rural

Winter’s Bone

admin — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 08:01:00 +0000

In my review of 2009’s Oscar-nominated film Precious I stated that it was incredibly difficult to objectively review the film because the realism that is presented is so detached from my own circumstances. After seeing Debra Granik’s gritty Winter’s Bone I find myself faced with a similar conundrum, although not to such an extreme.

For people living in the rural areas of the Ozark mountains a fulfilled life is not one of luxury. The goal for an individual is simply to survive rather than thrive in the harsh natural and social environment. The world presented in Granik’s dark thriller seems desolate and cold, but through the female protagonist it manages to glimmer with hope. Brilliantly filmed against the poetic landscapes of the Ozark mountains, Winter’s Bone is a glimpse into rural morality and the emergence of an unlikely hero.

Relative newcomer Jennifer Lawrence is a shoe-in for an Oscar nomination for her performance as Ree Dolly, a seventeen-year-old with a lot of responsibility. She is the chief caregiver of her two younger siblings, she lives with her nearly catatonic mother, and she only occasionally shows up for school. Her meth-dealing father has been arrested, posted the family’s house as bail, and vanished. If he does not show up at court, the family will lose their house and be thrown into a world where they have more enemies than friends.

The narrative is essentially straight forward, which allows Granik to lace the film with tension. Granik brilliantly proves that action does not equal tension and most scenes start and end on high notes with an anticipated release that never comes. At its heart, Winter’s Bone is a film noir with a missing person chase, a look into an underground crime world, and a feeling of constant danger. Lawrence successfully creates a new feminist hero that also harkens back to the great noir detectives of the 1940s.

In a low populated area like the rural Ozarks, the morality that is presented does not fit the mold that urban and suburban dwellers have become accustomed to. When a significant portion of the workforce consists of unskilled laborers, the job market is incredibly volatile. In one scene Ree sees her only two possible futures in two separate school rooms: join the army and escape or become a mother and join her miserable relatives.

Nobody appears content with their existence in Winter’s Bone except for the children who only appear in the film in brief segments where they can be seen jumping on a trampoline or playing in hay. The fact that the children get such joy out of such meager circumstances shows that Ree’s fight is worth it.

Cross-posted from Film Misery

Written by: Alex Carlson, July 7th 2010

The Demons of Aquilonia

admin — Thu, 27 May 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Lina Medaglia

Inanna Publications

The Demons of Aquilonia is a journey through a verdant panorama of beauty and a rich tapestry of the generations of families that comprise a small mountain village in the Italian region of Calabria. Lina Medaglia does a great job describing the push and pull forces that drive domestic and international migration. The beauty of the land is juxtaposed with the regional accent of Calabria, the ancient indebtedness that is the result of efforts to gain valuable, arable land and the general lack of opportunity that causes an all-too familiar “brain drain” toward urban areas and abroad. Such struggles of the countryside could be understood and found to be relatable to any person hailing from the rural side of the growing urban-rural divide.

The story presented in The Demons of Aquilonia does not flow in a linear fashion, and this communicates well the point that the central character, Licia, is in simultaneous dialogue with her those that share her current life after immigrating to Canada and family and friends from her her childhood spent in Calabria. For example, within two or three chapters you may travel with Licia between 1962 and 2006 discussing along the way Licia’s accent and her perseverance in Canadian schools and the revelations of her mother’s belief in the ‘Giganteschi curse’.

Medaglia’s portrait of her time in Calabria makes you wish that you were George Clooney with a sun-drenched villa on the precarious cliffs of the Amalfi coast. Alas, the closest that I have come so far is the imported Blood Orange Soda I recently picked up from Target. But Medaglia’s portrayal of the fractious dialogue between the past and present via the stories of older relatives provokes one to pursue one’s own odyssey through a genealogical tapestry. The Demons of Aquilonia is an appeal to understand the richness and complexity of one’s own past as this may gift us with a more holistic understanding of our personal identity. Understanding personal, familial history is a key to a deeper self-understanding and thereby a more firm ground on which to build an identity that is inclusive of the memories of those that came before us.

Written by: Brandon Copeland, May 27th 2010

MILK (5/1/2010)

admin — Wed, 05 May 2010 08:00:00 +0000

HERE Arts Center

New York, New York

Emily DeVoti’s provocative two-act play, MILK, opens in a spare farmhouse kitchen. It’s 1984. Ronald Reagan has just been elected US president and local newscasters seem to have nothing good to report. Meg (played by Jordan Baker), a former mathematician who loves precision and order, and her husband Ben (Jon Krupp), a former investigative reporter, are sitting at the table and talking, but it’s the kind of tense conversation that can quickly turn from controlled anger to fierce argument.

Things are bad, very bad. A drought has made dairy production virtually impossible, and land that’s been in Meg’s family for centuries is now on the cusp of foreclosure. On top of this, their college-aged daughter—who is never seen but is referenced at key moments in the play—wants to be an actress and their fourteen-year-old son Matt (Noah Robbins) wants material things his parents cannot possibly afford: name-brand sneakers, CDs, a bedside color TV, and stylish clothes, among them. Worse, there’s a city slicker on the prowl, and he’s made no bones about wanting to “help” Meg and Ben ease their financial woes. Ben thinks it’s good idea, "a gift from God"; Meg doesn’t.

Ben wins.

