Hollywood's War Against the South

Lewrockwell.com ^ | 2-18-2 | Franklin Harris

[Magician]

It is no surprise when yet another Hollywood film demonizes the South as nothing but a den of ignorance, poverty and bigotry.

For the most part, Hollywood persists in promoting the fiction that the states of the former Confederacy are stuck in a time warp, somewhere between 1865 and 1968. How many films produced in the last 20 years and set in the South can you name that don’t have race relations at their core? Even a brilliant film like Joel and Ethan Coen’s "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" can’t avoid dredging up the Klan, although, refreshingly, the Coen brothers link the Klan to Progressive Era "reformers."

However, it is a surprise to see a mainstream newspaper take note of Hollywood’s anti-Southern myopia.

In the Friday, Feb. 8, edition of USA Today, writer Scott Bowles takes on the issue with surprising directness.

Bowles quotes Marc Smirnoff, editor of Oxford American magazine, who correctly recognizes that the South is the last remaining target for vicious stereotyping. You can insult Southerners with impunity, while everyone else is off limits.

"If studios portrayed ethnic groups this way," Smirnoff tells Bowles, "they’d burn down the Hollywood sign."

I guess Hollywood should just be happy that we Southerners have learned some restraint since the days of the Fire-Eaters and the Sumner-Brooks Debate.

Independent filmmaker Gary Hawkins goes further, telling Bowles that Hollywood sees the South as "a foreign, frightening, funny place" that is "easy to demonize... for dramatic purposes."

The latest offender is the Oscar-nominated film "Monster’s Ball," starring Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thornton.

Central to the film is an interracial love story. That is something that could be controversial anywhere in America (see, for instance, Spike Lee’s film "Jungle Fever"). In this case, however, it is an excuse for trotting out the usual Southern bigots, straight from central casting.

Peter Boyle, as the Thornton character’s father, plays the embodiment of the stereotypical redneck racist.

All of this goes against history. Since the 1960s, race relations in the South have been far better than in the North. Even during the worst of the Civil Rights Era, the South never had riots to match those of Los Angeles, Detroit or Chicago, as historian Richard Lawson tells Bowles. (But Southerners already knew that.)

When so-called Civil Rights organizations have nothing better to do than attack Confederate monuments and drive barbecue baron Maurice Bessinger to the brink of bankruptcy, you know there are no real race problems left in the South.

But that doesn’t matter in Hollywood.

Sometimes, even when a film isn’t set in the South, the bad guys are Southerners. This includes a couple of films that are favorites of mine, in spite of their reflexive use of Southerners as villains.

The Bruce Willis sci-fi epic "The Fifth Element" is set in the far future, as removed from the Old South as you can get. But the villain, played by Gary Oldman, has a drawl that would put Fannie Flagg to shame.

Then there is Quentin Tarantino’s crime film, "Pulp Fiction," set in California.

Like any good crime story, "Pulp Fiction" is full of unsavory characters. But when Tarantino needs someone truly reprehensible to contrast to his protagonists, he turns to a bunch of Southern rednecks.

To drive the point home, the rednecks run a gun shop where they proudly display a Confederate battle flag. And to think that I was unaware that Los Angeles was home to so many flag-waving gun dealers from Dixie.

When a filmmaker does get the South right, he often has to apologize for it.

Ang Lee’s "Ride With the Devil" is a masterful tale of Civil War brutality. It plays fair with both sides and includes a wonderful speech in which a Southerner explains why the South cannot win the war. (It boils down to the North’s puritanical impulse to "improve" the world, never mind what those to be improved may think. Against that, the South’s desire merely to be left alone is no match.)

In interviews after the film’s release, Lee had to defend himself against the charge of romanticizing the South.

I should note that it took a Taiwanese-born director to do the South justice. Perhaps Lee sees some symmetry between the Confederacy’s struggle against the North and his country’s relationship with mainland China. Or maybe it just helps not to have been subjected to American public schools.

Bowles quotes actor Robert Duvall: "If you want to make a movie about the real South, I wouldn’t hire a director north of the Mason-Dixon line."

Amen.

