The rise of deconstructing
white trash movies
Analyses of representations of white trash in Erin Brockovich (2000), 8 Mile
(2002), A Love Song For Bobby Long (2004) and Black Snake Moan (2006)
Wednesday the 17th of February 2010
Master Thesis by:
Frank van Laer (3326462)
Professor Huijbersstraat 159
6524 NZ Nijmegen
The Netherlands
P: +31624902459
E: frank_van_laer@hotmail.com
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
3
1.1. Topic
3
1.2. Research question & case studies
6
1.3. Academic discussion
7
1.4. Chapter structure
11
2. Stereotyping, whiteness and stars
12
2.1. Introduction
12
2.2. Stereotyping
12
2.3. Whiteness
15
2.4. Stars
19
3. White society’s (re)discovery of white poverty
22
3.1. Introduction
22
3.2. Black and white poverty
23
4. Case studies
32
4.1. Introduction
32
4.2. Whites’ position of privilege and power
33
4.3. White naked body
35
4.4. Purity of whiteness
36
4.5. Use of the star’s image
37
4.6. Individuation
40
5. Conclusion
42
6. Bibliography
45
6.1. Movies
45
6.2. Literature
46
2
1. Introduction
1.1. Topic
“I’m a piece of f#cking white trash, I say it proudly” proclaims Jimmy Smith in the movie 8
Mile (2002).1 American rapper Eminem plays the role of Jimmy Smith, a white rapper living
in a poor neighborhood in Detroit, Michigan. In the 20th century poor whites have mainly
been portrayed in Hollywood movies (such as Gun Girls [1957], The Great Texas Dynamite
Chase [1976], Kalifornia [1993], Natural Born Killers [1994], Love and a .45 [1994] and
Freeway [1996]) as extremely violent people with no real personalities.2 Jimmy’s
proclamation in 8 Mile, however, suggests that poor whites have been portrayed in a more
positive way in Hollywood movies after the turn of the century. Although poor whites have
still been called white trash in recent Hollywood films, they have been portrayed more as
complex human beings. It would appear that the representation of poor whites in Hollywood
movies has been changed, and that poor whites have been represented less stereotypically in
Hollywood films from the 2000s than in 20th century Hollywood movies. Evidence suggests
that stereotypes of poor whites have even been deconstructed in recent Hollywood films.3
When studying Hollywood movies it is impossible to ignore America’s dominant
ideology of “white patriarchal capitalism.” White patriarchal capitalism permeates most
American films and the way the majority of Americans think about themselves and the world
around them (and thus provides a direct connection between Hollywood movies and U.S.
society). The ideology entails three distinct aspects. The first – white – refers to the ideology
that people of Western and Northern European descent are somehow better than are people
whose ancestry is traced to other parts of the world. The second – patriarchal – refers to a
culture predicated on the belief that men are the most important members of society, and thus
1
8 Mile, Hanson, Curtis. Imagine Entertainment. 2002: United States.
2
Gun Girls, Dertano, Robert C. Eros Productions. 1957: United States. The Great Texas Dynamite Chase,
Pressman, Michael. Yasny Talking Pictures. 1976: United States. Kalifornia, Sena, Dominic. PolyGram Filmed
Entertainment. 1993: United States. Natural Born Killers, Stone, Oliver. Warner Bros. Pictures. 1994: United
States. Love and a .45, Talkington, C.M. Trimark Pictures. 1994: United States. Freeway, Bright, Matthew. The
Kushner-Locke Company. 1996: United States.
3
The terms “white trash” and “poor whites” will be used throughout this study.
3
entitled to greater opportunity and access to power. The third – capitalism – refers to the
belief that success and worth are measured by one’s material wealth.4
Hollywood studios make and sell movies that they think people want to see; that is,
films that in some way reflect the dominant ideology in America, and films that show things
of which most people are aware.5 This all points to the possibility that there may be a
connection between Hollywood’s changing portrayal of poor whites and the awareness of
poor whites by Hollywood’s main audience: the American people. This leads to the following
question: Has the American public’s awareness of poor whites been changed during the 20th
century? The probable connection between Hollywood films about poor whites and U.S.
society’s changing awareness of this group make it necessary to examine to what extent
stereotypes of poor whites have been deconstructed in recent Hollywood movies.
A proper understanding of the term “white trash” is of fundamental importance when
analyzing movies about poor whites. The term is not new, but rather was first introduced in
the United States a few decades after the revolutionary era. In about 1800 white trash entered
the national drama of unification and immediately took center stage. White trash became the
subject of extensive public debates in the antebellum era. Several social observers agreed that
white trash lived in terrible and degenerate conditions; it was those very conditions that
seemed to define them as trash. But from the 1840s to the end of the reconstruction era in the
1870s, the same social observers passionately debated the reasons for the degeneracy of white
trash. These debates reflected the emerging conflicts over the shifting boundaries of race,
class, politics and culture that erupted in the American Civil War. On one side, northern
abolitionist reformers argued that the existence of white trash in the South was evidence of the
moral corruption and degradation that a slave society visits upon all of its members. End
slavery, they argued, and the white trash would rise to their rightful place as respectable white
citizens and industrious workers. On the other side, southern proslavery apologists argued that
a “degenerate” class of poor whites in the South existed not because of social or economic
factors, but rather as the result of “natural inferiority,” the inherited depravity that comes from
generations of “defective blood.” As proof, they pointed to the existence of white trash in
non-slave states.6
4
Harry M. Benshoff and Sean Griffin, America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality at the
Movies (Oxford 2009) 8-9.
5
Benshoff and Griffin, America on Film, 28.
6
Matt Wray, Not Quite White: White Trash and the Boundaries of Whiteness (Durham 2006) 136-137.
4
There is no specific literature on the history of white trash in the 20th century.
However, several scholars, such as Abel Green, J. Brooks Bouson, Colin Webster and
Brannon Costello, have defined white trash in the 20th century. During the 1920s Abel Green
argues that most white trash, “probably 95 percent, can neither read nor write English” and
are “illiterate and ignorant, with the intelligence of morons.”7 Although Green’s definition of
white trash is not highly academic, it is important to note that he clearly points out that white
trash is uneducated and stupid. J. Brooks Bouson gives a more academic definition of white
trash. Bouson claims that a classist slur and a racial epithet marks certain whites as a separate
breed. Bouson also argues that white trash is “the most visible and clearly marked form of
whiteness,” but she does not explain why this is the case. Literally, “trash” is just another
word for “garbage.” Nevertheless, Bouson claims that the second part of the term “white
trash” points to “the social degradation and shame implicit in this derogatory class
designation.” Bouson concludes her definition of white trash with the statement that the term
also invokes “long-standing stereotypes of poor whites as incestuous and sexually
promiscuous, violent, alcoholic, lazy and stupid.”8 Both Bouson and Green define white trash
as brainless people, but Bouson also connects white trash with things like shame, incest,
uncontrolled sexuality, violence, alcoholism and idleness.
Colin Webster’s definition of white trash has similarities to Bouson’s definition of the
term with Webster also using the argument that white trash is lazy and sexually promiscuous.
As Webster states, white trash represents “pollution, excess and worklessness far from
respectability” and white trash multiplies faster due to weaker blood. Nonetheless, Webster
brings something new up, because he claims that white trash is morally inferior to other white
people.9 Brannon Costello also thinks that moral depravity is a significant characteristic of
white trash: he argues that the distinction between decent whites and white trash is “as much
moral as economic.”10 According to all these definitions, white trash is white, poor, stupid,
lazy, alcoholic, violent, morally depraved, incestuous and sexually promiscuous. In short,
7
Abel Green, “‘Hillbilly’ Music”, Variety (1926) 1.
J. Brooks Bouson, “‘You Nothing But Trash’: White Trash Shame in Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of
8
Carolina”, Southern Literary Journal (2001) 101.
9
Colin Webster, “Marginalized white ethnicity, race and crime”, Theoretical Criminology (2008) 298.
10
Brannon Costello, “Poor White Trash, Great White Hope: Race, Class and the (De)Construction of Whiteness
in Lewis Nordan’s Wolf Whistle”, Critique (2004) 213.
5
white trash is “an amalgam of well-known stereotypes”: the term combines numerous
(negative) stereotypes of poor whites.11
1.2. Research question & case studies
The research question of this study is: To what extent have the stereotypes of poor whites been
deconstructed in Hollywood movies from the 2000s? For this research question
“deconstructing” means changing or eliminating particular stereotypes. In order to examine
the research question, four Hollywood films will be analyzed. These four movies are Erin
Brockovich (2000), 8 Mile (2002), A Love Song For Bobby Long (2004) and Black Snake
Moan (2006).12 These films take place in different parts of the United States and they tell
completely different stories. These movies, however, have one important thing in common:
they are all “white trash films.” Furthermore, the case studies are representative of all recent
white trash movies. What are white trash films? “White trash movies” are (Hollywood) films
with white trash characters; and “white trash characters” are characters who exhibit several
stereotypes of poor whites. What are the main characters and the storylines of the case
studies?
The main character of Erin Brockovich is Erin Brockovich (Julia Roberts). Erin is an
unemployed single mother, desperate to find a job and having no luck. This losing streak even
extends to a failed lawsuit Erin brings against a doctor over a car accident. With no
alternative, Erin successfully browbeats her lawyer to give her a job at his California based
law firm in compensation for the loss. At the law firm first no one takes her, with her trashy
clothes and rude manners, seriously. This soon changes when she begins to investigate a
suspicious real estate case involving the Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E). What she
discovers is that PG&E is trying to buy land that was contaminated by hexavalent chromium.
Hexavalent chromium is a deadly toxic waste that PG&E is improperly and illegally dumping
and, consequently, poisoning the residents in the area. As she digs deeper, Erin finds herself
the leading point in a series of events that would involve her law firm in one of the biggest
class action lawsuits in American history against a multibillion dollar corporation.
Jimmy Smith (Eminem) is the main character of 8 Mile. He is a wannabe rapper living
on the poor side of Detroit’s 8 Mile Road. He dumps his girlfriend Janeane when she tells him
11
Matt Wray and Annalee Newitz, White Trash: Race and Class in America (New York 1997) 171.
12
Erin Brockovich, Soderbergh, Steven. Jersey Films. 2000: United States. A Love Song For Bobby Long, Gabel,
Shainee. Destination Films. 2004: United States. Black Snake Moan, Brewer, Craig. Paramount Classics. 2006:
United States.
6
she is pregnant. To save money to make a demo tape, he moves into his mother’s trailer.
Jimmy’s life is miserable: he has a lousy job at a sheet metal factory, and he chokes at local
rap battles. Things improve when he meets Alex (Brittany Murphy). Alex is an aspiring
model heading for New York. She becomes his girlfriend, and a fast-talking pal promises him
to set up a demo. Unfortunately, Alex is not faithful to him, his mother rejects him, rifts
surface with his friends, and he is mugged by a rival street gang. Jimmy, however, eventually
acquires more shifts at the sheet metal factory, and he wins an important rap battle contest.
The main characters of A Love Song For Bobby Long are Bobby Long (John Travolta),
Pursy Will (Scarlett Johansson) and Lawson Pines (Gabriel Macht). In a Florida trailer park,
the teenager Pursy is informed by her boyfriend that her mother passed away. She returns to
her hometown, New Orleans, for the funeral and decides to live in her mother’s house. She
finds, however, that the completely decayed house has two drunken dwellers: a former
English professor Bobby and his former assistant Lawson, who has unsuccessfully been trying
to write a book about Bobby’s life for nine consecutive years. Pursy decides to share the
place, living together with them, and after their initial difficult relationship, Pursy, Bobby and
Lawson disclose deep secrets and improve their lives.
Rae (Christina Ricci) and Lazarus (Samuel L. Jackson) are the main characters of
Black Snake Moan. Rae is the white trash tramp of a small town somewhere in rural
Tennessee. She is molded by a life of sexual abuse at the hands of her father and verbal abuse
from her mother, who seems to delight in reminding Rae of her mistake in not aborting her.
One day Lazarus, a former blues musician who survives by truck farming, finds Rae nearly
beaten to death near his home. Lazarus, who is also facing personal crisis at the dissolution of
his marriage, nurses her back to health, providing her with gentle, fatherly advice as well as
an education in blues music. Rae’s boyfriend Ronnie (Justin Timberlake), goaded by the man
who nearly beat Rae to death, misunderstands the relationship between Rae and Lazarus, and
vows to kill him. Lazarus, exhibiting a street-smart understanding of violence and its motives,
calls Ronnie’s bluff, sensing that he is as troubled as Rae, and becomes a guiding force in the
