I was in my 40's before I realized, much to my horror, that the rest of the world looks at southerners with something like benign contempt, if not outright disdain. I have been watching an HBO show called The Righteous Gemstones and it exploits just about every Southern stereotype and throws in Christian stereotypes for good measure.
Now, Danny McBride has written and acted in some highly entertaining trashy TV likes Eastbound and Down, and Vice Principals. My son watched every episode of Eastbound and Down. I watched a few episodes until I realized that my desire to jump through the TV and choke McBride's character to death was causing a spike in my blood pressure which wasn't healthy.
According to IMDB, McBride is from Statesboro, Georgia. He must hate who he is and where he is from to gleefully jump on the ALL SOUTHERNERS ARE RACIST COUSIN-MARRYING IDIOTS bandwagon. Or maybe he just cares a lot more about making money than he does about his people. If he were my brother, cousin, or even old college roommate I would figure out a way to find him in person and slap him repeatedly until he confessed his sins and promised to do better.
We don't need more stereotypes here in the South, not even new ones. We have enough, thank you very much. Have you ever noticed that Bad Guys in movies usually speak with either a British accent or a Southern accent? Have you ever noticed that idiots in movies and on TV often have southern accents?
Righteous Gemstones is like yet another one of Hollywood's attempts to show how evil Southerners are, particularly Christian southerners. The Gemstones are evangelists with boatloads of money and basically no morals. There's nothing subtle about it. The women have big hair and love to shoot guns and act subservient, and the men like to shoot guns, quote the bible and also consort with hookers and do blow -- then lie about it to their wives, of course. I love John Goodman but seeing him in this mess, sounding like a man with a speech impediment [he really cannot manage even a bad southern accent, bless his heart] is painful.
I must confess I love to laugh at a southern joke as much as anyone else. I can laugh about my people, though, because in a way all southerners are like family to me, and it's okay for family to criticize one another or joke. When an outsider does it, though, it's definitely a HOLD MY PURSE kind of moment.
I feel a great sense of outrage against people like Danny McBride because it seems to me he has sold out on a gargantuan scale, and instead of fighting the good fight, trying to erase the stereotypes, he is simply exploiting them as much as he can. Every lead character he plays is devious, utterly amoral, utterly without ANY redeeming qualities. In order to be what passes for funny these days he steps over the line and then erases it.
Old TV shows always had a mandate, an unwritten rule, that lessons had to be taught. Evil characters had to either reform or be destroyed. Good characters might screw up but they would always return to being good. Think of every sitcom episode ever, and you get the idea. Was the formula tiresome? Yes, admittedly it was, at times. I stopped watching sitcoms long ago, after Friends went off the air. The newer sitcoms just seem empty though.
Walton Goggins also works with McBride a lot and he's from the Atlanta area. Way to sell out, Dude. I used to really like and admire Goggins.
The only way to combat stereotypes is to erase them, or at the very least not promote them.
Recent Comments