Keeping An Eye On the Czar of Russia

This is an article which I wrote for an American website in July 2010. Rich Hall is an American comedian who resides in Britain. I dont really like Rich Hall. I need to “like” comedians and Hall is too caustic. In a BBC documentary, he looked at how the “South” is portrayed in American culture. Hall himself was brought up in North Carolina. Text in Blue is more or less the views of Rich Hall. Text in Green is my observation.

Rich Hall suggests that Hollywood is obsessed with the three Rs of the american South…..Rednecks, Racism and Religion but is Hollywood telling the Truth. There is a Geography to Movies….implicit in big skies is the Western. Implicit in steamy heat is the American South. Not just as climate but as metaphors…….big skies means optimism…..stifling heat means repression.
Many “Southern Movies” have the “sweat and perspiration” in the title……..Body Heat, The Heat of the Night, Mississippi Burning. Steel Magnolias he claims is revenge for no female parts in Deliverance.
The South is obsessed with the Civil War…..it has a poetic response….the cavaliers of Gone With the Wind.
In North Carolina he was compelled to read Gone With The Wind by 4th Grade (can this be true?)
The South cant be UNDERSTOOD in Movies. It can only be FELT.
The South is perceived as having treated people badly.
Hollywood feels it has the “right” to treat the South badly.

Ok……I think he is wrong to leave out the Western……I reckon it was about 1961 when I first heard of the American Civil War.
A TV western series called Bronco Laine….had a flashback episode where Captain Laine was a Confederate Intelligence Officer. I didnt fully understand the context of course but I think this is a recurring theme in TVwesterns and say John Ford movies……that ten or more years the men (it was always men) moved west …and built a new America. Ranch hands from the old North and South worked hand in hand. And US Cavalry fought against a new common enemy on the Plains.  But in retrospect the entire black population were airbrushed out of the Movie Western.

Now let me say something controversial and in part I say it as a debating point. Was the South actually defeated in the Civil War.?
Let me make perhaps offensive comparisons.
When the Germans were defeated in WW2 it was crushing politically and philosophically as well as militarily. The Confederate defeat was more military. and politically (states rights) …..maybe not philosphical at all (race).
The american Civil War was as much about Modernity defeating the Old World.
For me theres a comparison with Ireland…..centuries of military defeat never killed off political aspiration. There was always a new generation of Rebels…..even if the Philosophy changed. from Monarchy thru to Republicanism.
Essentially a neutral observer could state that centuries of English-Irish conflict was a theatre of a bigger war between Northern Europe (Protestant) and Southern Europe (Catholic).
So what am I saying here?
That despite Reconstruction period (1865 to say mid 1870s) there was no real will to actually “crush” the South.

ADDS……….I just wanted to add that the American South and Ireland share a reputation as being very hospitable people. Where hospitality is regarded as a sacred duty.
Yet this SEEMS at odds ……as they are both societies that are very DIVIDED.
Its an odd contradiction.
“There are two ways to deal with Hillbillies……….educate them or exterminate them” (editorial in Baltimore Sun 1912).
Hillbilly culture might first have appeared as the McCoys and Hatfields in 1880s West Virginia but the word is first recorded in 1900. The image of feuding families in the mountains far away from the “law” is enhanced in the urban-rural split of early 20th century USA. Not strictly North-South but the failure of the cotton crop in the early 1900s sent southern country workers into the North and West urban areas.
Hillbilly was perceived as an acceptable slur.
But the Depression and Prohibition turned the Hillbilly into an unlikely hero. A symbol of proud reistance to the oppression of grinding poverty. And of course they were rebels making “moonshine”.
There are two types…stereotypes of Southern male…..the Plantation Owner and the “Tobacco Road” Hillbilly.
Humour? Has the Southerner allowed his “stupidity” to be mined as a rich vein of Comedy…..by…..Northerners.
Does any other ethnic group do this.
A joke to a Southerner is his own lack of “pretension” to be rewarded.
They laugh at The Cable Guy. And Jeff Foxworthy….cue footage.
Is it all Mark Twains fault? Remember folks that the bard of the Mississippi was actuallya Connecticut Yankee.
When Twain wrote his first book……Huckleberry Finn……he voiced the hero as a 12 year old illiterate boy living off his wits.
Cue…….Lil Abner….the cartoon strip featuring the muscle bound hero, Daisy May and in the end TWO THOUSAND Southern stereotypes and grotesques.
And the cartoonist who invented “Lil Abner” was …Al Capp…….from Connecticut who had only spent two weeks in his entire life south of the mason Dixon line.
Cue footage from the 1950s musical Lil Abner. So was Hillbilly Culture invented in ….Connecticut?

