Appalachia - Popular Culture

Popular Culture

The people, and the scholars, of Appalachia have for over a century paid close attention to how they are depicted in the popular media. The images are typically ugly and violent, making the region an object of humor, derision, and social concern. Ledford writes, "Always part of the mythical South, Appalachia continues to languish backstage in the American drama, still dressed, in the popular mind at least, in the garments of backwardness, violence, poverty, and hopelessness." Otto argues that comic strips "Li'l Abner" by Al Capp and "Barney Google" by Billy de Beck, which both began in 1934, caricatured the laziness and weakness for "corn squeezin's" (moonshine) of these "hillbillies." The popular 1960's "Andy Griffith Show" on television and James Dickey's 1970 novel Deliverance perpetuate the stereotype, although the region itself underwent so many changes after 1945 that it scarcely resembles the comic images.

• The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come, and other early 20th-century novels of John Fox, Jr., set in the Appalachian town of Big Stone Gap, Virginia, and surrounding areas, gave readers an image of frontier life in Appalachia and were made into popular films. Fox himself graduated from Harvard, and was a bon vivant newspaperman in New York City. He returned home to the Cumberland Mountains of Tennessee to write his stories because of poor health.

• Big Stone Gap also is the setting for the early 21st-century Big Stone Gap series by Adriana Trigiani.

• The motion pictures Coal Miner's Daughter (based on the life of noted country singer Loretta Lynn), Where the Lilies Bloom and Songcatcher attempt an accurate portrayal of life in Appalachia which stresses the tensions between Appalachian traditions and the values of urbanized America.

• Songcatcher takes place in rural Appalachia in 1907 and features the "lost" ballads of the Scots-Irish brought over in the 19th century and a musicologist's quest to preserve them.
• Stranger with a Camera is a documentary film from Appalshop about the representation of Appalachian communities by outsiders in film and video.
• The 1972 film Deliverance takes place in southern Appalachia. The film perpetuated extremely negative stereotypes of subhumanity.
• Large-format photographer Shelby Lee Adams, himself a son of Appalachian emigrants, has portrayed the Appalachian family life sympathetically in several books.
• Appalachian Spring is the name of a musical composition by Aaron Copland and a ballet of the same name by Martha Graham. Copland did not intend for his music, which he composed for Graham and which incorporates Shaker melodies, to have an Appalachian theme. Graham gave the work its name; her ballet told the story of a young couple living on the frontier in western Pennsylvania.
• Composer Frederick Delius wrote a theme and variations entitled Appalachia; he first composed Appalachia, subtitled "Variations on an Old Slave Song with final chorus." in 1896.
• Alan Hovhaness in 1985 composed a tone poem named To the Appalachian Mountains (Symphony no. 60).
• Author Catherine Marshall wrote Christy, loosely based on her mother's years as a teacher in the Appalachian region. The novel was highly popular and became the basis of a short-lived television series of the same name in 1994.
• The book Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver explores the ecology of the region and how the removal of the predators, wolves and coyotes, affected the environment.
• The comic strips often featured Appalachia, especially in "Li'l Abner" by Al Capp (1909–1979). Inge notes that the strip, which ran 1934–77, largely ignored religion, politics, blacks and the Civil War, but instead focused its humor on the morality of Dogpatch, examining its memorable and often eccentric people who typically relied on violence to control the social order, and held deep to their faith in land, home, self-sufficiency, and antipathy to outsiders. Arnold finds that starting with World War II Capp increasingly emphasized sex and violence.

• The fictional television program, Justified, is set in the eastern hills of Kentucky in and around Harlan County and was filmed in the Pittsburgh area originally.
• Much of the popular book series The Hunger Games is set in "an area that used to be called Appalachia" which is referred to in the book as District 12. Much of the surroundings and culture reflect present day Appalachia, such as reliance on coal mining as an industry.