(this post has been saved as a draft for some time now, and i can't bring myself to discard it though i'm not sure it will be of great interest to anyone either... but it has to go somewhere, and rather than the trash, here it is...)
i saw a clip of searching for the wrong-eyed jesus on one of my favorite blogs recently, and i experienced a very strong, very strange response... i had a visceral, emotional, angry reaction. maybe i just never noticed before, or maybe this sort of thing really is proliferating in a new way, but i feel as if i'm encountering romanticized representations of the south with alarming regularity. i know jim white is involved with the film-- that's actually how i first heard of it a couple years ago-- but that doesn't make it any easier to swallow... in fact, it complicates matters in some ways.
idealized images of the south hit me hard, and deep, and leave me struggling to articulate a myriad of emotions. it's just so easy to romanticize such a world... and so wrong. it's so offensive to see a fantasy version of the south that idealizes poverty and oppression and everything that comes along with it. such mythologizing erases a million other realities and perpetuates a deeply entrenched tendency to ignore history. i realize i don't have much room to point the finger here, considering that i fled the south at the first opportunity and never looked back. but... i suppose maybe this is me beginning to look back. and i'm seeing endless iterations of the south imaged as fantasy... and it enrages me.
imagine you are married. you have been married to your husband for decades. you have raised a family together. you have drifted apart in many significant ways, yet you remain together. you are part of each other's very identities. one day you discover your husband is in love with someone else. you follow your beloved and watch him with his new love. they are happy, and you see him smile in a way you had forgotten he could. you realize this new lover is privy to a side of your husband he has withheld from you for many, many years... she sees only the best parts of his personality whereas you know every ugly nook and cranny of his mind and heart better than the back of your own hand... the darkness and bitterness that you and your husband take for granted and live with every day is hidden from her view. and you resent her for it. you wish you could see as little as she does. but you never will. you go home and cook dinner for your husband. life goes on...
... so the south will continue to be romanticized, and i will continue to struggle to articulate the problems i have with such representations. i realize i've not made much progress toward that aim, and i apologize to anyone who may have bothered to keep reading to this point (and by the way, i welcome any dissenting viewpoints. maybe i'm just too sensitive about this subject...). i'll cease the ranting now and leave you with some music.
while i wrote this meandering mess, i was listening to some southern tunes, old and new. check out dock boggs, a "hillbilly" banjo player/songwriter from the 1920s... and the most talented southern musician i know, my dear friend todd, better known as invention of destruction.
the lake on green mountain, near my family cemetery in big cove, alabama
1 comment:
just got around to reading this now. you need to write stuff like this more often my friend. well said, all of it. write more please.
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