OK…..a lot to deal with there. Disappointed in that Baltimore Sun editorial. Yes of course I know about the migration of southerners to the north. Its a constant in the “country songs” that I listen to.
“Last night I went to sleep in Detroit City…….and I dreamed about those Cotton Fields of home” (Bobby Bare)
“Im sittin in a honky in Chicago……..with a broken heart and a woman on my mind” (Dean Martin)
“”while my baby walks the Streets of….Baltimore!!!” (Gram Parsons and Charley Pride)
But in Irish culture we have the same thing.
Unsophisticated country dwellers from West of Ireland taking ship to be in the Gangs of New York…….or to England to work in car factories (lucky) in the Midlands or to make motorways and railways.
“The craic was good in Cricklewood…..we wouldnt leave the “Crown”……the glasses flyin and Biddy cryin…..the Paddys are goin to town”
“Its a long long way from Clare to here…its a long long way…..it gets further every day……”
“Yes the Irish send you navvies nurses and the rest…..without our help and guidance youd soon be in a mess……thered be no priests in England to whom you could confess…..if it wasnt for the work of the Irish”.

And of course the Irish joke (ie the English stand up comedian telling an Irish joke) is built around this lack of sophistication .the semi-literate man from the west of Ireland working on a building site. But surely these are Hillbilly “jokes” too. Perhaps Rich Hall is hyper sensitive. Perhaps I am. I dont like LAZY HUMOUR. And I think Humour needs to be INCLUSIVE.
Or perhaps the real joke is that Irish jokes are stupid so that the English can understand them.
But……Irish people tell jokes about people from County Kerry.
Canadians tell jokes about Newfoundlanders.
Southerners tell jokes about people from Arkansas.
English people increasingly tell jokes about Norfolk. Probably some kind of recognition that theres a new breed of Irish comedian .Ed Byrne, Dara O’Briain……and even Father Ted series which was funny because it was funny. The Irishness was paradoxically crucial AND incidental.

But surely Rich Hall (creator of alter ego Otis Lee Crenshaw) is just plain wrong to say that no other culture is complicit in making jokes about its perceived “Stupidity” (the Irish) or their own stereotype …..Billy Connolly (Scotland) for example……or etnicity….Chris Rock, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy. …….Jackie Mason, Billy Crystal, Sid Caesar, Mel Brookes, Phil Silvers, Zero Mostell, Milton Berle (can you see where Im going here?). Now there IS a point where that “persona” becomes a “stereotype” which feeds INTO prejudice and racism rather than combatting it.
And the cartoon thing Lil Abner.
A confession here. I once NEARLY watched the musical Lil Abner……a very staged musical all seemingly set on a sound stage rather than any outdoor scenes. I just found it irritating. I think its the only time its ever been shown on British or Irish TV. Because I think anyone watching it would have stared open mouthed at the screen……..it was just so awful.
Now Rich Hall did show some old Hollywood footage where a “Hillbilly” was seen sleeping with his farm animals.
Offensive? Yes.
But is it so much different from the joke about “Paddy” having his pigs in the house. “What about the smell Paddy?” “Oh the Pig will get used to the smell”. Hmmm.
Surprisingly perhaps Rich Hall never mentioned the Beverley Hillbillies. Probably it did not totally fit his agenda as there are mixed messages.
It was one of my favourite programmes when I was a child.
But I think the “joke” was as much about the greedy Californian banker (Drysdale) and his snob wife and the lovelorn Miss Hathaway as it was about perky Elly Mae, stupid Jethro or the cunning of Granny and Jeds laid back innocence.

