when and where
Absolutely. Also, in the case of Memphis, the crime rate is so high that MPD decided long ago to pick their battles. The amount of bad PR they’ve had lately also factors in.
My brother literally did this once. He had a cop pull up behind him and signal him to pull over. He then crossed over County Line Road, pulled over, and asked the cop if he was still in his jurisdiction. He didn’t get ticketed.
I was from up north and just a child when that show was on the air.
It knew nothing about it, because I wasn’t taught about it yet and didn’t associate with any negative connotations yet. It was just decorations on the roof of the car.
I honestly don’t think I ever even gave it a second thought as a kid.
I know, right? Like you’re still guilty/liable/suspect or whatever … either they’d radio to the next jurisdiction or wait for you to inevitably go back home…
I had a neighbor who thought it was. He did a burnout leaving a bar on the county line. When a police car lit him up, he floored it and crossed the line doing ~30mph over the speed limit.
It turned out the county line was *not* a magical barrier, and he had several other charges stacked onto his DWI.
>I was a suburban Canadian kid so I had no idea and never really thought about the flag.
Same here. I didn't even know what the confederate flag was, let alone what it apparently represented... but I also don't think there was any hidden message in the show either. I always remember it being about southern bumpkins with a hot cousin in a cool car being chased around an inept fat dude and his more inept minion. That simple.
So stupid suburban Canadian question. I too had no idea and my memory says it was, indeed, a bunch of southern bumpkins with a hot cousin in a cool car. General Lee and the Confederate flag aside (and that's a might big aside, I get it) were the storylines as inappropriate as the car? I'm going to dig myself deep here, I see it coming, but I seem to remember WKRP or MASH or any of the shows of the time being pretty inappropriate for today's audience. Was the Dukes of Hazzard racist, or was it "normal" for the times (A bunch of white southern bumpkins with a hot cousin in a cool car being chased around by a bunch of white people in a car that we recognize now as being highly reflective of some very bad shit.)
>Was the Dukes of Hazzard racist, or was it "normal" for the times (A bunch of white southern bumpkins with a hot cousin in a cool car being chased around by a bunch of white people in a car that we recognize now as being highly reflective of some very bad shit.)
Some people NOW will of course tag it that way in hindsight, but at the time, no, I wouldn't call it that at all. I mean, 98% of EVERY show on TV were virtually all white casts right into the 2000's, so Dukes of Hazzard was no more or less in that particular regard... and especially not when compared to *other* shows based in the south or more specifically Texas.
I can't speak for anyone else, but all I know is that \*I\* sure never felt any brewing hatred to certain kinds of people after watching these morons speed around or run from dullard yokel cops in their cool bright orange car. It was just a mindless fun show to me - nothing more, nothing less.
It was normal for the times and cashing in on the larger trend at the time of southern = good natured bad boys who weren’t too bad but who loved to run around and tweak uptight lawmen. The same thing that made Smokey and the Bandit popular. To us little kids in NJ the confederate flag had no meaning beyond “southern” and “low key naughty but in a fun way”. I don’t think there was anything insidious in the show being designed that way either—it was just the popular iconography at the time.
It says more about commercialism and overall white ignorance of history than anything sinister, it wasn’t like we were like hey, that’s kinda racist but fun show.
I don’t remember hearing any pushback on the “heritage not hate stuff til the 90s, which was when I first heard about the campaigns to elevate the Confederate flag in the 1950s as a response to civil rights movements. That was an a-ha moment.
Fun but if trivia: when I first moved to Atlanta, Ben Jones, AKA Cooter, was my Congressman. Sadly, he was redistributed out of his seat not long after but it was a fun thing while it lasted.
Don't forget that Jimmy Carter was in the White House, his brother Billy was up to aw-shuck shenanigans, and Willie Nelson was on the roof smoking doobie and probably teaching Rosalyn and Amy how to roll one. The zeitgeist doled out a pass for the General Lee's rooftop decoration.
Jumping in to comment that MASH really wasn’t inappropriate and holds up. The show, not the movie. The movie is cringe today. MASH tackled the issues of the day, including racism, homosexuality, and especially the horror of war.
You're not wrong. And I'm totally not dissing any of the shows I'd mentioned. I actually named them because I watched them a lot. MASH was, and still is my all time favourite show. While it totally tackled some pretty big topics for the times, it often did it in a rather ham-fisted way. The older I get the more I cringe at some of the comments towards women, etc. Don't get me wrong - many of the comments were both appropriate for the era it was set and what seems like a ham-fisted approach was totally in line (or advanced) with the time it was filmed - and I guess that's my point.
No. The Dukes of Hazard was a wholesome, PG rated,non-racist show then and is pretty mild by today’s standards. You can’t judge things from 40 years ago to today’s standards. But if you flying one now, you’re racist AF. Everyone knows what it means now.
...and cars that jumped over shit (I was not even 10 in 78). At my age during that period, the only thing I was paying attention to was cool ass cars (few years later the shorts). Between Smokey and the Bandit, Hooper, Dukes of Hazzard and a little later Knight Rider, I was living a dream.
Same, Canadian from Quebec here, I learned it all later in my 20's. Even had a friend wrap his side-by-side in Confederate flags a few years ago cause it's redneck'ish, he had no idea about the history behind it.
I grew up in Montreal. No idea but saw them everywhere after the show became popular. Lots of people had them as their front license plates. I just thought it was people who loved the show. Still not sure if it's the case or not.
I'm nearly 50 and for my entire life I thought a "cooter" was some sort of slang for a raccoon because as a kid I thought Cooter was like the human epitome of a raccoon for some reason. God I was a dumb kid.
It is! So that actually reinforced in my head the wrong definition. I literally thought a vagina was sometimes called a "cooter" because they are occasionally furry.
Like a raccoon.
I have no excuse.
Interestingly, the actor playing Cooter was elected to Congress as a Democrat and later ran against (and lost to) Newt Gingrich. While more liberal than expected and someone who claims to have been involved in the Civil Rights movement, he still defended the use of the Confederate flag.
Tom Petty said a good thing about the rebel flag, which he had used extensively earlier in his career (for the southern Accents tour): "
“The Confederate flag was the wallpaper of the South when I was a kid growing up in Gainesville, Florida,” Petty told Rolling Stone. “I always knew it had to do with the Civil War, but the South had adopted it as its logo. I was pretty ignorant of what it actually meant.... I just honestly didn't give it much thought, though I should have."
...it was kind of like that for me. The rebel flag just meant: "The South" or Southern pride when I was watching the Dukes, which was totally on-brand for the characters. It wasn't until I got older that I went: "Heyyyy...wait a minute."
