After some research, page 10 of Google, to be exact, I found this review of Deliverance written in the Nashville Scene.

http://www.nashvillescene.com/arts-culture/film/article/13037765/deliverance-remains-the-movies-most-chilling-portrayal-of-nature-making-man-its-bitch

The author, Craig Lindsey, claims to be from Texas (which obviously is not even part of Appalachia), and agrees with the fact that there are redneck rapists out there in the woods waiting for victims. This opinion struck me as odd considering his roots, but then once you take into consideration the fact that he first watched this as a 12 year old it offers some form of excuse for his argument that the toothless yokels actually exist somewhere (probably right over that hill next to the Shakespearean village). His misunderstanding of what Appalachia is shows a lack of research into the region prior to publishing this article. That also means that there was no Appalachian voice in this article. However, near the end of the article he did argue that the movie did nothing to change the negative stereotype of the backwoods South, describing a transition to the “ignorant, racist, redneck rapists.” He chooses to focus on the subtext to the negative stereotypes. He takes the rape of Bobby as a metaphor for the nature of man to try to control nature. In a way, this author believes, the damming of the river (and likely the cemetery relocation) was the deeper meaning to the initially traumatizing.

“The Unquiet Earth” by Denise Giardina is a novel filled with stereotypes and defining cultural features. Of the many passages that speak to the themes discussed in class two specifically stick out to me as defining sections. The first one is the section titled “Till Human Voices Wake Us” on page 351 and describes the moment the dam finally breaks. This passage is crucial because it is the culmination of all the efforts of the residents of Number Thirteen to Make their voices heard. The townspeople had been complaining and warning about the potential dam collapse for months, but the big coal people and their local lackeys *cough Arthur Lee Sizemore cough* refuse to listen. Arthur Lee himself knew that the dam would break but was more concerned about his financial stance and power station to make any real change. Their inability to see past their wallets led to the flooding of the entire region and the loss of over 100 lives. This also represents how the culture and land of Appalachia was swept away by the flood of mechanized greed released by the powerful coal companies.
The second defining passage is on page 235. This is the scene where Dillon takes Tom, aka VISTA, and Jackie to visit his uncle’s hermit cabin in order to show them what strip mining has done to their family land. I consider this passage defining because it encompasses many of the attitudes/perceptions towards Appalachia. In Dillon And Tom you find the desire to make lasting changes for the better, albeit through very different avenues: Tom takes the government support route and disproves of Dillon’s guerilla tactics (“People here talk about you like they admire you, but I don’t see why. You just hide in that trailer all the time. It’s a fucking waste, man.”) while Dillon takes pride in his “grassroots” political participation as the only effective means to an end, disproving of Tom’s avenue (“You work for the government, and the government and the company, they’re the same. They didn’t send you in here to get anything done. They sent you in here to make folks think they care.”). Then of course there’s Jackie, who is letting all this happen around her while she worries about trivial matters like her shoes and her crush. She is not by any means representing the general female gender role of the time, but rather the self-involved attitude that allows such bad things to happen by their refusal to pay attention to the world around them.

Alan Banks and Sally Maggard discuss connected topics in their works, “Miners Talk Back: Labor Activism in Southeastern Kentucky in 1922” and “Coalfield Women making History,” respectively. Banks discusses in great detail the birth of a stereotype regarding east Kentucky coal miners during the great strike of 1922. According to him, “the assumption in 1922 was that southeastern Kentucky miners were not part of the national strike. In  the writings of government officials…Kentucky miners emerge as fiercely independent mountaineers uninterested in the own collective self-improvement (216),” a perception that is only true if one takes a quick glimpse at some broadly interpreted statistics. However, as Banks later goes into detail on, a closer look at the actual events in Kentucky in 1922 will tell a very different story. It is here that Sally Maggard ties in with Banks. Maggard uses her text to describe a specific side of the story that is not normally told to the public: the role of women in the Kentucky coal strikes (and beyond, of course). With an in-depth view of how women won the coal strike when the men were continuously failing, provided by Maggard, and the play-by-play of the construction of the apathetically independent coal miner stereotype from Banks, the reader of these works can then dissect and reconstruct the actual Appalachian coal-culture hidden behind the veil of mainstream entertainment.