Actually “the next thing you know old Jeds a millionaire” is a phrase I use a lot. I heard it a lot in my old office.
It was generally accepted way of saying that a sequence of events has ended well. Usually in a “dating” sense.
Rich Hall barely mentioned William Faulkner before going on to Tennessee Williams. In the absence of a Movie Director who was interpreting the South (as John Ford had been the “Western” director), Hall puts forward Tennesse Williams as the man who “gets” the South. Ironically ten Williams plays were made into movies in a decade ……under the radar almost as Westerns were THE thing in the same period.
Here was the opposite of Lil Abner. The South was lonely, steamy and hedonistic. Brief overview of how Williams was an “outsider” (he was gay and is mother and sister (effectively Blanche and Stella) “fragile” and his father “drunken”.
This is not only the Old South versus the New South…..this is old acting (Vivienne Leigh) being eaten alive by New Actors……….Paul Newman, Brando, Malden and the rest being the men who brought Williams characters to life.
Tennessee Williams changed the public face of the South…..single handedly!…….this was the New South dancing on the grave of Scarlett O’Hara…..hmmm
Erskine Caldwell got a mention…….”Tobacco Road” and “Gods Little Acre” again turned into movies……but heres the twist. The iconic image of the sharecroppers daughter about to sell her body for a turnip…is actually satire on “savages crippled by poverty”.  But these satires not actually meant literally were cheerfully embraced by Northern publishers and Hollywood as further evidence of Southern depravity.the movies are actually a kind of “soft porn”.

Ok….lets see. Disappointed that Faulkner was marginalised as I like Faulkner. Im less impressed by Tennesse Williams. I would have said those ten plays were actually the same play written ten times. Yes I knew Williams life story (maybe Id never really considered his father) but the movies are obviously straight versions of his plays. As such I find them claustrophobic and theatrical.
Now Caldwell is interesting. I have read “Tobacco Road” and cant say I enjoyed it…..and I certainly did not pick up on the satire. Yet as Rich Hall was saying this it struck me that “Angelas Ashes” (Frank McCourts controversial “memoir” set in 1930s Limerick) was somewhat similar.
McCourts accuracy has been challenged and McCourt maintained he was a “story teller not a historian”.
Had Caldwell and McCourt pulled off the same trick. Had the New York literary critics……and the Movie Industry taken them too literally. And seriously.Almost inevitable that a segment would feature music.
But the Grande Ole Opry in Nashville or Basin Street in New Orleans.

Rich Hall stands in Beale Street, Memphis. Blues (Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf etc) and Country and Rockabilly begat Rock and Roll. In the Sun Studios, polite Elvis recorded and so did the more dangerous Jerry Lee Lewis. Segregation of races did not apply to Music……black and white were both exploited by the Music Industry…….based of course in the North.
Hollywood is always behind the culture……..
Hank Williams had died in 1953. He was dangerous.
The bio-pic movie made in 1960 featured George Hamilton……no Hillbilly.
Bio-pics……such as Ray Charles and Johnny Cash…….are a pale imitation of the real thing.
If you want to know about Johnny Cash…..listen to his music!!!……..avoid the bio-pic.
Movies always attribute character change to Events……..in the movie “Hank Williams” injects heroin because of his brothers death. But no…..Hank Williams took heroin because he liked taking heroin.

A difficult segment. Beale Street, Memphis was a deliberate choice. Now it is more apparent that Rich Halls South is “White South” albeit the progressive South. Its an ethnic and tribal South.
I got the distinct impression that Rich Hall had no real faith in what he was saying.
He liked Rock and Roll ,,,,,,,,dangerous Rock and Roll……. but distanced himself from both the black “blues” , the safe Elvis and the conservative Country.

Religion. Lets look at a map of “The South” (a geographic and historic entity). Where is the Bible Belt? Neatly it is EXACTLY the same as the geographic and historic South. Of course no documentary on the South is complete without reference to the number of Churches. Hall visits a “black church” in Memphis.
But why is the Church such a force?
The Minister explains that in times of persecution peole turn to God.
But Rich Hall goes further. At the end of the Civil War, there were 4 million black slaves and a large number of destitute whites.
“Industrial strength religion” was brought to the South by NORTHERN evangelists.
Hollywood is afraid of Religion.
“Inherit The Wind” the iconic movie about creationism versus evolution is a fraud. It is NOT actually about the “monkey trial” in 1925 ….it is about McCarthyism in 1950s USA and the dangers of …..censorship and right wing values.
Contrary to myth, Evolution WAS taught in the Tennesse town where “Inherit the Wind” was set but it was taught alongside the “science” of eugenics……which was all discredited in the post war years. It was this teaching of eugenics that conservative Christians objected……….and by 1960, the question of creatinism/evolution had largely been settled. The real debate was about Free Thinking versus Orthodoxy and the liberal minds in Hollywood were using this old 35 year old example to prove a different point. …equating intolerance with the South……it was easier to make a point that way.