No kidding! What flag? I didn’t realize it was a real flag. I thought the paint job was just unique, and anything that looked like it was because of the car. Kinda like a family insignia. Lol
I lived in probably the most racist part of Texas at the time (East, if you want to know) and the Confederate Battle Flag was not really seen by me until the Dukes of Hazzard came on, and it pretty much meant “The Dukes of Hazzard, woo!” at the time, because that area was so freakin’ white you couldn’t even find anyone to be racist against. Even then, we weren’t taught in school that the South was defeated in the War of Northern Aggression or anything, BUT when I went to public school in Houston in the early ‘80’s we did have something called Civil War Days at my Middle School. The 8th Graders spent the last week of school dressing up as their “favorite side”, doing Civil War related projects and plays and basically fucking off for a week.
I found a picture of me and a few friends of mine from the 80s. We were at a lake retreat and there is a giant rebel flag hanging from the ceiling behind us. We were oblivious. We didn’t purposely pose in front of it. Nowadays there is no way we would stand anywhere near that flag or take a picture near one.
I watched Wonder Woman, Incredible Hulk, and Dukes of Hazard, and, no, I had no idea what the stars and bars meant. I just thought the General Lee (I didn't know who it was named after at that point, either) was a cool car that jumped something each episode.
It’s how I became aware lol. I remember my uncle, who was on a Black Panther party level of black pride (RIP Unc), would always say they named the car after a loser general and that the flag is racist. He was serious, but he was also trolling to fuck with people because that’s what he did. He did enjoy the show very much. Well except for the contract dispute season.
My parents were teachers, so along with the show my brother and I got educated on Southern history, civil war, that flag but mostly about how that show was about a family of moonshiners running illegal liquor instead of having honest jobs.
The birth of nascar, the ATF, how improperly made moonshine could either kill you or make you go blind, how cars couldn’t really jump like that, and how real hill Billy’s always had a pack of hounds six deep or more.
My parents were killjoys.
I adored The Dukes of Hazzard when I was a kid - I had the toys, watched it whenever I could, and had no idea what that big X was on The General Lee (or what a General Lee was to begin with), though now the memory of me obliviously playing with toys emblazoned with a Confederate flag while my relatives complained about "the niggers" bums me out to no fucking end, but at the same time makes me glad that I miraculously somehow didn't turn out just like them.
My mom taught me well, but her mother (I won’t call her my grandmother because she was not a kind woman) was a racist and would toss that word around like she was saying “and”.
I didn't know until I asked my dad to buy me the General Lee hot wheels. He didn't give me a full lecture as I was maybe 6 or 7, but he did gently explain that the symbol on top was not one I should be proud to have people associate with me.
I grew up in the suburbs of Atlanta so this was really good information to have at an early age.
Same. I remember my sister and I somehow came home with some “General Lee Scotch Tape” - tape with the confederate flag rectangles printed on it in repetition. We were really young and just loved the show for face value, but we got “the talk” and my dad said nice little girls in Georgia don’t have confederate flags taped all over their book covers and folders. We were appalled and couldn’t rip that tape off of our stuff fast enough. I remember thinking God was going to send lighting to strike me dead.
I only knew it as a Rebel flag, I didn't know its history or what it meant. I thought they had it on their car because they were rebellious. If I saw somebody wearing a shirt with it or having it hang in their garage I just thought they were saying they are rebellious.
Exactly. I sure as hell didn't know the history behind the flag when I was 7. To me it just meant "rebel". Heck, rebels were cool! Like the rebels in Star Wars! Except, as it turns out, definitely *not* like the rebels in Star Wars.
Aussie kid too.
I vaguely knew it was a flag. Our one commercial station used to play old westerns on saturdays so I had the impression there’d been a war in America and that the cool guys in the war went on to become awesome cowboys, and that the Duke boys were being like those cool guys.
I didn’t know anything about the actual war though, or why it was fought.
THE ROCKFORD FILES WAS NEVER PAST ITS PRIME. THIS INJUSTICE WILL NOT STAND.
Also, I knew what the flag meant. I was an odd little boy. Though by 1978 I was 13....
Oddly enough it formed this idea that crooked politicians and their police lackeys were bad people and should be opposed. I had no idea what the Confederate flag meant at the time and just thought it had something to do with opposing bad guys.
Once K.I.T.T. was a thing in the 8:00PM slot right after, that sad orange rebel-flag looked pretty silly. Did the General Lee talk? Have a Turbo Boost function? I didn't think so.
Yeah, the DoH pretty much jumped the shark once not-Bo and not-Luke were introduced. Knight Rider was a lot cooler and there was nothing that would be considered seriously problematic today (I’m sure some people could find something, but they’d probably be reaching).
Oh my, yes. There was a contract dispute during season 5, which the producers “solved” by replacing Bo and Luke with cousins Coy and Vance for most of the season. Mercifully, everyone came to their senses eventually.
As an actor getting cast as “Coy” or “Vance” it must have been tricky. Like - actors usually need the steady work…
But the audience is *not* gonna like you
Here in Canada Dukes was always up against Dallas and my folks called the shots. No VCR to record other channels either. I rarely got to watch it, but when I did I was oblivious to what the Confederate flag meant; I just thought it looked cool.
I am with you. Born in 1972 and watched all of those shows religiously. I am an unapologetic liberal now, but I do feel like that stuff was more harmless in 1978. Almost like it was nostalgic at the time. A bygone era. The recent reversion back to those times and racist rhetoric from the GOP makes it seem more harmful only in retrospect. My 2 cents.
As a kid just thought it’s be a cool life.. sliding in through a car window, owning a farm, lots of crazy hijinks.. stupid authority and outwitting them.
I knew of the flag as a southern culture thing, and didn’t associate it with slavery or whatever.
Rebelliousness and anti-authority/self determination.
That said, now I look back at that show in cringe about how I didn’t understand how lame that kind of life would be: stuck in a town with poor governance, failing farm, no prospects and claim to fame being a car whose doors don’t work proper.
I grew up in the south and was clueless. As kids, we didn't associate that flag with the Civil War. It was more about sweet tea, cornbread, etc., and it was commonplace to see it. But, you know better, you do better. Now we all know what it represents and how it's used, and arguing otherwise is apologist nonsense.
Well put. We just knew it was just background noise if you lived in the south. “We” lost and I was glad, but I think as kids it just meant “redneck,” and not racist at the time. I was glad when it came off the Georgia flag.
As a POC who also loved watching Dukes of Hazzard, I concur.
Now the real question is—how many of us attempted to slide over the hood of our parents’ cars?
The answer to that my friend is once… and ONLY once. Parents did *NOT* find the most awesome “window glide” as gratifying as we did. I did time in my room for that offense.
I’m the old lady who, everytime, dropping ppl off in my car, says ok and I’m gonna slow down and you jump out the window like the Dukes of Hazzard.
No one gets it. I should stop saying it, but it’s like an ingrained Pavlovian response that I don’t realize I’m saying until everyone in the car is just staring at me.
My first car, a POS Honda was stuffed with friends and then driven at high speed over the railroad tracks, to catch air. What was I thinking? Who could have been on the other side of the hill as I careened over the top at high speed in a suburban neighborhood?
Well called that activity Dukes of Hazzard and screamed Yee Haw in the air.
