Hillbilly Elegy

[arewethereyet]

Who here has watched the Netflix film "Hillbilly Elegy"?  My wife and I watched it and loved it but I've noticed that just about every review I've seen has panned it for some reasons that I find difficult to pin down.  They seem to find it inaccurate and somewhat offensive to the people of Appalachia but my experiences just don't align with this conclusion.  Does anyone else have ideas about why this film is being panned?

I watched it a few nights ago.  Overall for something to make noise at me, it was okay.  I did think they could have filled in a little more detail.  I enjoyed it but it's not something that I would watch again.  I thought the story was a little thin at times.  

As for the Appalachia setting, I think that same story could have been placed just about anywhere.

[Spongebob]

The story you watched was meant to be that explanation.  By the examples of the characters in the narrative.  The criticism it's getting (and has always gotten, before it being turned into a movie) is that the characters themselves are also examples of that kind of shorthand.

Now, as far as writing a story goes I get this.  It's tough to write something decent.  We simplify characters that are real and we invent imaginary characters where a real character (or the real character of a real person) doesn't suit the narrative purpose.  That the authors characters are cutouts is a given.  

- but since the narrative thrust of the entire work was to explain his discomfort (with a culture he believes to be in decline), perhaps it would have been better to do it a better way.

Vance was never shy about discrepancies between his own recollection of events and others - ton of good jokes about it on interviews when he was shopping the book around.  This isn't a problem for his story - I only mentioned it because you suggested that the truth of the story was relevant to why it was offensive. Beyond any criticism of the book (or the movie) I can only suggest that the contents could very well be true and meaningfully enough based on his own real experiences.  The extent to which his experience is representative of the culture which he sought to address, rather than the political ideology he'd used it to disseminate..is dubious.

I think your arguments are solid, but I'm still not sure I agree.  Let me present the idea from a different perspective.  Frank McCourt wrote his memoir, " 'tis", about his childhood in impoverished Ireland and then immigrating to America and his life there, etc...  There was also a movie, of course.  Did you consume either of these, and if so, was this story also due the same criticism?  To whit, its essentially the same story with a different setting.  The biggest difference was that Frank's family was far more impoverished.

---

I watched it a few nights ago.  Overall for something to make noise at me, it was okay.  I did think they could have filled in a little more detail.  I enjoyed it but it's not something that I would watch again.  I thought the story was a little thin at times.  

As for the Appalachia setting, I think that same story could have been placed just about anywhere.

I concur on the quality of the film, good but not great.  And I completely agree on the setting.  In fact, its not a new story at all, just a very specific setting and maybe that's what people find to off putting.  Is the book & film picking on rural Appalachia?

I'm trying to think of a similar story that focuses on escaping poverty in an African American region/area but nothing comes to mind.  Anyone else remember something?  There was the 70's TV show, "Good Times".  Would that be considered a close analog?

[The Grand Nudger]

This same story has been told, more than once or twice.

Never read tis or seen the movie. One of my hillbilly grannies read angelas ashes and told me it wasn't worth a shit, lol..so I never ended up getting around to any of his stuff. Vances story seeks to explain what he sees as the decline of rural culture by it's loss of manliness and old timey religion - by the damage wrought by drug addicts and the countless poor masses who are only poor because they lack the wit or wherewithal to bootstrap themselves up and out - too busy beating their wives and children, and whatnot.

IDK if that's what Frank McCourt wrote about, but if so...I guess my hillbilly granny had him pegged - and...again because this is very important, there's nothing in there that screams out appalachian experience to me. Seems like he came from a shitty family and he didn't quite escape whatever shitty ideas his shitty experiences lead him to. All of this while stoking the flames of white victimization in a bid to insist that any other thing must explain the bigoted lurch of rightwing america. What I saw were good families working hard and making good decisions and watching the american dream slip further and further away. It's not that we didn't know people like the characters in vances story..just that they were the aberration and the cautionary tale and the thing we had to be thankful for all at once. His story might explain him and what he believes..and it was very clearly intended to serve this purpose - but it has nothing to do with us.

Brutal honesty, it's a story about welfare queens and rural savages in need of conservative civilizing laundered as a primer on americans to a gullible and willing audience. Many of whom, left and right, have wholly swallowed this particular flavor of koolaid looooong ago. It's uniquely gruesome in that the very ideology which the author is selling is the force which has palpably victimized those americans and now courts them as though only it has their interests at heart. I'd say he gets one thing right precisely because he gets so much wrong. Rural americans own choices are the heart of their troubles - and that choice has been to sign off on the fantasy being sold by people like Vance.

But, you know.....they got glenn close to do it - and didn't mention any of that, so.

[Ranjr]

"All my friends are restless.  All they do is talk it down.
Two or eight lanes, it don't matter.  It's just another town.
There's a fool on every corner on every street in every one.
And I'd rather be your fool nowhere than go somewhere and be no one's."

