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I've recently been watching episodes of "The Dukes of Hazzard" TV show from the 80s. It really gives me lots of laughs...especially Boss Hogg and Sheriff Roscoe . Anyway, I'd like to hear your opinion on how Southerners have been portrayed in the movies and on TV.
Personally, I don't take the shows seriously. I even find "The Beverly Hillbillies" funny and not offensive even though it's a direct hit at where I'm from...the hills of Tennessee. I'm an Appalachian Southerner....a hillbilly. Once I had a girl from Japan ask me if I was a "hilly-billy" and then she asked the meaning of the term. Some Southerners hate the stereotypes and the false portrayals of being Southern. So, here are two questions to think about...
1. Are you a Southerner who is offended by how Southerners have been portrayed in the movies or TV?
2. Are you a non-Southerner who thinks Southerners might be like the Beverly Hillbillies?
Here's a list of some Southern themed movies and tv shows-
The Color Purple
Gone With the Wind
The Dukes of Hazzard
The Beverly Hillbillies
The Andy Griffith Show
7 comments:
I am a no to both questions. I have to say that most southerners are not portrayed so nicely. I think some people may still hold the position of the south during the Civil War against them.
Gee, Linda, who would hold the Civil War against the South?
It's interesting how the feelings have carried over from way back then, isn't it? I think that maybe the one thing about the Beverly Hillbillies that might bother me is that they're portrayed as being so naive and ignorant.
I have to say that I knew very few people in high school who lived a Beverly Hillbilly lifestyle, but one poor girl lived in a one room shack & there was no grass in her yard because her dad had about 15 hunting dogs kept there. She didn't have running water and took her baths in the creek.
I've lived in Maryland all my life and I went to high school with a guy who didn't have an indoor bathroom. He didn't have a creek, so I dunno what he did for showers.
If you watch the Beverly Hillbillies closely, you'll notice that the non-hillbillies on the show are also cast in a negative light. Where the Clampets are generous, helpful and neighborly, nearly everyone else on the show is portrayed as greedy and self-absorbed. So, who is really being cast in a negative light?
You're right, LVF Person :). I hadn't thought about that. In some ways, non-Southerners are portrayed in a negative light on The Dukes of Hazzard too. I just watched an episode about two criminal thugs from the city who come to "do a hit" on Boss Hogg. It was a pretty bad episode, too, with racial stereotypes as well.
I think that stereotypes can be funny or mean, and in the case of the TV shows listed they are over-exaggerated in an attempt to be funny (I loved the Beverly Hillbillies).
I don't like being stereo-typed as a Californian, if fact its usually meant as an insult.
The funny thing is - there really are stereotypical people, or else how would we have come up with stereotypes in the first place?
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