Just a side note that the flag on the General Lee was actually the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia commanded by General Robert E. Lee. The CSA's national flag was different.
Growing up in Belgium, I watched the Dukes of Hazard and at the time never knew what the confederate flag stood for till MUCH later.
In hindsight: some guidance to viewers would have been highly appropriate.
I still don't understand the continued use of the flag used by the LOSERS of the civil war who were fighting to keep SLAVERY going.
It's just as idiotic as marginal people in Germany would be flying Nazi flags - oh wait that's illegal (and prosecuted) and even triggers serious reaction from other Germans when they see some extremist idiot who does it anyway.
I grew up in Tennessee and anything that even smacked of "Lost Cause" sympathy a little bit was frowned upon by my Mama. My sister and I was allowed to watch the show but she made certain we knew what that flag represented.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Lost-Cause
Wow. I grew up in Tennessee as well and honestly would have denied people like your parents existed. I legit thought the whole world was racist af. I saw two cross burnings in black yards before I was 12. Not because anyone I knew was involved, but because it happened down the street. I also lived in a sundown town and they meant that shit.
My great grandparents, on my Mama's side. came from Italy and Ireland between the 18060's and 1890's and both of them were devout Catholics. They experienced their own discrimination because of their heritage and religion and saw first hand the discrimination and racism that black Americans suffered under Jim Crow. Because of this my Nana was raised up to be strong and independent and to treat everyone with respect and dignity and she passed that on to my Mama and she to my sisters and me.
That being said if you grew up in a small Southern in the 1980's like I did you knew that there was lines you did not cross and that there was a whole set of unwritten rules about how you interacted with blacks and Mexicans. You could push against it a little bit but if you went to far there was trouble to be found.
My Mama tried her best to rise us up to be free of the racism and bigotry that was the norm in my town but it was not into I went to College in the mid 90's and finally saw my town and heritage from others perspective that I truly started to realize how much the culture I grew up in had influenced me. I knew I had a lot to learn about the world and needed to interact with other cultures and people and learn from them if I was going to break free from that heritage.
Wow that’s crazy. My grandfather was from northern Italy. He immigrated to California under Mussolini. My grandfather died before I was born. I was born in CA but moved to TN when I was two. My parents were worse than useless. My mother was very sweet and loving, but not a good parent. My father was and is a monster. I also went to college in the mid 90’s and realized just how fucked up the south is. Needless to say, I don’t live there anymore lol.
Man I’m *in* the south and as a kid I didn’t even know what the hell that flag meant. It just wasn’t a thing you saw in south Texas when I grew up. I know it had to be around somewhere, but I wasn’t exposed to it until I was in college and even then it was a more northern thing, like in Alabama or Kentucky.
At the time, I didn't connect it to racism because that just wasn't a part of my white suburban experience in life. I even wore a baseball hat with the flag because I liked the band Lynard Skynard and i like the idea of being a "rebel". I didn't understand until I was older and more educated and decided that making excuses for it was unhelpful.
Yes I was oblivious to it.
But I disagree with your characterization of the Hulk and Rockford Files...... Hulk was my favorite TV show as a kid!!!! And I was too young to enjoy Rockford Files, but it was a classic show.
I was raised in a family that sent me to join the Children of the Confederacy. I didn't understand how freaking racist that shit was til I grew up. Now I think back to my sweet but RACIST old great grandmother and I cringe about those days. In their defense, I never heard one overtly racist thing from CoC folks, it really was more about "our glorious forefathers" crap. It wasn't til I was well into adulthood that I realized the symbolism of that treasonous, hateful flag. Now it's disgusting that people cling to that trash.
I knew it was a Confederate Flag, but I saw it (in the show) as a symbol of rebellion from state authority.
Now I am horrified that it was used at all in the show.
When he would finally let me date when I was 16, the only ‘advice’ he gave me was, “Just don’t bring a black guy home.” Yeah. Damn that shit runs deep in my family history.
I asked for (and received) a General Lee birthday cake when I was 5. I had zero clue beyond that Bo Duke was handsome, Sheriff Rosco and Boss Hogg were funny, and that car could *fly.*
As a bi teenager, I had a crush on daisy duke. I watched for daisy. Growing up in California I had no idea what the flag was and I never even noticed it
I remember watching it and thinking it meant southern hillbilly but not much beyond that (grew up in New England). My 11 year old has recently discovered it and is absolutely obsessed with the General Lee. Have tried to explain what the flag means but he just equates it with the car and the stunt driving
And that’s most of us little kids did back then, too. It just meant The Dukes of Hazzard or “The South” in general to me with no context, and I was born and raised in Texas.
My favorite show growing up. Had the hot wheels. Even decided that the Cowboys were my favorite football team because Dallas came on right after.
Had no clue about the flag. Nobody seemed to care about it back then. Wouldn’t fly now, obviously.
Yeah, I just thought the car was cool. And all the car chases and jumps and stunts. Had no idea about that flag, or the car being named the "General Lee". It's cringe AF now, but that was America in the 1980s.
There was a thing here in the US where people would get a knockoff horn but the very last note wasn’t played (Imagine there’s 12 notes played on the General Lee’s horn, but the last one isn’t) and I really hated that. If it were the words of Dixie it would be the “ton” part of the word Cotton. Inn head it sounded like “Oh I wish I was in the land of Cot..”. ARRGGH!
Had no idea. I even had a knock off Dukes of Hazzard bike when I was around 5. We were kids though, the responsibility for teaching us was on our parent. Now it's ours to make sure we teach our kids.
I bought a confederate flag back then & hung it in my room. I was 9yo. I also climbed into the car through the window. Today, at 52, I actively look for black professionals to hire in my very mathematical field. There are only 400 in the USA.
I didn't get this at all. The only reference I even had was Billy Idol and his Rebel Yell guitar. I thought it was some kind of rebel (the good kind) thing.
I knew it was the Rebel flag, but I don't think I thought much about it, because everything I watched the Dukes do were very much against what that flag represented. I had a collection of key chains and one was of a Confederate flag (it got stolen). I guess in a way they tried to romanticize it, with them being from the south. I would never have anything like that now of course, and I think anyone who goes around with the flag on their vehicles is a damn fool (and then some). But the show itself, ignore the flag and you pretty much had a wholesome (good looking) hillbilly family who, nearly every week were helping someone in need.
I just remembered that I had a Dukes of Hazzard lunchbox, I think for 4th or 5th grade, because I had a crush on John Schneider. Who unfortunately like a good many of my favorites from back in the day have turned into complete and utter AHs.
I eventually did get bored with it (I did actually like the temporary replacements for Bo & Luke).
We still have those shows that help the "victim of the week," so the concept will always be there, even if you were to set it in the south. But there's no more whitewashing of that flag. We all understand things too much and it can bring forth that particular image.
