tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post1691695769180934273..comments2024-03-19T21:14:01.007-07:00Comments on The Compass Rose: Dickey's Deliverance - The Macho Movie to End All Macho MoviesCurtis Favillehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comBlogger37125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-45416869259786766332011-06-04T05:55:00.325-07:002011-06-04T05:55:00.325-07:00I certainly couldn't have predicted how the di...I certainly couldn't have predicted how the discussion would unfold in this case.<br /><br />People end up arguing about Dickey's portrayal of "hillbillies"--a social group that was once condemned in this country, and who turn up (in familiar guise) in a he-man testing novel by a sensitive American poet.<br /><br />I wouldn't have thought it was an issue, but it apparently is. You could even say that Dickey used them as puppet-figures to enable his plot, but Dickey himself was a Southerner, so his awareness of the issue is more complicated than that. <br /><br />Is it possible that Dickey's portrayal of them isn't really negative--that what viewers see in them is something different from how he imagined them? Did the movie distort his intention? <br /><br />I still think we need to see them in the context of the dialectic he sets up between human culture and civilization. Neither the novel nor the movie is a criticism of American backwoods culture. It's a morality play--fully imagined--improbable and unlikely in many of its particulars--which was set up to demonstrate a system of contention. It's an "action" which pits forces, and resolves them (or doesn't). That's how I'd like to see it. <br /><br />We can argue endlessly about whether his characters are "real" or "made up." Cartoon characters and clowns and strange birds--even Shakespeare used them.Curtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-18242367431167168762011-06-04T04:27:19.955-07:002011-06-04T04:27:19.955-07:00Did I mention I that a hillbilly from West Virgini...Did I mention I that a hillbilly from West Virginia introduced me to the woman who became my wife. He worked as a cement finisher and his wife talked him into hiring me on as his hod carrier. The hillbillies were decent folk, especially in comparison to the delusory class consciousness I encountered in the years I spent seeking a niche among the rancorous literati.Craighttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05061304265345986242noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-19543889180429792292011-06-02T18:18:17.843-07:002011-06-02T18:18:17.843-07:00The hills are alive with the sound of Muzak.The hills are alive with the sound of Muzak.Kirby Olsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05952289700191142943noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-57156618458242913662011-06-02T11:58:03.668-07:002011-06-02T11:58:03.668-07:00ARF
ARF
Arf
ahehehehehehehehehehheh hehARF<br /><br />ARF<br />Arf<br />ahehehehehehehehehehheh hehHardy Har Harnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-12194250035242783172011-06-02T11:32:15.900-07:002011-06-02T11:32:15.900-07:00KO:
This is unreasonable--
the discussion is goi...KO:<br /><br />This is unreasonable--<br /><br />the discussion is going nowhere.<br /><br />I'm outahere!Curtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-76186927202235751532011-06-02T11:28:14.443-07:002011-06-02T11:28:14.443-07:00Of course literature is about real life. To say th...Of course literature is about real life. To say that it isn't is to argue that literature has no bearing on real life, and has therefore no meaning whatsoever.<br /><br />Of course the Beverly Hillbillies are about real people.<br /><br />Of course Shakespeare, the Bible, and all other fictions, reference real people, and real life. Otherwise, it's useless.<br /><br />But writers can be way off in their approximations, as can mathematicians.<br /><br />Bad writers and critics can have really screwed up understandings of the worlds they describe.<br /><br />Dickey is way off, and he demonizes country people. <br /><br />The feminists do have important points about the ways in which women are depicted. And we can glean from those criticisms a critique that can upend the criticisms of other groups.<br /><br />There is a massive and unconscious prejudice in America toward Appalachia and its residents. This is partially political. It is partially based on fear, and ignorance.Kirby Olsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05952289700191142943noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-12183523721528597632011-06-02T10:19:48.723-07:002011-06-02T10:19:48.723-07:00Kirby:
I have the unpleasant feeling you're t...Kirby:<br /><br />I have the unpleasant feeling you're trying to manipulate the argument towards other purposes, here. <br /><br />First, there is no such thing as a pan-hillbilly culture in America. America is vast. To compare West Virginia or Georgia with Alaska is kind of dumb. <br /><br />A defect in a work of fiction would be its formal weaknesses. Creating weird stereotypes and hybrid characters is the basic work of fictional enterprise. Literature is full of them. <br /><br />Comparing a fictionalized comedic television serial such as the Beverly Hillbillies to "real people" is pointless, just as comparing Dickey's hill folk extended family to all of America's rural population is dumb. Who's to say Dickey's representation of one family is a stereotyping of others, anyway? That seems a very big stretch, even if Dickey's novel were a social criticism--which it certainly isn't. He's setting up a test narrative in which Nature (with a capital N) is explored and examined. Nature is inherent in the participants--I think that's the message. Men contain evil--civilization weans it out of us, or tries to. The tension (and struggle) between civilized and "wild" is what drives the narrative. The hill folk are posed as the consequence of limited civilization, of people living partway inside, and partway outside, of ordered, civilized life. They have one foot inside the mysterious, unpredictable, untamable wilderness. Nature "claims" its proxies and its victims. It's a very Darwinian universe Dickey is showing us--but it's a fictional universe. Keep that in mind.<br /><br />As fas as "banning" discussion. The evidence against that is our exchange right here. Have I ever censored your commentary?Curtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-16726940981286742182011-06-02T09:54:20.118-07:002011-06-02T09:54:20.118-07:00The hillbillies are ..arguably...Dickey's amor...The hillbillies are ..arguably...Dickey's amoral heroes, Olsonski. You just don't get it. <br /><br />Were literary works required to contain/uphold formal arguments--or for that matter, be completely fair to everyone-- there would be little literature remaining (including your favorite beatnik-hallmark cards). Fiction is thematic,perhaps evidentiary-- not axiomatic (lets see a necessarily true "literary" premise. Well, maybe.."all men are mortal"---AFAWK). Then has KO ever finished, say, Aristotle's Poetics? Doesn't look like it.Perezosohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01875109580933192779noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-71714247287665780962011-06-02T09:29:35.580-07:002011-06-02T09:29:35.580-07:00I would never argue for banning fiction or poetry....I would never argue for banning fiction or poetry. But I do think it can be discussed as to its possible defective elements, which might include how it libels/labels a group.<br /><br />The Beverly Hillbillies presents other Appalachians as virtually ineducable, and yet strange with sudden insight (Granny is uncanny!).<br /><br />We can and should discuss these things. You're banning discussion, or saying that any discussion is an attempt at banning. Dickey is allowed to put hillbillies down if he wants. The left in general does this with hillbillies. Palin is a hillbilly of a kind.<br /><br />I don't think you have to have gone to Harvard or Yale (or at least to one o the Ivies or the sister colleges) to be appropriate or acceptable within a literary or presidential context.Kirby Olsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05952289700191142943noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-18313623006215547192011-06-02T08:03:58.689-07:002011-06-02T08:03:58.689-07:00Kirb:
This could devolve into an argument about t...Kirb:<br /><br />This could devolve into an argument about the differences between fiction and non-fiction.<br /><br />I don't think that's what I was addressing in the post.<br /><br />One could criticize any figure from fiction on the grounds of the words s/he speaks, or their actions. But the author of a fiction has a larger purpose, which encompasses the characters and action. <br /><br />A writer should have the freedom to write about anything, without getting into this trap about implication(s). Insisting upon some moral use is exterior to the imaginative act. <br /><br />Dickey probably knew 100 times more than you do about the country and people he was describing than you do, Kirby. That's a certainty. But that's beside the point you're trying to make. You've vastly oversimplified the process of dramatic representation. You seem incapable, for instance, of understanding the purpose and function of a play like Oedipus: "The Author shouldn't be saying such horrible things about sons! And Mothers! Ban it!"Curtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-86103098818498828602011-06-01T21:19:57.437-07:002011-06-01T21:19:57.437-07:00I think writers shouldn't go after easy target...I think writers shouldn't go after easy targets. 'Tis cowardly. He positioned these folks as unthinkably evil and not good neighbors. Not the case. This in turn makes me question his neighborliness and just what it was he thought he was up to. Writing implies a philosophy, and has arguments in it. It has premises. Otherwise, it doesn't matter. Dickey is making a social statement about Appalachia and its residents that many are quick to unthinkingly believe. It's a lot of twaddle.Kirby Olsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05952289700191142943noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-22909373530048600232011-06-01T17:37:07.035-07:002011-06-01T17:37:07.035-07:00Kirb:
I'll repeat my earlier observation. Th...Kirb:<br /><br />I'll repeat my earlier observation. This is a movie, adapted from a work of fiction. <br /><br />Writers of fiction are free to make any kind of representation without being responsible for what the characters may say, or what the narrative appears to support. This would be true of Upton Sinclair and Ayn Rand and Paul Horgan, despite the fact their work(s) show(s) all kinds of propagandistic content. It's certainly true of Dickey. Dickey's novel isn't an indictment of country yahoos. One may question whether or not the novel is based on real models, but that's as far as we can legitimately go.Curtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-33185810778380289192011-06-01T17:24:28.699-07:002011-06-01T17:24:28.699-07:00I've lived my whole life in Appalachia and con...I've lived my whole life in Appalachia and consider myself Appalachian. I admit that I've only lived in the northern stretches but have camped in the Smokies and my parents lived in N. Carolina. I wonder if the stereotype is just an attempt to drive down a specific group. They're the last group everyone feels like they can dump on and massacre. But why is this?<br /><br /><br />It's like dumping on blondes, but it's classist, and strange.<br /><br />On the other hand, there has been some animosity toward city dwellers because of the rivers getting turned into hydroelectric power. The backwoods people may have sometimes tried to fight back, but I've never heard about it. Around here many towns (8) were inundated for the New York City reservoirs, and all trace of their existence was expunged. <br /><br />Some still gather by the side of the reservoir and sing songs and moan for their ancestors. This happened in the 1930s. Perhaps the agit-prop of Deliverance was meant to excoriate the people of similar towns in Georgia, and to say that their lives didn't matter since they were such scum anyway.Kirby Olsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05952289700191142943noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-35495337395202286802011-06-01T15:00:46.309-07:002011-06-01T15:00:46.309-07:00Olson's full of sentimental scheisse as usual....Olson's full of sentimental scheisse as usual.<br /><br />West Virginia? It's unlikely he would last a night in Butte County, or much of the central valley--Kirby O meets the Hell Angels or 'skins! He'd be "puffin" in a few minutes as the scootertramps sayJhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11567400697675996283noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-13043231221867048842011-06-01T14:41:04.436-07:002011-06-01T14:41:04.436-07:00Kirb:
The country people have a kind of von der e...Kirb:<br /><br />The country people have a kind of von der erde symbolic significance in the film, which isn't intended, I don't think, to cast aspersions on "country" per se. <br /><br />You're correct that country people can be as welcoming and genial as any. But it's been a commonplace cliché for two hundred years that the secluded "poor white" of back country Appalachia often display quite backward lives. Dickey was using a cliché, but I'd wager it was a cliché he could back up with first-hand knowledge. <br /><br />Do you have first hand experience to defend your charge? Would you wander into the West Virginia backwoods without a wingman?Curtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-60993773592094926572011-06-01T13:19:22.070-07:002011-06-01T13:19:22.070-07:00Well, I realized you hadn't thought about it. ...Well, I realized you hadn't thought about it. Appalachia is not as bad as people think, and people anywhere can misbehave.<br /><br />Wikipedia has an article that covers the plot of the film:<br /><br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deliverance<br /><br />It hits the same highlights as your own.<br /><br />The same details stick out.<br /><br />But there's nothing about any original activity upon which the film was based. It seems creepy to pick on country people by the supposedly sophisticated people.<br /><br />Country people are quite sophisticated and just as nice as city people.Kirby Olsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05952289700191142943noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-978875969007887272011-06-01T13:18:19.750-07:002011-06-01T13:18:19.750-07:00Actually, the American theme of Dickey's scraw...Actually, the American theme of Dickey's scrawling I mostly approve of--but don't think he quite had.....a Weltanschauung. As a Faulkner did. Or Kesey. ...One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest was a vision of the ...takeover of Jeffersonian America, if you will, by the liberal-bureaucratic state--McMurphy's eradicated by the doctors and Nurse Ratcheds, and her orderlys. Most think it's just some hippy-dippy BS (because of the moovie, which wasn't my cup of tea). But it's not, really. The book didn't really manifest itself on the silver screen.Jhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11567400697675996283noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-67047332331917304412011-06-01T11:37:32.527-07:002011-06-01T11:37:32.527-07:00Kirby:
I don't think it fair exactly to accus...Kirby:<br /><br />I don't think it fair exactly to accuse Dickey of "making fun of Appalachia" if that's what you're getting at.<br /><br />Deliverance is a work of fiction. The attitudes it portrays are not "real" in that sense, but dramatizations of possible (or imagined) versions of a make-believe world. I should say that I knew a nice fellow at my government job who had worked in his earlier life as a traveling salesman in the outback of Kentucky and West Virginia, who told me that all the guys there routinely carried a loaded handgun in the glove compartment of their vehicles, because "you never knew" what you were likely to encounter in the backwoods. People could be strange--and a bit worrisome. I don't have any personal history about this.<br /><br />It isn't quite fair to compare Pennsylvania or upstate New York with the backwoods of Arkansas or West Virginia--they're quite different in an ethnographic sense. Country people may be friendly, or they may not be. One mustn't generalize. Was Dickey's story a deliberate swipe at country people? I don't think so. Was/Is it "true" to "reality"? I can't say. But that's not the point of my post, really.Curtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-75644725175282608912011-06-01T10:53:16.893-07:002011-06-01T10:53:16.893-07:00Making fun of hill people of white appalachia is o...Making fun of hill people of white appalachia is one of the last groups that left and right still discriminate against: how often does it happen that they rape and murder just for the sheer hell of it. I grew up in Appalachia (Pennsylvania) and still live in the Catskills (New York), and think the people are pretty well-behaved.<br /><br />One of the reasons I've never liked the movie is that I find it to have appalling stereotypes of the country people of the Appalachians.<br /><br />I can understand Conrad. In Africa in 1850 you might get blitzed by the local. In Vietnam, likewise.<br /><br />Getting blitzed by the locals in Appalachia? Not likely.<br /><br />More likely to happen at a cocktail party among celebrities in Manhattan where they would start stirring their olives and rolling their eyeballs.<br /><br />Was Dickey's movie and book based on a real event of any kind? Or is just more vicious stereotyping?Kirby Olsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05952289700191142943noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-69046104259650143202011-06-01T08:52:57.599-07:002011-06-01T08:52:57.599-07:00J:
Yes, movies is a separate medium. Rarely does...J:<br /><br />Yes, movies is a separate medium. Rarely does a great movie result from a great novel. Caine Mutiny, IMO. But the novel is not longer considered great literature. <br /><br />There's a certain seriousness of purpose which doesn't translate well to the screen. Catcher in the Rye, for instance--no movie possibility there at all. It's all in the voice and the fancy-footwork of the internal monologue.Curtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-18308954744347517832011-06-01T08:37:36.351-07:002011-06-01T08:37:36.351-07:00OK. As I said, I enjoyed the Deliverance movie, u...OK. As I said, I enjoyed the Deliverance movie, unPC or not, but don't consider it some visionary work or whatever. Then, Coppola/Milius botched Conrad in "Apoc. Now" as well. <br /><br />Realism doesn't work so well in movies, IMHE--tends to get bo-ring, even with murders, rape, macho-men, bimbos, etc.--like a endless movie of the week show. The over-the-top flicks --Dr. Strangelove, or those by Oliver Stone, Terry Gilliam, animation, etc--pack more of a punch.Jhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11567400697675996283noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-18345656822283860002011-06-01T08:33:38.540-07:002011-06-01T08:33:38.540-07:00My wife rafted that river during the decade follow...My wife rafted that river during the decade following the movie's release with a female colleague from the clinic where they worked along Highway 61 in Mississippi. They were federal employees and the only white women at a clinic in a town comprised entirely of descendants of former slaves. They needed more sunscreen but didn't encounter any hillbillies or macho city slickers out proving their manhood. I'd say the book and the movie also bear comparison with Golding's Lord of the Flies.Craighttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05061304265345986242noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-51709744684070106392011-06-01T08:25:32.613-07:002011-06-01T08:25:32.613-07:00J:
Let's not get sidetracked into a discussio...J:<br /><br />Let's not get sidetracked into a discussion of Conrad. Referring to his trope of men tested under fire--a la Lord Jim or Heart of Darkness--is as much as I wanted out of the reference. <br /><br />Let's leave it at that.Curtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-84392650911211251392011-06-01T08:23:53.723-07:002011-06-01T08:23:53.723-07:00Dickey isn't a great novelist. I don't th...Dickey isn't a great novelist. I don't think anyone would compare him to Conrad or Melville. <br /><br />That's not the point. My blog was about the movie, not the novel. Though Dickey wrote the screenplay, so we can infer certain intentions from it. I think it's a great piece of popular entertainment, which succeeds in being a very efficient transmitter of Dickey's ideas about nature and evil and redemption, etc. <br /><br />Dickey's story has nothing to do with colonialism, though I suppose one could make a point about the condescension the men feel towards the hill country people. In what sense are these people better "adapted" to their milieu than the men?Curtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-56221149860918165432011-06-01T08:19:37.558-07:002011-06-01T08:19:37.558-07:00I don't think you understand Conrad's writ...I don't think you understand Conrad's writing, Sir F--reading it visavis your stoical, new-critical secular perspective yll never get it, anymore than a biblethumper or zionist would.Jhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11567400697675996283noreply@blogger.com