{"id":23210,"date":"2020-12-04T02:28:40","date_gmt":"2020-12-04T02:28:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=23210"},"modified":"2020-12-06T17:14:12","modified_gmt":"2020-12-06T17:14:12","slug":"the-chattering-classes-got-the-hillbilly-elegy-book-wrong-and-theyre-getting-the-movie-wrong-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/the-chattering-classes-got-the-hillbilly-elegy-book-wrong-and-theyre-getting-the-movie-wrong-too\/","title":{"rendered":"The chattering classes got the ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ book wrong \u2013 and they’re getting the movie wrong, too"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lisa R. Pruitt<\/a>, University of California, Davis<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Film critics have had nary a good word to say about Netflix\u2019s new movie \u201cHillbilly Elegy<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reviewers varyingly called it \u201cOscar-Season B.S.<\/a>,\u201d \u201cwoefully misguided<\/a>,\u201d \u201cYokel Hokum<\/a>,\u201d \u201claughably bad<\/a>\u201d and simply \u201cawful<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

I admit to delight when I read professional critics trashing the film, which is
\nbased on J.D. Vance\u2019s widely praised memoir<\/a> detailing his dramatic class migration from a midsize city in Ohio to the hallowed halls of Yale Law School. I was expecting the worst based on my dislike of the book, and these reviews confirmed my expectations.<\/p>\n

But once I saw the film, I felt it had been harshly judged by the chattering classes<\/a> \u2013 the folks who write the reviews and seek to create meaning for the rest of us. In fact, the film is an earnest depiction of the most dramatic parts of the book: a lower-middle-class family caught in the throes of addiction.<\/p>\n

Everyday viewers seem to find the film enjoyable enough \u2013 it has solid audience reviews on IMDB<\/a> and Rotten Tomatoes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So why the big gap between the critical response and audience reaction? Could it be yet another sign of the country\u2019s steadily growing class divide?<\/p>\n

A bootstrap manifesto<\/h2>\n

The film\u2019s negative reviews are an about-face from critics\u2019 warm embrace of the book, which was published in 2016, when Vance was just 31.<\/p>\n

In telling his story of overcoming his mother\u2019s addiction and attendant familial and economic precarity, Vance credits his Mamaw and Papaw, along with luck and hard work.<\/p>\n

Fair enough. But he gives no nod to the government structures \u2013 K-12 schools, the military and the GI bill, the public university where he earned his B.A \u2013 that greased the skids of his sharp ascension into the ruling class. Worse still, Vance expressly blames laziness as the culprit of those left behind, with only cursory attention to the impact of policies<\/a> that encouraged the offshoring of manufacturing jobs and weakening of the social safety net.<\/p>\n

The book is not subtle in its message: Working-class grunts are to blame for their own struggles. If they\u2019d just get off their duffs, go to church and stay married, everything would be OK.<\/p>\n

\"J.D.
J.D. Vance\u2019s memoir was a sensation when it was published.<\/span>
\nDrew Angerer\/Getty Images<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Yet commentators from across the political spectrum greeted the book with a big wet kiss. Published months before Donald Trump\u2019s election, it was perfectly timed for the zeitgeist, and Vance\u2019s extended personal anecdote suddenly became the authoritative text about enigmatic working-class whites, all presumptive Trump supporters<\/a>. The New York Times fawned over its \u201cdiscerning sociological analysis<\/a>,\u201d overlooking Vance\u2019s one-sided invocation of data and scholarly literature<\/a>, while prestigious think tanks<\/a> like the Brookings Institution elevated Vance to expert status.<\/p>\n

I was one of few progressive elites to push back<\/a> against the media\u2019s early, broad embrace of the book. Admittedly, I was moved by Vance\u2019s compelling biography, which featured many of the hallmarks of my own: hillbilly roots, addicted parent, family violence and \u2013 ultimately \u2013 a dramatic class leap into elite legal circles<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But I was put off by Vance\u2019s singular focus on personal responsibility and use of his story to advance an agenda antagonistic to the social safety net. Many of Vance\u2019s positions run contrary to my own scholarly work about the white working class<\/a> and rural America<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Vance also suggests that his family \u2013 in both its best and worst manifestations \u2013 is representative of Appalachia. Yet like all families, Vance\u2019s is typical in some ways but not in others. And that\u2019s what got so many Appalachians up in arms<\/a> when the book came out. Not all of them are drug addicted any more than they\u2019re all coal miners. Further, not all Appalachians are white<\/a>. Many lead boring lives<\/a>.<\/p>\n

From curiosity to disdain<\/h2>\n

I wasn\u2019t happy when Ron Howard and Netflix paid US$45 million for the movie rights,<\/a> because I didn\u2019t want the book to get an even wider audience. But the film leaves Vance\u2019s politics aside and instead focuses on three generations worth of Vance family saga. That means the positive potential I saw in the book is at the heart of the film.<\/p>\n