young couple’s resurrection.
1.3. Academic discussion
This study will contribute to ongoing academic discussions on stereotyping, whiteness and
perceptions of poverty in U.S. society. Stereotyping has been defined by several scholars.
According to Charles Stangor, stereotyping is “the application of stereotypes when we interact
7
with people from a given group.”13 Willard F. Enteman agrees with Stangor that stereotyping
is simply the use of stereotypes, but Enteman also emphasizes the connection between
stereotyping and laziness. As Enteman states, a person who uses a stereotype “simply does
not want to work harder than necessary to achieve a superficial result.” People who stereotype
do not think carefully about situations and other human beings, even though this is
necessary.14 Travis Linn takes Enteman’s critique of stereotyping one step further. Linn
argues that stereotyping is very harmful. Linn claims that stereotyping is especially damaging
when people use stereotypes which are based on “race, gender and other characteristics that
are both inevitable and irrelevant to personal worth.”15 Harry M. Benshoff and Sean Griffin
point out that not only people, but also Hollywood contributes to “simplified notions of race
and ethnicity via the use of stereotypes.”16
Numerous scholars claim that in the United States mainly non-whites, and in particular
African Americans, are the victim of stereotyping. Timothy Brezina and Kenisha Winder
argue that stereotyping affects the daily lives of the majority of African Americans in the U.S.
Especially white Americans think that the reason why black Americans are at an economic
disadvantage is that they are lazy and unwilling to support themselves.17 Francis T.
McAndrew and Adebowale Akande agree with Brezina and Winder that stereotyping of
African Americans still occurs frequently. There was a decline of stereotyping of African
Americans from the 1930s through the 1970s, but stereotyping of black Americans increased
again during the 1980s.18 John Hoberman gives a clear example of stereotyping of African
Americans. African Americans are dominant in the world of sports, and that is why many
Americans assume that black Americans are athletes by temperament and genetic endowment.
This seemingly harmless assumption angers many African Americans, because they expect
13
Charles Stangor, “Volume Overview” in: Charles Stangor ed., Stereotypes and Prejudice: Essential Readings
(Philadelphia 2000) 1.
14
Willard F. Enteman, “Stereotyping, Prejudice and Discrimination” in: Paul Martin Lester and Susan Dente
Ross eds., Images That Injure: Pictorial Stereotypes in the Media (Westport 2003) 9-10.
15
Travis Linn, “Media Methods that Lead to Stereotypes” in: Paul Martin Lester and Susan Dente Ross eds.,
Images That Injure: Pictorial Stereotypes in the Media (Westport 2003) 9-10.
16
Benshoff and Griffin, America on Film, 49.
17
Timothy Brezina and Kenisha Winder, “Economic Disadvantage, Status Generalization and Negative Racial
Stereotyping By White Americans”, Social Psychology Quarterly (2003) 402.
18
Francis T. McAndrew and Adebowale Akande, “African Perceptions of Americans of African and European
Descent”, The Journal of Social Psychology (1995) 649.
8
from their fellow Americans that they recognize their complexity as human beings. 19 This
study will point out as well that people who stereotype ignore the complexities and
personalities of others.
Although white Americans are rarely the subject of stereotyping, poor whites are
stereotyped quite a bit in the United States. After all, the term “white trash” is a result of
stereotyping of poor whites. Nevertheless, most scholars seem to overlook poor whites (and
the fact that they are often the victim of stereotyping). All contributors to Richard Delgado
and Jean Stefancic’s Critical White Studies solely connect whiteness to dominance and
privilege. Bonnie Kae Grover argues that white is “the dominant race,” and that “good jobs, a
fine education, nice neighborhoods, and the good life” are white entitlements.20
Ruth
Frankenberg claims that white culture is dominant, and George A. Martinez argues that “even
after slavery ended, the status of being white continued to be a valuable asset, carrying with it
a set of assumptions, privileges and benefits.”21 Benshoff and Griffin write in their study on
the representation of race, class, gender and sexuality in American film that “those considered
white or of Anglo-Saxon descent still seem to have more privilege and opportunity than do
those of other races.”22 Richard Dyer also claims, in his excellent study on the representation
of whiteness in Western visual culture, that whites have a position of privilege and power. In
his study, Dyer analyzes numerous movies with white people, but he does not mention any
films about poor whites.23
Matt Wray is one of the few scholars who does recognize the existence of poor whites
in America. Wray argues that poor whites have severely been stigmatized as white trash from
1800 to 1870.24 Wray and Annalee Newitz claim that nowadays white racism is not only
directed against non-whites but also against poor whites. Stereotyping is a significant aspect
19
John Hoberman, “The Price of ‘Black Dominance’”, Society (2000) 49-50.
20
Bonnie Kae Grover, “Growing Up White in America?” in: Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic eds., Critical
White Studies: Looking Behind the Mirror (Philadelphia 1997) 34.
21
Ruth Frankenberg, “White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness” in: Richard Delgado
and Jean Stefancic eds., Critical White Studies: Looking Behind the Mirror (Philadelphia 1997) 633. George A.
Martinez, “Mexican-Americans and Whiteness” in: Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic eds., Critical White
Studies: Looking Behind the Mirror (Philadelphia 1997) 210.
22
Benshoff and Griffin, America on Film, 7.
23
Richard Dyer, White (London 1997) 9.
24
Wray, Not Quite White.
9
of this white racism.25 This study will try to raise awareness of both the existence and the
stereotyping of poor whites in the United States.
Although white poverty is not widely recognized in America, poverty itself is certainly
acknowledged by U.S. society. What are the 20th century perceptions of poverty in U.S.
society? When you take the ideology of “white patriarchal capitalism” into account, it is not
surprising that the poor in the United States have been despised during the entire 20th century.
After all, poor people have failed to fulfill the dominant ideology in America. According to
James T. Patterson, “inhospitable opinions about the poor are among the most durable
features of America’s experience with poverty and welfare since 1900.”26 Americans assumed
that in most cases people were poor due to lack of effort. Martin Gilens claims that this is the
main reason why so many Americans hated welfare in the 20th century; they were convinced
that the majority of welfare recipients did not deserve welfare.27 Frank Stricker draws a less
rigid image of the 20th century perceptions of welfare and poverty in U.S. society than
Patterson and Gilens do. Stricker argues that 60% of the American people hated welfare in the
late 1970s, but that only 40% of all Americans disliked welfare in the 1980s.28 This study will
broaden the discussion of the 20th century perceptions of poverty in U.S. society by discussing
the American public’s awareness of black and white poverty during the 20th century.
To conclude, significant volumes of research have been conducted on stereotyping,
and in particular the harmful consequences of stereotyping. Several scholars have pointed out
that the American people detested the poor during the 20th century. Nonetheless, most
scholars still overlook poor whites (and the fact that they are frequently the victim of
stereotyping) in both U.S. society and Hollywood movies. This study will acknowledge both
the existence and the stereotyping of poor whites in the United States by analyzing
Hollywood films about poor whites. More specifically, this study will examine to what extent
the stereotypes of poor whites have been deconstructed in Hollywood movies from the 2000s.
This has not been done before, and therefore this study will fill a research gap.
25
Wray and Newitz, White Trash.
26
James T. Patterson, America’s Struggle against Poverty in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge 2000) 202.
27
Martin Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media and the Politics of Antipoverty Policy (Chicago
2000) 1-2.
28
Frank Stricker, Why America Lost the War on Poverty – And How to Win It (Chapel Hill 2007) 179.
10
1.4. Chapter structure
The above mentioned research question will be tackled thematically. The theoretical
framework will be discussed in Chapter 2. The theoretical framework involves stereotyping,
whiteness and stars. 20th and 21st century images of the poor in both U.S. society and
Hollywood films will be explored in Chapter 3. This information is essential in order to be
able to understand Hollywood’s changing portrayal of poor whites. The theory on
stereotyping, whiteness and stars will be applied to Erin Brockovich, 8 Mile, A Love Song For
Bobby Long and Black Snake Moan in Chapter 4, and the research question will be answered
in Chapter 5.
11
2. Stereotyping, whiteness and stars
2.1. Introduction
“I think... I think we’re f#cked up. I know I am. But that don’t mean what I feel ain’t real, that
I can’t love somebody. And I know what I done is real real bad, but um... [pause] So if you
want to quit on me I understand. But please don’t.” says Rae to her boyfriend Ronnie in Black
Snake Moan (2006).29 Obviously Rae begs Ronnie not to leave her, but she also makes an
effort to analyze Ronnie and herself. There is, however, a whole theoretical framework
necessary to analyze white trash characters like Rae and Ronnie. This study’s theoretical
framework will be discussed in this chapter. The theoretical framework involves stereotyping,
whiteness and stars.
Why are stereotyping, whiteness and stars relevant for analyzing white trash movies?
By definition, white trash films include characters who exhibit various stereotypes of poor
whites, and viewers of white trash movies often recognize these stereotypes, thus stereotyping
is an important aspect of (watching) white trash movies. Obviously, numerous characters in
white trash movies are white and poor. The combination of being white and poor makes the
skin color of these characters highly significant. The reasons for this will be explained in this
chapter. Finally, Erin Brockovich (2000) and 8 Mile (2002) are star vehicles, and Julia
Roberts and Eminem are the stars in these white trash movies. 30 A star vehicle is a movie that
is primarily made in order to enhance an actor’s career. Frequently a star vehicle uses the
star’s image in a particular way. For this study, it is important to note how Roberts’ and
Eminem’s images are used in Erin Brockovich and 8 Mile.
2.2. Stereotyping
This study’s theoretical framework involves stereotyping. While watching a white trash
movie, we often apply stereotypes to several white characters. What exactly are stereotypes
and stereotyping? According to Charles Stangor, “stereotypes are beliefs about the
characteristics of groups of individuals.” Harry M. Benshoff and Sean Griffin’s definition of
the term is highly similar; they write that stereotypes are “oversimplified images of a person
29
Black Snake Moan, Brewer, Craig. Paramount Classics. 2006: United States.
30
Erin Brockovich, Soderbergh, Steven. Jersey Films. 2000: United States. 8 Mile, Hanson, Curtis. Imagine
Entertainment. 2002: United States.
12
or group.”31 An example of a stereotype is that poor whites are ignorant, violent and
incestuous. Stereotyping is the use of stereotypes; it is the application of stereotypes when we
interact with people from a given social group.32
Stereotypes and stereotyping are not the only significant concepts for analyzing white
trash movies. Social categorization, subtyping and individuation are relevant concepts as well.
Stereotyping is the result of social categorization. When watching a white trash movie, social
categorization frequently occurs. In general, however, social categorization occurs when,
rather than thinking about another person as a unique individual, we instead think of the
person as a member of a group of people. We can do this, for instance, on the basis of
someone’s physical features (such as skin color, gender or age) or other types of categories
(such as nationality, occupation or mental condition). Once we categorize someone, thoughts
and feelings about the categorized person are also quickly activated.33 While watching a white
trash movie, social categorization occurs when we see a character who exhibits one or more
of the characteristics of white trash, and we think of the character as someone who is white
trash.
Indeed, we sometimes go beyond social categorization. When do we do this?
According to Stangor:
“Although we may normally begin with social categorization when we first meet
someone, we may, at least in some cases, go beyond this initial step. Whether or not
we do so will depend upon our current relationship with the other person as well as our
goals for further relationships with him or her. If we find the person interesting or
relevant enough, or if we are dependent upon them for some reason, then we are likely
to go beyond social categorization to learn more about the person.”34
The story of a film always evolves around the main characters, and therefore the main
characters often become important to the audience. When this occurs we go beyond social
categorization with the main characters of a white trash movie.
31
Harry M. Benshoff and Sean Griffin, America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality at
the Movies (Oxford 2009) 428.
32
Charles Stangor, “Volume Overview” in: Charles Stangor ed., Stereotypes and Prejudice: Essential Readings
(Philadelphia 2000) 1.
33
Stangor, “Volume Overview”, 2.
34
Stangor, “Volume Overview”, 3.
13
One potential outcome that can occur when we continue to learn about someone is
known as subtyping. Subtyping can occur both in real life and while watching a white trash
movie. According to Stangor:
“Subtyping occurs when the individual recategorizes the individual into a lower level