By the time businessman James (Peter Bradbury) and his teenaged daughter, Veronica (Anna Kull), arrive on the scene—in a private plane, no less—things have deteriorated even further. But James couldn't care less about the family’s personal difficulties. Instead, he’s turning his managerial acumen to improving the farm’s productivity. Although he knows nothing about cows, he hatches a plan that, on paper, will foster unprecedented growth and save the day: importing “wild, hairy, horned” bulls to impregnate the many heifers dotting the pastoral landscape.

As you have probably guessed, things don’t pan out as James—or Ben or a reluctant Meg—expect. While the second act of the play is far weaker than the first, the excellent cast, including Caroline Baeumler as Auroch, a talking bovine the Program Notes describe as “quite possibly the last living wild cow,” briefly explore a number of evocative themes including monetary pressures; urban versus rural lifestyles; marital fidelity; self-sacrifice; coming of age; and the festering ache that often accompanies keeping silent about things that matter.

In fact, by the time Veronica tearfully confides her father’s secrets to Matt, the pathos is so intense that James instantly morphs into someone less repugnant. In the end, while we may revile Matt politically, DeVoti renders him a multidimensional personality who is deserving of compassion.

There are no easy answers in MILK. Indeed, as the world changes, some customs and practices inevitably become obsolete and are replaced by newer rituals and activities. The key is figuring out which pieces of cultural and personal history to retain and which to let go.

At one point, Meg looks into a bucket of unpasteurized milk and declares that “the pure stuff, it corrupts so easily.” Maybe so. MILK asks its viewers to think about what’s negotiable and what isn’t. Regardless of what is ultimately decided, one thing is certain: after watching this well-executed play, urban audiences will think about cows in a whole new way.

Photo credit: Jim Baldassare

Written by: Eleanor J. Bader, May 5th 2010

Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America

admin — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 17:49:00 +0000

By Mary Gray

New York University Press

The town I grew up in—Athens, Georgia (pop. 100,266)—is generally known for two things: indie music (a la REM, Elephant 6, and Kindercore) and the University of Georgia, both of which play a major role in maintaining the town's liberal leanings. However, Athens doesn't lean too far. It's still a place where college football dominates from Labor Day to Christmas, and if you're not in church on Sunday morning, you are assumed to be riddled with sin.

Coming up in an environment rife with contradiction, I learned a lot about peaceful co-existence through plausible deniability. (He's not gay; he's just eccentric.) Sure, we had an annual human rights festival where the young and old listened to people like UGA law professor Eugene Wilkes speak about the need for student activism to combat the world's ills, but mostly they were there for the music. One can only ask so much from a small town in the South, and once my identity as a radical queer feminist began to set in, Athens began to feel stifling. So as soon as I was able to, I did as gay rights icon Harvey Milk instructed, and fled to the nearest city.

The city, however, was not the activist paradise I'd imagined it would be. I did find a lot of feminists and socialists and anti-racists and queers with whom I could link arms and "fight the good fight," but I lost that sense of community I'd always known at home. What good was knowing someone would show up at a protest if you couldn't count on them to show up when your car dies and you need to get to work? What good were late night conversations about Spivak when you couldn't tell someone you were late with the rent (again)? I knew I'd lost something in the transition from small to large, and while I was happy with what I'd gained, I still questioned whether it was enough. I wondered if it were possible to reconcile being in a place where no one is a stranger with the benefits one gains when one is able to be anonymous.

Enter Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America. I recently interviewed Mary Gray for WireTap Magazine after reading her groundbreaking new book about the myths and mysteries of being queer in small town America. The book resonated with me deeply, as Gray (herself a former queer rural youth) explains how the current gay rights movement excludes rural LGBTQ issues and constructs a queer identity that increases rural queer invisibility. She provides strategies for altering the course to address their needs without requiring re-location (a luxury that is not always attainable or desired) or conformity to a falsely homogeneous queer standard.

Out in the Country was like a breath of fresh country air—just what this Georgia girl needed.

Cross-posted to Bitch Magazine's On the Map blog

Written by: Mandy Van Deven, September 4th 2009

The Social Economy of Single Motherhood: Raising Children in Rural America

admin — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 00:20:00 +0000

By Margaret Nelson

Routledge

The Social Economy of Single Motherhood is a study of both facts and perceptions of single motherhood in rural Vermont in contrast to more general studies done on urban mothers. It details the circumstances behind every mom interviewed for the study instead of lumping them into the stereotype of single, poor, welfare moms who are just lazy and promiscuous. Many of these women are divorced and left behind husbands for a variety of reasons including abuse or negligence. Most of the single moms in the study were very poor, though a few came from middle class backgrounds and weren’t living in poverty until they had children. The book critiques welfare reform by looking at how it impacts families who aren’t able to make ends meet or don’t have livable wages. What sets this book apart is its focus on the social economy. The United States is one of the few countries in the world that does not include or acknowledge domestic work in its economic analysis even though, as Nelson writes, our society would collapse without it. Nelson approached this subject in terms of personal exchange and details women who seek friendships with other women of similar circumstances to serve a variety of needs for one another (babysitting, car rides, small loans, etc) with the understanding that everyone will be reciprocal of time and energy given or shared. Nelson chronicles some very disheartening exchanges in this arrangement, including sexual favors for car repairs. The book briefly acknowledges the role that unlivable wages and irresponsible fathers play in these circumstances. The most effective—unintended perhaps—result of this book is that you can’t deny the need these families have. A powerful read.

Written by: Davina Rhine, December 11th 2006