The Responsibility of Forms: Social and Visual Rhetorics of Appalachian Identity A dissertation presented to the faculty of the College of Fine Arts of Ohio University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy Carissa A. Massey June 2009 © 2009 Carissa A. Massey. All Rights Reserved. 2 This dissertation titled The Responsibility of Forms: Social and Visual Rhetorics of Appalachian Identity by CARISSA A. MASSEY has been approved for the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and the College of Fine Arts by William F. Condee J. Richard Hamilton/Baker and Hostetler Professor of Humanities Charles A. McWeeny Dean, College of Fine Arts 3 ABSTRACT MASSEY, CARISSA A., Ph.D., June 2009, Interdisciplinary Arts The Responsibility of Forms: Social and Visual Rhetorics of Appalachian Identity (262 pp.) Director of Dissertation: William F. Condee Appalachians are typically represented in visual culture as homogenized: white and poor. For the rest of the country tuned into to American visual culture, Appalachia is nothing more than America’s backwoods country, crawling with hillbillies, peopled by incestuous families, and stocked with slovenly welfare abusers. In the spirit of recent Appalachian scholarship’s reclamation of Appalachian heterogeneity via challenges to what scholars have referred to as the “Appalachian Myth,” this study examines the rhetoric of Appalachian stereotypes in visual culture, observes scenarios in which they construct external and internal “others,” and theorizes the ways in which images promote prejudice, classism, and gender disparities and deny the existence of richly diverse cultural traditions within the region. The visual ephemera covered in this project are not studied or organized as artifacts in an historical taxonomy. Instead, they are understood as subjects within a visual grammatical system. This system establishes boundaries between Appalachia and America. Thus, the subjects and materials studied—Jesco White: The Dancing Outlaw, media coverage of the 2006 Sago mine disaster, Jessica Lynch and Lynddie England, Hillbilly Days, Redneck Games, and The Descent—are treated as iconic phrases within a larger visual etymology or taxonomy of identity. By treating images as grammatical 4 rhetorics and situating them within the context of contemporary feminist and visual studies theories, this dissertation offers a new theoretical framework to study the construction of identity through the deployment and rhetoric of imagery. Approved: _____________________________________________________________ William F. Condee J. Richard Hamilton/Baker and Hostelter Professor of Humanities 5 DEDICATION This work is dedicated to the memories of Madge Adeline Smith and Sophie P. Kitty. 6 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation was made possible by many people, both academics and members of my community. Dr. William Condee and Dr. Charles Buchanan have been central to both the development of these ideas and my ability to articulate them. Thank you both. I would also like to recognize my dissertation committee and thank them for their input, advice, and interdisciplinary perspectives. Thank you Dr. Jennie Klein and Dr. Marina Peterson. I also wish to acknowledge and thank Dr. Gini Gorlinski for her amazing mentoring and advice. Finally, I would like to acknowledge and thank Dr. Beverly Marchant and Dr. Susan Jackson. Thank you for starting me on this interdisciplinary arts journey. There are other people who not only made this project possible, but my education and future in my profession as well. My husband, Jason Hartz, provided support and rallied me to dream, seek, and accomplish this goal. I would also like to recognize my foster family, who prove that non-normative kinship in Appalachia does not always mean what we think it does. You are truly my family. You gave me shelter when I needed it most, parenting when I thought I needed it least, and the love and support necessary for me be tothe first in my family to graduate from college, three times, no less! Without you, Shelly Rusen, Walt Auvil, and Kirk Auvil, my professional self may never have been possible. Finally, I would like to thank the rest of my family and friends, especially Suzanne and Maurice Hartz. It takes a village! 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ 3 DEDICATION .................................................................................................................... 5 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. 6 LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................ 9 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................ 12 Deviance and Images .................................................................................................... 15 CHAPTER ONE: ICONIC APPALACHIA: SOCIAL AND VISUAL ELISION .......... 21 CHAPTER TWO: APPALACHIA: HISTORY, MYTH, AND POSTMODERN STUDIES .......................................................................................................................... 50 What is Appalachia? ..................................................................................................... 50 The Myth of Appalachia ................................................................................................ 60 CHAPTER THREE: THE CODIFIED MYTH ................................................................ 67 Appalachian Studies on the Myth of Appalachia .......................................................... 74 Postmodernism in Appalachian Studies ....................................................................... 84 CHAPTER FOUR: STEREOTYPES, POSTMODERNISM, AND VISUAL CULTURE STUDIES .......................................................................................................................... 95 Important Differences in Visual and Historical Methodologies ................................... 95 Anatomy of the Appalachian Stereotype: Identity Theory ............................................ 96 Anatomy of the Visual: Psychology, Vision, and Meaning ......................................... 107 The “Visual” in Western Thought .............................................................................. 112 8 Identity and the Visual ................................................................................................ 117 CHAPTER FIVE: LAND AND KIN AS RHETORICS OF APPALACHIAN DIFFERENCE ................................................................................................................ 123 Land and People, Land as People: The Mountain in the Mountaineer ...................... 127 The Landscape in Nineteenth Century Visual Culture ............................................... 131 Normative Families and Non-Normative Hillbillies: The Rhetoric of Kin ................. 146 CHAPTER SIX:THE SEXUAL RHETORIC OF APPALACHIAN STEREOTYPES. 168 The Hillbilly and Hegemonic (Heterosexist) Masculinity .......................................... 170 From Ellie Mae to Daisy Duke ................................................................................... 180 Jessica and Lynndie .................................................................................................... 190 CHAPTER SEVEN: FILM, THE DOCUMENTED IMAGE, AND THE APPALACHIAN OTHER .............................................................................................. 202 The Dancing Outlaw ................................................................................................... 205 Going “Hillbilly,” Going “Redneck”: Intercultural Performativity .......................... 226 CHAPTER EIGHT: CONCLUSION ............................................................................. 233 The Hermeneutics of the Hillbilly ............................................................................... 233 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................... 240 9 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: “Uncle Collis and the ‘Hill-Billies’: Illustrating the Troubles of a Good Man in the Far South” .................................................................................................................. 34 Figure 2: Portrait of Collis P. Huntington, print ............................................................. 37 Figure 3: Portrait of Collis P. Huntington, photograph .................................................. 38 Figure 4: C. Kesslor Interior of a Typical Arckansaw Home ......................................... 40 Figure 5: C. Kesslor In an Arkansas Kitchen ................................................................. 42 Figure 6: Andre Stern Girl Fingerpainting ...................................................................... 43 Figure 7: Portrait of William Goodell Frost ................................................................... 61 Figure 8: Frederic Remington The Mountain Man ......................................................... 70 Figure 9: Frederic Remington On the Southern Plains ................................................. 72 Figure 10: Samuel Roberts Wells The Falling Back of the Facial Line ....................... 100 Figure 11: Samuel Roberts Wells Grades of Intelligence ............................................ 100 Figure 12: James Redfield