Vance and Appalachia

There are some… negative reviews of Peter Thiel’s Fake Appalachian Messenger Boy from within the community… Neema Avashia:

Folks outside Appalachia devoured Hillbilly Elegy because it reinforced what they already believed about us: that we were lazy, homogenous, and to blame for the unemployment, addiction and environmental disasters that plagued us. Vance’s description of a Jackson, Kentucky, where “people are hardworking, except of course for the many food stamp recipients who show little interest in honest work”, allowed liberals and conservatives alike to write Appalachia off as beyond saving, and its problems as self-created, and thus, deserved.

Harper gladly published, and continues to profit off, his memoir. Major publishing outlets issued rave reviews. The book sat atop the New York Times bestseller list for 54 weeks and Ron Howard subsequently made it into a Netflix movie. (More profits, in case you missed them.) Vance quickly became a go-to for legacy media, appearing on CNN as the Rust belt explainer, and talking on NPR as the Appalachian expert, when in fact he was in no position to do either.

Vance’s narrative, and the people and institutions who championed it, who profited off it, are why he is Trump’s pick for vice-president. His candidacy rests on the platform that they created for him.

Sam Workman (colleague of our from the Before Times at UW, currently faculty at WVU) blames academia. I can’t say that I have the same experience; I don’t remember anyone trying to foist Hillbilly Elegy on me as the True Story of Appalachia, but I certainly agree about the appeal of Poverty Porn.

Academics on the whole have a deep desire to foster social good and uplift with the power of science, be that social, physical, biological, or even humanities that remind us of our shared experiences, hopes, and fears. This aim is laudable. The problem is that most academics are from a class disconnected from these vulnerable communities. Academics have an appetite like no one else for thick descriptions of social ills to which their expertise might be put to use. And so, works like Hillbilly Elegy lead to a spate of what are usually narcissistic discussions of how these populations can be “saved” or improved in terms of academic metrics, approaches, or worldviews.

This general reaction to poverty porn ranges from ridiculous to dangerous. For instance, I am an Appalachian with generations-deep roots in the region, who moved back to work on our many, real problems. Yet, I have often been advised to read Vance’s work so that I understand Appalachia better — not by conservatives, but by liberal colleagues on campus. On the dangerous end, this addiction fuels stereotypes and perceptions of regions that gain life not only in narratives about place and people but in resulting science. That the academy elevated this depiction of a place is undeniable when considering Vance’s (and others in the same mold) speaking engagements.

And I’m sorry but Opie can go fuck himself.

But here’s the thing: Ron Howard is no hack. The opposite opinion — that the filmmaker is actually a perpetual Hollywood scullion, trawling the industry for work and leaving a trail of mediocre output in his wake — reliably resurfaces among devotees of le cinema popular whenever Mr. Howard comes out with a new picture. And on some level, it’s not that hard a theory to wrap your arms around. He represents a kind of vanilla baseline. He has been steadily cranking out popular entertainment that garners both awards recognition and middlebrow box-office results — while typically remaining free of any razzle-dazzle stylistic flourishes or alienating subtext — for decades. Hillbilly Elegy, while surely intended to garner both awards recognition and a glut of streaming attention, has proven to be more alienating than usual. And so criticism of the story and Howard’s decision to adapt it is well deserved.

Yet the existence of this lackluster movie is hardly proof of Howard’s supposed lifelong hackery. Arraign him for opting to bring to life a memoir that caricatures the very people it’s purportedly exalting. But condemn his entire body of work as trifle? 

I actually agree that middle-brow, not particularly ambitious filmmaking has a certain value, and I’d never argue that Howard’s entire output is worthless. But Hillbilly Elegy is a glowing, soft-focus ode to an aspiring fascist, and it’s going to hang around Opie’s neck from here until the end of his days. Somewhere, Sheriff Andy Taylor weeps…