Mike Cooley -- Marry Me

Lines 2 and 3 sum up my response to condescending pricks like the one in the fork scene.  The difference is seeing such encounters as a teaching opportunity, and not a call to bow up.

[Spongebob]

This same story has been told, more than once or twice.  

Never read  tis or seen the movie.  One of my hillbilly grannies read angelas ashes and told me it wasn't worth a shit, lol..so I never ended up getting around to any of his stuff.  Vances story seeks to explain what he sees as the decline of rural culture by it's loss of manliness and old timey religion - by the damage wrought by drug addicts and the countless poor masses who are only poor because they lack the wit or wherewithal to bootstrap themselves up and out - too busy beating their wives and children, and whatnot.

IDK if that's what Frank McCourt wrote about, but if so...I guess my hillbilly granny had him pegged - and...again because this is very important, there's nothing in there that screams out appalachian experience to me.  Seems like he came from a shitty family and he didn't quite escape whatever shitty ideas his shitty experiences lead him to.   All of this while stoking the flames of white victimization in a bid to insist that any other thing must explain the bigoted lurch of rightwing america.  What I saw were good families working hard and making good decisions and watching the american dream slip further and further away.  It's not that we didn't know people like the characters in vances story..just that they were the aberration and the cautionary tale and the thing we had to be thankful for all at once.  His story might explain him and what he believes..and it was very clearly intended to serve this purpose - but it has nothing to do with us.

Brutal honesty, it's a story about welfare queens and rural savages in need of conservative civilizing laundered as a primer on americans to a gullible and willing audience.  Many of whom, left and right, have wholly swallowed this particular flavor of koolaid looooong ago.  It's uniquely gruesome in that the very ideology which the author is selling is the force which has palpably victimized those americans and now courts them as though only it has their interests at heart.  I'd say he gets one thing right precisely because he gets so much wrong.  Rural americans own choices are the heart of their troubles - and that choice has been to sign off on the fantasy being sold by people like Vance.

But, you know.....they got glenn close to do it - and didn't mention any of that, so.

My extreme apologies, the book and film I meant to refer to was, indeed, "Angela's Ashes".  One major difference here is that McCourt was an English major, so his ability to spin a yarn may be greater than Vance's.  'tis was a later book he wrote, but not quite as good as the first.  It's been decades since I read either.  But, yeah, the book was about how many (not all) families in early 20th century Ireland were impoverished and how it affected their life.  And yeah, there was an abusive father involved.  I never read it to be saying, "hey, look at all the pitiful Mick's."  In McCourt's tale, his mother was the one holding the family together and Frank eventually found success as a teacher in the US and later as an author.  As you said, there are many such stories and I don't see them as offensive as long as it's not implicit that the people must be pathetic due to their nature, which I never got from Hillbilly Elegy either.  If it's suggested that circumstances have transpired to create a world where they are struggling, then I can't fault the work.  And I may read the book and see for myself how Vance uses his story to explain the Trump phenomenon.  Whether he is right or wrong, he is certainly right that such a phenomenon exists and it appears that Trump's promises, no matter how outlandish or ridiculous, are what drives people to him.  I have read part of the book "White Trash", published in 2016, which goes much deeper into the history of poverty and politics in the US.  I got distracted and put it down but now I think its time to finish it.  I think Vance's book might fit within this book as a paragraph or two.

[The Grand Nudger]

That you didn't get it was the intentional product of the directors discretion - and that, combined with the cast, is why it's seen to be offensive award bait.

They just flat out left that part out. Honestly, I think, for the better.

Haven't read White Trash either, but this stood out in the publishers

and films like Deliverance kept alive the unsavory image of inferior, isolated white mongrels, giving the elites and wannabes plenty of incentive to guard their privilege.

The concern is that hillbilly elegy is in the same genre.

[Ranjr]

Interesting.  When I run across halfwit hilljacks on the river, it never occurs to me my privilege needs guarding.

[The Grand Nudger]

Mongrels at the gates theory. If the hilljacks are white mongrels we can absolve ourselves of the responsibility to help our fellow americans. We can refer to real or imaginary defects in their character (or the character of their parents, or the character of their culture) as justification for our own decision to act, not act, or act in a certain way towards them and towards their interests.

[Ranjr]

Too bad we can't all see equal accounting of mongrels on each side of the gate.

I reserve occasion to act against hilljack interests when they act against mine.

[The Grand Nudger]

Hilljacks are more likely to go full antifa on a mine owner than after you. That might explain the violence of hillbilly culture better than the idea that we're the fatherless products of drug addicted mothers.

Even more on the nose, hillbillys and the coastal elite aren't exactly strangers in conflict. That's who all that coal and timber and steel and then cars were for.