Hillbillies: 'Silly Nonsense' or 'Dangerous Truth'?

In Who’s Inventing West Virginia, I noted the misinformation and stereotypes that pervaded a recent news article about West Virginia and the yearly Roadkill Cookoff here in Pocahontas County. As J.M. suggested (here) in a comment, though, focusing on stereotypes misses something . . . something which can’t be found in the journalist’s one-sided perspective.

Consider the pride expressed in the song “Small Town USA” (right now #1 on the country billboard) or “Bonfire.” Or, to go back a ways, there's the 1989 popular album "Pickin' on Nashville" by the band called Kentucky Headhunters, an irony given Max’s Forte’s article “The Revenge of the Local, The Horror of the Provincial, and Western Cosmopolitanism at Risk,” which includes a section on Western elites' making of the American cannibal.

In short, people are self-identifying as rednecks, praising their small-town, simple way of life, and some even assume the name headhunter. The labels seem wrong and, yet, empowering.

Forte hints toward the latter when he feels that Shelby Lee Adams’s photos of Appalachian people are “stunningly beautiful . . . engrossing, a testament to lived alterity within the heart of empire, even if forgotten or scorned” (source). As he states from the beginning, though, his post focuses heavily on Western elites’ depictions, so perhaps these are the ones who have “forgotten or scorned."

In an analysis of the TV show the Beverly Hillbillies, Sandra Ballard, who self-identifies as a native of Appalachia, can’t help but love the show despite its depictions of Appalachians as what she calls “comic fools” (139). She finds an admirable subversiveness:

[T]hey enjoy life, and in their encounters with everyone, from police officers to clergy, physicians, and college professors, they challenge figures of authority with honest questions. As Al Capp said of his Yorkums in Dogpatch, the Clampetts have refreshingly ‘indestructible’ innocence, and ‘they reveal through their foolishness our own absurdities.’ They are fools who hold up mirrors to us when they speak the truth. The hillbilly fool may get his way without trying because his actions are based on common sense and honesty, exposing the base ignorance and greed of someone with more power who considers himself superior (147).

So are the Beverly Hillbillies fools, or are they actively fooling, i.e. making fools out of Beverly Hills culture? Who’s playing the joke on who? Are Western elites casting Hillbillies in a stereotypical role and scorning their ways of life or are the Hillbillies making fun of Western elites in Beverly Hills? I’d say the Hillbillies are the clear winners. Of course, I live in rural Appalachia. Who knows. Maybe people in Beverly Hills see the opposite.

Here’s one example from the “Garden Party” episode. The Clampetts' neighbor is hosting a high-class garden party. In Part 3, the elite seem to have the upper-hand. One of the Clampetts’ friends has to convince them that they’re not supposed to bring garden tools to the party and has to find clothes to wear because the ones they have aren’t deemed suitable. In Part 4, the Hillbillies start to win out. When the Clampetts arrive at the part with their mannerisms, liquor, chitlins’, crawdad dip, and possum sausages in hog renderings, the host has a fainting episode, very exaggerated. She sends them home with the excuse that they can host the overflow guests at their house. Jed and Granny sit at their table and mock the music and the punch. Jethro complains that nobody’s dancing. They take measures to liven things up on their side, and by the end all the guests have left the neighbor’s house, preferring the Clampetts' party.

Part 3:

Part 4:

Part 5:

Ballard suggests that that, in fooling, those who are being mocked can laugh at themselves because the “fools” are able to place themselves outside American culture, but I would argue they're not outside American culture at all:

The fool is ‘the detached spectator who has been placed, or has placed himself outside accepted codes. From this point ‘outside’ – this extrapolated fulcrum – he takes his leverage on the rest of us.’ In other words, if we dismiss the ‘hillbilly fool’ and assign him a place to ‘lean’ on American culture, he has the potential to be in a position of power (140).

Do Hillbillies really have to be ‘outside’ American culture an accepted codes to have weight? Perhaps the very fact that their personas strike a common chord with large numbers of American audiences shows that many parts of the ‘Hillbilly’ ethic are widely valued in America, and growing since these shows (and, now, country songs) have solidified feelings of affinity.

Ballard also adds:

. . [W]hen fools express ideas that can be dismissed as silly nonsense, they may be speaking dangerous truths. . . . Fools boldly raise questions and call attention to truths and contradictions that many dare not voice (140).

Can an idea be both “silly nonsense” and a “dangerous truth”?  I’d say it depends on who’s doing the labeling. Who are the truths dangerous TO? In The Beverly Hillbilles, the mockery targets Beverly Hills elite. John Rich’s song “Shuttin’ Detroit Down” expresses more anger than mockery, but the target is similar: Wall Street elite and rich executives:

 
At the same time, though, if the depictions are dangerous, country songs are supported by the music industry, and, likewise, the film industry produced The Beverly Hillbillies. Is giving the ideas a place in American culture also a way of repressing them?

Another case to consider is comedian Stephen Colbert’s 2006 speech at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. It's the best example I could find of mockery sanctioned by those in power who, at the same time, oppose many of the speaker's statements. Colbert acts the part of a "jester” entertaining but mocking the president and journalists, along the lines of the Medieval fool, where "the medieval state caught on fast that . . . sanctioning such folly was the best way to limit it" (Ballard 140).He would also fit the model of Sheakesperean fool: "Shakespeare's fools enjoy sanctioned exemptions that allow them to be truth-tellers. . .  Because the fool acts 'completely outside the social hierarchy,' he is free to speak and to act without constraint.' His function is to speak the truth to power" (141).

Maybe the Hillbilly's sanctioned role as fool or jester, or the film and music industries' wide acceptance of songs and programs that criticize the elite, undermine any potential subversion by making it seem that poor people who affiliate with these characteristics are "outside of," "above," or "detached from" the social hierarchy when, in fact, they're deeply embedded in it.

And where do comedians like Colbert fit into all of this, or, more importantly, shows like the O'Reilly Factor and Glen Beck that draw on similar values to those expressed in Hillbilly figures, like simplicity, fundamental truths, and bold statements off the beaten path, in order to argue their cases and attract viewers?

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Originally posted on The Prism: http://anthropologicalprism.blogspot.com
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Ballard, Sandra L. (1999). Where Did Hillbillies Come From? In Back Talk from Appalachia: Confronting Stereotypes. Eds. Dwight Billings, Gurney Norman, and Katherine Ledford. Lexington: U. of KY. Pp 138-49.