Southern by the grace of God : religion, race, and civil rights in Hollywood's American South / Megan Hunt.
| Author/creator | Hunt, Megan, 1968- author. |
| Format | Book |
| Publication | Athens, Gerogia : The University of Georgia Press, [2024] |
| Copyright Date | ©2024 |
| Description | x, 226 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm. |
| Subjects |
| Series | Politics and culture in the twentieth-century South Politics and culture in the twentieth-century South. ^A703323 |
| Contents | Introduction. The divine and the depraved : religion in Hollywood's south -- "They'll take the Bible literally you know" : To Kill a Mockingbird and the origins of Hollywood's secular civil rights hero -- "How come the only cheek gets turned in this country is the Negro cheek?" : African American christianity and civil rights in cinema, 1920-1990 -- "When things made sense, when we were the good guys" : reconstructed white southerners in the mid-1990s civil rights melodrama -- "Jimmy Swaggart meet Huey Long in Hell" : Cape Fear's "Monster of the South" -- "You don't see Billy Graham walking any picket lines" : redefining the civil rights genre in the "Age of Obama" -- Conclusion. "Why there's this desire to write about all these horrible things that happened over civil rights, I don't know" : southern authenticity in the age of the civil rights melodrama. |
| Abstract | "Like the media coverage of the civil rights era itself, Hollywood dramas have reinforced regional stereotypes of race, class, and gender to cleanse and redeem the wider nation from the implications of systemic racism. As Southern by the Grace of God reveals, however, Hollywood manipulates southern religion (in particular) to further enhance this pattern of difference and regional exceptionalism, consistently displacing broader American racism through a representation of the poor white southerner who is as religious as he (and it is always a he) is racist. By foregrounding the role of religion in these characterizations, Megan Hunt illuminates the pernicious intersections between Hollywood and southern exceptionalism, a long-standing U.S. nationalist discourse that has assigned racial problems to the errant South alone, enabling white supremacy to not only endure but reproduce throughout the nation. Southern by the Grace of God examines the presentation and functions of Protestant Christianity in cinematic depictions of the American South. Hunt argues that religion is an understudied signifier of the South on film, used-with varying degrees of sophistication-to define the region's presumed exceptionalism for regional, national, and international audiences. Rooted in close textual analysis and primary research into the production and reception of more than twenty Hollywood films that engage with the civil rights movement and/or its legacy, this book provides detailed case studies of films that use southern religiosity to negotiate American anxieties around race, class, and gender. Religion, Hunt contends, is an integral trope of the South in popular culture and especially crucial to the divisions essential to Hollywood storytelling"-- Provided by publisher. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| LCCN | 2024021604 |
| ISBN | 9780820367637 hardcover |
| ISBN | 082036763X hardcover |
| ISBN | 9780820367620 paperback |
| ISBN | 0820367621 paperback |
| ISBN | electronic book |
| ISBN | electronic book |
| Standard identifier# | 40032517084 |
Availability
| Library | Location | Call Number | Status | Item Actions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Joyner | Ronnie Barnes African American Collection | PN1995.9.S66 H86 2024 | ✔ Available | Place Hold |