social category (a subtype). Subtyping involves combining information from two or
more categories together to form our judgment of the person. Because subtypes
provide even more meaningful information about the person than do broader social
categories, they are likely to be used routinely when we think about people.”35
While watching a white trash movie, subtyping can occur when we, for instance, first think of
a character as a white person, but later subtype him as a poor white person if we subsequently
learn this information about him. In this case a second category (his income) has been
combined with the first category (his skin color), and our judgments about the character may
change.
Sometimes it may not be possible to classify the individual into a subtype, and
individuation may occur. For this study about deconstructing white trash movies,
individuation is the most relevant concept. When individuation occurs, the deconstruction of
stereotypes occurs as well. What is individuation? Individuation, according to Stangor, means
that:
“Rather than using a person’s social category or categories as a basis of judgment, we
consider them instead in terms of their own unique personality. Individuation is likely
to occur when there is no social category that seems relevant, or when the person
behaves so inconsistently with the category that it no longer seems relevant. In this
case the category membership of the person becomes only one small part of the
information that we use to make sense of the person.”36
By definition, it is very difficult to individuate white trash characters, because they
behave in highly stereotypical ways. However, when we are watching a white trash movie,
individuation can occur when a white trash character behaves so inconsistently with their
category that it no longer seems relevant. In this context, it is important to keep in mind that
individuation coincides with the deconstruction of stereotypes of poor whites. A great
35
Stangor, “Volume Overview”, 3.
36
Stangor, “Volume Overview”, 3-4.
14
example of this is Mandy Moore as Sally Kendoo in American Dreamz (2006).37 Sally seems
to be a white trash country girl: she is poor, white, stupid, morally depraved and sexually
promiscuous, and she looks like Britney Spears; but she appears to be a shrewd business
woman who becomes the host of a wildly popular television talent show.
2.3. Whiteness
This study’s theoretical framework involves not only stereotyping, but also whiteness. White
trash movies touch upon significant debates concerning whiteness and racial imagery. Richard
Dyer argues that racial imagery is central to the organization of the modern world. The
countless small decisions that constitute the practices of the world are at every point informed
by judgments about people’s capacities, judgments based on what people look like, where
they come from, how they speak and even what they eat. These judgments are all racial
judgments. Each day people everywhere across the world struggle to overcome the
stereotypes and barriers of race. Race is not the only factor governing these things, but race is
always one of the factors.38
There has been an enormous amount of analysis of racial imagery in the past few
decades, but until recently a notable absence from such work has been the study of images of
white people. Indeed, to say that one is interested in race has come to mean that one is
interested in any racial imagery other than that of whites. That is why the average moviegoer
thinks about issues of race only when seeing a film about a racial or ethnic minority group.39
Race, however, is not only attributable to people who are not white, nor is imagery of nonwhite people the only racial imagery. It is necessary to examine the racial imagery of white
people – thus not the images of other races in white cultural production, but the imagery of
whites themselves. This is necessary because as long as race is something only applied to
non-white people and white people are not racially seen and named, whites function as a
human norm.40 In other words, as Benshoff and Griffin state, “when it goes unmentioned,
whiteness is positioned as a default category, the center or the assumed norm on which
everything else is based.”41
37
American Dreamz, Weitz, Paul. NBC Universal Television. 2006: United States.
38
Richard Dyer, White (London 1997) 1.
39
Benshoff and Griffin, America on Film, 52.
40
Dyer, White, 1.
41
Benshoff and Griffin, America on Film, 53.
15
Research – on museum exhibitions, books, advertisements, movies, TV-shows and
computer games – repeatedly shows that in Western representation white people are
overwhelmingly and disproportionately predominant. Whites have the central and elaborated
roles, and therefore most stars are also white. Above all, white people are placed as the norm.
Whites are everywhere in representation. This, however, along with their placement as the
norm, represents whites not as whites but as people who are variously gendered, classed and
sexualised. At this level of racial representation, white people are not of a certain race, they
are just the human race.42
Benshoff and Griffin claim that whiteness is most often invisible to people who
consider themselves to be white; but many non-whites “are often painfully aware of the
dominance of whiteness, precisely because they are repeatedly excluded from its
privileges.”43 This is crucial to the security with which whites occupy their privileged
position. White people are taught to believe that all that they do, good and bad, all that they
achieve, is to be accounted for in terms of their individuality. Whites cannot believe that they
obtain a job, a nice house, or a helpful response at school or in hospitals, because of their skin
color, but because of their unique and achieving personality.44 While watching a white trash
movie it is interesting to see how the white trash characters deal with white people’s position
of privilege and power. Do they feel ashamed that they have failed to take advantage of their
privileged position? Or do they not feel ashamed, because they know that life can be hard for
whites as well? For example, the introductory quote of this study (“I’m a piece of f#cking
white trash, I say it proudly”) suggests that Jimmy is not ashamed at all that he failed to take
advantage of white people’s position of privilege and power. Why is he not ashamed of
himself?45
As said before, this study’s theoretical framework involves both stereotyping and
whiteness. What is the connection between these two and how does stereotyping and
whiteness apply to white trash movies? There is a connection between stereotyping and
whiteness, but this connection is very weak. The reason for this is that not whites, but nonwhites have always been severely stereotyped. One cannot come up with a limited range of
endlessly repeated images for white people, because the privilege of being white in white
culture is not to be subjected to stereotyping in relation to one’s whiteness. Whites are solely
42
Dyer, White, 3.
43
Benshoff and Griffin, America on Film, 53.
44
Dyer, White, 9.
45
The questions that are posed in this chapter will be answered in Chapter 4.
16
stereotyped in terms of gender, nationality, class, sexuality and ability. Whiteness generally
colonises the stereotypical definition of all social categories other than those of race. To be
normal, even to be normally abnormal (gay, disabled), is to be white. White people in their
whiteness, however, are imaged as individual and/or endlessly diverse, complex and
changing.46 White trash movies are exceptions to this rule because in these films white people
are strongly stereotyped, and not only in terms of gender, nationality, class, sexuality and
ability. Thus white trash movies are one of the few film genres that connect whiteness with
stereotyping.
According to Dyer’s theory on whiteness, white people have the monopoly on
individuality.47 Whites, however, do not only have the monopoly on individuality, white
people are also the ones thought of as being capable of mental and intellectual tasks; while
non-white people are thought of as being more basely physical and even animalistic. White
culture has repeatedly constructed and exploited stereotypes of non-whites as being overly
sexualized. Benshoff and Griffin argue that throughout U.S. history “fear and hysteria about
‘rampant and animalistic’ non-white sexualities (as opposed to ‘regulated and healthy’ white
sexualities) have been used to justify both institutional and individual violence against nonwhite people.”48 “Sexual promiscuity” is one of the characteristics of white trash. When we
are watching a white trash movie it is interesting to see that some white trash characters are
sexually promiscuous. Does this mean that white trash people have a non-white soul in a
white body? Or do white trash movies show us that whites can be as flawed as non-whites?
White trash movies touch on important debates regarding whiteness and racial purity.
Dyer claims that genealogical research has partially been motivated by the search for the
origins of humankind. In this perspective, white people represent the only sub-race that has
remained pure to the human race’s Aryan forbears.49 In this way, white people are represented
as moral and good, while non-white people are often characterized as immoral and inferior.50
In the quest for purity, whites win either way: either they are a distinct, pure race, superior to
all others, or they are the purest expression of the human race itself. What is striking in either
version is the emphasis on purity and of the special purity of whiteness. 51 The ideology of
46
Dyer, White, 11-12.
47
Dyer, White, 11-12.
48
Benshoff and Griffin, America on Film, 54.
49
Dyer, White, 22.
50
Benshoff and Griffin, America on Film, 54.
51
Dyer, White, 22.
17
“white patriarchal capitalism” clearly reflects this theory of the superiority of the white race,
because the ideology considers white people somehow better than non-white people.
If races are conceptualised as pure, then miscegenation threatens that purity. Given the
actual history of interbreeding in the imperial history of the past few centuries, it is not
surprising that various means have been found to deal with this threat to whiteness.52
According to Benshoff and Griffin, throughout much of U.S. history “marriages were
carefully arranged to keep a family lineage ‘pure,’ and laws prohibiting interracial marriage
were common in most states. If there were non-white relationships within a family tree, they
would frequently be hidden or denied.”53 In white trash movies it is interesting to see how the
film deals with the subject of the special purity of whiteness. Do white trash characters have
relationships with non-white characters? Do white trash characters have sex with non-whites?
In American Dreamz, for instance, several characters are Arab American, Jewish American
and African American, but Sally’s boyfriend is white. Does this make her less white trash?
White trash movies broach relevant debates concerning whiteness and the naked body.
Dyer argues that until the 1980s, it was rare to see a white man semi-naked in popular culture.
Art galleries, sporting events and pornography offered socially sanctioned or cordoned-off
images, but the cinema, the major visual narrative form of the 20th century, only did so in
particular cases. This was not the case with non-white male bodies. In the Western, the
plantation drama and the jungle adventure film, the non-white body was routinely on display.
There were, however, two exceptions: the boxing film and the adventure film in a colonial
setting with a star possessed of a champion or built body.54 White trash movies are also one of
the exceptions, because in these films the white body is regularly on display. A wonderful
example of this is Natalie Portman as Novalee Nation in Where The Heart Is (2000).55
Novalee is poor, white, ignorant and sexually promiscuous, and she shows off her beautiful
body in almost every scene.
The two common features of adventure films – a champion/built body and a colonial
setting – set the terms for looking at the naked white male body. The white man has been the
center of attention for many centuries of Western culture, but there is a problem with the
display of his body, which gives another inflection to the general paradox of whiteness and
visibility. A naked body is a vulnerable body. This is so in the most fundamental sense – the
52
Dyer, White, 25.
53
Benshoff and Griffin, America on Film, 54.
54
Dyer, White, 146.
55
Where The Heart Is, Williams, Matt. Wind Dancer Productions. 2000: United States.
18
bare body has no protection from the elements – but also in a social sense. Clothes are bearers
of prestige, notably of wealth, status and class: to be without them is to lose prestige.
Nakedness may also reveal the imperfections of the body by comparison with social ideals. It
may betray the relative similarity of male and female, white and non-white bodies, undo the
merciless insistence on difference and power carried by clothes. The exposed white male
body is susceptible to pose the legitimacy of white male power: why should people who look
like that – so unimpressive, so like others – have so much power?56 White trash people do not
have wealth, status and power, and their shabby clothes are not bearers of prestige. Their
worn-out clothes are only bearers of poverty. Do their worn-out clothes make them more
white trash?
There is also value in the white male body being seen. On the one hand, the body often
figures very effectively as a point of final justification of social difference. By this argument,
whites – and men – are where they are socially by virtue of their bodily superiority. The sight
of the body can be a kind of proof. On the other hand, the white insistence on spirit, on a
transcendent relation to the body, has also led to a view that perhaps non-whites have better
bodies, run faster, reproduce more easily and have bigger muscles. The possibility of white
bodily inferiority falls heavily on the shoulders of those white men who are not at the top of
the spirit pile, those for whom their body is their only capital. Particularly in the context of
white working-class or “underachieving” masculinity, an affirmation of the value and even