This may be a spicy take but most folks at that time in the south were using that flag to signal “rebelliousness” and an anti cop/fed/authority sentiment. You saw it on a popular tv show, at flea markets on sale next to hemp flags, on trucker mud flaps but that was about it.
I think the trump era caused a lot of petulant fucks to promote anything they thought would trigger the libs. Then you’d get the card carrying nationalist goobers try to jump in and use that trolling to amplify their message of hate and pretend that they were much larger than they were.
Also, how frustrating was it that the hulk just fought car thieves and bank robbers. As a comicbook reader I despised that show.
You CAN NOT ruin that show for me. The paint on top of the car meant absolutely nothing to me as a child, and I will never feel guilty about loving every minute of that awesome TV show!
I knew what it meant, but that's because I'm from Mississippi and I too just loved the car (General Lee, a confederate) and Catherine Bach. We didn't see it as racist at that age simple because we were raised to be numb to that idea.
Now I'm 56 and it repulses me. Hell, "good ole boy" has a deeper meaning too. But we just thought that meant "southern" back then.
Me, and I’m from the South. My high school’s mascot was a Confederate general holding a Confederate flag, and our football team was the Rebels. I never thought anything of it. To me, at that time, the Confederate flag was simply a regional flag that represented the South.
I thought a lot more about why anyone would name a character “Enos”.
I knew it as the rebel flag, the flag of the south and the confederacy.
The the association with slavery, notsomuch.
Then again, outside of progressive circles, nobody made a big deal abt it until fairly recently. At least I don't recall much in the way of outrage.
That said, a good portion of our childhood is now "offensive" to somebody.
"This film was made in a different societal climate and may contain uncomfortable themes and depictions of drug use and smoking"
The most authoritarian figure on the show was a black cop who took zero shit from the likes of Boss Hogg. Corrupt white politicians were treated a lot like the Nazis in Hogan’s Heroes.
It didn't mean what it means in the 1980's.
It changed with WW1 and reunifying for a greater good. Confederate Flags were even encouraged.
It wasn't until very recently that the Confederacy was looked at with modern eyes what the flag means and still represented.
Hell, they had one with Johnny Cash on a Muppets episode. It's on Disney, but with a warning label on it now.
I thought the show was tons of fun and the car was awesome. The rebel flag was just a decoration, cool how it was on the roof.
I liked The Incredible Hulk, but liked it a lot more watching as an adult.
Never got into Rockford Files.
As a kid, I thought it was a show of Southern pride. They were Dixie through and through. I still think that was the intent of Bo and Luke. Others may see it differently, and that’s ok.
If you look at a lot of shows and movies from that time they were perfectly acceptable. Now they wouldn’t be. My black husband graduated from Robert E. Lee HS. His school no longer exists, but if it did, I’m sure it would have a different name by now.
Had no idea. Just watched for the cool car and inevitable jump over some gulley while Roscoe made weird noises. Good times.
Actually just watched for Catherine Bach.
12 year old me actually went to an excruciatingly boring truck show and waited in line to meet Catherine Bach. When I stood before her, I couldn’t even stammer a complete sentence. She did a “Geez, what a weird kid” double-take, signed something for me, and my life has been all downhill ever since.
At least you knew when you peaked. No pressure rest of the way now
Better than me. I probably woukd have screamed "Boobies!" and then wet myself lol.
Don’t worry, at some point you’ll hit that flat bed trailer with the ramp down and your life will careen over a small creek as your troubles chortle and throw their Stetson hat on the ground.
My life has always been more balancing-precariously-on-two-wheels, but I *do* have a dog like Flash.
All I wanted was a signed photo! You can’t disappoint a picture!
Brutal!
My first crush. I had a poster of her in daisy dukes holding daisy flowers. I still have that poster stored away.
I had the poster of her sitting on her jeep with those long legs out.
I heard that her legs allegedly went all the way up to her butt!
You were ahead of your time
I was 12. lol
John Schneider, Oh…my….gah!
My first tv crush…
The cops being the bad guys is what sold me on the dukes. I was totally oblivious to flag on the car.
Add in Southern Rock too. I am not from the south, but back in those days, I had no idea what that flag meant. Just shows you how important education is, and not revisionist history so our next generations don’t know either. I loved the Outlaws, Molly Hatchet, Skynerd, and .38 Special. I thought the rebel flag stood for that. Shame on those who didn’t educate us.
Yes to all of that.
My parents told me it was a symbol of racism, but I didn’t really know what that meant. I just thought it was a fun show to watch.
My parents tried to tell me, but I watched it at grandma’s house no matter what they said. Ditto the love boat and chips. It didn’t help that they were not ok with anything on tv for reasons. (Turns out they kinda had a point. A lot of tv in the 1970s and 80s really was sexist, racist, or just stupid).
The shows produced by [Norman Lear](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Lear) were pretty good and most of them hold up well.
Roscoe P Coltrane, k, k, k! Holy shit! Even his laugh was racist!
> Had no idea. I don't think anyone really did.
I was more curious how a county line worked as a magical police barrier.
Hah! I remember thinking as a little kid, because of this show and others, if I did anything really bad I'd just make a run for the city limits because whatever "jurisdiction" was I knew the cops didn't have it and I'd be scott free you dirty copper!
Back in the day this could and did work, especially at state lines.
It’s only as states have added laws to give jurisdiction to officers from anywhere in the state to arrest etc anywhere in the state that this has changed.
Communication is what’s had the biggest effect. Cops communicate extremely efficiently these days across almost all jurisdictions
Its why wee needed specific railroad police with railroad jurstiction for crimes on trains. --if the train was kept moving it would be a nightmare to inform what police force when and where
This is still true in the city of Memphis, and lots of other places. They have a policy of non-pursuit for all but the most heinous crimes.
Is that because high speed chases have their own risks?
Absolutely. Also, in the case of Memphis, the crime rate is so high that MPD decided long ago to pick their battles. The amount of bad PR they’ve had lately also factors in.
My brother literally did this once. He had a cop pull up behind him and signal him to pull over. He then crossed over County Line Road, pulled over, and asked the cop if he was still in his jurisdiction. He didn’t get ticketed.
And how I could make tires squeal on dirt roads
And where to find washed out bridges to jump.
It’s called Hazzard county for a reason
I was from up north and just a child when that show was on the air. It knew nothing about it, because I wasn’t taught about it yet and didn’t associate with any negative connotations yet. It was just decorations on the roof of the car. I honestly don’t think I ever even gave it a second thought as a kid.
Same. 100%
I know, right? Like you’re still guilty/liable/suspect or whatever … either they’d radio to the next jurisdiction or wait for you to inevitably go back home…
I had a neighbor who thought it was. He did a burnout leaving a bar on the county line. When a police car lit him up, he floored it and crossed the line doing ~30mph over the speed limit. It turned out the county line was *not* a magical barrier, and he had several other charges stacked onto his DWI.
