I published this today in The Conversation, about the new Ron Howard/Netflix film, "Hillbilly Elegy," based on J.D. Vance's book by the same name. Here's an excerpt:
I admit to delight when I read professional critics trashing the film, which is based on J.D. Vance’s widely praised memoir detailing his dramatic class migration from a midsize city in Ohio to the hallowed halls of Yale Law School. I was expecting the worst based on my dislike of the book, and these reviews confirmed my expectations.
But once I saw the film, I felt it had been harshly judged by the chattering classes – the folks who write the reviews and seek to create meaning for the rest of us. In fact, the film is an earnest depiction of the most dramatic parts of the book: a lower-middle-class family caught in the throes of addiction.
Everyday viewers seem to find the film enjoyable enough – it has solid audience reviews on IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes.
So why the big gap between the critical response and audience reaction? Could it be yet another sign of the country’s steadily growing class divide?
I want to be clear that I didn't see the film depicting rural in any sustained or meaningful way. Middletown, Ohio, Vance's home town is not rural by any measure. Indeed, it's not even technically Appalachian. But about the first 10 minutes of the film take place in Jackson, Kentucky, the Vance Family's ancestral home. That's Vance's real claim to "hillbilliness," and I don't dispute that a certain hillbilly culture followed his family into the Rust Belt.
Cross-posted to Legal Ruralism.