There is a movie on Netflix now that's getting a lot of negative reviews, but the ones I've seen didn't mention the points I noticed about it.
Hillbilly Elegy is based on a book of that title, written by J.D. Vance. (Starting with that title -- to me, "hillbilly" seems like a disrespectful word, I don't know -- I read parts of that book online and, along with the title, there are some things about it that give me a little "cringe."
Maybe it's the generalizations, or judgments, or something? --
Anyway, the title was given by the book's author, so that isn't the fault of the movie director or writer. Although on the other hand, if it's a negative epithet, the screenwriter could have given the film a different title.
Although on another other hand, in that case potential audiences wouldn't have the automatic tie-in recognition that this film is based on the book...
Anyway...) --
The Washington Post reviewed it, and so did the New York Times, and a bunch of online websites...
What I noticed about the movie, that I haven't seen anyone else mention, is -- OK, the story is based on an idea that generational family dysfunction and poverty affects a percentage of people living in Appalachia.
But I'm watching it going, "You can see this type of appalling behavior anywhere, not just in Appalachia." I think I would take the relative "poverty" component and set it aside a minute, and just look at what you're really dealing with there -- no matter the amount of coins in people's bank accounts, Crazy is as crazy does.
And it's not typical of, or limited to, Appalachia, Why are we picking on the people who live there?
You can find crazy, yelling, hitting, blaming, battering, tantrum-throwing humans in any segment of society, in the South, in the North, in California or New York or Minnesota, or Russia or Cuba.
In segments of society where most of the people in it are rich, or kind of rich--"richish"--there may, indeed, be more social pressure to behave oneself "in front of other people" because there might be more social sanction on battering, yelling, cursing, etc.
It doesn't mean that in those segments of society crazy people are nice at home or in the workplace. They will just modify their behavior as much as they feel they have to, in an environment or situation. It doesn't mean that, fundamentally, they are any different from the low-rent characters in this film. They just have more social pressure working on them. They want to seem cool and sophisticated.
In Hillbilly Elegy, both the book and the movie, there are people who are, if we might borrow a Southern, perhaps Appalachian, expression--Plum Crazy, and they don't modify their behavior very much. (Some sociopaths like an audience to their ickiness.)
But--bottom line, I just don't see how any of it needs to be seen as typical of, or unique to, Appalachia -- I mean, watch some reruns of Law & Order, there are no state lines containing the crazy.
I still think the word "hillbilly" is disrespectful and "bogus," (as they like to say in Boston). And one reviewer said the thing wasn't even an elegy, so...
The movie was directed by Ron Howard -- Opie from The Andy Griffith Show.
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