When I was a kid, I loved day trips to Chicago. I remember my grandmother having to sign a clearance contract because I "accidentally" stumbled onto the “Transformers 3” set and got picked up by a camera. Movies about Chicago, or even just ones filmed there, have always been my favorite because I get to see a little slice of my childhood on the screen. But when it comes to movies from my real childhood, tucked away in the rural Midwest, I often find myself cringing at the media stereotypes.
I was recently encouraged to watch the movie, “Hillbilly Elegy”, for a class about whiteness in Rural America. However, I fail to see how this movie was anything more than a jaundiced example of media tactics. Stories of underdogs overcoming poverty, abuse, and addiction can be found on any street in America, not just the rural backroads. Yet, Hollywood only uses this type of plot-line as a heartstring blockbuster for people of color, such as “The Blind Side”, or to further depreciate the image of rural whiteness.
Rural America is shown by the media to be either "hicks and hayseeds" or "criminal kingpins and murderers." Dramatic television shows such as Ozark and Sons of Anarchy depict a rural lifestyle of crime, whereas "reality" shows such as Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty uphold the hillbilly tropes. This is seen across Hollywood and has been around since the early 1900s. A 1904 film, "The Moonshiner", depicts rural Americans breaking the law in order to drink. The behavior shown in media such as this culminates and fosters these rural cliches to the point where Rosann Kent, Appalachian studies professor at the University of North Georgia, asks, "Why are we the last acceptable stereotype?"
This cliche becomes particularly harmful when the political climate of America is considered. The US is increasingly politically polarized and this difference in opinion has been leading to violence. From the January 6 insurrection to protests that turned violent against speakers on college campuses, politics have become a method of assuming one’s moral character and can even determine one's safety and social acceptance. Rural Americans get portrayed as being alt-right and are even being credited as the reason Trump won in 2016.
Rurality is painted by the media as being predominantly white, with a culture of poverty and addiction. Although there is some truth to both poverty and addiction rates in rural communities, many rural areas thrive culturally. A previous article can be found here describing how music is an integral part of Appalachian culture. By whitewashing rurality, Hollywood loses any appreciation for minority groups who inspire and elevate rural livelihoods.
Furthermore, there are many parallels exist in how rural Americans and people of color are depicted. Unwhite: Appalachia, Race, and Film examines this further and argues:
Appalachian people in cinema have been portrayed as phenotypically white, but using the same tropes that have long been used to portray non-whites in film . . . The similarity in the way these groups are portrayed draws a connection between the treatment of non-whites and the treatment of Appalachians, both of which maintain and protect a particular image of whiteness.I have personally experienced the negative impact of this "white trash" stereotype. When I moved to California, I experienced a culture shock so large I felt like I was in a different country. Being thrust into high-level academia with a background that matched these stereotypes, I was set up to be looked down upon. After the intro week of law school, I began to state that I was instead from Chicago, hoping that people would think I belonged there. I recategorized my uncle's hand-me-down tees into "vintage thrift finds" and made an aesthetic out of never owning clothes nice enough to ruin. However, I can't blame the people around me for making those assumptions. Most of my classmates are from urban areas and likely gathered their understanding of rurality through their media consumption. Even though many of the Hollywood portrayals are hyperbolic, the cumulation of negative stereotypes is othering rural people, and the misunderstood cliches need to be retired.
4 comments:
Thanks for this post, it was really interesting to read! I also watched all of Hillbilly for the discussion in class this week, which was the documentary I showed about half of. As I was watching the documentary, I had similar feelings that you did watching Hillbilly Elegy- is this truly helping to bridge the gap of understanding between rural and urban people, or just perpetuating the same old stereotypes? The way that the person making the documentary felt very disconnected from the community, and the documentary itself being centered around her family were things I was conflicted about. In many ways, her family seems like the exact type of people who many in urban spaces have no sympathy for. I worry that the documentary didn't go far enough in its goal of humanizing rural people, and as a result urban watchers may just see the Trump hats and hear the ridiculous statements her family is making about him, and use the documentary as another reason to write off rural people and places.
This was such a great blog! I remember feeling a similar culture shock when I first went off to undergrad in LA. Whenever I was asked where I'm from, I almost always received a negative response to my answer, "Merced." At the time, this was especially shocking to me because I convinced myself I grew up in a suburb. It's almost like a level of double consciousness is developed when you grow up outside of a city. I knew what cities were like because I traveled to them for big events and day trips throughout my life, but a lot of these people had no clue what a smaller/rural area was like except for very limited TV depictions.
I also totally resonate with the excitement of seeing a place close to you in film. I've only seen Merced on one tv show about meth called American Crime. It was mostly set in Modesto, but I watched the whole season just to catch a glimpse of my home.
Thanks for a great post! I think it's really important to not paint rural America with broad strokes of whiteness because it erases the experience of people of color within those spaces. I think there can be room made in the discourse for all of these nuances. I also think it's interesting that after learning more about rural issues, I am much more aware of when people use terms like rural and in what connotation. One of these instances happened when I talking to a friend about where he was from and he's like rural x. I'm like interesting because that would actually be considered a city, so it's interesting also to see what people identify with. Your post reminds me of something we discussed earlier- rural bashing. Just because people in certain states are considered more rural does not mean that their humanity should not be recognized. Plus states like California aren't generally considered rural but there are so many rural areas here, so I think the Hollywood industry can definitely do a better job of shaping the cultural narrative in a way that portrays things accurately. Thanks again!
You've hit on an important point, and something that I have also been thinking about for a long time (with respect to hyper-sensationalized media portrayals of just about any community, or anything for that matter). I didn't find a good explanation / answer for this issue until I read Neil Postman's brilliant book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. His basic argument is that the form in which we consume media dictates the content of media that we consume. In other words, there is something peculiar about visual media (he was talking about TV and films in particular, but his writing is equally, if not more, relevant to present-day social media) such that it cannot sustain sophisticated discourse. Thus, the answer to the question: why can't Hollywood do better [in its representation of rural communities, or other communities]? is simply that it can't because of the very nature of visual media.
This sounds pessimistic, but I would highly recommend taking a look at Postman's book to better understand his contentions. I find him to be especially on point if we were to take his argument and apply to TikTok and Instagram, for example, which is quite remarkable since he was writing in the 1970s.
Post a Comment