Violence Across the Midwest in Popular Film Adam R

University of Wisconsin Milwaukee UWM Digital Commons Theses and Dissertations May 2014 Nostalgic Frontiers: Violence Across the Midwest in Popular Film Adam R. Ochonicky University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.uwm.edu/etd Part of the American Literature Commons, and the Film and Media Studies Commons Recommended Citation Ochonicky, Adam R., "Nostalgic Frontiers: Violence Across the Midwest in Popular Film" (2014). Theses and Dissertations. 742. https://dc.uwm.edu/etd/742 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by UWM Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of UWM Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. NOSTALGIC FRONTIERS: VIOLENCE ACROSS THE MIDWEST IN POPULAR FILM by Adam R. Ochonicky A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English at The University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee May 2014 ABSTRACT NOSTALGIC FRONTIERS: VIOLENCE ACROSS THE MIDWEST IN POPULAR FILM by Adam R. Ochonicky The University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, 2014 Under the Supervision of Professor Patrice Petro In “Nostalgic Frontiers: Violence Across the Midwest in Popular Film,” I analyze the temporality and politics of nostalgia while providing a critical history of Midwestern representations in popular culture from the turn of the twentieth century through the first decade of the new millennium. A general line of inquiry informs this project: how do narratives set in the Midwest imagine, reify, and reproduce Midwestern identity, and what are the repercussions of such regional imagery circulating in American culture? Throughout this project, I identify shifting cultural perceptions of the Midwest at particular historical moments. In relation to these regional considerations, I analyze two modes of nostalgia: as a spatial element that is mapped onto the Midwest’s landscape and as a cultural force that regulates Midwesterners with violence. I developed the concept of “nostalgic violence” in order to theorize violent attempts to reshape the present in relation to idealized images of the past in Midwestern narratives. Overall, with “Nostalgic Frontiers,” I work to more fully integrate nostalgia and regional study into the diverse field of media studies by assessing how ideological and historical factors are filtered through cinema, thus shaping our understanding of the Midwest. ii © Copyright by Adam R. Ochonicky, 2014 All Rights Reserved iii For Liz, who is with me even from a distance. For my parents, who have supported me in every possible way. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Chapter One: A Nation “Thrown Back Upon Itself”: Origins of the Midwest as the Space of Nostalgia 28 Chapter Two: “Stay Here Till We Rot!”: Midwestern Anti-Modernity and Spatial Constriction, 1929-1944 66 Chapter Three: “Neither Here Nor There”: Blank Identities and Nostalgic Landscapes in 1970s Midwestern Films 108 Chapter Four: The Millennial Midwest: Nostalgic Violence in the Twenty-First Century 159 Chapter Five: “I Used to Live Here”: Locating Sincerity and Midwestern Disillusionment 191 Chapter Six: Paranoid Frontiers and Nostalgic Restorations 225 Conclusion: Disappearances and Rediscoveries 269 v 1 Introduction In 1996, an article in a small weekly newspaper announced a startling find: “‘Midwest’ Discovered Between East, West Coasts.” The publication, of course, was The Onion, a satirical newspaper founded in Madison, Wisconsin during the late 1980s. Since its inception, The Onion consistently has offered a sharp critique of contemporary American culture, with a particular attentiveness to how its region of origin, the Midwest, is widely perceived. Revised and republished several times since its first appearance, the “discovery” article engages with the popular conception of the Midwest as “flyover country,” that is, as a vacant, nondescript space – both geographically and culturally – between the two coasts. While reporting on the Midwest’s “wild lands full of corn and wheat,” the article knowingly reproduces regional stereotypes, such as that of elitist coastal inhabitants and their uncultured counterparts who occupy the center of the nation. The anonymously penned piece dutifully recounts, “Though the Midwest is still largely unexplored, early reports depict a region as backwards as it is vast,” and a member of the fictitious “exploratory team” explains, “The Midwestern Aborigines are ruddy, generally heavy-set folk, clad in plain non-designer costumery . And though coarse and unattractive, these simple people were rather friendly, offering us plain native fare such as ‘Hotdish’ and ‘Casserole.’” In the 1997 revision of this article, a fake “Los Angeles-based anthropologist” details the Midwest’s inherent cultural