Thunder Bay and the Myth of Interdependence

 

 Ultimately, Thunder Bay reinforces Steve Martin’s position on offshore oil drilling. Martin effectively argues for the off-shore drilling by stressing interdependence, an organismic approach to ecology, claiming that oil and shrimp can not only mix but bring prosperity to all: “There’s oil down there,” Martin proclaims, and “this is going to be good for the town, good for the people.” 

The conflict is not so easily resolved, however, and must first rise to a climax. Because of his opposition to oil drilling, for example, Dominique will no longer rent his shrimp boat to Martin and Gambi, but his friend Teche (Gilbert Roland) will, perhaps only as another income source. The other shrimpers remain concerned: “Don’t they know they’re killing the shrimp?” Dominique asks. Stella, Dominique’s oldest daughter agrees, exclaiming, “The town’s not enough. They have to kill the whole bay.” 

During the initial seismic blasting that will locate the best areas for underwater drilling, Martin disagrees and reinforces his claims that oilmen and shrimpers can build a prosperous community together: “Those shrimp can withstand ten times the blast,” he asserts. After the blasting, however, the townspeople plan to stop Martin and Gambi because they believe their dynamite may have destroyed the shrimp beds. 

When Stella warns Martin that the townspeople may confront him, however, he continues to stress the potential for an interdependent relationship between shrimpers and oilmen, telling her that dynamite won’t “do any harm. If it hurt the shrimp, I’d stop it.” And when the townspeople nearly attack him, Martin continues to espouse his claims for an interdependent relationship between them: “Nothing we do spoils the fish or the town…. Oil is going to do good things for the place.”

Thunder Bay and the Myth of Interdependence

 

Set in 1946 Louisiana, Thunder Bay connects oil drilling and shrimping from its opening shot of Johnny Gambi and Steve Martin (James Stewart) walking down a long deserted road: They carry a heavy chest and discuss a money making idea that will require a $2 million investment, but then a Port Filliay Fish Company truck picks them up and takes them into town for a 2:00 appointment, aligning their oil drilling plan with the community’s fishing industry. The connection between fishing and oil drilling broached by the film is emphasized here, especially since, once they reach town, Gambi rents a shrimp boat for $50 a day, so the two can, they hope, form a partnership with a big oil man, Kermit MacDonald (Jay C. Flippen). 

At first, however, the relationship between oil drilling and fishing is seen as conflicting rather than interdependent. To offset any hostility their enterprise might ignite, Gambi and Martin encourage area fishermen to think they are opening a fish cannery. But when their potential investors arrive by seaplane and, despite company troubles, agree to fund Steve Martin’s project, an offshore drilling platform and rig, the film’s major conflict is broached. Even though business investor MacDonald gives Stewart money in advance to pay off debts and promises to deposit $500,000.00 the next day, the area shrimpers are skeptical of this possible disruption to their means of survival and way of life. 

The shrimp boat owner Dominique’s (Antonio Moreno) daughters serve as love interests for Gambi and Martin and another source of conflict between local fishermen and the oil drillers: the elder sister Stella (Joanne Dru) eventually partners with Martin, and the younger sister Francesca (Marcia Henderson) pairs up with Gambi. Primarily, however, the townspeople oppose Martin and Gambi, believing that oil and shrimp can’t mix. The primary conflict of Thunder Bay, then, is between those who make a living from the sea—shrimpers and other fishermen—and those who would like to make a living from what lies beneath its waters—oilmen. Although history suggests this conflict is irresolvable, however, the film negotiates a resolution between these two world views and sources of income that is based in organismic approaches to ecology.

Thunder Bay and the Myth of Interdependence, continued

 

According to James Stewart biographer Jeanine Basinger, “Although it is somewhat unsettling today to watch a movie that sets a conflict between oil-drilling and nature—and oil-drilling is the hero—the machinery and the rig are photographed as things of beauty and majesty” (132) in Thunder Bay. From Basinger’s perspective, “Hard industrial grays and reds replace the greens and blues of nature and become the ‘colors’ of the modern era” (132). A. W. of The New York Times agrees, asserting that visually, “the complex off-shore drilling apparatus is the most distinctive aspect of Thunder Bay.” Shot in Technicolor and shown on an innovative “wide, curved screen [with] stereophonic [stereo] (or directional) sound” (A.W.) in the Loew’s State Theatre, Thunder Bay’s vast setting took center stage, overshadowing its weak narrative. 

Basinger calls the film and its ending “a modern environmentalist’s worst nightmare” based on her reading of the film as a conflict between oil-drilling and nature in which oil-drilling wins, perhaps missing the film’s implausible environmental message: shrimpers and oil men can live together interdependently because the elusive golden shrimp are not only undamaged by oil drilling but attracted to the rig. Other reviewers address this move toward interdependence. Reviewer Dennis Schwartz claims the film’s resolution “has shrimpers and oil men willing to live with each other in harmony, saying there’s room for both.” Reviewer Dan Jardine asserts that Anthony Mann establishes a conflict of world-views between what he calls Hispanic shrimp fishermen and speculative oil men but “backs away from the dialectic he has established from the get-go and gives us a soppy and completely implausible restorative ending.” 

Although we agree that the film’s ending is implausible, we argue that the seeds of a resolution to the conflict between shrimpers and oilmen are planted early in the film when the romantic plot between Johnny Gambi (Dan Duryea) and Francesca Rigaud (Marcia Henderson) is broached. Thunder Bay moves beyond Louisiana Story, then, not only claiming that oil drilling can leave the natural world untouched, but also asserting that oil drilling and shrimping can coexist interdependently.

Anthony Mann's Thunder Bay (1953) and the Myth of Interdependence

 

Whereas Louisiana Story makes the case that an oil company can build its rig, drill for oil, build a pipeline and disappear, leaving the bayou untouched and the Cajuns around the well a little richer, Thunder Bay asserts that oil drillers and shrimpers can work together. In fact, in Thunder Bay, oil drilling provides more than jobs and money, according to the film. It provides access to “the golden shrimp” fishermen have been seeking for generations, stimulating a more productive shrimp season. 

Thunder Bay’s populist presentation of progress and organismic or wise use approaches to ecology seem like more viable choices for both local shrimpers and their environment. But those visions also break down in the face of the negative externalities ever present during offshore oil drilling. Although the film suggests shrimpers and oil drillers can build and maintain interdependent relationships that serve them both economically while preserving the sea and its marine life, suggesting the possibility of sustainable development in the gulf, those claims are all based in fiction (myth) rather than fact (reality). 

Thunder Bay approaches off-shore oil drilling from a strictly fictional point of view, without claiming a more fact-based documentary approach to the subject, but it also illustrates a skewed point of view of oil drilling perhaps reinforced by one of the film’s star’s (James Stewart) connections to the oil industry. In her updated biography of Anthony Mann, for example, Jeanine Basinger recounts James Stewart’s connection to the film and its subject, explaining that Thunder Bay was one of three projects Stewart found and asked Mann to direct, in this case because Stewart had joined a partnership with a Texas oilman (132). Despite its weak script, Anthony Mann’s “mastery of physical space” (Basinger 132) stands out in Thunder Bay.