The Dirty South examines the shifting significances of the South as
a constructed, fantasized region in the American psyche,
particularly its frequent association with tropes of dirt that
emphasize soil, garbage, trash, grit, litter, mud, swamp water,
slime, and pollution. Beginning with iconic works from the 1970s
such as Deliverance and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, James A. Crank
traces the image of a "dirty" South into the twenty-first century
to explore the social, political, and psychological effects of the
region's hold on the imaginations of southerners and nonsoutherners
alike. With a focus on media forms through which southern identity
gets articulated and questioned—including horror movies, Swamp
Thing comics, and popular music by artists such as Waylon Jennings
and OutKast—The Dirty South probes the sustained fascination with
southern dirtiness while reflecting on its causes and consequences
since the end of the civil rights era. Highlighting the period from
1970 to 2020, during which the South began to represent several new
possible identities for the nation as a whole and for the area
itself, Crank considers the ways that southerners have used
depictions of dirt to create and police boundaries and to contest
those boundaries. Each chapter pairs prominent literary or cultural
texts from the 1970s with more contemporary works, such as Jordan
Peele's film Get Out, which recycle similar investments or,
critically, challenge the inherent whiteness of the earlier images.
By historicizing fantasies of the region and connecting them to the
first decades of the twenty-first century, The Dirty South reveals
that notions about southern dirtiness proliferate not because they
lend authenticity or relevancy to the U.S. South, but because they
aid so conspicuously in the zombified work of tethering investors
(real and imagined) to a graveyard of ideas.
General
Imprint: |
Louisiana State University Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Series: |
Southern Literary Studies |
Release date: |
November 2023 |
Authors: |
James A Crank
• Scott Romine
|
Dimensions: |
229 x 152mm (L x W) |
Pages: |
288 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-8071-8013-6 |
Categories: |
Books
|
LSN: |
0-8071-8013-0 |
Barcode: |
9780807180136 |
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