superiority of the white male body has special resonance.57 White trash people probably value
their own bodies very highly as well, because their body is their only possession. But is this
also the case in white trash movies? If so, for what do the white trash characters use their
body? A clear example of this is Hilary Swank as Maggie Fitzgerald in Million Dollar Baby
(2004).58 Maggie is poor, white and uneducated. Under guidance of boxing trainer Frankie
Dunn (Clint Eastwood), Maggie becomes a boxing champion and earns a lot of money. Thus
Maggie literally uses her body to escape poverty.
2.4. Stars
This study’s theoretical framework involves stereotyping and whiteness, but also stars. Two
of the case studies within this study (Erin Brockovich and 8 Mile) are star vehicles, and the
56
Dyer, White, 146.
57
Dyer, White, 146-147.
58
Million Dollar Baby, Eastwood, Clint. Warner Bros. Pictures. 2004: United States.
19
presence of stars in these white trash movies is highly significant. Dyer claims that the fact
that a given star is in a film is part of the audience’s foreknowledge. According to Benshoff
and Griffin, fans of a particular star want to see any of the star’s films, and stars are therefore
used to sell films, giving movies a kind of brand-name appeal.59
The star’s name and his/her appearance (including the sound of his/her voice and dress
styles associated with him/her) all signify that condensation of attitudes and values which is
the star’s image. The star’s image is used in the construction of a character in a film in three
different ways: selective use, perfect fit and problematic fit.60 While watching a white trash
movie it is interesting to see how the star’s image is used in the construction of a white trash
character. It is important to note whether the use of the star’s image is a selective use, a
perfect fit or a problematic fit.
A film may, through its use of the other signs of character and the rhetoric of film,
bring out certain features of the star’s image and ignore others. In other words, from the
structured polysemy of the star’s image certain meanings are selected in accord with the
overriding conception of the character in the film. This selective use of a star’s image is
problematic for a film, in that it cannot guarantee that the particular aspects of a star’s image,
which it selects, will be those that interest the audience. To attempt to ensure this, a film must
bring the various signifying elements of the cinema to the foreground and minimise the
image’s traits appropriately.61 When we are watching a white trash movie and the use of the
star’s image seems to be a selective, it is relevant to note which aspects of a star’s image the
film has selected. Does the movie emphasize the star’s white trash background, and/or does
the film refer to the star’s previous white trash movies?
In some cases, all the aspects of a star’s image fit with all the traits of a character (a
perfect fit). Some aspects of the star’s image will probably not be especially important, but
they will not be incompatible either. There are cases of this working with already known
characters like Clark Gable as Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind (1939) and Gérard Philipe
as Julien Sorel in Le rouge et le noir (1954).62 A perfect fit can also occur with films not
based on previous material, but written and developed expressly for a given star. 63 In a white
59
Benshoff and Griffin, America on Film, 33-34.
60
Richard Dyer, Stars (London 1998) 126.
61
Dyer, Stars, 127.
62
Gone with the Wind, Fleming, Victor. Selznick International Pictures. 1939: United States. Le rouge et le noir,
Autant-Lara, Claude. Documento Film. 1954: France.
63
Dyer, Stars, 129.
20
trash movie the use of the star’s image can be a perfect fit when the film has been written and
developed expressly for the star or when the movie is highly autobiographical of the star’s
life. In what ways does the film refer to the star’s life?
Although good cases can certainly be made for both a selective use of a star’s image
and perfect fits between star’s images and film characters, the powerfully, inescapably
present, always-already-signifying nature of star’s images more often than not creates
problems in the construction of a character. The contradictory and polysemic nature of the
images makes it hard either to delimit a few aspects or to fully articulate the whole thing with
the character as constructed by the other signs in the film. There are several examples of
problematic fits between star’s images and characters – Lana Turner in The Postman Always
Rings Twice (1946), Bette Davis in Now, Voyager (1942) and Marlon Brando in Last Tango
in Paris (1972).64 These examples all specify the particular point of signification where the
contradiction may be discerned. In certain cases, the contradiction may be at all points, such
that one can conceptualize the problem in terms of a clash between two complex sign-clusters,
the star as image and the character as otherwise constructed. A great example of this is
Marilyn Monroe as Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953).65 In a white trash movie
the use of the star’s image can be a problematic fit when the star’s image is completely upperclass and absolutely non-white trash. In this case the star’s image contradicts too much with
the white trash character.
To conclude, stereotyping, social categorization, subtyping and individuation are
significant concepts for analyzing white trash movies. Also, the fact that white characters are
stereotyped in white trash movies makes these films unique in the world of Western
representation. The desperate position of white trash characters, their inability to control their
bodies and the visibility of their bodies, makes white trash movies highly interesting study
objects. Finally, while analyzing a movie that is both a white trash film and a star vehicle, it is
essential to see whether the use of the star’s image is a selective use, a perfect fit or a
problematic fit.
64
The Postman Always Rings Twice, Garnett, Tay. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). 1946: United States. Now,
Voyager, Rapper, Irving. Warner Bros. Pictures. 1942: United States. Last Tango in Paris, Bertolucci, Bernardo.
Produzioni Europee Associati (PEA). 1972: Italy.
65
Dyer, Stars, 129-130. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Hawks, Howard. Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation.
1953: United States.
21
3. White society’s (re)discovery of white poverty
3.1. Introduction
In American Dreamz (2006), Sally’s agent advises her to manifest her white trash background
on the talent show, saying, “see, people like the whole white trash thing.”66 Blockbuster white
trash movies like Erin Brockovich (2000) and 8 Mile (2002) prove that this statement is
correct; in particular white Americans flocked to the multiplexes to see these films. 67 These
high grossing white trash movies point out, as well, that white society has been aware of
white poverty during the 2000s. Perhaps this seems very obvious, because there have always
been numerous poor whites in the United States, however, the release dates of most white
trash films suggest that white society’s awareness of white poverty is a fairly recent
phenomenon. Kalifornia (1993), Natural Born Killers (1994), Love and a .45 (1994),
Freeway (1996) and Freeway II: Confessions of a Trickbaby (1999) have been released
during the 1990s, and Erin Brockovich, 8 Mile, A Love Song For Bobby Long (2004),
American Dreamz and Black Snake Moan (2006) have been released during the 2000s.68 This
leads to the following question: Have both white society and Hollywood (re)discovered white
poverty during the past few decades? This question will be examined in this chapter by
exploring shifting images of the poor in both white society and Hollywood movies during the
20th century and early 21st century.
Why is this question relevant for this study? This study’s research question is: To what
extent have the stereotypes of poor whites been deconstructed in Hollywood movies from the
2000s? As outlined in Chapter 2, the deconstruction of stereotypes of poor whites occurs by
individuating white trash characters. Viewers are the ones that individuate white trash
characters, but they are only able to do this if they are aware of the existence of poor whites.
That is why it is very important for this study to examine white society’s awareness of white
66
American Dreamz, Weitz, Paul. NBC Universal Television. 2006: United States.
67
Erin Brockovich, Soderbergh, Steven. Jersey Films. 2000: United States. 8 Mile, Hanson, Curtis. Imagine
Entertainment. 2002: United States.
68
Kalifornia, Sena, Dominic. PolyGram Filmed Entertainment. 1993: United States. Natural Born Killers,
Stone, Oliver. Warner Bros. Pictures. 1994: United States. Love and a .45, Talkington, C.M. Trimark Pictures.
1994: United States. Freeway, Bright, Matthew. The Kushner-Locke Company. 1996: United States. Freeway II:
Confessions of a Trickbaby, Bright, Matthew. The Kushner-Locke Company. 1999: United States. A Love Song
For Bobby Long, Gabel, Shainee. Destination Films. 2004: United States. Black Snake Moan, Brewer, Craig.
Paramount Classics. 2006: United States.
22
poverty during the past few decades. Analyses of white society’s 20th century awareness of
black poverty and Hollywood’s 20th century awareness of white poverty provide the necessary
context.
3.2. Black and white poverty
Although African Americans have always been disproportionately poor, black poverty was
ignored by white society during the first half of the 20th century. The academic study of
poverty in America began around the end of the 19th century. During this period social
reformers and poverty experts made the first systematic efforts to describe and analyze the
poor. Racial distinctions were common in these works, but, as Martin Gilens states, “such
distinctions usually referred to the various white European ‘races’ such as the Irish, Italians
and Poles; this early poverty literature had little or nothing to say about blacks.” 69 In 1904,
Robert Hunter’s study Poverty was published, in which he uses statistical and ethnographic
accounts of poverty to describe America’s poor. Hunter discusses the work habits, nutritional
needs and intelligence of the Italians, Irish, Poles, Hungarians, Germans and Jews, but he does
not pay any attention to African Americans.70
From a 21st century point of view, it seems rather odd that Hunter and other early 20th
century writers made strong distinctions between several white “races.” Until the second half
of the 20th century, white society considered Americans from Jewish, Southern European or
Eastern European descent, as less white than Americans from Northwestern European
descent. In 1933, Daniel Katz and Kenneth Braly surveyed (mainly white) undergraduate
students of Princeton University about their perceptions of various ethnic groups. As Gilens
states,
“Students were given a list of eighty-four traits and were asked to select the five that
were ‘most characteristic’ of the group in question. In characterizing blacks, 75
percent chose ‘lazy’ as among these five traits; it was second in popularity after
‘superstitious’ and twice as popular as the next most frequently chosen trait, ‘happygo-lucky.’ In contrast, the students chose ‘lazy’ as a characteristic of only one of the
nine other ethnic groups in the survey (Italians), and only 12 percent chose ‘lazy’ as
one of the five most characteristic traits of this group.”71
69
Martin Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media and the Politics of Antipoverty Policy (Chicago
2000) 103.
70
Robert Hunter, Poverty (New York 1904).
71
Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare, 156.
23
Although Princeton students are not average Americans, the survey suggests that white
society thought less of Italian Americans than of English, Dutch, German and Scandinavian
Americans.
Early 20th century Hollywood movies revealed that white society did not ascribe the
moral and good characteristics of “real” white people to Irish Americans and Italian
Americans. As Harry M. Benshoff and Sean Griffin state, early American films “typically
showed Irish Americans as small, fiery-tempered, heavy-drinking, working-class men.”72 And
Irish American women were typically represented in early Hollywood movies like The Finish
of Bridget McKeen (1901) as ill-bred, unintelligent house servants.73 Early American cinema
did not think any better of Italian Americans than of Irish Americans; stereotypical
representations of people of Italian heritage included that of an assimilationist small
businessman, a socialist radical or anarchist, and a Latin Lover. Rudolph Valentino was the
most famous Latin Lover of the 1920s; he had been born in Italy and appeared in films such
as The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921) and The Sheik (1921).74
During the 1920s, many African Americans migrated from the rural southern states to
cities in the Midwest and Northeast of the United States. This mass migration caused growing
black communities in several northern cities, such as Philadelphia, New York, Boston,
Detroit, Chicago and Minneapolis. These large black communities, in particular the
emergence of Harlem as a well-known urban black neighborhood, brought some attention to
black poverty. White society finally seemed to acknowledge African Americans. During this
period popular white-oriented mass-circulation magazines printed numerous stories on
African American life and culture. As Gilens states, however, “this increased attention
focused more on blacks as symbols of the Jazz Age and on Harlem as a place of ‘laughing,
swaying and dancing.’ White Americans remained profoundly uninformed and unconcerned
about black poverty.”75
72
Harry M. Benshoff and Sean Griffin, America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality at
the Movies (Oxford 2009) 56.
73
Benshoff and Griffin, America on Film, 56-57. The Finish of Bridget McKeen, Edison Manufacturing
Company. 1901: United States.
74
Benshoff and Griffin, America on Film, 61-62. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Ingram, Rex. Metro
Pictures Corporation. 1921: United States. The Sheik, Melford, George. Paramount Pictures. 1921: United States.
