[/caption]NEW ORLEANS- Judith Martin - Did the sharecroppers, small farmers, and small town people of the late 19th and most of the 20th century in the South know something we 21st century American moderns could learn from?
Jack Temple Kirby, in his 1979 book Media-Made Dixie: The South in the American Imagination (LSU Press), seems to believe so as he dissects the history of the media representations of post-Civil War life in The South in the United States of America. Put simply, his main thesis (in 1979) was that everyone from D. W. Griffith "Birth of A Nation" to Alex Haley "Roots", consistently overlooked a whole swath of Southern society.
To summarize: The media persisted in rehashing the myths about the South, of the benign plantation on one side, and sleazy nymphomaniacs and mental cases on the other.
Kirby pointed out abundantly that what the media failed to acknowledge was that a lot of the population of The South was made up of sharecroppers (of all races), small farmers, and small town people.
It was not until the 1960s and 1970s, wrote Kirby, that the media discovered rural and small town America. TV programs like "The Andy Griffith Show" and "The Waltons" set out to examine the way people "out in the country" could cope with problems, and usually succeed in solving them.
What the TV producers discovered was one of the main strengths of sharecroppers, small farmers, and small town people was a sense of family among themselves -- that extended out into the surrounding community. The upholding of the family was of prime importance, and even routines like calling "Good night" to each other in one household made for very strong ties. If there was a problem, the family usually faced it together.
More "surprising" was that rural people had a sense of "place". They identified themselves with their farm, their town, their county, as the hub of their existence. These were the places they cared about most, and respected as a part of each individual's identity.
What was sometimes hard for the media to come to grips with was the fact that these folks embraced a simplicity of life with which they were perfectly happy.
Unlike "big city folk" who seemed always to be out buying more showy and expensive clothes, houses, cars, and the like, the country folks were content with being comfortable, even if that meant once in a while looking "down at the heel". But everyone was "family", from the sheriff's office to the folks who lived up on "Spencer's Mountain".
Kirby closed his analysis of Media-Made Dixie by saying that Americans as a whole were losing touch with that part of their culture that values family (immediate and community), place (home), and comfort, rather than pretense and show. But once that is gone, overwhelmed by strip shopping malls and fast food outlets, and highways that bypass a slower pace of life, it may be next to impossible to regain it.
And that is the lesson we American moderns can certainly learn: To treasure and respect the basic, good things in life that really no money can buy: Family, home, and the simple life.
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