Recent films, including Hillbilly Elegy, prompt discussion about how Hollywood views rural America

Films like Hillbilly Elegy and the new limited-release Nomadland are stirring up new discussion about how Hollywood portrays rural life, Stephen Humphries reports for The Christian Science Monitor.

"It’s a touchy topic. White, rural voters have been excoriated in some quarters of the media for voting for Donald Trump. Consequently, popular culture depictions of those in the countryside are often viewed through a political lens," Humphries reports. "Those living in small-town America worry about how they’re portrayed by filmmakers who’ve parachuted into a locale. Others argue that the outsider storytellers can bring fresh perspectives to socioeconomic issues. But there’s also widespread agreement that Hollywood should venture into the outer reaches of red states more often and try to tell nuanced stories about what unites and divides us."

Stereotypes are also often embraced by nationwide news media, R. Garringer writes for Scalawag:

"I've seen national media portray West Virginia—where I was raised—and Eastern Kentucky—where I now live—as the home of racist white voters, as a place of despair and conservatism, as a wasteland of drug epidemics and pollution. I've seen national media swoop in every four years for presidential campaigns, or stop in for a short story about the "drug overdose capital" of the country. I've seen national media seek out stories that fit a narrative they wrote long before their reporters set foot on mountain ground. What I've almost never seen is national coverage that portrays this place as the home of rich legacies of radical labor organizing, environmental organizing, and queer organizing, as the soil for rich artistic and literary traditions, as a region shaped by patterns of in- and out-migration, as a place that is complex, varied, diverse, and full."

Impoverished single moms in Appalachia don't have much access to the literary world, and are mostly portrayed inaccurately in popular media such as Ron Howard’s Hillbilly Elegy film version of J.D. Vance's book, Alison Stine writes for Gen, a Medium publication about politics, power and culture: "The film gets so much epically wrong about the region it purports to reflect; its poverty fallacies have overshadowed how much it gets wrong about women, particularly single mothers."

In the film, Vance's mother, a high school salutatorian, mourns that she got pregnant at 18 and was unable to pursue her own goals. "But her very valid complaints of not being allowed to better herself or use her brain because she’s been forced into solo caregiving are presented by the film as hysterics. She’s a roadblock in Vance’s way — how dare she question the system," Stine writes. "In this narrative, Vance’s desire for a better life is presented as noble, a hero’s quest. Bev’s desires — to have more schooling, to remarry, to get out, like Vance — are monstrous, unacceptable . . . Vance heads off to the kind of better life that only some men can aspire to, while women are left behind to pick up the pieces."