75
Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare, 103.
24
During the 1930s, almost every American suffered from the Great Depression. This
economic downturn caused mass unemployment in all states. The Great Depression increased
white society’s attention for poverty. Nonetheless, white writers and commentators kept
ignoring black poverty. I.M. Rubinow’s book Quest for Security, for instance, was published
during the worst years of the depression. Although Quest for Security has often been cited in
literature on poverty, Rubinow makes no mention of African Americans in his study.76 During
the 1940s, poverty remained a pressing concern, but the bombing of Pearl Harbor and
America’s participation in the Second World War understandably focused the public’s
concern elsewhere.77
During the aftermath of World War II, the American public shifted its attention from
the war to rebuilding the domestic economy and fighting communism in both the United
States and abroad. America’s economy flourished, wealth increased, living standards rose
quickly, and poverty seemed like a distant problem. Gilens claims that “poverty in the United
States declined from 48 percent in 1935, to 27 percent in 1950, to 21 percent in 1960.” 78 With
more money to spend, Americans changed their lifestyles drastically. By 1960, 86 percent of
all American homes had televisions, numerous Americans had moved to the suburbs and even
more Americans owned a car. Nevertheless, poverty still existed in the United States. During
the 1950s, Americans – and American journalists – ignored this fact, because they were too
busy celebrating America’s prosperity; consequently, Time, Newsweek and U.S. News and
World Report each published an average of just sixteen stories on poverty during the entire
decade.79
Although the American public lost interest in poverty during the 1950s, white society
paid considerable attention to white poverty throughout the entire first half of the 20th century.
During this period white Americans could read about white poverty in newspapers, magazines
and books, but Hollywood made sure that they could also see poor whites on the big screen.
The image of the hillbilly, in particular, appeared in numerous Hollywood movies. Like
“white trash,” “the hillbilly” is a combination of numerous stereotypes of poor whites.
According to Anthony Harkins, the hillbilly is “typically associated with the Ozarks or
Appalachia” and is “filthy, lazy, uncivilized, drunk and impoverished not only economically
76
I.M. Rubinow, Quest for Security (New York 1934).
77
Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare, 103.
78
Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare, 103-104.
79
Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare, 103-104.
25
and culturally but also genetically.”80 According to Harkins’ definition, a hillbilly and
someone who is white trash are very similar to each other; they are both not only white and
poor, but also the scum of the earth.
During the period between the end of the First World War and the aftermath of the
Second World War, mountaineer characters appeared in almost every film genre: action
movies, thrillers, documentaries, social dramas, musicals, comedies, cartoons and even
government propaganda. Although moviegoers were already weary of ignorant moonshiner
and feudist stereotypes during the mid-1910s, these portrayals remained dominant during the
1920s. As the savage mountaineer persona increasingly lost credibility during the late 1920s,
however, it was gradually replaced by the hillbilly. The image of the hillbilly dominated
Hollywood movies about poor whites during the span of the 1930s and held sway through the
end of World War II. After the Second World War, hoary stereotypes of barefoot and longbearded feuding hillbillies came increasingly under attack. Hollywood reinvented the hillbilly
image once again, this time in the guise of rustic but domesticated Ma and Pa Kettle. The
Kettle films became enormously popular. In these movies, as Harkins states, “the hillbilly
persona represented a cracked mirror image of postwar attitudes about the sanctity of the
child-focused nuclear family and the new, and for many, unsettling, suburban and consumerist
American society.”81 By the mid-1950s, when white society started to ignore America’s poor,
the Kettle films decreased in popularity, and the hillbilly image disappeared from
Hollywood’s radar.82
As said before, white Americans lost interest in poverty during the 1950s. During the
1960s, however, white society rediscovered poverty. Several excellent books on poverty were
published, such as John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Affluent Society and Michael Harrington’s
The Other America. Stimulated by these publications, the American public and policy makers
began once more to notice the poor.83 John F. Kennedy helped to raise awareness of poverty
in the United States as well. During the presidential campaign of 1960, Kennedy is said to
have been shaken by the grinding poverty that he saw in West Virginia. In this state, countless
poor whites lived in rural poverty due to a lack of both education and job opportunities. As
President of the United States, Kennedy created a number of antipoverty programs focusing
80
Anthony Harkins, Hillbilly: A Cultural History of an American Icon (New York 2004).
81
Harkins, Hillbilly, 142.
82
Harkins, Hillbilly, 141-171.
83
John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (Boston 1958). Michael Harrington, The Other America: Poverty
in the United States (New York 1962).
26
on juvenile delinquency, education and training programs, and he provided federal assistance
for needy regions of the United States. The poverty programs of the early 1960s, and the
popular images of the poor that went along with them, however, were as Gilens states, “just as
pale in complexion as those of the turn of the century.”84 Both the media and Kennedy’s
cabinet members did not pay much attention to poor African Americans. The dominant image
of poverty at this time was the image of the white hillbilly.85
Popular images of poverty changed dramatically, however, during the mid-1960s.
White society had ignored poor African Americans for centuries, but black poverty started to
dominate public thinking about poverty during the mid-1960s. This racialization of the poor
turned poverty into a solely black problem; white poverty virtually disappeared from the
public’s attention. One significant social change made the racialization of popular images of
the poor possible. This change was the huge migration of African Americans from the rural
South to the urban Midwest and Northeast. At the turn of the 20th century, more than 90
percent of all African Americans lived in the South, and three-quarters of all African
Americans lived in rural areas. African Americans had been leaving the South at a slow rate
for decades; during the 1920s, many rural southern African Americans migrated, for instance,
to northern cities. Black migration from the South, however, increased tremendously during
the 1940s and 1950s. According to Gilens, “the average black out-migration from the South
between 1910 and 1939 was only 55,000 people per year. But during the 1940s it increased to
160,000 per year, during the 1950s it declined slightly (to 146,000 per year), and between
1960 and 1966 it fell to 102,000 per year.”86 In 1910, African Americans accounted for only 2
percent of all Americans living in the Midwest and Northeast. As a consequence of the
migration during the 1940s and 1950s, however, African Americans made up 7 percent of all
northerners by 1960, and 12 percent of the northern city population.87
Both Gilens and Frank Stricker claim that the civil rights movement played an
important role in white society’s discovery of black poverty. The civil rights movement
dominated the mid-1960s and fought for equal rights, black enfranchisement and an end to
legal segregation. The civil rights movement’s most significant successes were the passage of
the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Civil Rights Act
prohibited segregation in public accommodations and banned discrimination by trade unions
84
Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare, 104.
85
Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare, 104.
86
Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare, 104-105.
87
Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare, 104-105.
27
and schools. The Civil Rights Act also called for the desegregation of public schools and
outlawed some of the voting procedures used to impede African Americans. The Voting
Rights Act banned literacy tests and established federal government oversight of registration
and voting in jurisdictions with low voter turnout. As a consequence of these acts and other
legal measures, nationwide voter registration rates among African Americans increased from
only 29 percent in 1962 to 67 percent in 1970.88
During the late 1960s, civil rights leaders shifted their attention from legal inequality
to economic inequality. The battle for black enfranchisement in the South had a long way to
go because southern white society resisted both legal and economic equality for African
Americans. Nevertheless, as Gilens states, “the first large urban uprisings during the summer
of 1964 and the greater number of ghetto riots during the summers to follow shifted both the
geographical and programmatic focus of the struggle for racial equality.” 89 During the early
1960s, civil rights leaders had already tried to reduce racial economic inequality in the United
States. In 1963, the National Urban League had called for a “crash program of special effort
to close the gap between the conditions of Negro and white citizens” and released a ten-point
“Marshall Plan for the American Negro.” In the same year, Martin Luther King issued a
similarly conceived “G.I. Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged.” Unfortunately, these early
efforts were not successful because the struggle for basic civil rights in the South drew all of
the attention.90
In 1966, however, Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference (SCLC) focused their attention on the miserable living conditions of the African
Americans in the northern ghettos. King and the SCLC organized demonstrations and rent
strikes in Chicago to dramatize the horrible economic conditions of countless urban African
Americans. King called for a number of measures aimed at improving the lives of Chicago’s
African American population: integrating the segregated public schools, reallocating public
services to better serve minority populations, building low-rent public housing units, and
removing public funds from banks that refused to make loans to African Americans. King did
his best, but he achieved very little in Chicago. Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago said that
King’s efforts were unnecessary, because his administration was already doing a lot to
improve the lives of poor African Americans. More moderate Chicago-based civil rights
88
Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare, 108. Frank Stricker, Why America Lost the War on Poverty – And How
to Win It (Chapel Hill 2007) 100.
89
Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare, 108. Stricker, Why America Lost the War on Poverty, 100.
90
Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare, 108-109. Stricker, Why America Lost the War on Poverty, 100.
28
leaders resented King’s intrusion into their affairs and the attention he received from the
media. Black militants called King a sell-out for talking to the white political powers. King’s
concern with the economic problems of urban northern African Americans was not
completely worthless, however. With his efforts in Chicago, King helped to focus public
attention on the problem of black poverty.91
At least as important as the shifting focus of civil rights leaders (from legal inequality
to economic inequality) were the ghetto riots. Poor African Americans forced white
Americans to acknowledge them once and for all. During the smoldering summer of 1964,
riots broke out in several northern cities and neighborhoods, such as Harlem, Rochester,
Chicago, Philadelphia and Jersey City. Property damage was estimated at $6 million. The
ghetto riots of the mid-1960s received wide media coverage and white society could not
ignore the economic problems of poor African Americans anymore. Consequently, white
Americans started to see poverty as a problem solely concerning African Americans. White
poverty disappeared from white society’s radar until the 1980s.92
During the mid-1960s, the contrasts between white Americans and African Americans
became more prevalent in U.S. society. Consequently, white society no longer made a
distinction between several white “races.” In 1967, Princeton undergraduates were surveyed
again about their perceptions of various ethnic groups. In 1933, the trait “lazy” was chosen as
characteristic of both African Americans and Italian Americans. In 1967, however, Princeton
students only considered African Americans as lazy.93 Nonetheless, Hollywood still made a
distinction between different white “races.” Although actors of Irish heritage regularly played
a variety of roles instead of being typecast as only Irish characters, Italian American actors
and directors did not hide their ethnicity.94 For example, Sylvester Stallone and John Travolta
played Italian American protagonists in Rocky (1976) and Saturday Night Fever (1977)
respectively, and Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese made a myriad of movies
centered on Italian American gangsters, such as The Godfather (1972) and Mean Streets
(1973).95
91
Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare, 109. Stricker, Why America Lost the War on Poverty, 100.
92
Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare, 109-111. Stricker, Why America Lost the War on Poverty, 100.
93
Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare, 158.
94
Benshoff and Griffin, America on Film, 58, 64.
95
Rocky, Avildsen, John G. Chartoff-Winkler Productions. 1976: United States. Saturday Night Fever, Badham,
John. Robert Stigwood Organization (RSO). 1977: United States. The Godfather, Coppola, Francis Ford. Alfran
