What Madea Can Teach Us about the State

Madea Goes to Jail was on TV this weekend and I caught a few minutes of it. One scene in particular stuck out as an important lesson on the state and how we can deal with it. (You can skip to 1:15 for the relevant segment).

So, we see that the prosecutor considers herself to be on the same side as the police and the judge (which is true, they’re all government employees) so why anyone believes they’ll have a fair trial in a government court is beyond me. Going further, the judge is far from impartial, holding a personal grudge against Madea. And it’s only by the grace of the inept police department and its failure to follow its own bureaucratic rules that Madea is released, otherwise she’d be in a cage.

The best lesson however, is in how Madea treats the whole situation. She’s entirely irreverent; she has no respect at all for this aggressive, inhumane legal system. I’m not suggesting that her behavior is something to emulate, necessarily, because in real life if the judge couldn’t put her away for the supposed crime she was charged with, she surely would have locked her up for contempt of court. But we should have contempt for these people and their unjust system; that much is true.

Finally, her point about not needing a special permit from the state to drive, since she has keys, is the very heart and soul of freedom and expresses the exact sentiment of nullification. It says: “I don’t need your permission to be free, I don’t require your authorization to express my liberties; I own property and I am free.” Again, I don’t mean to advocate something like driving without a license. But making fun of the state, mocking it, and laughing at the institution is one of the easiest ways to delegitimize it, to make it less imposing, and ultimately to render it null.