The West Virginia Whites and Appalachian Counterculture

Raucous, unruly, illiterate, uncultured, and just plain vulgar. These are merely some of the adjectives conjured up about the Appalachian people by the 2010 documentary film The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia. The film portrays the large family as uneducated, countrified folks who just want to party and live their lives without consequences, but the general opinions evoked by the film leave a negative, albeit humorous, association with the Appalachian population. The bare-bones and drug-fueled lifestyle presented in the film begs the question: What about the rest of Appalachia? Is this entire region of the United States existing in an off-the-grid dystopia, or is there more than what is typically captured by books and the media?

Historically speaking, the stereotype of the Appalachian “hillbilly” didn’t arise until the twentieth century. In the early days, the region was occupied by Native Americans and, over time, European settlers began trickling into the melting pot, just as with the rest of the United States. According to Jackson (2006), “the growth of the coal-mining industry and the coming of roads to Appalachia brought cultural change” (p. 29) to the region. With sufferable labor conditions impacting both the health and the lifestyle of the workers, the average coal miner's wages provided just enough to get by. Without the wherewithal to leave the Appalachian region, many generations of families wound up living in the region indefinitely and, with no way out, eventually began leading hopeless lives, as reflected in the aforementioned film.

The literature surrounding the region focuses primarily around a central theme: hard labor. Even today, the Appalachian society’s biggest and most profitable resources can be found in nature– wood, coal, etc. With natural resources comes hard work. Eliot Wigginton’s book series entitled Foxfire, detailed images depict hard-working, self-sufficient country folk. Wigginton’s book series is a labor of love embarked upon by himself, a teacher, and his high school students to capture the stories and lives of the elderly in Appalachia. Documenting a way of life which no longer exists is an important task. While Wigginton’s book does instruct, in great detail, how to build a log cabin, it is not necessarily assumed that a reader will pick the book up as a purely instructional guide. The importance of the book is to document a way of life which may be on its way to extinction. 

The historically self-sustaining lifestyle of the Appalachian Mountain region provides deeper insight into why, perhaps, this area of the country has been so susceptible to stereotypes and mockery. But what do Jesco White and his clan of tap-dancing, law-breaking, unemployed, pill-popping drug abusers have in common with the good old hard-working American reputation of yesteryear? According to Massey, Appalachian stereotypes took shape in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Massey pinpoints the stereotypes in a more gender-specific way, noting that “if the hillbilly man is lazy, ignorant, and drunk then the hillbilly woman is aggressive, overly fecund, and masculine” (p. 130). This is an important description as it directly mirrors the stereotypes put forth by The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia. 

In the film, the viewer gets a rare glimpse into a subculture often ignored by mainstream society. In one family, and over the course of the film’s ninety-minute run time, we encounter a retired stripper, multiple imprisonments, extreme family violence, and a case of CPS taking away a newborn, drug-addled baby from her mother. As a viewer, two emotions are constantly intermixed during the screening of this film– one doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. What begins as a light-hearted film about the hilarious antics of a rowdy and unkempt family quickly turns into a heartbreaking realization that this downward trend that the Whites are living in is nowhere close to ending. 

While the Whites provide a certain degree of entertainment to themselves as well as their viewers, one wonders what will become of a family so plagued by poverty and addiction. Massey adds that “films, advertisements, comedic skits, comic strips, television shows, greeting cards, and email jokes constantly circulate these images, these stereotypes are literally everywhere in visual culture, within easy grasp in any visual medium” (p. 129). While fictional media stereotypes surrounding this region abound, the truth remains that the Whites are a real, American family. While the film is, as the title persists, “wild,” it is also important to remember that it is real. When taken for face-value, comedic entertainment is lost and exchanged for something more equivalent to tragedy. 

Of course, as is with all stereotypical images, the entirety of the Appalachian region cannot be judged solely based upon the behaviors and actions of one family. A district attorney from the region in which The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia was filmed acts appalled and disgusted by the stereotypes conjured by the Whites. The D.A. tells of a local boy who was admitted to M.I.T. with a full scholarship and expresses he wishes that kid would get followed around by a camera crew instead of people like the Whites. Why, then, didn’t the filmmakers just leave the Whites and give attention to a more upstanding citizen? The answer is simple: because it isn’t entertaining. 

Stereotypes and the media go hand-in-hand, especially with ease of access to modern technology. Pure entertainment aside, the exploitation of the Whites and the Appalachian region serves as a reminder of the problems existing within the borders of our own country. Poverty, drugs, and mental illness are serious problems. If the government continues to simply hand out disability checks to people like the Whites, the problem will never be fixed. While the hilarity of the Whites’ antics cannot be denied, their lives are existing in a vicious circle of violence and death. The title of The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia evokes sentiments of fun, but the film leaves a permanent impact on its viewers and sheds light on the tragic reality of the Appalachian region.

References

Edwards, G. T., Asbury, J. A., & Cox, R. L. (2006). A Handbook to Appalachia: An Introduction to the Region. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. 

Massey, C. (2007). Appalachian Stereotypes: Cultural History, Gender, and Sexual Rhetoric. The Journal of Appalachian Studies, 13(1/2), 124-136. 

Nitzberg, J. (Director). (2010). The wild and wonderful Whites of West Virginia [Documentary]. United States: Distributed by New Video Group. 

Wigginton, E. (1972). The Foxfire book: Hog Dressing; Log Cabin Building; Mountain Crafts and Foods; Planting by the Signs; Snake Lore, Hunting Tales, Faith Healing;

Moonshining; and Other Affairs of Plain Living (1st ed.). Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.