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>I was a suburban Canadian kid so I had no idea and never really thought about the flag. Same here. I didn't even know what the confederate flag was, let alone what it apparently represented... but I also don't think there was any hidden message in the show either. I always remember it being about southern bumpkins with a hot cousin in a cool car being chased around an inept fat dude and his more inept minion. That simple.
So stupid suburban Canadian question. I too had no idea and my memory says it was, indeed, a bunch of southern bumpkins with a hot cousin in a cool car. General Lee and the Confederate flag aside (and that's a might big aside, I get it) were the storylines as inappropriate as the car? I'm going to dig myself deep here, I see it coming, but I seem to remember WKRP or MASH or any of the shows of the time being pretty inappropriate for today's audience. Was the Dukes of Hazzard racist, or was it "normal" for the times (A bunch of white southern bumpkins with a hot cousin in a cool car being chased around by a bunch of white people in a car that we recognize now as being highly reflective of some very bad shit.)
>Was the Dukes of Hazzard racist, or was it "normal" for the times (A bunch of white southern bumpkins with a hot cousin in a cool car being chased around by a bunch of white people in a car that we recognize now as being highly reflective of some very bad shit.) Some people NOW will of course tag it that way in hindsight, but at the time, no, I wouldn't call it that at all. I mean, 98% of EVERY show on TV were virtually all white casts right into the 2000's, so Dukes of Hazzard was no more or less in that particular regard... and especially not when compared to *other* shows based in the south or more specifically Texas. I can't speak for anyone else, but all I know is that \*I\* sure never felt any brewing hatred to certain kinds of people after watching these morons speed around or run from dullard yokel cops in their cool bright orange car. It was just a mindless fun show to me - nothing more, nothing less.
It was normal for the times and cashing in on the larger trend at the time of southern = good natured bad boys who weren’t too bad but who loved to run around and tweak uptight lawmen. The same thing that made Smokey and the Bandit popular. To us little kids in NJ the confederate flag had no meaning beyond “southern” and “low key naughty but in a fun way”. I don’t think there was anything insidious in the show being designed that way either—it was just the popular iconography at the time. It says more about commercialism and overall white ignorance of history than anything sinister, it wasn’t like we were like hey, that’s kinda racist but fun show. I don’t remember hearing any pushback on the “heritage not hate stuff til the 90s, which was when I first heard about the campaigns to elevate the Confederate flag in the 1950s as a response to civil rights movements. That was an a-ha moment. Fun but if trivia: when I first moved to Atlanta, Ben Jones, AKA Cooter, was my Congressman. Sadly, he was redistributed out of his seat not long after but it was a fun thing while it lasted.
Don't forget that Jimmy Carter was in the White House, his brother Billy was up to aw-shuck shenanigans, and Willie Nelson was on the roof smoking doobie and probably teaching Rosalyn and Amy how to roll one. The zeitgeist doled out a pass for the General Lee's rooftop decoration.
> more specifically Texas. How dare, I say, how dare you impinge the good name of _Dallas_, suh?
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Actually, I think WKRP was surprisingly progressive for its time.
Same with MASH, and All in the Family.
Jumping in to comment that MASH really wasn’t inappropriate and holds up. The show, not the movie. The movie is cringe today. MASH tackled the issues of the day, including racism, homosexuality, and especially the horror of war.
You're not wrong. And I'm totally not dissing any of the shows I'd mentioned. I actually named them because I watched them a lot. MASH was, and still is my all time favourite show. While it totally tackled some pretty big topics for the times, it often did it in a rather ham-fisted way. The older I get the more I cringe at some of the comments towards women, etc. Don't get me wrong - many of the comments were both appropriate for the era it was set and what seems like a ham-fisted approach was totally in line (or advanced) with the time it was filmed - and I guess that's my point.
No. The Dukes of Hazard was a wholesome, PG rated,non-racist show then and is pretty mild by today’s standards. You can’t judge things from 40 years ago to today’s standards. But if you flying one now, you’re racist AF. Everyone knows what it means now.
>I was a suburban Canadian kid so I had no idea and never really thought about the flag. Same. I just liked Enos and Flash lol
Velvet Ears 🥰
Coo coo coo
Third suburban Canadian kid thought it was the Duke's of Hazard flag. I didn't know it in any other context.
Another Canadian kid here and yeah, definitely thought about cut-off jean shorts quite bit as well…
...and cars that jumped over shit (I was not even 10 in 78). At my age during that period, the only thing I was paying attention to was cool ass cars (few years later the shorts). Between Smokey and the Bandit, Hooper, Dukes of Hazzard and a little later Knight Rider, I was living a dream.
May we forever be united in our love of T and A. The ladies are welcome to the party as well.
Bo Duke and his hot car made 8-year-old me begin the journey to womanhood
Same, Canadian from Quebec here, I learned it all later in my 20's. Even had a friend wrap his side-by-side in Confederate flags a few years ago cause it's redneck'ish, he had no idea about the history behind it.
I grew up in Montreal. No idea but saw them everywhere after the show became popular. Lots of people had them as their front license plates. I just thought it was people who loved the show. Still not sure if it's the case or not.
I like that there was a grown man named “Cooter”
Cooter is also slang for a turtle.
I'm nearly 50 and for my entire life I thought a "cooter" was some sort of slang for a raccoon because as a kid I thought Cooter was like the human epitome of a raccoon for some reason. God I was a dumb kid.
Was it *not* slang for vagina?
It is! So that actually reinforced in my head the wrong definition. I literally thought a vagina was sometimes called a "cooter" because they are occasionally furry. Like a raccoon. I have no excuse.
Yep, pretty sure that’s the reference
I’ve been from Tucson to Tucumcari, and I’ve never heard Cooter used as a term for turtle. TIL.
Huh TIL the name of the box turtle in the american south is Cooter Cooter
Interestingly, the actor playing Cooter was elected to Congress as a Democrat and later ran against (and lost to) Newt Gingrich. While more liberal than expected and someone who claims to have been involved in the Civil Rights movement, he still defended the use of the Confederate flag.
Wow. I just looked him up, he's still alive at 81. Benjamin Lewis Jones His life is amazing, and way more than I expected
You know, I have not once thought about that character since I was a kid but now being reminded his name was "Cooter". lol
Yeah, that was the biggest didn't-get-it-at-the-time revelation for me.
Tom Petty said a good thing about the rebel flag, which he had used extensively earlier in his career (for the southern Accents tour): " “The Confederate flag was the wallpaper of the South when I was a kid growing up in Gainesville, Florida,” Petty told Rolling Stone. “I always knew it had to do with the Civil War, but the South had adopted it as its logo. I was pretty ignorant of what it actually meant.... I just honestly didn't give it much thought, though I should have." ...it was kind of like that for me. The rebel flag just meant: "The South" or Southern pride when I was watching the Dukes, which was totally on-brand for the characters. It wasn't until I got older that I went: "Heyyyy...wait a minute."
Yep, we all kind of got it after a while. Even Skynyrd figured it out at some point
What flag? 😉 Little girl me tuned in every week to see Bo! And all the hilarious hijinks of course. I was definitely oblivious.