29
Although white Americans had forgotten about white poverty during the late 1950s,
the 1960s and the 1970s, Hollywood released a few movies with white trash characters during
these decades, such as Gun Girls (1957), Lorna (1964), Mudhoney (1965), Pink Flamingos
(1972), Sixpack Annie (1975) and The Great Texas Dynamite Chase (1976).96 In these films
teenage girls embark on crime sprees (Gun Girls, The Great Texas Dynamite Chase), busty
women have sex with many men (Lorna, Sixpack Annie) and unemployed men pass the day
by drinking beer and frequenting whorehouses (Mudhoney, Pink Flamingos). Apparently the
American public did not want to see poor whites on the big screen during the black poverty
dominated decades, because Gun Girls, Lorna, Mudhoney, Pink Flamingos. Sixpack Annie
and The Great Texas Dynamite Chase were all commercial failures.
During the early 1980s, an economic recession hit America and caused a decline of the
gross domestic product and both an unemployment and poverty increase. As Gilens states,
“per capita gross domestic product fell over 3 percent between 1981 and 1982, unemployment
rose to almost 11 percent, and the poverty rate increased from about 11 percent in 1979 to
over 15 percent in 1983.”97 At this time, Ronald W. Reagan was President of the United
States. Reagan’s administration tried to combat the economic downturn with domestic
spending cutbacks and verbal attacks on government antipoverty programs. Not surprisingly,
Reagan’s efforts to “trim the safety net” caused much political controversy.98
Reagan’s controversial policymaking and the horrible living conditions of the poor
brought poverty to the front-pages again. Time, Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report
published only 43 stories on poverty in 1979 and 1980 combined, but in 1982 and 1983 these
newsmagazines published 103 stories on America’s poor. The stories were mainly focused on
the growing problems of unemployment, poverty and debates regarding the right response of
the government to these problems. As Gilens states, “about 39 percent of poverty-related
newsmagazine stories in 1982-83 focused on poverty or government antipoverty programs,
Productions. 1972: United States. Mean Streets, Scorsese, Martin. Taplin – Perry – Scorsese Productions. 1973:
United States.
96
Gun Girls, Dertano, Robert C. Eros Productions. 1957: United States. Lorna, Meyer, Russ. Eve Productions.
1964: United States. Mudhoney, Meyer, Russ. Delta Films. 1965: United States. Pink Flamingos, Waters, John.
Dreamland. 1972: United States. Sixpack Annie, Broderick, John C. American International Pictures. 1975:
United States. The Great Texas Dynamite Chase, Pressman, Michael. Yasny Talking Pictures. 1976: United
States.
97
Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare, 125-126.
98
Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare, 125-126.
30
with another 28 percent on unemployment or efforts to combat it. In addition, smaller
numbers of stories concerned homelessness, housing programs and legal aid (each
constituting 6 percent to 8 percent of poverty coverage).”99
To conclude, during the period between the civil rights movement and Reagan’s
presidency, white Americans saw poverty mainly as a black problem, but during the early
1980s white society’s attention turned once again to white poverty. White society’s
rediscovery of white poverty coincided with the lowest percentage of African Americans in
magazine stories on the poor since the early 1960s. During 1982 and 1983, only 33 percent of
poor people portrayed in stories on poverty were African American.100 Hollywood, however,
did not rediscover white poverty during the 1980s because Hollywood never stopped
releasing movies with white trash characters during the course of the 20th century.
Nevertheless, after only losing money with white trash movies during the late 1950s, the
1960s and the 1970s, white society’s rediscovery of white poverty during the 1980s gave
Hollywood the opportunity to finally make some money with white trash films. Although
1980s white trash movies like The Galaxy Invader (1985) and Ginger Ale Afternoon (1989)
failed at the box office, 1990s white trash films like Kalifornia, Natural Born Killers and
Freeway were commercially successful.101
After releasing highly stereotypical white trash movies during the entire 20th century,
Hollywood studios started to make different kinds of white trash films after the turn of the
century. These 21st century white trash movies still show stereotypes of poor whites, but they
also deconstruct the age-old stereotypes. The four case studies of this study (Erin Brockovich,
8 Mile, A Love Song For Bobby Long and Black Snake Moan) are excellent examples of these
deconstructing white trash movies.
99
Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare, 126.
100
Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare, 126.
101
The Galaxy Invader, Dohler, Don. Moviecraft Entertainment. 1985: United States. Ginger Ale Afternoon,
Zielinski, Rafal. Churchill Partners. 1989: United States.
31
4. Case studies
4.1. Introduction
“Everyone knows that books are better than life! That’s why they’re books!” shouts Pursy in
A Love Song For Bobby Long (2004). Hollywood movies are also better than life, because one
of the best-known Hollywood conventions is that all films end with a happy ending.102 21st
century white Americans are highly familiar with this convention because they have been
raised with Hollywood movies. As said in Chapter 1, white Americans are also extremely
familiar with the ideology of “white patriarchal capitalism” because this ideology permeates
most American films and the way most Americans think about themselves and the world
around them.103 Keeping this convention and ideology in mind, you can easily assume that
white Americans – when watching the four case studies, Erin Brockovich (2000), 8 Mile
(2002), A Love Song For Bobby Long (2004) and Black Snake Moan (2006) – expect a happy
ending and assume that the happy ending will be financial success (capitalism) for the white
trash characters (white).104
It is common knowledge that people are moved more by a movie character’s ordeals
when they know the character better. That is why white American viewers want to get to
know the white trash characters very well in order to enjoy the happy ending as much as
possible. Thus, they want to individuate the white trash characters. Probably they want solely
to individuate the main white trash characters, because Hollywood movies generally center on
either one character or a core group of characters, and this makes it more likely that the happy
ending will only affect the main characters of a film. This is also the reason why this chapter
will focus on the main white trash characters of the case studies: Erin, Jimmy, Bobby, Pursy,
Lawson and Rae.
In brief, white Americans want to individuate the main white trash characters of a
white trash movie. Concepts of whiteness and stars, however, which have been discussed in
Chapter 2, make the individuation of white trash characters difficult. This leads to the
following questions: In what ways do concepts of whiteness and stars make the individuation
102
Harry M. Benshoff and Sean Griffin, America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality at
the Movies (Oxford 2009) 25.
103
Benshoff and Griffin, America on Film, 8-9.
104
Erin Brockovich, Soderbergh, Steven. Jersey Films. 2000: United States. 8 Mile, Hanson, Curtis. Imagine
Entertainment. 2002: United States. A Love Song For Bobby Long, Gabel, Shainee. Destination Films. 2004:
United States. Black Snake Moan, Brewer, Craig. Paramount Classics. 2006: United States.
32
of the main white trash characters of Erin Brockovich, 8 Mile, A Love Song For Bobby Long
and Black Snake Moan difficult? To what extent do these concepts prevent white Americans
from individuating the main white trash characters of the case studies? These questions will
be examined in this chapter by analyzing the case studies while drawing from this study’s
previous chapters. The concepts that will be discussed in this chapter are: whites’ position of
privilege and power, the white naked body, the purity of whiteness and the use of the star’s
image.
4.2. Whites’ position of privilege and power
As discussed in the academic discussion, white people hold a position of privilege and power.
It is easier for whites to get a job and a nice house than it is for non-whites.105 Jimmy (in 8
Mile), Bobby and Lawson (in A Love Song For Bobby Long), and Rae (in Black Snake Moan)
all fail to take advantage of whites’ position of privilege and power. During the entire running
time of 8 Mile, Jimmy lives in his mother’s trailer and works at a Detroit sheet metal factory.
Although he eventually gets more shifts at the factory, he stays poor due to his low salary. In
A Love Song For Bobby Long, Bobby and Lawson do not earn any money. Bobby is a former
English professor and Lawson is a struggling writer, and they are basically unemployed. Rae
is also unemployed in Black Snake Moan.
Jimmy, Bobby, Lawson and Rae look poor, because they all wear worn-out clothes.
Rae, in particular, indulges in her white trash persona. She wears brown cowboy boots, tiny
blue shorts, and a small top with the American flag, the Confederate flag and two guns on it.
To an outside observer, that is the odd part of these characters: they do not seem to be
ashamed of their failure to take advantage of whites’ position of privilege and power. During
one of the final rap battles, Jimmy even proclaims “I’m a piece of f#cking white trash, I say it
proudly.” Their shamelessness makes them white trash.
105
Bonnie Kae Grover, “Growing Up White in America?” in: Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic eds., Critical
White Studies: Looking Behind the Mirror (Philadelphia 1997) 34. Ruth Frankenberg, “White Women, Race
Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness” in: Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic eds., Critical White
Studies: Looking Behind the Mirror (Philadelphia 1997) 633. George A. Martinez, “Mexican-Americans and
Whiteness” in: Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic eds., Critical White Studies: Looking Behind the Mirror
(Philadelphia 1997) 210. Richard Dyer, White (London 1997) 9.
33
Wink (Eugene Byrd) and Jimmy (Eminem) [left picture], and Pursy (Scarlett Johansson), Bobby (John Travolta)
and Lawson (Gabriel Macht) [right picture]. Look at Jimmy’s, Bobby’s and Lawson’s worn-out clothes.
Rae (Christina Ricci) in her white trash outfit.
For white Americans it is difficult to understand when poor whites are not ashamed of
their failure to take advantage of their privileged position or are not ashamed of their failure to
live up to the ideology of “white patriarchal capitalism.” These are the reasons that white
American viewers think that Jimmy, Bobby, Lawson and Rae are white trash. As explained in
Chapter 2, it is difficult to individuate white trash characters, because they behave in a very
stereotypical manner. It is even harder to individuate white trash characters when they do not
seem to use their mind.
34
4.3. White naked body
Erin (in Erin Brockovich), Jimmy (in 8 Mile) and Rae (in Black Snake Moan) rely more on
their bodies than on their brains. Although Erin has to think when she is investigating the
Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E) case, she uses her body at a crucial moment. At the
Lahontan Regional Water Board office, she uses her gigantic cleavage to persuade the man
behind the desk to let her look in the archives in the backroom and to let her copy numerous
documents about PG&E. These documents are such valuable evidence that they convince Ed
to hire her back. And when Ed asks her how she got the documents, she simply replies:
“They’re called boobs, Ed.”
Ed (Albert Finney) and Erin (Julia Roberts) [left picture], and Jimmy (Eminem) [right picture]. Pay attention to
Erin’s persuading cleavage, and notice the physicality of Jimmy’s rapping and the muscular arms of his
opponent.
Jimmy and Rae do not seem to use their minds at all. Jimmy’s work at the sheet metal
factory is highly physical and he solves all his problems with his fists. In 8 Mile, he has
disagreements with Greg (over his mother), the Leaders of the Free World (over his rapping)
and Wink (over Alex), and all of these disputes end up with a fight. By definition, rapping is
showing off your verbal skills, but 8 Mile portrays rapping as something physical. The rap
battles look like verbal boxing matches. The physicality of these fights is emphasized by the
rappers’ muscular arms. In Black Snake Moan, Rae’s sex addiction has taken over her body
and mind. She has to obey to the cravings of her body. Lazarus teaches her to resist these
cravings, but her mind does not seem strong enough to actually do this.
Erin, Jimmy and Rae are portrayed as very physical human beings; they are almost
animalistic. Erin’s and Rae’s physical nature is emphasized by their semi-naked bodies. Both
women show their bare legs, arms and cleavage in almost every scene. In white society
showing an excess of skin is considered classless, and that is why their semi-nakedness makes
35
Erin and Rae increasingly white trash. In short, the physical nature of Erin, Jimmy and Rae
make them all more white trash, and thus more stereotypical, which makes them harder to
individuate.
Erin (Julia Roberts) and Ed (Albert Finney) [left picture], and Rae (Christina Ricci) [right picture]. Notice Erin’s
cleavage and bare legs, and Rae’s half-naked body.
4.4. Purity of whiteness
Richard Dyer claims that genealogical research has partially been motivated by the search for
the origins of humankind. In this perspective, white people represent the only sub-race that
has remained pure to the human race’s Aryan forbears. Non-white people are then seen as
degenerative, falling away from the true nature of the human race. In the quest for purity,
whites win either way: either they are a distinct, pure race, superior to all others, or they are
the purest expression of the human race itself. What is striking in either version is the
emphasis on purity and the special purity of whiteness.106 If races are conceptualized as pure,
then miscegenation threatens that purity.107
