Trash or Treasure? Images of the Hardscrabble South in Twenty-First-Century Film
This chapter focuses on twenty-first-century films that depict the hardscrabble South. Divisive images of the American South have appeared throughout the history of film, for example, in D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915) or in Victor Fleming's Gone with the Wind (1939). However, there have also been benign, even sympathetic films on poor southerners, including Jean Renoir's The Southerner (1945) and Debra Granik's 2010 adaptation of Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone (2006). This chapter discusses films that portray the Rough South, such as George Washington (2000), Shotgun Stories (2007), and That Evening Sun (2009). The trend outlined by these and other filmmakers suggests that a conscious revision is underway: an attempt to bring the rough characters to the fore, to reexamine the conditions that give rise to “redneck,” “hillbilly,” and “white trash” stereotypes.