For one, working-class white people can see themselves on screen. When I read the book, I initially laughed out loud \u2013 but also cried \u2013 over the ways Vance\u2019s hillbilly grandparents reminded me of my own extended family. I also related to his \u201cfish out of water\u201d experiences in elite law firms.<\/p>\n

Second, the story is a reminder that white skin is no magic bullet. Folks where I live and work in California often use \u201cwhite privilege\u201d as synonymous with \u201cyou\u2019re white, you\u2019ll be all right.\u201d Members of the Vance family are white, but they are clearly not all right. The movie has the potential to foster empathy between the two worlds J.D. Vance straddles \u2013 the ones I also straddle \u2013 between working class and professional class.<\/p>\n

Yet to some critics, the film amounted to no more than \u201cpoverty porn<\/a>.\u201d They lamented<\/a> a lack of complexity, nuance, motivation and internal conflict in the film\u2019s characters.<\/p>\n

Really? Those reviewers must have looked right past the trauma both Mamaw and Bev experienced in their early lives \u2013 the former as a child bride, the latter as a child raised in the violent home of that child bride. J.D. is a product of both.<\/p>\n

There are surely other reasons, too, that the film world has turned a cold shoulder to this cinematic packaging of Vance\u2019s book. I suspect that it has something to do with the fact that the four-year span between the book and the film neatly coincided with the beginning and end of Trump\u2019s presidency. During that same period, what started as progressive elites\u2019 curiosity about the white working class gave way to bald disdain and fury.<\/p>\n

Nowadays, my Twitter feed is awash with resentment every time \u201cmainstream media\u201d run a story about white Trump supporters<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

The woke whine that such coverage implies that these are the \u201creal Americans\u201d who we should try to understand<\/a>, while overlooking other marginalized subsets of the population. Film critic negativity about \u201cHillbilly Elegy\u201d may reflect similar attitudes \u2013 a mix of exasperation and boredom with a pet topic for media outlets since the 2016 election.<\/p>\n

[Deep knowledge, daily.<\/em> Sign up for The Conversation\u2019s newsletter<\/a>.]<\/p>\n

Audiences have a different response<\/h2>\n

To me, the real pity is that so many coastal elites know so few working-class folks<\/a> of any color, let alone the hillbilly subset of them. Indeed, studies show that, increasingly, people from different socioeconomic strata no longer mix even within the same metro areas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The crummy reviews ultimately evince this profound and persistent disconnect between those who write the reviews and \u201cregular\u201d folks.<\/p>\n

A week after its release, the film\u2019s critic score on Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> was 27, while its audience score was 82. That\u2019s a massive spread, and one that may align with the yawning chasm cutting across our national electorate.<\/p>\n

The cosmopolitan set can\u2019t believe viewers would want to watch \u201cthose people\u201d \u2013 and may even be able to relate to them \u2013 any more than we can believe so many people voted for Donald Trump<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When critic Sarah Jones<\/a>, an Appalachian by upbringing, argues that \u201cHillbilly Elegy\u201d wasn\u2019t made for hillbilly viewers<\/a>, I\u2019m not convinced. Jones places \u201cHillbilly Elegy\u201d among \u201can old and ignoble genre\u201d that \u201ccaricatures the hillbilly for an audience\u2019s titillation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maybe. But there are far worse depictions of rural folks and other hillbilly types. Look no further than this appalling scene<\/a> from \u201cPlanes, Trains and Automobiles\u201d or the 1972 classic \u201cDeliverance<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Howard and screenwriter Vanessa Taylor certainly took liberties in condensing and dramatizing decades of Vance family dysfunction, but we shouldn\u2019t pretend that families like these don\u2019t exist. I know people like them \u2013 heck, I\u2019m even related to some.<\/p>\n

Many viewers will relate to \u201cHillbilly Elegy\u201d simply because addiction is such a shockingly common phenomenon, one that touches many families and every community. Others will appreciate the film because it presents J.D. Vance achieving the \u201cAmerican dream.\u201d It\u2019s an ideal many find irresistible in spite of the fact that \u2013 or, indeed, because \u2013 upward mobility is more elusive than ever<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With Vance\u2019s politics tucked out of sight, can we simply judge the film for its entertainment value? Can we acknowledge that we don\u2019t all like the same things?<\/p>\n

After all, there may be a few things<\/a> elites don\u2019t \u201cget.\u201d And that could be because the movie wasn\u2019t made for them in the first place.\"The<\/p>\n

Lisa R. Pruitt<\/a>, Martin Luther King, Jr., Professor of Law, University of California, Davis<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lisa R. Pruitt, University of California, Davis Film critics have had nary a good word to say about Netflix\u2019s new movie \u201cHillbilly Elegy.\u201d Reviewers varyingly called it \u201cOscar-Season B.S.,\u201d \u201cwoefully misguided,\u201d \u201cYokel Hokum,\u201d \u201claughably bad\u201d and simply \u201cawful.\u201d I admit to delight when I read professional critics trashing the film, which is based on J.D. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":23211,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293],"tags":[2746,837,3439,308,2225,652,2687,498],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23210"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23210"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23238,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23210\/revisions\/23238"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}