White society does not understand why you would hang out with non-whites if you are
not forced to. That is why most white Americans do not have any black friends. In 8 Mile,
Jimmy’s friends are almost all black, and this makes him more white trash. The fact that
Jimmy only has sex with white women (Janeane and Alex), however, works against his white
trashiness. As said before, Rae’s habit to walk around half-naked makes her more white trash.
Rae’s black roommate (Lazarus) and her sexual encounters with two black men (Tehronne
and Lincoln) add to her white trashiness. White Americans think that Jimmy’s choice of
friends and Rae’s choice of roommates and sexual partners are trashy. These observations
106
Dyer, White, 22.
107
Dyer, White, 25.
36
make individuating Jimmy and Rae difficult, because it is hard to individuate characters that
are white trash.
Jimmy (Eminem) and his predominantly black friends [left picture], and Rae (Christina Ricci) and her black
roommate Lazarus (Samuel L. Jackson) [right picture].
4.5. Use of the star’s image
As outlined in Chapter 2, the star’s image is used in the construction of a character in a film in
three different ways: selective use, perfect fit and problematic fit. 108 A film may, through its
use of the other signs of character and the rhetoric of film, bring out certain features of the
star’s image and ignore others (a selective use).109 This is very much the case in Erin
Brockovich. The movie clearly refers to Julia Roberts’ previous role as a prostitute in Pretty
Woman (1990).110 In both films she wears tight fitting tops, miniskirts, high heels and a lot of
makeup. But Erin Brockovich ignores other aspects of Roberts’ image, such as her image as
America’s sweetheart. As said before, Roberts as Erin shows a lot of skin, and this habit
makes Erin more white trash. The resemblances of Roberts in Erin Brockovich and Roberts in
Pretty Woman add to Erin’s white trashiness.
108
Richard Dyer, Stars (London 1998) 126.
109
Dyer, Stars, 127.
110
Pretty Woman, Marshall, Garry. Touchstone Pictures. 1990: United States.
37
Julia Roberts as Vivian Ward in Pretty Woman (1990) [left picture] and as Erin Brockovich in Erin Brockovich
(2000) [right picture]. Pay attention to the miniskirts and the outrageous red hair in both pictures.
When we speak of a perfect fit, all the aspects of a star’s image fit with all the traits of
a character.111 In 8 Mile, the use of Eminem’s image is a perfect fit: Eminem’s image is
extremely white trash because he grew up in a trailer park in Detroit, many of his songs are
about his white trash past, and he swears a lot. His white trash image is perfect for the role of
a white trash character in a white trash movie, and clearly his white trash image adds to
Jimmy’s white trashiness.
111
Dyer, Stars, 127.
38
Eminem [left picture] and Jimmy [right picture]. Look at the resemblances of Eminem and Jimmy.
Furthermore, the use of Eminem’s image is a perfect fit because Eminem is a rapper
and he plays a rapper in 8 Mile. Also, the film is packed with Eminem songs (“8 Mile,” “Lose
Yourself”) and the movie refers in many ways to Eminem’s life. First, the film takes place in
Detroit at a time when Eminem was still poor (1995). Second, both Eminem’s daughter
(Hailie) and Jimmy’s little sister (Lily) are blonde, and Eminem and Jimmy adore their blonde
angels tremendously, thus, Lily clearly refers to Hailie. Finally, Eminem has a bad
relationship with both his mother and his ex-wife (Kim), and Jimmy has a troublesome
relationship with both his mother (Stephanie) and his girlfriend (Alex). When you know these
facts it is hard to keep Eminem and Jimmy apart, and this is something that 8 Mile does not
seem to want us to do. For white Americans, this makes it difficult to individuate Jimmy,
because they are not sure if they are watching a character (Jimmy) or a real person (Eminem).
39
Eminem and his daughter Hailie [left picture], and Jimmy and his sister Lily [right picture]. Look at the
resemblances of the two pictures.
4.6. Individuation
As discussed in this chapter, the concepts of whites’ position of privilege and power, the
white naked body, the purity of whiteness and the use of the star’s image make the
individuation of Erin (Erin Brockovich), Jimmy (8 Mile), Bobby, Pursy and Lawson (A Love
Song For Bobby Long), and Rae (Black Snake Moan) difficult. These concepts make the
characters white trash, and thus stereotypical, which makes them harder to individuate.
Surprisingly, these concepts do not prevent white Americans from individuating the main
white trash characters of the case studies. The reason for this is that Erin, Jimmy, Bobby,
Pursy, Lawson and Rae go through huge positive transitions in the movies. These transitions
make the characters more unique, and therefore easier to individuate. As Charles Stangor
states, individuation means that “rather than using a person’s social category or categories as a
basis of judgment, we consider them instead in terms of their own unique personality.”112
Thus, individuation and uniqueness go together. The big contrasts between the introductions
of Erin, Jimmy, Bobby, Pursy, Lawson and Rae in the films and the happy endings of the
movies point out the positive transitions of the characters.
Erin is introduced as a single mother who had children at a young age, has not
attended college, was fired at her previous job and who divorced her husband. She looks for a
new job, but nobody wants to hire her. Erin Brockovich ends with Erin winning a major law
case against a multibillion dollar company (PG&E) and receiving a $2 million paycheck. She
has fulfilled the ideology of “white patriarchal capitalism,” and that is why this happy ending
is not very surprising for white American viewers. The ending of 8 Mile is more surprising for
112
Charles Stangor, “Volume Overview” in: Charles Stangor ed., Stereotypes and Prejudice: Essential Readings
(Philadelphia 2000) 3-4.
40
a white American audience. At the start of the film, Jimmy loses a rap battle and gets fired at
a pizza place. Although the movie ends with Jimmy winning a rap battle contest and getting
more shifts at the sheet metal factory, he does not become rich and famous. Thus he does not
fulfill the ideology of “white patriarchal capitalism.” The ending is even more surprising for
white Americans, because they know that Eminem has become a superstar rapper (who turned
in his trailer for a mansion). So 8 Mile is about a character (and not a real person) after all.
Bobby, Pursy and Lawson do also not fulfill the ideology of “white patriarchal
capitalism” in A Love Song For Bobby Long. Nevertheless, they go through huge positive
transitions. Bobby turns from an unemployed alcoholic into a loving father; Pursy turns from
a high school dropout into a college student; and Lawson turns from a struggling
writer/alcoholic into a writer who can actually finish a book. Although the ending of the film
is joyful, white American viewers are probably amazed that there is no pot of gold for any of
the white trash characters. The happy ending of Black Snake Moan is also not the happy
ending that white Americans expect. Rae is introduced as a white trash nymphomaniac who
cannot control her body. She not only has sex with her boyfriend (Ronnie), but also with a
black drug dealer (Tehronne). At the end of the movie, she is still not cured of her sex
addiction and she has not escaped poverty, but the ending is cheerful nonetheless, because she
gets married to Ronnie.
To conclude, white American viewers (under influence of the ideology of “white
patriarchal capitalism”) expect financial success for the main white trash characters of the
case studies. Only Erin, however, becomes a millionaire. Although the concepts of whites’
position of privilege and power, the white naked body, the purity of whiteness and the use of
the star’s image make the individuation of Erin (in Erin Brockovich), Jimmy (in 8 Mile),
Bobby, Pursy and Lawson (in A Love Song For Bobby Long), and Rae (in Black Snake Moan)
difficult, these concepts do not prevent white Americans from individuating the main white
trash characters of the case studies. The reason for this is that Erin, Jimmy, Bobby, Pursy,
Lawson and Rae go through huge transitions, which make them more unique, and therefore
easier to individuate.
41
5. Conclusion
This study’s introductory quote from 8 Mile (“I’m a piece of f#cking white trash, I say it
proudly”) suggests that poor whites have been portrayed in a more positive way in Hollywood
movies after the turn of the century. It would appear that the representation of poor whites in
Hollywood movies has been changed, and that poor whites have been represented less
stereotypically in Hollywood films from the 2000s than in 20th century Hollywood movies.
Evidence suggests that stereotypes of poor whites have even been deconstructed in recent
Hollywood films. This leads to the research question of this study: To what extent have the
stereotypes of poor whites been deconstructed in Hollywood movies from the 2000s? For the
research question “deconstructing” means changing or eliminating particular stereotypes. You
can break down the research question into two questions: Have stereotypes of poor whites
been changed in early 21st century Hollywood films? Have stereotypes of poor whites been
eliminated in early 21st century Hollywood movies?
Four “white trash films” have been analyzed in order to examine the research
question: Erin Brockovich (2000), 8 Mile (2002), A Love Song For Bobby Long (2004) and
Black Snake Moan (2006).113 “White trash movies” are (Hollywood) films with white trash
characters; and “white trash characters” are characters who exhibit numerous stereotypes of
poor whites. The analyses of this study have been focused on the main white trash characters
of the case studies: Erin (Erin Brockovich), Jimmy (8 Mile), Bobby, Pursy and Lawson (A
Love Song For Bobby Long), and Rae (Black Snake Moan).
As outlined in Chapter 4, white American viewers of the case studies want to
individuate Erin, Jimmy, Bobby, Pursy, Lawson and Rae. Why do white Americans want to
individuate these white trash characters? White Americans are highly familiar with both
Hollywood conventions (happy ending) and America’s dominant ideology of “white
patriarchal capitalism.” Therefore, when watching a white trash movie, white Americans
expect a happy ending and assume that the happy ending will be financial success (capitalism)
for the white trash characters (white). The audience is moved more by a film character’s
ordeals when they know the character better, and that is why white Americans want to get to
know the white trash characters very well so they will enjoy the happy ending as much as
113
Erin Brockovich, Soderbergh, Steven. Jersey Films. 2000: United States. 8 Mile, Hanson, Curtis. Imagine
Entertainment. 2002: United States. A Love Song For Bobby Long, Gabel, Shainee. Destination Films. 2004:
United States. Black Snake Moan, Brewer, Craig. Paramount Classics. 2006: United States.
42
possible. Thus they want to individuate the white trash characters. Hollywood movies
generally revolve around one character or a core group of characters, and this makes it more
likely that the happy ending will only affect the main characters of a film; therefore white
Americans probably only want to individuate the main white trash characters: Erin, Jimmy,
Bobby, Pursy, Lawson and Rae.
Concepts of whiteness and stars (whites’ position of privilege and power, the white
naked body, the purity of whiteness and the use of the star’s image), however, make the
individuation of Erin, Jimmy, Bobby, Pursy, Lawson and Rae for white American viewers
difficult because these concepts make the characters white trash, and thus stereotypical, which
makes them harder to individuate. These concepts, however, do not prevent white Americans
from individuating the characters. The reason for this is that Erin, Jimmy, Bobby, Pursy,
Lawson and Rae go through huge positive transitions, which make them more unique, and
therefore easier to individuate.
“White trash” is a combination of negative stereotypes of poor whites. The fact that
the main white trash characters of the case studies go through positive transitions gives a
white American audience the overall impression that white trash is not all bad. Thus the case
studies have added positive characteristics to an amalgam of negative stereotypes. Given the
knowledge that Erin Brockovich, 8 Mile, A Love Song For Bobby Long and Black Snake
Moan are representative of all recent white trash movies, you may conclude that stereotypes
of poor whites have been changed in early 21st century Hollywood movies. After all, as
discussed in Chapter 3, in 20th century Hollywood films white trash characters were portrayed
simply as awful human beings with no positive features. Nevertheless, stereotypes of poor
whites have not been eliminated in early 21st century Hollywood movies, because stereotypes
of poor whites still occur in recent Hollywood films.
This study applied many concepts of Whiteness Studies (whites’ position of privilege
and power, the white naked body, the purity of whiteness) to four white trash movies, and this
suggests that “White Trash Studies” can become a valuable branch of Whiteness Studies.
Nevertheless, it is unsure if a separate white trash branch of Whiteness Studies is viable,
because the academic world pays very little attention to white trash. Whiteness scholars, such
as Bonnie Kae Grover, Ruth Frankenberg, George A. Martinez and Richard Dyer, for
example, ignore white trash completely.
Most academics probably overlook white trash, because they assume that white trash
is just another term of abuse for poor whites. This study has shown, however, that “white
trash” is a much more complicated term: it is a combination of the stereotypes of poor whites,
43
and the use of the term is directly connected to white society’s awareness of poor whites. In
short, white poverty is mainly an economic issue, and white trash is primarily a socio-cultural
phenomenon. That is why white trash asks for a different approach than white poverty. This
study’s approach of white trash has been successful, and may therefore serve as a blueprint
for further white trash studies.
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6. Bibliography
6.1. Movies