1. “Among the most significant changes that migration brought about in the second half of the twentieth century, the outflow of black residents made the Appalachian region decidedly whiter” (313). Beyond simply making the Appalachian region homogeous, what other cultural  shifts happened as a result of the vast African American diaspora?
2. What was the underlying motivation in the “rehabilitation” and “resettlement” programs in Appalachia (313)?
3. What are some specific ways in which the programs of “poverty warriors, AV and VISTA volunteers, civil rights and labor militants, environmentalists, and settlers” (349) may overlap both then and now?

His description of the Kentucky Cycle as “the literary equivalent of a drive-by-isshooting” is very accurate and a powerful statement. The term “drive-by” is used in many communities to describe a form of homicide that has ruined many a family. Basically, the criminal drives past their target with some form of automatic weapon or shotgun. They then spray and pray, usually hitting their target (and then some); however, it is also just as likely that a drive-by will not even hit its intended target in the very short amount of time it takes for the attack to occur. Donesky uses this phrase in a literary sense to describe the manner in which twenty-eight-year-old Robert Schenkkan handles Appalachian culture in the Kentucky Cycle. As was noted at the beginning of the chapter, Robert Schenkkan spent less than  24 hours in the Appalachian region back in 1981. Considering that the culture has been around since the mid 1700s, his visit represented the brief space of time used in a physical drive-by. Schenkkan’s target was the “plight of his poor neighbors” brought on by laziness and stupidity. And, like most drive-bys, he totally missed his target. The short time that he spent in the region meant that he missed the point of the origin of these unfortunate circumstances, and with a broad sweep of his literary assault rifle (his pen) hurt an entire culture in an attempt to change their situation.

The main issues with the Kentucky Cycle are quoted pretty explicitly by Kentucky academic Gurney Norman in Billings’ introduction to Back Talk. Norman faulted Schenkkan for “tromping on real people and the real facts of their history…run[ning] roughshod over a whole culture” as well as creating a “vision [that] is inaccurate and unjust–it blames the victim” (Billings, 9). Arguing from this perspective, I definitely agree with his point. Throughout this play’s nine acts, every bad thing that happens to the three families can be traced to a specific moment where greed won over morality in a specific character’s life. We can look at the story of Joshua Rowen and his son Scotty as a perfect example. Scotty died in a mine explosion related to the amount of dust that was in the air. Why was there so much dust in the air? Because Joshua didn’t fight hard enough for clean mines when he made his deal with the coal mining company, worried more about job security for himself then job safety for his community. Instances like this exist throughout this six hour play and clearly represent exactly how Schenkkan viewed the Appalachian people during his one day trip.

Here is the impossibility of agreeing or disagreeing with such an argument: who am I to decide? The only people who have to the right to dispute this argument are the resident of Appalachia themselves. As the ones on the “inside” they can tell us whether or not the view of these academics is the view of the entire culture, or just the enlightened few. My stance, therefore, is that if the Appalachian people view this play as a poor reflection of their cultural identity, then it must be–despite how much I loved the plot as a sort of epic tragedy.

