Mythologizing the "Southern Lady"

Poor Scarlett. That silly war ruins all the best parties:




Our readings this week talk about how we codify and memorialize something called "Southern identity."  *Gone with the Wind* is a perfect example of the nostalgic vision of a South that seems totally removed from the very infrastructure upon which it relied.

Here's an example from the film, where romance and religious ritual are bound up with racial subjugation and economic disparity:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oorFyVS23ns&feature=related

In Tara McPherson's Intro to *Reconstructing Dixie: Race, Gender, and Nostalgia in the Imagined South*, she talks early on about the myth of the "Southern Lady": "[The South] remains at once the site of the trauma of slavery and also the mythic location of a vast nostalgia industry. In many ways, Americans can't seem to get enough of the horrors of slavery, and yet we remain unable to connect this past to the romanticized history of the plantation, unable or unwilling to process the emotional registers still echoing from the eras of slavery and Jim Crow. The brutalities of those periods remain dissociated from our representations of the material site of those atrocities, the plantation home. Furthermore, the very figure who underwrote the widespread lynching of black southern men (and women) during the era of segregation in the South somehow remains collectible. The white southern lady--as mythologized image of innocence and purity--floats free from the violence for which she was the cover story..."

The romanticized version of something called Southern femininity relies on a firmly entrenched structure of economic access and race-based labor framework. Interestingly, Mammy becomes the voice of maternalistic morality, telling Scarlett to "behave" and to "act like a lady"...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4546UkGWSw&feature=related

We talked about this a little in class, but what do you make of Alabama's Azalea Trail Maids?

Here's a blurb about the controversy that ensued after their being asked to march in Obama's inaugural parade:
http://www.local15tv.com/news/local/story/Controversy-Over-The-Azalea-Trail-Maids/_log9pDFgk-nF4cuv1wq3Q.cspx

The father of one of the maids says in the article: "they've never represented slavery or racism.... only Alabama’s southern culture."  What's at stake or what are the implications of thinking of those as two separate and identifiable things?


More?  Okay, sure:
http://www.wsfa.com/Global/story.asp?S=9655036


So are these innocuous images based on popular culture's trips to the movies?  Should there be any responsibility attached to these representations?  What does this suggest about the politics of memory and memorializing?  

True Blood...True South?

U.S. pop culture (especially angsty teens) loves vampires again.  Not creepy "classical" sorts in the vein (pun intended) of Count Dracula and dank mansions.  Now instead of Counts, we've got Confederate Soldiers.  And instead of mansions, we've got bars and antebellum homes.  Well, at least in "True Blood."  The series is particularly interesting in its presentation of the South (takes place in Louisiana bayou country) vis-a-vis the presence of supernatural..."forces"?  Religion gets a not-so-subtle treatment in the show, especially in regard to us/them and good/evil social dichotomies.  But in a Southern context, this plays out in all sorts of (interesting?  troubling?  compelling?  ridiculous?) ways.

Since we can't spend a semester just on this one show (dry those eyes), just take a look-see at the opening credits:



Telling images, no?  There's an especially remarkable triangulation of space/setting, religious rituals, and sexuality.  We see a very specific South: one of marshes, old homes, abandoned cars, bars made of splintered boards, racial hatred and violence.  The religious overtones are pretty specific too: crosses, charismatic church services, prayers, baptism.  And then, lots and lots of sex.  Noticeably absent?  Vampires.  Not even vampire lore or archetypes.  Loads of jumping and writhing though (alongside a decomposing animal or two or three or five), and that ends up standing in for our more traditional images of the creepy sensuality that accompanies so many vampire narratives.  The juxtaposition of bodies in religious and sexual contexts is something that comes up again and again in the show itself.  And the stereotypes are pretty easy to identify.  So what do we make of the huge success and popularity of "True Blood"?  Marketing magic?  Just one more piece of the vampire craze?  Or is there anything to be said for the ways in which we understand religion alongside physicality in the South?  And if so, what might be said about it?

What Religion in the South Looks Like (?)

So if Scarlette O'Harlette and fried chicken (along with some maps, which, we'll certainly talk about--those aren't so innocuous either!) are the images that show up for a search of "southern," what happens when something called "religion" gets thrown into the mix?  Well, I'm glad you asked:

Hmm, so now we've got tiny churches, a lynching, the book "Baptized in Blood," and Jerry Falwell (among other things).  This offers a pretty specific brand of Protestantism to partner with images of the South.  Fair?  Unfair?  Falwellian?  (no, I'm not sure what that means)

Seeing the South

Depending on who you are and where you've lived, you may have very specific ideas about where "the South" is, what it's like, and what role something called "religion" plays there.  People debate whether states like Texas or Florida "count" as the South, whether the region should include the Caribbean, what it means to be "Southern," etc.  More specifically, if we play a little visual free association, different images might come to mind if someone asks you to think about the South...(like? what say you?).  So, how we see the American South will vary, of course, but I thought it might be telling to look at what a huge search engine like Google had to say about the matter.  If you search "Southern" in Google Images, here's a snapshot of the first images that pop up:

These images seem to offer a pretty particular vision of what "southern-ness" is all about...And if that's the case, what (if anything?) should be read into the fact that the most popular/recognizable images of what's "Southern" are things like knife-laden Confederate flags surrounding a buxom blonde wearing ripped jeans (next to a "Southern belle" in corset and big skirts), fried chicken, and one "Scarlett O'Harlette"?  

In other words, do you think there's a tension between the South that we live in and the South that appears in a larger cultural imagination?  Or not?  Where do these images come from?