Mode of Program Participation
Academic Scholarship
Participation Type
Paper
Presentation #1 Title
Latex(t) in Korine's Trash Humpers
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
Trash Humpers (2010) is a reflexive film, reflexivity meaning the audience is made aware of the filmness of the film. Director Harmony Korine, a Nashville, TN native, and his wife Rachel Korine don disturbing latex masks to perform their roles as Hervé (perhaps Hervé is a loose homophone for the director’s name) and Momma. A director starring in their own film can point to the director reflecting upon himself as creator. Set in Nashville, Tennessee, the "humpers" perform grotesque acts, while intoning Appalachian folk music. This paper aims to explore the film's metacommentary on the anomic rejection and factioning within Appalachian culture.
The purpose of the presentation is to analyze Harmony Korine’s film Trash Humpers in the context of an Appalachian lens. The paper, and presentation, aim to research and analyze Trash Humpers as representative of presumptions and stereotypes about Appalachian interpersonal relationships and culture. The film is notoriously unpleasant to watch, with astoundingly low reviews from both critics and the layperson. As such an unpleasant and grossly unpopular film, the representation of Appalachia in Trash Humpers is of particular significance—the film challenges us to endure the horrors of its characters’ unpleasant daily activities, enacting the disease with which we face certain realities about Appalachian life.
I’ll be utilizing Robert Stam’s theories regarding reflexivity to analyze the film and to orient the audience to the film’s pertinence. Artistic and filmic concepts, like “glitching,” will be integral to the discussion. Comparative analysis of Appalachian folklore with the Humpers’ “cradle songs” will also be utilized.
In the larger picture of portrayals of Appalachian cinema, there are movies which (a) explicitly seek to portray Appalachia, and movies which (b) implicitly reference Appalachia through mannerisms, speech, and class. Trash Humpers is the latter. That in itself is not fantastic or bizarre. What is fantastic and bizarre is that Trash Humpers, in its sheer unpleasantness and filmic “badness,” calls forth from the audience a loathing, long dormant for those not often exposed to the most extreme and sequestered corners of Appalachia.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Nicole Lawrence teaches at Marshall University. She studied poetry at Indiana University. You can read her work in Still: The Journal.
Latex(t) in Korine's Trash Humpers
Trash Humpers (2010) is a reflexive film, reflexivity meaning the audience is made aware of the filmness of the film. Director Harmony Korine, a Nashville, TN native, and his wife Rachel Korine don disturbing latex masks to perform their roles as Hervé (perhaps Hervé is a loose homophone for the director’s name) and Momma. A director starring in their own film can point to the director reflecting upon himself as creator. Set in Nashville, Tennessee, the "humpers" perform grotesque acts, while intoning Appalachian folk music. This paper aims to explore the film's metacommentary on the anomic rejection and factioning within Appalachian culture.
The purpose of the presentation is to analyze Harmony Korine’s film Trash Humpers in the context of an Appalachian lens. The paper, and presentation, aim to research and analyze Trash Humpers as representative of presumptions and stereotypes about Appalachian interpersonal relationships and culture. The film is notoriously unpleasant to watch, with astoundingly low reviews from both critics and the layperson. As such an unpleasant and grossly unpopular film, the representation of Appalachia in Trash Humpers is of particular significance—the film challenges us to endure the horrors of its characters’ unpleasant daily activities, enacting the disease with which we face certain realities about Appalachian life.
I’ll be utilizing Robert Stam’s theories regarding reflexivity to analyze the film and to orient the audience to the film’s pertinence. Artistic and filmic concepts, like “glitching,” will be integral to the discussion. Comparative analysis of Appalachian folklore with the Humpers’ “cradle songs” will also be utilized.
In the larger picture of portrayals of Appalachian cinema, there are movies which (a) explicitly seek to portray Appalachia, and movies which (b) implicitly reference Appalachia through mannerisms, speech, and class. Trash Humpers is the latter. That in itself is not fantastic or bizarre. What is fantastic and bizarre is that Trash Humpers, in its sheer unpleasantness and filmic “badness,” calls forth from the audience a loathing, long dormant for those not often exposed to the most extreme and sequestered corners of Appalachia.