[Magician]

To hell with PC moviemaking. We need a modern update of "Tobacco Road". And maybe some more Amos and Andy segments.

[phasma proeliator]

How bout some pics of some beautiful southern "bells"?

[Aurelius]

For a somewhat contrasting view see:

THIS

[murdoog]

see, for instance, Spike Lee’s film "Jungle Fever"

I don't much care for Mr. Lee's politics, but I have to give him credit for making films where there are racists that DON'T have southern accents.

[rebelyell]

That's why we're fightin' this war, men! Deo vindice!

[Savage Beast]

Cliches, stereotypes, and propaganda are soooooooo boring! The ring of truth is sooooooooooooooooooooooo refreshing!

[FormerLib]

Remind you of any Southern Belles in your neck of the woods.

[DentsRun]

One thing I've never understood is why so many people who grew up in the north (as I did) always thought that Abraham Lincoln was a great president "because he held the union together." It always seemed to me that if a state voluntarily joined the union it ought to be able to voluntarily leave the union too, no questions asked.

I mean, what is the moral justification for keeping the southern states in the union against their will? I asked a teacher that once and she said that Lincoln's successful prosecution of the civil war allowed us to remain a big strong nation rather than two small weak ones. I don't disagree but that's hardly a moral argument. More recently I was arguing with a former friend on the same issue. His answer was that at the time of the American revolution the ability of democracy to survive was not established. So to prove a point, forcing states to stay in a union against their will was justified.

And that brings up my final point. What's so great about democracy in the first place? It's still tyranny of the majority. Might makes right. Domination of the numerous over the few. It's one thing to agree with Winston Churchill that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the rest. It's another to pretend that all democracies are shining cities on a hill.

[RobbyS]

"You can insult Southerners with impunity, while everyone else is off limits."

Nope, Catholics, too. As I am both, I am constantly offended.

[FormerLib]

I believe you've touched on the reason why so much of the current teaching on the Civil War portrays it as only being about slavery. When opposing something such as that, you've already got all of the moral justification that you need. That the explanation is not 100% accurate doesn't trouble most education school grads.

[maxwell]

Hey, why'd this thread disappear earlier? Good article, Magician.

[Aurelius]

I believe I am in 100% agreement with you. As to why people believe what they do. I think Abraham Lincoln has been sanctified and democracy as a form of government made holy in most of the American people's minds. This is a result, I believe, of a deliberate effort. People so-affected, even if they have capacity for analytical thought, don't bring it to bear on these topics. In Lincoln's case I think this apotheosis, as it has been called, was seen as a necessity precisely to try to prevent the people from thinking seriously about the murderous and destructive war that he had brought about. Ignoring civilian deaths it cost the life of roughly one man in every 25. And everything possible had to be done to see that as few people as possible seriously asked themselves the question: was the preservation of the Union worth this, let alone, would it have been right to do it forcibly even if it could have been done with much less loss of life and destruction of property?

[Aurelius]

It is also intrutive to look at the casuistic moral gymnastics gone through to justify our alliance with Stalin against Hitler. (Please don't think I am sugesting we should have instead allied with Hitler against Stalin.)

[Malcolm]

After such shows as the "Beverly Hillbillies," "the Dukes of Hazard," etc., one gives up on any honest portrayal of the South via Hollywood. Do non-Southerners REALLY think that the vast majority of Southerners speak, act, and think like Uncle Jed or Boss Hog? If you do, you’re calling the wrong people “ignorant.” Most of the Metro Areas of Southern cities are as advanced and educated as any in the rest of the nation. I'm not the kind of Southerner that lauds Civil War era culture (that war was the biggest mistake Southerners ever committed) but at the same time I admire and prefer present day Southern culture far more than any other area of the nation. As far as Hollywood, don't expect anything other than outright misrepresentation of our region. Don't forget, the rest or the nation holds these incorrect, self-serving views, and they certainly don't object to the "hick" portrayals of the South that Hollywood keeps churning out, despite their earnest pleas that the media industry, in every other instance, accurately, factually, and without bias, deliver their product to the people…..

[Red Jones]

bump