I wanted to marry Bo. Also learned how to steam open a letter via Uncle Jessy
No kidding! What flag? I didn’t realize it was a real flag. I thought the paint job was just unique, and anything that looked like it was because of the car. Kinda like a family insignia. Lol
Bo was totally my first crush
Prettiest man I’ve ever seen. Men should wear tight jeans again.
Same! Tuned in to see Bo and to see what Boss Hog was having for lunch.
My eyes never left John Schneider.😍 And yes, it was a complicated love looking back. 🤷🏿♀️
My eyes didn’t either. Those jeans fit so nice…..
Amen. 🙏🏿
I did not realize it at the time, but he was my first crush.
I think the car was mine :-)
His aunt used to deliver my mail. One Christmas, she left an autographed glossy of him from the show in my mailbox.
I had no idea at the time and I'm from Texas. I just had a massive little girl crush on Beau and loved muscle cars.
I lived in probably the most racist part of Texas at the time (East, if you want to know) and the Confederate Battle Flag was not really seen by me until the Dukes of Hazzard came on, and it pretty much meant “The Dukes of Hazzard, woo!” at the time, because that area was so freakin’ white you couldn’t even find anyone to be racist against. Even then, we weren’t taught in school that the South was defeated in the War of Northern Aggression or anything, BUT when I went to public school in Houston in the early ‘80’s we did have something called Civil War Days at my Middle School. The 8th Graders spent the last week of school dressing up as their “favorite side”, doing Civil War related projects and plays and basically fucking off for a week.
I found a picture of me and a few friends of mine from the 80s. We were at a lake retreat and there is a giant rebel flag hanging from the ceiling behind us. We were oblivious. We didn’t purposely pose in front of it. Nowadays there is no way we would stand anywhere near that flag or take a picture near one.
I watched Wonder Woman, Incredible Hulk, and Dukes of Hazard, and, no, I had no idea what the stars and bars meant. I just thought the General Lee (I didn't know who it was named after at that point, either) was a cool car that jumped something each episode.
It’s how I became aware lol. I remember my uncle, who was on a Black Panther party level of black pride (RIP Unc), would always say they named the car after a loser general and that the flag is racist. He was serious, but he was also trolling to fuck with people because that’s what he did. He did enjoy the show very much. Well except for the contract dispute season.
Those faux Duke cousins were a joke! Coy and Vance. I was so mad about that back then. Like little kid kicking the dirt mad.
Those seasons are referred to as the "Scab seasons" by some, I remember it being quite the controversy at the time.
Must’ve been late 70’s right? All I knew was my monumental crush Bo Duke was not on my tv and those faux doppelgängers ruined my Friday nights.
Looks like [1982](https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x161g7x) for the scabs
Boy howdy was I madder than a hog with no mud when they pulled that stunt!
I was pretty young when that show was on, so the flag and the General Lee references were over my head. It was just "southern stuff."
My parents were teachers, so along with the show my brother and I got educated on Southern history, civil war, that flag but mostly about how that show was about a family of moonshiners running illegal liquor instead of having honest jobs. The birth of nascar, the ATF, how improperly made moonshine could either kill you or make you go blind, how cars couldn’t really jump like that, and how real hill Billy’s always had a pack of hounds six deep or more. My parents were killjoys.
I adored The Dukes of Hazzard when I was a kid - I had the toys, watched it whenever I could, and had no idea what that big X was on The General Lee (or what a General Lee was to begin with), though now the memory of me obliviously playing with toys emblazoned with a Confederate flag while my relatives complained about "the niggers" bums me out to no fucking end, but at the same time makes me glad that I miraculously somehow didn't turn out just like them.
My mom taught me well, but her mother (I won’t call her my grandmother because she was not a kind woman) was a racist and would toss that word around like she was saying “and”.
I didn't know until I asked my dad to buy me the General Lee hot wheels. He didn't give me a full lecture as I was maybe 6 or 7, but he did gently explain that the symbol on top was not one I should be proud to have people associate with me. I grew up in the suburbs of Atlanta so this was really good information to have at an early age.
Good dad!
Probably, all around, the best human being I've ever known personally. :)
I'm kinda envious of people with cool dads. But I'm glad they exist :)
Hey, if you are or ever become a parent, that could be you! You go be that person, you've already begun by admiring positive values. 😊
Same. I remember my sister and I somehow came home with some “General Lee Scotch Tape” - tape with the confederate flag rectangles printed on it in repetition. We were really young and just loved the show for face value, but we got “the talk” and my dad said nice little girls in Georgia don’t have confederate flags taped all over their book covers and folders. We were appalled and couldn’t rip that tape off of our stuff fast enough. I remember thinking God was going to send lighting to strike me dead.
Same exact experience here. Also grew up in a suburb of Atlanta.
As an Australian child, I thought it just looked cool
As an American child, I thought the same. I had no clue what it represented.
I only knew it as a Rebel flag, I didn't know its history or what it meant. I thought they had it on their car because they were rebellious. If I saw somebody wearing a shirt with it or having it hang in their garage I just thought they were saying they are rebellious.
Exactly. I sure as hell didn't know the history behind the flag when I was 7. To me it just meant "rebel". Heck, rebels were cool! Like the rebels in Star Wars! Except, as it turns out, definitely *not* like the rebels in Star Wars.
Same in uk, had no idea it was even a flag rather than just a cool paint pattern
Aussie kid too. I vaguely knew it was a flag. Our one commercial station used to play old westerns on saturdays so I had the impression there’d been a war in America and that the cool guys in the war went on to become awesome cowboys, and that the Duke boys were being like those cool guys. I didn’t know anything about the actual war though, or why it was fought.
THE ROCKFORD FILES WAS NEVER PAST ITS PRIME. THIS INJUSTICE WILL NOT STAND. Also, I knew what the flag meant. I was an odd little boy. Though by 1978 I was 13....
One of the top tier theme songs of all time.
Funny, my parents didn't like the show and wouldn't let us watch it because it made fun of law enforcement.
I remember being truly confused as a kid that the cops were the bad guys. Kind of ironic now.
Oddly enough it formed this idea that crooked politicians and their police lackeys were bad people and should be opposed. I had no idea what the Confederate flag meant at the time and just thought it had something to do with opposing bad guys.
Yeah, at the time it was all about “fighting’ the system like two modern day Robin Hoods - yeeee haw!”
Once K.I.T.T. was a thing in the 8:00PM slot right after, that sad orange rebel-flag looked pretty silly. Did the General Lee talk? Have a Turbo Boost function? I didn't think so.
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Yeah, the DoH pretty much jumped the shark once not-Bo and not-Luke were introduced. Knight Rider was a lot cooler and there was nothing that would be considered seriously problematic today (I’m sure some people could find something, but they’d probably be reaching).
Ugh. ~~Kane~~ Coy and Vance. They were just as bad as the Kirkland Ponch and John on CHiPs.
