[Ever since Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, newspapers
and magazines have been obsessed with constructing a mythology of a
“forgotten” white working class. Hillbilly Elegy just reinforces
the stereotypes it insists it’s illuminating.]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

MAY HILLBILLY ELEGY MARK THE END OF TRUMP-ERA MYTH-MAKING ABOUT THE
WHITE WORKING CLASS  
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Katie Rife
November 10, 2020
AV Club
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_ Ever since Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, newspapers and
magazines have been obsessed with constructing a mythology of a
“forgotten” white working class. Hillbilly Elegy just reinforces
the stereotypes it insists it’s illuminating. _

, Photo: Netflix

 

_Note: The writer of this review watched _Hillbilly Elegy_ from
home. Before making the decision to see it—or any other film—in a
movie theater, please consider the health risks involved.
Here’s_ _an interview_
[[link removed]]_ on
the matter with scientific experts._

Ever since Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, newspapers and
magazines have been obsessed with constructing a mythology of a
“forgotten” white working class through interviews at down-home
diners and reportage from tractor pulls in deep red states. And if
you’re someone who grew up in one of those states, it’s kind of
funny to watch reporters from New York contorting themselves into
pretzels trying to_ understand_ these exotic creatures in camouflage
T-shirts. Funny, except that same effort has been used to prop up a
politics of white grievance, erasing working people of color who live
in the South and Midwest and excusing racist vitriol under the banner
of “economic anxiety.” To give it just a small crumb of
credit, _Hillbilly Elegy_, the new Ron Howard film based on J.D.
Vance’s 2016 memoir of the same name, doesn’t play as an apology
for the toxic racism of white America. But like those _New York
Times_ profiles, it views its subjects as zoo animals, offering the
same enduring stereotypes about Appalachia—namely, that it’s full
of people too ignorant to realize that they’re being victimized by
their own bad choices—peddled by Vance’s book.

MOVIE REVIEW [[link removed]]

Hillbilly Elegy

C-

DIRECTOR

Ron Howard

RUNTIME

116 minutes

RATING

R

LANGUAGE

English

CAST

Gabriel Basso, Owen Asztalos, Amy Adams, Glenn Close, Haley Bennett,
Freida Pinto

AVAILABILITY

Select theaters November 11; Netflix November 24

Howard, who of course started his showbiz career on an ode to
small-town America
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provides a certain wholesome sheen, especially in the early scenes. We
open with a pastoral, back-to-the-land lament, as a young J.D. (Owen
Asztalos) describes how exploring the hills and hollers near his
extended family’s hometown of Jackson, Kentucky makes him feel
complete. But he, mom Bev (Amy Adams), sister Lindsay (Haley Bennett),
and grandmother Mamaw (Glenn Close) can’t stay long. Thanks to a
chain of events that began with Mamaw getting pregnant at age 13,
they’ve got to travel the “hillbilly highway” back up north to
Middletown, Ohio, where they live. From there, the family’s dramatic
struggles begin to unfold, cutting between the late ’90s (although
you might be forgiven for thinking it was the ’80s) and 2011.
That’s when an adult J.D. (Gabriel Basso), now a student at Yale Law
School, is forced to come home and take care of some things after Bev
overdoses on heroin. He does so while making frequent calls to his
girlfriend, Usha (Freida Pinto), back in New Haven, for both narrative
and culture-clash purposes.

I wanted to empathize with J.D. I am white and grew up in a family of
healthcare workers, schoolteachers, and blue-collar employees in
Cheviot, Ohio, 45 minutes south of Middletown. We drove through the
tunnel seen in this film several times a month, en route to my
grandparents’ house. I, too, worked my way through college at a
state school, and have felt like an imposter in rooms full of people
whose holiday bonuses could solve my entire family’s financial
problems in one swoop. But I do know what the outer fork is for, and I
guarantee you that J.D. Vance did, too, long before screenwriter
Vanessa Taylor wrote a scene into this film where Vance breaks into a
sweat in front of a set of formal dinnerware. (Please, let’s retire
the extra-fork-as-class-signifier cliché—and take J.D.’s other
major axis of oppression, only knowing one type of white wine, with
it.) Like the book, the film version of _Hillbilly Elegy _goes for
easy over honest every time, which is one reason why the former has
been sharply
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those
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claims
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represent
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Photo: Netflix