Too much of a conspiracy theory for me and by this stage of the programme, I am starting to think that Halls agenda has taken control of the facts. Certainly the influx of evangelists into the defeated South seems likely…..they did the same in the Plains on reservations and had brought the Bible with soup kitchens to Ireland in the 1840s.

The Civil Rights struggle was led in the South by Preachers. It was a matter of Spirituality as much as Politics. Civil Rights is a “spiritual issue”.  It takes SPIRITUAL strength to oppose Racism and thats why Churches were burned.
If Rosa Parkes and others started someting in mid 1950s. .then it would be the 1960s before Hollywood felt safe to tackle it.
“To Kill A Mocking Bird” might have been a fore-runner but “In the Heat of The Night” (1967) did it better.
But the townsfolk in both movies were slack jawed one dimensional hicks….stupid. They sat sweating in greasy diners.
Hollywood had decreed that the South must always be punished. for losing the Civil War
Rod Steigers character in the Heat of the Night saw how the South and Life was going.
But the casting of Sidney Potier……beautiful and sophisticated and SAFE was the key.
Where Sidney Potier led……eventually others……..Denzil Washington, Will Smith, Morgan Freeman would follow.
But was it Hollywood which led the way………or was it real life where race riots were happening…or young POOR men (black and white) from the South were fighting in Vietnam.
But 1968…the deaths of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy changed the narrative.
The Race issue became cartoonish……The Klansman (starring oddly Welshman Richard Burton) was the first pic in which OJ Simpson had a role. Jim Brown and Fred Williamson…..all pro footballers….were at the head of this kinda cartoonish violence. Mirrored in the North by “Shaft” type movies.
“Bonnie and Clyde” was violent. White Southerners hitting back in an anti-establishment way.
I of course “get” that standing up to Injustice is as much a Spiritual exercise as a political exercise. Well said Mr Hall.
And necessarily the drama about History will be a few years after the event. Clearly Sidney Potier (Guess Whos Coming To Dinner) is exactly the sort of young man that appealed to Middle America.
The Klansman I have never seen……but ceratinly those exploitation movies …newly elected Black police officers facing racism…were a mixed bag of good and bad.
And yes……..Hall makes a good point about the best known Black faces being head hunted by Hollywood.

Rich Hall is an American “stand up” a regular on BBC and resident in Britain several years. He is from Charlotte, NC and presented a 90 minute documentary last night which I taped.
Frankly I dont like him. He is 56 according to Wikipedia (I would have guessed slightly younger) and a former regular on USAs Saturday Night Live.
He is perhaps…….too regular a guest on BBC Comedy Panel Shows….a kinda inner circle of mutually appreciating comics who appear on each others shows. Rich Halls novelty value (like John Oliver in USA) is that he is an “outsider”……….bringing an “American perception” to European themes. I have never warmed to him. I am not sure entirely when he is speaking “offensively” or “abrasively” as a comic persona…….or whether its the real Rich Hall.
And he belongs to that 21st century group of post-political correctness comedians.  I find that this is an unwelcome retreat from the 1980s and 1990s.

For some reason the BBC like to give Comedians (Stephen Fry mostly) the role of presenting serious documentaries. This is too often to give ratings a boost but in many ways it can work well.  The best Comedians are …..at heart……very serious people. They “know stuff”.

“The Truth About The Dirty South”……South being the American Southern States.
Rich Hall is from Charlotte, North Carolina…….and basically this was 90 minutes where Hall theorised that the South as presented in “popular culture” (Hollywood mostly) is very different from the authentic “South” good and bad …….which he knows.

You all know that I am pretty interested in American culture…….politics and history…..and have been reading about the Civil War all my adult life. All my references are from History…..or more likely popular culture….books, movies, TV, music.
Of course I am familiar enough with the History to differentiate fact and fiction………I can get that “Dukes of Hazzard” is Southern and “Law and Order” is New York, that “Murder She Wrote” is New England  and that most shows are Californian. A more casual viewer would just see “American”. I can contextualise.
I know that many of these images are not “authentic”…..that Americans would quickly tell me “its not like that”……in much the same way I tell people that Ireland is not like………”The Quiet Man”……….or “Riverdance”……..or “Bono”……..or “Angelas Ashes” (Frank McCourts book which I despise).
I think I spend a lot of time……explaining what is and what isnt “real” to my American friends.
And I empathised with Rich Hall…….a man I dont like……who clearly had the same dilemna.