There's a fine line between celebration and caricature, between exaltation and exploitation, and although I can't define it, like Justice Potter Stewart said of pornography, “I know it when I see it.” Most every music video I’ve seen on CMT in the 21st century crosses, or more accurately, Water Melon Crawls across that line. I confess, for the longest time I could not understand what “cultural appropriation” was, but then I saw the sayings and utensils of my childhood on magazine covers, dish towels, coffee mugs, music videos and t shirts. Lord help us, those awful t-shirts. You know the ones: G.R.I.T.S. (Girls Raised In The South), Southern Girlz, Simply Southern and the like.
Yes I have drank sweet tea out of a mason jar at my Big Mamma’s dinner table, but never from a turquoise one that cost $8 a piece, and so help me, never from one on a wine stem! I about half expect to go into one of those cultural brothels, I mean, stores, and find replicas of the Cool Whip and butter tubs my Big Mamma used as free Tupperware for her leftovers, selling for $7.99 each. Maybe they'll even be embossed with bona fide country nomenclature like "finer than frog hair" or "how's your momma'n'em?" Or better yet, "git'r done." "Bless your heart" should be a part of your vocabulary, not your wardrobe.
What made guys cool in the 50's was rolling up the sleeves of their white t shirts, not buying a pre rolled Calvin Klein t-shirt off the rack at a downtown boutique for $45. Somewhere between my childhood and now southern went from a culture to a trend. It's as if the south collectively hired a pr firm, a promoter, an agent, and a stylist. You know, people who don't really care anything about you other than making a profit off of you. People who view you as a product, not a person. The great musical prophet Alan Jackson tried to warn us. “I hear down there it’s changed, you see, well they’re not as backwards as they used to be...Lord it sounds so easy, this shouldn’t take long, be back in the money in no time at all...he’s gone country, look at them boots, he’s gone country, back to his roots, he’s gone country, a new kind of suit, he’s gone country, here he comes...the whole world’s gone country.”
Maybe I’m just overreacting or hyper-sensitive. They say “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” so maybe I should be flattered. But here’s the thing, it’s not the folks in California or Wisconsin or New Jersey who are imitating us that rubs me the wrong way. It’s the carpetbaggers who are exploiting our heritage and those of us who are being lured into a sort of minstrel show performance of who we are.
Historically we were different “down here” and that was a good thing, but it wasn't an act and we certainly didn't export it or even talk about it. It was just our way of life. It was how we were raised, not something we were sold. Admittedly I'm conflicted at best and hypocritical at worst. I celebrate being southern. My favorite things to write about pertain to my southern heritage. When I travel and people say "what kind of accent is that!" I proudly respond “Tennessee.” I love sweet tea and biscuits and gravy and riding on a dirt road, but I don't like seeing it printed on a coffee mug or sold in a catalog. Culture shouldn’t be a commercialized commodity. I appreciate a good meal at Cracker Barrel as much as the next guy, but any self respecting southerner will readily admit that it can’t compare with breakfast or supper at any one of your mother, grandmother or aunt’s houses. It’s a just a theme park version of my heritage and more often than not I leave with a full belly but an empty heart because I know I’ll never eat at my Big Mamma’s kitchen table again. I guess what I’m trying to say is I love the real thing. Authenticity.
Too many of us southerners are content with a replica. A music video version of our heritage instead of the real thing. Things like spending time with family or preparing a home cooked meal from scratch. We don’t really want to go for a ride on a backroad with someone we love and sing along with the radio or go swimming in a creek with our friends. We want to be “up in the club” dancing to a song about these things, written by someone who’s never actually done any of those things. We just want the Instagram, #southernlife, Hollywood produced version starring Reese Witherspoon. But that’s not me.
I want to watch my uncles play horseshoes and my cousins play softball in the field by the house, not girls in cut offs and bikini tops wearing trucker hats dancing in the bed of a ridiculously jacked up and tricked out “pickup truck.” I want to go for a ride in an old 1978 F-150, with torn seats and rust spots and talk about real life with my oldest friends. I want to eat fried chicken that was cut up from a whole chicken and fried in lard in a cast iron skillet, not bought in a red and white bucket and labeled “Nashville Hot Chicken.” I want to be around folks who love to eat watermelon on a hot day, not take watermelon vodka shots off a hot body. I want to listen to an impromptu concert in the backyard from people who’ve played mandolins, guitars, fiddles and banjos since they were little, not “hick-hop” with 808 drum machines from guys who spend more time fixing their hair than practicing their instrument.
Most of the southerners I see on television or online are just characters. Larry The Cable Guy is really Dan Whitney, a nice guy, and a funny guy, but his public persona is just a character. The people I grew up around were certainly “characters” but they were never caricatures. I don’t have a problem with the Dan Whitney’s of the world. It’s not the characters on television that bother me so much as the “life imitating art” that I see on Wal Mart racks and in fast food parking lots. It’s the real southerners who are buying this cultural fool’s gold and parading it around in the real world that grieve me. I’ve got news for you, if you have to put “Country Boy” across your windshield, you ain’t country, boy.
But I won’t lose heart, there are still authentic southern voices out there that haven’t been “auto-tuned” by the consumer concerned machine. Authors like Rick Bragg, musicians like Jason Isbell, The Drive By Truckers, and Elizabeth Cook (and Paul Thorn, and Grant Peeples, and Joshua Hedley and Erin Rae.....), websites like The Bitter Southerner, and bloggers like Sean Of The South, remain fully immersed in southern heritage from a contemporary, and even progressive perspective. Small town squares with home owned retail shops are slowly making a comeback. Homegrown “farm to label” clothing makers like Alabama Chanin are revitalizing long abandoned industrial parks with a foot in the past and an eye on the future, yet remaining passionately committed to their communities in the present. A new wave of southern chef’s are going back home and going back to their roots, bringing grannie’s recipes to life using locally sourced ingredients and adding their own twist in the process. That is what southern heritage is really about. Hanging on to the best parts of your people’s past, taking care of the people around you in the present, and adding a little bit of yourself that you will pass along to the next generation....not just posterizing cliches and covering them in sequins. It’s in living out the values of our elders that make us who we are, not just having them hanging on our walls.
I see the evidence everywhere that we are learning from the mistakes of our past and even making an effort to atone for the sins of our fathers. Perhaps one day we are all going to look back on the last couple of decades in southern culture, and especially this era of “country” music, much like we look back on the disco era. I believe the South’s gonna rise again....better than ever....and you can put that on a t-shirt.
No comments:
Post a Comment