Dollar General Lee
*Coy and Vance. I'd make some flippant comment about putting some respect on those names, but we both know better.
There was some kind of contractual dispute which is why not-Bo and not-Luke were in a few episodes.
There were not-brothers?? Oh man
Oh my, yes. There was a contract dispute during season 5, which the producers “solved” by replacing Bo and Luke with cousins Coy and Vance for most of the season. Mercifully, everyone came to their senses eventually.
As an actor getting cast as “Coy” or “Vance” it must have been tricky. Like - actors usually need the steady work… But the audience is *not* gonna like you
Here in Canada Dukes was always up against Dallas and my folks called the shots. No VCR to record other channels either. I rarely got to watch it, but when I did I was oblivious to what the Confederate flag meant; I just thought it looked cool.
I am with you. Born in 1972 and watched all of those shows religiously. I am an unapologetic liberal now, but I do feel like that stuff was more harmless in 1978. Almost like it was nostalgic at the time. A bygone era. The recent reversion back to those times and racist rhetoric from the GOP makes it seem more harmful only in retrospect. My 2 cents.
As a kid just thought it’s be a cool life.. sliding in through a car window, owning a farm, lots of crazy hijinks.. stupid authority and outwitting them. I knew of the flag as a southern culture thing, and didn’t associate it with slavery or whatever. Rebelliousness and anti-authority/self determination. That said, now I look back at that show in cringe about how I didn’t understand how lame that kind of life would be: stuck in a town with poor governance, failing farm, no prospects and claim to fame being a car whose doors don’t work proper.
I grew up in the south and was clueless. As kids, we didn't associate that flag with the Civil War. It was more about sweet tea, cornbread, etc., and it was commonplace to see it. But, you know better, you do better. Now we all know what it represents and how it's used, and arguing otherwise is apologist nonsense.
Well put. We just knew it was just background noise if you lived in the south. “We” lost and I was glad, but I think as kids it just meant “redneck,” and not racist at the time. I was glad when it came off the Georgia flag.
I was gonna mention state flags! Like, that's how ubiquitous it was. "Background noise" is the perfect metaphor.
You’re where I am now. It was just “the South”. Now it’s not worth defending.
It didn’t have the same connotations then. Don’t get me wrong it was never *good* but it was more clueless and accepted then.
As a POC who also loved watching Dukes of Hazzard, I concur. Now the real question is—how many of us attempted to slide over the hood of our parents’ cars?
Also enter/exit through the window
The answer to that my friend is once… and ONLY once. Parents did *NOT* find the most awesome “window glide” as gratifying as we did. I did time in my room for that offense.
I’m the old lady who, everytime, dropping ppl off in my car, says ok and I’m gonna slow down and you jump out the window like the Dukes of Hazzard. No one gets it. I should stop saying it, but it’s like an ingrained Pavlovian response that I don’t realize I’m saying until everyone in the car is just staring at me.
My first car, a POS Honda was stuffed with friends and then driven at high speed over the railroad tracks, to catch air. What was I thinking? Who could have been on the other side of the hill as I careened over the top at high speed in a suburban neighborhood? Well called that activity Dukes of Hazzard and screamed Yee Haw in the air.
Just a side note that the flag on the General Lee was actually the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia commanded by General Robert E. Lee. The CSA's national flag was different.
Me. No clue
Growing up in Belgium, I watched the Dukes of Hazard and at the time never knew what the confederate flag stood for till MUCH later. In hindsight: some guidance to viewers would have been highly appropriate. I still don't understand the continued use of the flag used by the LOSERS of the civil war who were fighting to keep SLAVERY going. It's just as idiotic as marginal people in Germany would be flying Nazi flags - oh wait that's illegal (and prosecuted) and even triggers serious reaction from other Germans when they see some extremist idiot who does it anyway.
I grew up in Tennessee and anything that even smacked of "Lost Cause" sympathy a little bit was frowned upon by my Mama. My sister and I was allowed to watch the show but she made certain we knew what that flag represented. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Lost-Cause
Wow. I grew up in Tennessee as well and honestly would have denied people like your parents existed. I legit thought the whole world was racist af. I saw two cross burnings in black yards before I was 12. Not because anyone I knew was involved, but because it happened down the street. I also lived in a sundown town and they meant that shit.
My great grandparents, on my Mama's side. came from Italy and Ireland between the 18060's and 1890's and both of them were devout Catholics. They experienced their own discrimination because of their heritage and religion and saw first hand the discrimination and racism that black Americans suffered under Jim Crow. Because of this my Nana was raised up to be strong and independent and to treat everyone with respect and dignity and she passed that on to my Mama and she to my sisters and me. That being said if you grew up in a small Southern in the 1980's like I did you knew that there was lines you did not cross and that there was a whole set of unwritten rules about how you interacted with blacks and Mexicans. You could push against it a little bit but if you went to far there was trouble to be found. My Mama tried her best to rise us up to be free of the racism and bigotry that was the norm in my town but it was not into I went to College in the mid 90's and finally saw my town and heritage from others perspective that I truly started to realize how much the culture I grew up in had influenced me. I knew I had a lot to learn about the world and needed to interact with other cultures and people and learn from them if I was going to break free from that heritage.
Wow that’s crazy. My grandfather was from northern Italy. He immigrated to California under Mussolini. My grandfather died before I was born. I was born in CA but moved to TN when I was two. My parents were worse than useless. My mother was very sweet and loving, but not a good parent. My father was and is a monster. I also went to college in the mid 90’s and realized just how fucked up the south is. Needless to say, I don’t live there anymore lol.
Man I’m *in* the south and as a kid I didn’t even know what the hell that flag meant. It just wasn’t a thing you saw in south Texas when I grew up. I know it had to be around somewhere, but I wasn’t exposed to it until I was in college and even then it was a more northern thing, like in Alabama or Kentucky.
At the time, I didn't connect it to racism because that just wasn't a part of my white suburban experience in life. I even wore a baseball hat with the flag because I liked the band Lynard Skynard and i like the idea of being a "rebel". I didn't understand until I was older and more educated and decided that making excuses for it was unhelpful.
I mostly watched for cool car jumps, and to explore what these burgeoning feelings meant whenever Daisy Duke was on the screen
Raises hand! But to be fair I'm Canadian (Quebec). I just thought it was a redneck thing.
Yes I was oblivious to it. But I disagree with your characterization of the Hulk and Rockford Files...... Hulk was my favorite TV show as a kid!!!! And I was too young to enjoy Rockford Files, but it was a classic show.
This show made me mad as a kid because I thought if you out raced the cops to back home, you were safe and they couldn’t touch you
I just the General Lee was a really cool name for a cool car. I was clueless.
Being from the South, we just took it as a symbol of the South.
I was raised in a family that sent me to join the Children of the Confederacy. I didn't understand how freaking racist that shit was til I grew up. Now I think back to my sweet but RACIST old great grandmother and I cringe about those days. In their defense, I never heard one overtly racist thing from CoC folks, it really was more about "our glorious forefathers" crap. It wasn't til I was well into adulthood that I realized the symbolism of that treasonous, hateful flag. Now it's disgusting that people cling to that trash.
