Matt Saber
REEFER MADNESS:
White Lies, White Youths and the Privilege of Scapegoats
The last time I smoked marijuana, I spent ten minutes giggling at a lawnmower. I had smoked grass and the lawnmower cut grass, so I assume the joke manifested from that realization. As far as I can recall, I didn’t violently murder anyone that night; but if I have learned anything from Reefer Madness, it is entirely possible that I went on a killing spree and have simply forgotten. Reefer Madness is a laughably bad 1930s film designed to warn parents of the dangers of cannabis. As with all great films, Reefer Madness takes place at a meeting of the School-Parents Association (SPA), at which the parents are warned that “marihuana” causes uncontrollable laughter, violent outbursts, and inevitable insanity. An intense urge to eat large quantities of snack food is not mentioned—but obesity wasn’t invented until 1950, so they likely decided it was an irrelevant side effect. The bulk of the film is a story told by the head of the SPA. It’s a story that could happen in YOUR town to YOUR children. It’s also the story of a few fine white kids and how pot destroyed their lives. The first beautiful WASP child who has his life ruined by the Chronic is Jimmy. Jimmy is a fine young lad who says things like “jive” and dances as poorly as you would expect any white boy to dance. While the Devil’s lettuce doesn’t improve his dancing, it does cause him to drive extremely fast and run over a pedestrian. Jimmy drives away and feels bad about the hit-and-run, but sees no real repercussions for his actions. The realism of a white kid getting away with manslaughter is meant to lure the viewer in, to ground the upcoming stories in fact, and to distract the viewer from the realization that if you’re truly stoned, you’re much more likely to drive 20 MPH under the speed limit while also constantly checking your mirrors. 72 | HONEYSUCKLE MAGAZINE
Next on the chopping block is Bill, a promising young tennis star who quotes Shakespeare and gets embarrassed when his girlfriend’s mother sees them kiss. After lighting up a few reefers, Bill starts whiffing tennis balls and hooking up with a hussy in some strange lady’s apartment, before getting into a fight and being accused of murder. Because of the dangerous memory loss associated with ganja,
REEFER MADNESS 1936 poster
Bill believes that he committed the murder (although he was actually framed by a joint-hustling street tough) and is found guilty by a jury. The judge eventually throws out his conviction because he doesn’t want to ruin Bill’s tennis career; but golly, that was a close call. Mary, being a woman, doesn’t fare quite as well as Bill. Unfortunately for Mary, she has no sense of smell, and inadvertently smokes a marijuana cigarette thinking that it’s just tobacco. After surviving an attempted rape, she is the victim of a stray bullet and dies. The other main female character in the film, Blanche, is so distraught over Mary’s death and her role in it that she throws herself out a win-
dow. You see, women actually feel guilt, while men just pretend to. Finally, there’s Brock, an upstanding member of the Stanford swim team. After smoking the sticky icky, he brutally rapes a woman in an alley—though to be fair, he’d hallucinated her consent first. Brock is found guilty, but because he was white and under the influence, the judge merely sentences him to a lifetime of regretting that he ever got caught. Some of you have probably seen a black-and-white movie or two, and have realized that the last example wasn’t actually in the film. What you may also have realized, simply by being a human with a number of questionable life experiences, is that cannabis does not cause individuals to rape and murder each other. Certainly, a few reefers can cause impaired driving and judgment, but the insanity and violent outbursts claimed by the film are seemingly white lies with the intent of scaring the good people of the 1930s into action. To understand the mindset that drives a film like Reefer Madness, you have to understand that all white children are inherently good—until an outside force corrupts them. Whether that force is marijuana, rap music, or NFL players kneeling during the national anthem; white kids are all just future Ivy League graduates until something unsettling gets in the way. Luckily, times are changing. Old mindsets evolve, and wacky tobacky is no longer the scourge threatening to corrupt our promising youth. We’ve realized that God’s green goodness has medical uses for old white people, so we’ve moved on to villainizing the true menaces to young white minds: feminism and civil rights movements. Someday, we’ll make our way out of the 1960s and white men are going to pay. Until then, light up a bowl and enjoy your privilege.
