Hollywood's War Against the South

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.

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.

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."

I think I am enlightened in believing that slavery could have been abolished without waging a war of conquest and subjugation that cost the lives of some 600,000 Americans and devastated the economies of 11 states.

If that is your definition of 'enlightenment' then every one of your southern leaders still fails since they were perfectly willing to wage war for "...holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time." Or at least that's why the people of Texas seceded. The people of Mississippi merely thought slavery was "...the greatest material interest of the world." Who among your southern leaders was advocating the ending of slavery by peaceful means? Who among your southern leaders was advocating the ending of slavery at all?

A flat lie.

I'm enclosing this Link for your examination. It is from the Museum of the Confederacy and talks about hosting the largest, most comprehensive exhibit on Lee memorabilia. One of the items mentioned in it's library collection is the December 1862 document by which Lee emancipated the 63 slaves of his late father-in-law, George Washington Parke Custis. It's about half way down the page.

Watch who you're calling a liar. Or at least check the facts first.

I don't buy your marriage analogy. States are abstractions; they don't behave as people do.
People in 1787 KNEW something stronger than the articles was needed. And if the states could just walk away from it at will or pleasure, it was no stronger than a rope of sand- just like the Articles.

It seems to me that there's something inherently wrong with using totalitarian tactics to establish a viable democracy. That's like "destroying the village in order to save it."

None, because 40 years of relentless assaults by radical abolitionists -- including outright support for race war in the South -- had pushed Southerners into a defensive posture.

Thank God, right?

Walt

Your point about the various forms of the Southern accent is dead-on. I've lived in all but two of the Southern states, and the accents are very distinct. The gentile lilt of Georgia and South Carolina; the "twang" of Texas; the casual, mannerly class of Alabama and the slightly "deeper" version of same found in Mississippi; the beautiful musicality of a true Tennessee accent, the slightly clipped-yet-elegant North Carolina style............all just terrific.

And men, trust me when I say that there is nothing.....nothing sexier than a beautiful woman with a lilting Southern accent. sigh...................................................

Watch who you're calling a liar. Or at least check the facts first.

Neo-confeds will check the facts; then they torture a completely unreasonable interpretation from them, and still call you a liar.

Walt

Walt, thanks for coming on here and debating these wild-eyed hicks, who somehow think that I, as a Georgian, would now be better off in a present day "CSA" than I am now. Maybe the Southern states had a right to leave, but I am glad that did not happen. Think of all those Southern whites, tricked into fighting for "states rights," when what it was really about was slave labor and rich plantation owners. Whatever transpired beforehand, the South DID fire on Ft. Sumter, the first shots of the war. I wish all these "Civil War" hicks would leave the US, find some South Pacific island, and form their own "white paradise." In 10 years time, the island would be deserted. I detest all these Southern separatist political and cultural organizations. Just as I detest the IRA even though I am of Irish ancestry, so do I these Civil War whiners. Thank G-d all Southerners are not like this.....

"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."

The main point you have left out is that this nation was founded as a Republic, which is a very different thing than a Democracy. The term Democracy came into use when the first world war was referred to as the war to defend Democracy and since that time language has been corrupted to the point that hardly one person in a hundred knows the difference. A true Democracy is possibly the worst form of government bar none. Note that the pledge of allegiance to the flag has never contained the words "and to the Democracy for which it stands".

This guy isn't seeing the same movies I am. From "My Cousin Vinnie" to "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" to "Sweet H?ome Alabama" (and bunches of titles in between), the South doesn't look bad at all - and is redeemed as the home of folks who are pretty decent.

"Oh, and add to my previous post, Martin Sheen totally sucked as Robert E. Lee in Gettysburg. I haven't gotten over that one yet. He made him look and sound crazy, if you ask me. Robert Duvall would have done a much better job."

For my money Duvall is just about the best all around actor I have ever seen. I can think of noone else who seems so convincing in so many different roles. I have ofter turned on the TV in the middle of some movie and watched for 30 minutes before realizing that the actor portraying some character that I found totally fascinating was Duvall. Most actors are instantly recognizable in any role but he is not.

It was committed by the Davis government which issued a declaration of war on April 17, 1861.

Precisely. Lincoln made sure it was not the US Army that fired first.

I wish Robert Duvall could replace Martin Sheen through digital re-editing of Gettysburg.

Who among your southern leaders was advocating the ending of slavery by peaceful means? Who among your southern leaders was advocating the ending of slavery at all?

Sam Houston

As a US Senator from Texas, he voted against the expansion of slavery to the territories. Quite a number of people believed that if slavery were contained to the states where it already existed, it would die out. Houston was the only senator from a slave state to vote against the Kansas-Nebraska bill allowing "popular sovereignty" to decide whether those territories would be slave or free. In 1861, when he was again Governor of Texas, he refused to take an oath of allegience to the Confederacy and was removed from office.

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