Participation Type
Panel
Session Title
Appalachia on Film: Telling It True?
Session Abstract or Summary
This panel will consider portrayals of Appalachia and Appalachians in recent films: Logan Lucky (2017), Child of God (2013), and Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story (2013). Specifically, the presenters will think through issues of truth and tale-telling, questions of who is telling the story and what story they're trying to tell. The different papers will touch on issues of class (Logan Lucky), sexual orientation and ecological sustainability (Goodbye Gauley Mountain), and fidelity to source material (Child of God). In the case of Logan Lucky, where does celebration end and mockery begin, and does it matter who is telling the tale? For Goodbye Gauley Mountain, this love letter to the Appalachian mountains grapples with distinctions between insiders and outsiders, natives and migrants, and the film itself pushes the boundaries of film genre and personhood. Finally, Child of God presents intensified and exaggerated versions of Appalachian cliches, and raises questions of whether fidelity—in this case to Cormac McCarthy’s 1973 novel of violence, isolation, and necrophilia—is always and everywhere a positive attribute. All the papers will engage with representations of Appalachia and examine who is telling our stories, and how.
Presentation #1 Title
Logan Lucky: Exploitation or Class Critique?
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
Films set in Appalachia tend to depict conflicts between characters of differing economic classes, with audience identification frequently directed toward middle and upper classes. Often this class identification is part of a complex intersection, such as in Deliverance (1972, dir. John Boorman) and the Wrong Turn series (2003-14, dirs. Rob Schmidt, Joe Lynch, Declan O’Brien, and Valeri Milev), where urban and non-Appalachian characters are threatened by rural Appalachians. In other cases, as in The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia (2009, dir. Julien Nitzberg), characters of differing economic classes share spatial origins. The heist film Logan Lucky (2017, dir. Steven Soderbergh) instead directs audience sympathies toward working class and unemployed characters. This paper will examine to what degree this redirection avoids exploitation and engages in class critique and will look at the film within the contexts of other films and TV shows set in Boone County, West Virginia, Soderbergh’s earlier heist films—Ocean’s Eleven (2001), Oceans Twelve (2004), and Oceans (2007)—and his previous Appalachian film, Bubble (2005).
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Walter Squire is an associate professor of English and Director of the Film Studies Program at Marshall University. He has published articles on Disney adaptations, mad scientist films, and the cinematic depiction of teachers.
Presentation #2 Title
Filming Depravity: The Hillbilly Monster and Spectatordom in James Franco’s adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God
Presentation #2 Abstract or Summary
In both Cormac McCarthy’s darkly comic Child of God and James Franco’s 2013 faithful screen adaptation of the novel, the stereotypical associations of the depraved, slack-jawed backwoods hillbilly monster are not so much reinforced as they are given room to grow and fester to grotesque and absurd proportions. Franco’s cinematic depiction of the desperate and lonely necrophiliac Lester Ballard (buoyed by Scott Haze’s fully committed lead performance and an almost cinéma vérité film style) serves as a voyeuristic peek into the potential depths of depravity that nonetheless is fueled by both film’s implicit desire to participate and serve as witness and spectator to an Appalachian cliché run amok. This presentation will also consider the perils of slavish fidelity to McCarthy’s source material that borders on cinematic necrophilia in its oftentimes forced incorporation of passages from the novel and sentence-to-shot reconstructions in the adaptation from page-to-screen that loses much of the humor and all of the grace of its source material.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #2
Cody Lumpkin is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Marshall University where he teaches courses in literature, writing, and film. His poetry has recently appeared Rhinoand Tar River Poetry.
Presentation #3 Title
Marrying a Mountain in Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story
Presentation #3 Abstract or Summary
Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story (2013, directed by Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle) is an anti-MTR documentary, but it is also an exploration by Stephens of her West Virginia home, her family’s deep connections to the mining industry, and the conflicts within Appalachia over environmental issues. In addition, Goodbye Gauley Mountain documents Stephens’s and Sprinkle’s ecosexuality and chronicles their wedding to the Appalachian Mountains (one of several weddings in which Stephens and Sprinkle have married the Earth). Filmically, Stephens and Sprinkle play with and undermine numerous boundaries, including those between self and nature, between insider and outsider, and between the film genres of documentary and romantic comedy. In this film, Stephens and Sprinkle undermine notions of romantic and sexual love, and the film raises significant questions of agency (who gets to speak for the mountains?) and pleasure (what do we give to the Earth in relation to what we take?). In this presentation, post-human theory will help us unpack these and other questions, to get at the heart of the pleasures of this film and the pleasures we can receive from the Earth.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #3
Allison Carey is an Associate Professor and English Department Chair at Marshall University. She is currently at work on a book about LGBTQ literature in Appalachia, due out from West Virginia University Press in 2018.
Conference Subthemes
Diversity and Inclusion, Environmental Sustainability
Logan Lucky: Exploitation or Class Critique?
Films set in Appalachia tend to depict conflicts between characters of differing economic classes, with audience identification frequently directed toward middle and upper classes. Often this class identification is part of a complex intersection, such as in Deliverance (1972, dir. John Boorman) and the Wrong Turn series (2003-14, dirs. Rob Schmidt, Joe Lynch, Declan O’Brien, and Valeri Milev), where urban and non-Appalachian characters are threatened by rural Appalachians. In other cases, as in The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia (2009, dir. Julien Nitzberg), characters of differing economic classes share spatial origins. The heist film Logan Lucky (2017, dir. Steven Soderbergh) instead directs audience sympathies toward working class and unemployed characters. This paper will examine to what degree this redirection avoids exploitation and engages in class critique and will look at the film within the contexts of other films and TV shows set in Boone County, West Virginia, Soderbergh’s earlier heist films—Ocean’s Eleven (2001), Oceans Twelve (2004), and Oceans (2007)—and his previous Appalachian film, Bubble (2005).
