Flashback: It¡¯s midnight at the Orson Welles Cinema, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1980. Perry Henzell¡¯s breakthrough Jamaican film ¡°The Harder They Come¡± has been playing here every weekend for nearly a decade now, but tonight it¡¯s still a full house. As the lights go down, the audience sparks up, and within a good 10 minutes the room is stewing in a haze of pungent ganja smoke and fine reggae music.

More than four decades later, I wonder, why? Not why people went to see the film ¡ª it¡¯s a fierce tale of injustice avenged, based on a Jamaican ghetto outlaw/folk hero from the 1940s, but set in the ¡®70s reggae scene, and it boasts a legendary soundtrack including The Maytals¡¯ ¡°Pressure Drop,¡± The Slickers¡¯ ¡°Johnny Too Bad¡± and several hits sung by the film¡¯s star, Jimmy Cliff. In fact, ¡°Harder¡± played an integral role in breaking reggae music outside Jamaica; even Bob Marley followed in its footsteps, touring many of the same American theaters that screened the film.

No, I¡¯m not wondering why they saw the film. The question is: Why did people keep going to see it weekend after weekend? Yes, it was to dope-smokers what ¡°The Rocky Horror Picture Show¡± was to cross-dressers ¡ª a chance to flaunt your vice in public, to show strength in numbers that The Man couldn¡¯t touch ¡ª but more than that, it was an attitude.