Another is that Vance seems perfectly happy to throw his own people
under the bus in order to make his life fit a narrative about pulling
oneself up by the bootstraps. One of the many frustrating things about
this film is that it occasionally hits on a real issue—the pipeline
from legal painkillers to heroin addiction, for example, or
intergenerational cycles of teen pregnancy—then ties itself into
knots in order to make those factors a matter of personal
responsibility, sapping their political and narrative potency. Bev
failed to renew her insurance, so it’s really her fault she gets
kicked out of the hospital after overdosing. Lindsay never stood up to
their mother, so now she’s “stuck” in a hell of oppressive
assistant managers and uneven lawns. (They use _plastic _forks. And
only one of them per meal! Imagine!) Those simple folks who say
“syrup” funny? Well, maybe they’re poor because they don’t
really_ want_ to work.

Most importantly, Vance’s troubled family is from Ohio, so therefore
their troubles must be Ohio’s fault. Vance’s book is subtitled
“A Memoir Of A Family And A Culture In Crisis,” but the only
“culture” on display in this film is cartoonish caricatures. The
connections among psychology, geography, and politics are tenuous at
best, and the point _Hillbilly Elegy_ is trying to make obscure. But
its contempt for (or, to be generous, misunderstanding of) Middletown,
Ohio comes through loud and clear in everything from the costume
design to the performances._ _Close provides the closest thing to an
inspirational figure as Mamaw, but her character is too broadly
sketched for her strength to shine through the oversized T-shirts and
awful “good/bad _Terminator_” monologue. She comes across as a
fully realized individual, however, which can’t be said for either
of the actors cast as J.D. And while Amy Adams betrays her Oscars
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“dirtying up” to play Bev, we don’t get a glimpse into the soul
of a troubled but ultimately decent woman so much as a tornado of
smudged eye makeup, thrashing, and screaming. As for Bennett, so
compelling in_ __Swallow_
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she barely registers at all here.

Photo: Netflix

Of course, the wealthy elites J.D. finds so intimidating also
experience mental illness and addiction in their families, but we
don’t frame a day trader with a heroin habit as a symptom of “a
culture in crisis.” That dubious honor is reserved for the poor, and
if Vance wasn’t so concerned with singing a song of woe about how
unfair it is that he once felt awkward at an Ivy League dinner, maybe
he’d realize that _Hillbilly Elegy_ is as full of excuses for why
he left as the excuses for why people stay. Clearly, the author has
some lingering shame around his mother’s struggles with
addiction—an emotional thread the film downplays in favor of cheap
visual metaphors and histrionic fits in acid-washed denim. Much of the
action is set during Vance’s early teenage years, and the self-pity
makes sense coming from the perspective of an adolescent boy. But is
the film aware it has the emotional insight of a teenager screaming at
his mother about how embarrassing she is?

It’s unfortunate that Vance had a difficult time growing up.
Addiction is a nightmare for a family, and the powers that be have not
done enough to hold those responsible for the opioid crisis in
Appalachia to account. But frankly, we’d all be better off if the
writer discussed these issues with a therapist rather than spinning
them into bootstrapping poverty porn; _Hillbilly Elegy_ just
reinforces the stereotypes it insists it’s illuminating. If you want
to watch a sensitive character study about intergenerational trauma in
Appalachia, there’s Barbara Loden’s _Wanda_
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If you want an inspirational story of a prodigal son grappling with
his guilt about those he left behind, _Dark Waters_
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came out last fall. And for an eye-opening exploration of the opioid
crisis’ effect on the region, the Oscar-winning short
“Heroin(e)”
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Netflix. As for Vance, now that he’s got his movie-deal money, let
him work out his feelings in private, and save the column inches for
those whose voices aren’t being heard.

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