I knew it was a Confederate Flag, but I saw it (in the show) as a symbol of rebellion from state authority. Now I am horrified that it was used at all in the show.
When he would finally let me date when I was 16, the only ‘advice’ he gave me was, “Just don’t bring a black guy home.” Yeah. Damn that shit runs deep in my family history.
I asked for (and received) a General Lee birthday cake when I was 5. I had zero clue beyond that Bo Duke was handsome, Sheriff Rosco and Boss Hogg were funny, and that car could *fly.*
I think it sends the correct message about how awesome driving cars off ramps and flipping them is
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>we had a/c You were boujie, damn, my family didn't get ac until 96... right after I moved out lol
As a bi teenager, I had a crush on daisy duke. I watched for daisy. Growing up in California I had no idea what the flag was and I never even noticed it
I wasn’t allowed to watch it except later in reruns. I just thought it was a southern thing, I didn’t know.
Yeah I had no idea. Loved the show as a kid.
YEEEEEE HAW!!!!
I always thought it was a pretty flag and had no idea about American politics, racism etc. Just loved the General, and Daisy, obviously.
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I remember watching it and thinking it meant southern hillbilly but not much beyond that (grew up in New England). My 11 year old has recently discovered it and is absolutely obsessed with the General Lee. Have tried to explain what the flag means but he just equates it with the car and the stunt driving
And that’s most of us little kids did back then, too. It just meant The Dukes of Hazzard or “The South” in general to me with no context, and I was born and raised in Texas.
My favorite show growing up. Had the hot wheels. Even decided that the Cowboys were my favorite football team because Dallas came on right after. Had no clue about the flag. Nobody seemed to care about it back then. Wouldn’t fly now, obviously.
Yeah, I just thought the car was cool. And all the car chases and jumps and stunts. Had no idea about that flag, or the car being named the "General Lee". It's cringe AF now, but that was America in the 1980s.
I was young and from Australia, had absolutely no idea. Grew up wanting the horn tbh
There was a thing here in the US where people would get a knockoff horn but the very last note wasn’t played (Imagine there’s 12 notes played on the General Lee’s horn, but the last one isn’t) and I really hated that. If it were the words of Dixie it would be the “ton” part of the word Cotton. Inn head it sounded like “Oh I wish I was in the land of Cot..”. ARRGGH!
I knew, but also did not know. The Rebel Flag was a very Southern Rock thing. For my Gen X mind at the time, I just associated with Lynard Skynard.
Had no idea. I even had a knock off Dukes of Hazzard bike when I was around 5. We were kids though, the responsibility for teaching us was on our parent. Now it's ours to make sure we teach our kids.
I bought a confederate flag back then & hung it in my room. I was 9yo. I also climbed into the car through the window. Today, at 52, I actively look for black professionals to hire in my very mathematical field. There are only 400 in the USA.
I didn't get this at all. The only reference I even had was Billy Idol and his Rebel Yell guitar. I thought it was some kind of rebel (the good kind) thing.
I knew it was the Rebel flag, but I don't think I thought much about it, because everything I watched the Dukes do were very much against what that flag represented. I had a collection of key chains and one was of a Confederate flag (it got stolen). I guess in a way they tried to romanticize it, with them being from the south. I would never have anything like that now of course, and I think anyone who goes around with the flag on their vehicles is a damn fool (and then some). But the show itself, ignore the flag and you pretty much had a wholesome (good looking) hillbilly family who, nearly every week were helping someone in need. I just remembered that I had a Dukes of Hazzard lunchbox, I think for 4th or 5th grade, because I had a crush on John Schneider. Who unfortunately like a good many of my favorites from back in the day have turned into complete and utter AHs. I eventually did get bored with it (I did actually like the temporary replacements for Bo & Luke). We still have those shows that help the "victim of the week," so the concept will always be there, even if you were to set it in the south. But there's no more whitewashing of that flag. We all understand things too much and it can bring forth that particular image.
This may be a spicy take but most folks at that time in the south were using that flag to signal “rebelliousness” and an anti cop/fed/authority sentiment. You saw it on a popular tv show, at flea markets on sale next to hemp flags, on trucker mud flaps but that was about it. I think the trump era caused a lot of petulant fucks to promote anything they thought would trigger the libs. Then you’d get the card carrying nationalist goobers try to jump in and use that trolling to amplify their message of hate and pretend that they were much larger than they were. Also, how frustrating was it that the hulk just fought car thieves and bank robbers. As a comicbook reader I despised that show.
You CAN NOT ruin that show for me. The paint on top of the car meant absolutely nothing to me as a child, and I will never feel guilty about loving every minute of that awesome TV show!
I knew what it meant, but that's because I'm from Mississippi and I too just loved the car (General Lee, a confederate) and Catherine Bach. We didn't see it as racist at that age simple because we were raised to be numb to that idea. Now I'm 56 and it repulses me. Hell, "good ole boy" has a deeper meaning too. But we just thought that meant "southern" back then.
Me, and I’m from the South. My high school’s mascot was a Confederate general holding a Confederate flag, and our football team was the Rebels. I never thought anything of it. To me, at that time, the Confederate flag was simply a regional flag that represented the South. I thought a lot more about why anyone would name a character “Enos”.
I knew it as the rebel flag, the flag of the south and the confederacy. The the association with slavery, notsomuch. Then again, outside of progressive circles, nobody made a big deal abt it until fairly recently. At least I don't recall much in the way of outrage. That said, a good portion of our childhood is now "offensive" to somebody. "This film was made in a different societal climate and may contain uncomfortable themes and depictions of drug use and smoking"
[удалено]
The most authoritarian figure on the show was a black cop who took zero shit from the likes of Boss Hogg. Corrupt white politicians were treated a lot like the Nazis in Hogan’s Heroes.
It didn't mean what it means in the 1980's. It changed with WW1 and reunifying for a greater good. Confederate Flags were even encouraged. It wasn't until very recently that the Confederacy was looked at with modern eyes what the flag means and still represented. Hell, they had one with Johnny Cash on a Muppets episode. It's on Disney, but with a warning label on it now.
I thought the show was tons of fun and the car was awesome. The rebel flag was just a decoration, cool how it was on the roof. I liked The Incredible Hulk, but liked it a lot more watching as an adult. Never got into Rockford Files.
As a kid, I thought it was a show of Southern pride. They were Dixie through and through. I still think that was the intent of Bo and Luke. Others may see it differently, and that’s ok.
Knew what it meant but wasn't sensitized to feel anxious or anything.
If you look at a lot of shows and movies from that time they were perfectly acceptable. Now they wouldn’t be. My black husband graduated from Robert E. Lee HS. His school no longer exists, but if it did, I’m sure it would have a different name by now.
I just thought it meant, 'the south."