It's really rare that you come across a Southern character that's not stereotyped, vilified or aggrandized.
-- Anson MountStar of AMC's Hell on Wheels
Watching the recent Disney film Zootopia, my wife and I were treated to a delightful tale of a world of animals where the issues of the value of diversity and the destructive harm of stereotypes was presented in a funny and imaginative way -- that was until they weren't.
In the midst of all the great moral lessons, the movie went for the one go-to typecast that shows no sign of letting up in today's Hollywood: the stupid Southern redneck. Despite the fact that all the other animal characters speak with excellent English (except for a stoner yak and a Godfather-sounding artic shrew), a young fox named Gideon Grey -- who bullies the lead protagonist -- inexplicably sounds like he is from somewhere near Yellville. He is shown wearing overalls because "that's what we'all wear to school." Later as an adult, he has reformed his bullying behavior and now sounds completely emasculated in both tone and gesture. Welcome to the tortured existence of the cinematic white Southern male.
Let's be perfectly clear about something: As the father of two strong women and step-father to a third, I am clear-eyed horrified about the past abuses when film has objectified and devalued women. Adding to this is the way minorities have either been rendered invisible or else shown only in insulting stereotype roles. Of the 99 problems Hollywood has right now, this is clearly No. 1 on that list.
Thankfully, there have been giant strides made lately -- most notably the Bentonville Film Festival, led by the actress Geena Davis, designed to promote work by women and minorities and to get their movies the distribution that will place them in front of nationwide audiences. But there is still a lot of work to be done -- according to recent studies, on average, every film has two speaking male roles for every female.
But if Hollywood has a fear of female characters, and often is unwilling to cast minorities in any substantive role, typically the South only graces the screen as a cultural punching bag -- and the Southern male beast is usually at its malevolent center. Be it as rapists in Deliverance, criminals in Winter's Bone or rubes in O Brother, Where Art Thou ... Oh well, you get the picture. But what about Atticus Finch, the polemic character in the iconic film To Kill a Mockingbird? I can safely say, that in my many travels all over Alabama, I never heard anyone sound even remotely like Gregory Peck. Yep they "de-Southerned" him.
Is this really that important one might ask -- it's only a movie. The great Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky wrote eloquently on the human need to master and know the world and how cinema plays such a strong role in that. We go to see films, said Tarkovsky, for a living experience -- for cinema, like no other art, widens, enhances and concentrates a person's experience. That is a key reason all of us like to see ourselves represented in the films we watch and enjoy and learn.
Indeed, using an observation by Virginia Woolf on the dearth of intelligent women characters in popular fiction, the writer Alison Bechdel came up with a formula to call attention to gender inequality in films and fiction. The Bechdel Test is a simple test which names the following three criteria: (1) The piece has to have at least two women in it, (2) who talk to each other, (3) about something besides a man. One recent assessment of films shows that only slightly half of all films meet this minimal criterion.
Pivoting off that, I hereby propose the Atticus Test for future cinema on the South. It will have the following three criteria: (1) It has to have at least one Southern male who is clearly educated, (2) who loves his wife or girlfriend more than beer and shooting things (3) and takes responsibility for the historical legacy of the past by actively working for better, fairer world.
And Geena, I look forward to working with you next year!
Sey Young is a local businessman, husband, father and longtime resident of Bentonville. Email him at [email protected].
NAN Our Town on 05/05/2016