deficiency by observing, “Many of the basic aspects of a civilized culture appear to be entirely absent . There is no theater to speak of, and their knowledge of posh restaurants is sketchy at best. Further, 2 their agricentric lives seem to prevent them from pursuing high fashion to any degree, and, as a result, their mode of dress is largely restricted to sweatpants and sweatshirts. .” Aside from the high degree of self-awareness informing The Onion’s satirical portrait of the Midwest’s “crude and provincial” inhabitants, such less-than-flattering depictions of the region were hardly confined to the late twentieth century. For example, in Winesburg, Ohio (1919), Sherwood Anderson begins his collection of stories with “The Book of the Grotesque,” a short piece in which a sleepless writer has “a dream that was not a dream” about the occupants of the titular town. The unnamed writer (potentially Anderson himself) labels these Midwesterners as “grotesques,” although he qualifies, “The grotesques were not all horrible. Some were amusing, some almost beautiful. .” (23). A more contemporary depiction of outlandish Midwesterners regularly appears in Parks and Recreation (2009-), a television series that follows the life of public worker Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) and her fellow local government employees in the fictional town of Pawnee, Indiana. Whenever the genial cast is forced to interact with the townspeople at public meetings, chaos and discomfort ensues, largely due to the Pawnee constituents’ typically inscrutable behavior and bawdy non sequiturs. From at least as early as Mark Twain’s accounts of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn’s exploits in the latter half of the nineteenth century to the daily trials of Leslie Knope in the twenty-first century, the Midwest has been constructed as a space of simultaneous attraction and repulsion within American popular culture. “Nostalgic Frontiers: Violence Across the Midwest in Popular Film” provides a history of Midwestern representations in popular culture from the turn of the twentieth 3 century through the first decade of the new millennium. A general line of inquiry informs this project: how do films such as Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) and A History of Violence (2005) imagine, reify, and reproduce Midwestern identity, and what are the repercussions of such regional imagery circulating in American culture? Among other conclusions, nostalgia and violence have proven to be defining elements of the Midwest’s identity, and the two terms operate in an almost dialectical manner, reframing how the region has been understood for more than one hundred years. Accordingly, nostalgia itself is as much the subject of this project as Midwestern cultural representations. Throughout “Nostalgic Frontiers,” I address two primary modes of nostalgia within Midwestern narratives: as a spatialized element that is mapped onto the Midwest’s very landscape and as a cultural force that regulates Midwesterners’ behaviors and identities. Despite the specificity of the Midwest and nostalgia as fields of study, in a broader sense, “Nostalgic Frontiers” is a study of past-ness, or how the weight of both cultural and individual memory is brought to bear on the present. Across each chapter, a recurring goal of this project is to resituate texts – and the ways in which they have been interpreted or ascribed meanings – within a regional context that is linked to nostalgia. I seek to elevate both the “Midwest” and “nostalgia” as additional entry points for framing and interpreting texts among more established analytic categories within media studies. Overall, “Nostalgic Frontiers” aims to revise the regional “discovery” narrative detailed in The Onion article by sketching out a chronology or, to emphasize continuity across Midwestern texts, a lineage of the complex ways in which the region has been depicted in popular film, as well as in selected literary and historical works. Rather than an awareness of Midwestern identity constituting a “discovery,” this 4 project represents a recovery – or a rediscovery – of key cultural objects that shaped perceptions of the region and that continue to inform its meaning in American culture. The Midwest: Blank Identity, Nebulous Territory One major assumption underlying “Nostalgic Frontiers” is the notion that, by virtue of setting fictional narratives within the Midwest, then a given text is participating, intentionally or not, in a long tradition of contesting and complicating regional identity. Consequently, this project’s textual objects were chosen because they reflect and engage with Midwestern representational conventions, either by working against common regional stereotypes or

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