This first half of the Kentucky Cycle was filled with death, pain, and hypocrisy. The first thing I noticed that the writer of this play is clearly working hard to argue is the violence present in the hearts of the Appalachian people. In each of the five parts to Part One someone “innocent” gets murdered. In the first one, it was an entire tribe of Native Americans along with Michael’s companion. In the second one, Morning Star’s freedom. The Homecoming: a baby girl, Michael Rowen, Joe Talbert. The list continues. It gets to the point that the viewer kind of expects a gruesome murder or backstabbing; there is no more shock factor. The fact that the viewer reaches this point speaks to the rhetoric that Schenkkan is willingly spreading: that the people of Appalachia have hate in their hearts and blood on their hands. Murder in Appalachian culture isn’t just a moral stain on their fancy Confederate uniforms (or the horse feather in the cap of righteous anger), it’s hereditary; the ability to murder has been passed down from the first pioneer who fell in love with the region to all of his descendants. Another issue that should be noted is the emphasis on the love of land that has motivated the majority of these murders. The desire for land ownership and autonomy turns seemingly innocent young men (as seen in the beginning of each play) to the poisoned hearts seen later in the same play or in subsequent plays.

Ballard attempted to argue in Back Talk that there was a difference between people who laughed at the hillbilly jokes because they believe them and those who just get them. Initially, it is difficult to understand this argument without placing that same argument in a different perspective. An equivalent argument would be if someone made a “black people be like…” joke without actually ever having known a black person versus one black person making the joke to another black person. With this new understanding, I now see exactly where she is coming from and agree with her argument. There is very clearly a difference between the two perspectives. The delicate balance of her next argument sways between whether or not buying these stereotypical products contributes to reinforcing it. Unfortunately, it does. While the person buying that product is only doing so out of sheer irony,  the person behind them is learning something from that observation. The thought then becomes “If that person who would meet the stereotype says its okay then it must be okay!” As a direct result of merely one week in this course I no longer feel comfortable buying products like the ones discussed by Ballard. Once you’ve been in the shoes of the people you used to joke about, you can no longer go back to making jokes the same old way.

Steinberg’s decision to use the Holy Bible as in introduction to her Barbie article for a variety of reasons. First of all, it reflects the primarily Christian (used here to include Catholics and Protestants) society that existed at the time of Barbie’s creation and continued into the time of Steinberg. The fact that we recognized it as a biblical allusion also speaks to the effectiveness of Steinberg’s format choice. Second, it views Barbie in a slightly exaggerated but fair religious light. Barbie dolls have taken a position as a religious icon for many across the nation. She embodies everything that society tells girls they need to be, from the body type (18) to the fulfillment of the American Dream (21), to the interactions with the “others” of the world (24). As the “standard by which all others are measured” (24) Barbie willingly takes her stance as the idol/model of young girls in the same manner that Christ is the idol/model of his followers. After all, both have books and stories written of their exploits with explicit lessons that must be drawn from each. Therefore, Steinberg’s use of the Book of Genesis as a model for her introduction effectively prepares the reader to accept her premises by revealing from the beginning the role Barbie plays in our culture.

I did not find the descriptions provided by Harney and Frost as problematic. Harney and Frost cast the culture of Appalachian civilization in a new and respectful light that had not been seen at the time (so problematic to the close-mindedness of their day, but not problematic from a more open perspective). Harney, however, did give more grace to the beautiful scenery of the Appalachians then he did to the people themselves. Describing the “indescribable awe in the presence of serene night and unbounded shadow (9),” or the way “the twilight lingers like love over a home (1)” characterized his romanticization of the topography. However, his analysis of the people, while respectful (almost as if he admired some of their cultural traits) lacked the “bigger picture” romanticism he utilizes when describing nature and that Frost uses in his cultural descriptions. This was evident in how he described the rude yet independent black woman on page 2, the simple yet admirable young life of his companion on page 4, and the credit that the young scout should have received before the battle of Jonesborough on pages 11 and 12. Frost, on the other hand, made it abundantly clear that he had obtained an incredible level of respect for Appalachian America after his first visit, explicitly contradicting the view of the modern establishment towards people “behind the times” by attacking the things that made them think they were so great. For example, his use of the Scriptures to raise Appalachian America on a moral pedestal  with the allusion to the patriarchs and how “mere illiteracy is not fatal to character.” He also recognizes what most of imperialist America didn’t: that were parts of Appalachian culture that were strong and rich and that the people there “should be encouraged to retain all that is characteristic and wholesome in their present life.”