.What is 'Appalachia?': Reflections on District 12.

I read the first book of The Hunger Games trilogy over Christmas break, and I hope to read the other two this summer.  My husband knows the entire synopsis of the series thanks to the internet, but I want to wait and read the books.  This weekend we went to the see the film in theaters twice (yes, twice...not necessarily because we wanted to see it that bad, but because the first time we watched it the teenagers around us wouldn't stop whispering.  I would've liked to have taken a poll of that first audience to see how many people had seen it already.  There's no way that many people wanted to see it and yet talked through most of the film.  But I digress...)

Since I don't know the whole story and I read the first book several months ago, the opinions that follow are solely based on the film adaptation, and they're merely the musings of an Appalachian, reflecting on the role and representation of Appalachia in the film.  Basically, I'm wondering what it really means to be 'Appalachian' today, and what others outside the region and culture seem to think it means.  Part of the reason I'm thinking about this is because of the keynote speaker at the Appalachian Studies Conference Scott and I attended this past weekend (related post coming soon).  Si Kahn, an activist, writer, and musician, posed these two questions to the audience: (1) What does it mean to be 'Appalachian' right now? (2) How do we suspect this will change in the next 50 years?

With those questions in mind, I turn now to the representation of District 12 (culturally and geographically located in Appalachia) in the film.  I think it's interesting that the film-makers (and Suzanne Collins herself) chose to depict District 12 in such a way that makes one think of the turn-of-the-century rather than 50 years in the future.  I'm wondering if audiences think that Appalachian people still go around hunting in the woods for food, bartering and trading, and making their own clothes, because I'm here to tell you, they don't.  I'm sure this is no surprise, but when my husband and I moved outside Appalachia (the area of Ohio where we currently reside is outside the geographic definition of 'Appalachia' according to the ARC) people didn't look at us and automatically guess we were Appalachians (they figured that out when we opened our mouths and started talking with our 'mountain' accents, which I might add the film did not represent - my husband was actually pretty disappointed they didn't).

No, Appalachians today are not much different from anyone else thanks mainly to technology, the media, and Wal-Mart.  Yes, our ancestors might have differed significantly from people in other regions of America, but we carry cellphones, watch 16 and Pregnant, tweet and use Facebook just like anyone else.  We wear the same clothes from Abercrombie and Hollister and Gap, and we drive Hondas and BMWs just like anyone else. This discussion goes back to the assignment I created for my ENG 102 students in my Appalachian-themed class: how has modern technology and media impacted our sense of place?

Getting back to the film, if you haven't seen it I'm not giving anything away by providing these pictures from District 12 (I already posted a couple of these on a previous post).  What do we see?

Source: thehungergames.wikia.com

To me, these pictures look like we've taken a few steps back in history, and perhaps this is because of the rest of the story (what I've not read yet).  Maybe in the destruction of America as we know it now, people adapted to a new way of life.  Living in the mountains might have meant going back to the 'old ways' of living off the land, making do with what you had, similar to our great-grandparents.  If you're an oppressed people lacking in resources, I'd say that would be the smartest thing to do.  (Side note: when they showed the miners in District 12, I was reminded of my great-grandfather who carried that same kind of silver lunch pail everyday to work, not my dad who currently works for a coal company, and I definitely didn't think of some futuristic way of mining coal...the clock, to me, appeared to have gone backwards several decades).

Yes, there are places in Appalachia that still look not a year over 1950 (the film took place in an abandoned mill town in North Carolina) but most of the people (and I qualify saying 'most') don't barter for goods, don't make their own clothes, and don't go around covered in dirt and grime.  And we certainly don't take baths in old washtubs like Katniss does before the Reaping.

I'm not at all criticizing the film, the film-makers, or the author for representing Appalachia in this way.  My mom told me she didn't really appreciate the way they depicted us, and I have to say while I was watching the film, I didn't really take note of it.  Instead, I was proud that Katniss came from District 12.  She's smart, strong, and compassionate, and these traits have a great deal to do with where she comes from.

The film's representation of Appalachia brings us to an interesting discussion of how the film-makers might have otherwise distinguished and represented Appalachia if they hadn't gone back to our ancestral roots, back to the small mining towns, coal dust-covered streets, and simple, practical wardrobe (I was sometimes reminded of October Sky, although District 12 is much poorer, and again, October Sky was set in the past not the future).  What distinguishes us as Appalachians today? Merely our accents? The stereotypes that continue to represent our people?  It's definitely something to think about: how will our children think of Appalachia?  Will we be any different than anyone else in America? And is this a positive, negative, or a little of both?  There's no doubt we come from and still share a rich culture, but do we still embrace it?

No conclusions here...like I said, just some musings.  Any thoughts?