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Romanticizing the land, denigrating its people by A.V. Krebs
(Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2002 -- CropChoice guest commentary) --Recently Lisa de Moraes, a Washington Post staff writer reported that
CBS is bringing back "The Beverly Hillbillies," but this time the family
members that supposedly will supply the laughs won't be played by
Hollywood actors; they'll be real live families from the South.
She notes: "After spending decades trying to shed the Bubba image it
contracted in the 1960s when its prime-time lineup included a slew of
backcountry characters, CBS has decided to embrace once again its
biggest hick hit of all. The network already has a crew of casting
agents combing `mountainous, rural areasí in Arkansas, West Virginia,
North Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky in search of a
`multi-generational family of five or more --- parents, children and
grandparents --- who will be relocated for at least a year' to a mansion
in Beverly Hills, said CBS spokesman Chris Ender.
"`That is not to say if we discover the perfect family from another area
of the country we wouldn't consider them,' he added. `We're looking for
a family from a very rural area that hasn't been exposed to big-city
life or luxuries of life in any way.'"
The family will be given money with which to buy expensive cars and
designer suits, hire maids and personal assistants, and dine at trendy
West L.A. eateries.
The head of reality programming for CBS, Ghen Maynard, told the trade
paper Variety, which broke word of the remake that the network is
looking for a family that's very different but "relatable" and whose
members love one another.
In the late 1960's other popular shows played off the same "Beverly
Hillbillies" theme --- "Petticoat Junction" and "Green Acres" --- and
all three were still Top 20 programs when CBS dropped them in the early
`70s. "That was about the time," de Moreas notes that, "the Nielsen
company started providing the networks with information about viewer
demographics. Turned out, people who watched these shows were mostly
rural, mostly older and lacking much spending power. Advertisers became
less interested in the shows."
Ender said CBS isn't worried that the new "Beverly Hillbillies" will
suffer the same fate. "We believe this will hit a sweet spot of young
adults with its reality base," he said, young viewers being the audience
advertisers most want to reach.
Quoting Dub Cornett, who's among those developing CBS's "Beverly
Hillbillies" reality remake, she continues "`We will accomplish the most
if we cast it well with people who respect themselves but see the humor
in themselves. We will end up with a piece that truly has, God forbid,
social commentary, and maybe will enlighten, that it's not all barefoot
hillbillies," he said. "Most of America can only imagine what it's like
to live in Beverly Hills and live in a multimillion-dollar mansion. We
can share this advantage with them, rather than laugh at them."
So once again we will see the people who populate rural America
portrayed as not just being backward when it comes to being "exposed to
big-city life or luxuries of life in any way," but are also deemed
suitable objects of humor by the haves of the have nots. The fact that
rural America and the people who live in our rural communities from
family farmers in the heartland to those working in the hills and
valleys of Appalachia are suffering at the hands of these very same
haves plays little or no part in the minds of our media moguls.
As long as those other "sweet spot[s] of young adults with its reality
base" are satisfied, namely with abundant amounts of food and energy,
the plight of the men, women and children who toil to provide those
necessities of life will be but a passing blur on the nightly news.
Even when the news media decide to venture into America's hinterlands
we usually get the standard postcard shots of pastoral-beauty and the
faux romanticism of living out in the countryside, while at the same
time --- behind their backs --- we make sport of the people who live in
such surroundings while paying little or no heed to their basic human
everyday needs.
There is something uniquely obscene about people growing and harvesting
abundant crops for our dining room tables and fast food restaurants who
themselves have to purchase food stamps so they and their families can
survive while at the same time nearly one-third of the food their crops
generates is wasted.
When goodly numbers of Americans were mucking around with Bill Clinton
and Ken Starr in TV land in the late summer of 1998 PBS viewers were
given the opportunity to eavesdrop for six and one-half hours on the
lives of Nebraska family farmers Juanita and Darrel Buschkoetter's
marriage in "The Farmer's Wife," a documentary produced for the
network's "Frontline" series. (See Issue #4)
Here was a story, stark in its reality, focusing not on inane humor, but
on the grim reality of being a farm family today faced on a daily basis
with losing their farm and their future.
The questions raised in "The Farmer's Wife," just as the questions
raised in Edward R. Murrow's famous TV documentary "Harvest of Shame"
are issues that those who provide us with the news and events that help
shape our nation and the world steadfastly refuse to confront for fear
of antagonizing the increasing small number of corporations that seek to
control our lives.
A Scott Chronister from Eitting, Germany got it exactly right, in a
letter-to-the-editor to the Washington Post after the de Moraes article,
when he wrote:
"Does CBS think we believe that the show is intended to provide `social
commentary' and to `enlighten' viewers? P.T. Barnum already answered
that one. If CBS is really looking for a fish-out-of-water story, it
should take a family of former Enron or WorldCom executives, strip them
of their cash and other worldly goods, and plop them in the middle of
Appalachia. Now that has the makings of good humor and good social
commentary."
"AMERICAN GOTHIC" BY GRANT WOOD:
TAKING A POTSHOT AT RURAL LIFE
SHEILA FARR, THE SEATTLE TIMES: The work: "American Gothic" a 1930 oil
painting by Grant Wood.
Why it matters: "American Gothic," along with the "Mona Lisa" and
"Whistler's Mother," is, according to critic Robert Hughes, "one of the
three paintings that every American knows. . . . ."
It's also an image that gets frequently vandalized by cartoonists and
advertisers, to spoof contemporary politicians or sell products (who
hasn't seen Paul Newman and his daughter Nell posed in American
Gothic-getup on the labels of their food products?)
Oddly, however, the most recognized couple in American art is really no
couple at all: It likely represents a country lass and her angry father
--- a take-off on the old farmer's daughter jokes. Wood dressed his
sister and a local dentist in 1890s-style costume for the picture,
saying, "I imagined American Gothic people with their faces stretched
out long to go with this American Gothic house."
During the Depression, when Works Progress Administration (WPA)
photographers were capturing on film the tragic faces of impoverished
farmers, Wood's slightly campy painting raised a controversy --- some
thought Wood was taking a potshot at rural life. He probably was. Now
the painting is a textbook example of how an artwork that at first
creates a tumult of disapproval can go on to be revered as an icon.
Where to find it: "American Gothic" is owned by The Art Institute of
Chicago.
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