8 Mile, Hanson, Curtis. Imagine Entertainment. 2002: United States.

A Love Song For Bobby Long, Gabel, Shainee. Destination Films. 2004: United States.

American Dreamz, Weitz, Paul. NBC Universal Television. 2006: United States.

Black Snake Moan, Brewer, Craig. Paramount Classics. 2006: United States.

Erin Brockovich, Soderbergh, Steven. Jersey Films. 2000: United States.

Freeway, Bright, Matthew. The Kushner-Locke Company. 1996: United States.

Freeway II: Confessions of a Trickbaby, Bright, Matthew. The Kushner-Locke Company.
1999: United States.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Hawks, Howard. Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation.
1953: United States.

Ginger Ale Afternoon, Zielinski, Rafal. Churchill Partners. 1989: United States.

Gone with the Wind, Fleming, Victor. Selznick International Pictures. 1939: United States.

Gun Girls, Dertano, Robert C. Eros Productions. 1957: United States.

Kalifornia, Sena, Dominic. PolyGram Filmed Entertainment. 1993: United States.

Last Tango in Paris, Bertolucci, Bernardo. Produzioni Europee Associati (PEA). 1972:
Italy.

Le rouge et le noir, Autant-Lara, Claude. Documento Film. 1954: France.

Lorna, Meyer, Russ. Eve Productions. 1964: United States.

Love and a .45, Talkington, C.M. Trimark Pictures. 1994: United States.

Mean Streets, Scorsese, Martin. Taplin – Perry – Scorsese Productions. 1973: United
States.

Million Dollar Baby, Eastwood, Clint. Warner Bros. Pictures. 2004: United States.

Mudhoney, Meyer, Russ. Delta Films. 1965: United States.

Natural Born Killers, Stone, Oliver. Warner Bros. Pictures. 1994: United States.

Now, Voyager, Rapper, Irving. Warner Bros. Pictures. 1942: United States.

Pink Flamingos, Waters, John. Dreamland. 1972: United States.

Pretty Woman, Marshall, Garry. Touchstone Pictures. 1990: United States.

Rocky, Avildsen, John G. Chartoff-Winkler Productions. 1976: United States.

Saturday Night Fever, Badham, John. Robert Stigwood Organization (RSO). 1977: United
States.
45

Sixpack Annie, Broderick, John C. American International Pictures. 1975: United States.

The Finish of Bridget McKeen, Edison Manufacturing Company. 1901: United States.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Ingram, Rex. Metro Pictures Corporation. 1921:
United States.

The Galaxy Invader, Dohler, Don. Moviecraft Entertainment. 1985: United States.

The Godfather, Coppola, Francis Ford. Alfran Productions. 1972: United States.

The Great Texas Dynamite Chase, Pressman, Michael. Yasny Talking Pictures. 1976:
United States.

The Postman Always Rings Twice, Garnett, Tay. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). 1946:
United States.

The Sheik, Melford, George. Paramount Pictures. 1921: United States.

Where The Heart Is, Williams, Matt. Wind Dancer Productions. 2000: United States.
6.2. Literature

Benshoff, Harry M., and Sean Griffin, America on Film: Representing Race, Class,
Gender, and Sexuality at the Movies (Oxford 2009).

Bouson, J. Brooks, “‘You Nothing But Trash’: White Trash Shame in Dorothy Allison’s
Bastard Out of Carolina”, Southern Literary Journal (2001) 101-123.

Brezina, Timothy, and Kenisha Winder, “Economic Disadvantage, Status Generalization
and Negative Racial Stereotyping By White Americans”, Social Psychology Quarterly
(2003) 402-418.

Costello, Brannon, “Poor White Trash, Great White Hope: Race, Class and the
(De)Construction of Whiteness in Lewis Nordan’s Wolf Whistle”, Critique (2004) 207223.

Dyer, Richard, Stars (London 1998).

Dyer, Richard, White (London 1997).

Enteman, Willard F., “Stereotyping, Prejudice and Discrimination” in: Paul Martin Lester
and Susan Dente Ross eds., Images That Injure: Pictorial Stereotypes in the Media
(Westport 2003) 9-10.

Flynt, James Wayne, Dixie’s Forgotten People: The South’s Poor Whites (Bloomington
2004).

Frankenberg, Ruth, “White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness”
in: Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic eds., Critical White Studies: Looking Behind the
Mirror (Philadelphia 1997) 632-634.
46

Gilens, Martin, Why Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media and the Politics of
Antipoverty Policy (Chicago 2000).

Glasmeier, Amy, An Atlas of Poverty in America: One Nation, Pulling Apart, 1960-2003
(New York 2006).

Green, Abel, “‘Hillbilly’ Music”, Variety (1926) 1.

Grover, Bonnie Kae, “Growing Up White in America?” in: Richard Delgado and Jean
Stefancic eds., Critical White Studies: Looking Behind the Mirror (Philadelphia 1997) 3435.

Harkins, Anthony, Hillbilly: A Cultural History of an American Icon (New York 2004).

Hoberman, John, “The Price of ‘Black Dominance’”, Society (2000) 49-50.

Linn, Travis, “Media Methods that Lead to Stereotypes” in: Paul Martin Lester and Susan
Dente Ross eds., Images That Injure: Pictorial Stereotypes in the Media (Westport 2003)
9-10.

MacRae, C. Neil, Charles Stangor and Miles Hewstone eds., Stereotypes and Stereotyping
(New York 1996).

Martinez, George A., “Mexican-Americans and Whiteness” in: Richard Delgado and Jean
Stefancic eds., Critical White Studies: Looking Behind the Mirror (Philadelphia 1997)
210-213.

McAndrew, Francis T., and Adebowale Akande, “African Perceptions of Americans of
African and European Descent”, The Journal of Social Psychology (1995) 649-655.

Patterson, James T., America’s Struggle against Poverty in the Twentieth Century
(Cambridge 2000).

Schneider, David J., The Psychology of Stereotyping (New York 2004).

Stangor, Charles, “Volume Overview” in: Charles Stangor ed., Stereotypes and Prejudice:
Essential Readings (Philadelphia 2000) 1-16.

Stricker, Frank, Why America Lost the War on Poverty – And How to Win It (Chapel Hill
2007).

Webster, Colin, “Marginalized white ethnicity, race and crime”, Theoretical Criminology
(2008) 293-312.

Wray, Matt, Not Quite White: White Trash and the Boundaries of Whiteness (Durham
2006).

Wray, Matt, and Annalee Newitz, White Trash: Race and Class in America (New York
1997).
47