Ignorant_Hillbillies__The_Representation_Of_Southern_Culture

Ignorant Hillbillies: The Representation Of Southern Culture By Television Abstract Television has been the window to the world for many people for a long time. Television creates images and representation of places and people. Television has succeeded in creating a negative image of southern culture and the southern people. Television has made southerners into ‘hillbillies’ who are ignorant and uncivilized in many aspects of life. Using situation comedies from the 1940’s to the 1970’s, television set in stone the view of southern Americans. Television has created a reality for people that is not the actual reality, which could be studied from a cultivation theory point of view. Today people still judge southerners as ignorant hillbillies and people continue to treat southern culture as separate from mainstream culture. Introduction Anne Shelby, an Appalachian author, visited a private school in Louisville. The teacher introduced her as follows, “This is Anne Shelby, our visiting author, and she lives in the middle of nowhere”. “No!” Anne protested. “I live in the middle of somewhere.” This experience may explain the problem of why southerners are seen as different. According to Dwight Billing southerners live in a real place that people see as a symbol (1999, p. 153). The word commonly used to described southerners is the television, people, culture, southern, hillbillies, created, southerners, image, shows, reality, hillbilly, harkins, appalachian, representation, often, ignorant, characters, beverly, 1999, show, person, newcomb, mainstream, american, view, times, stereotype, south, real, poor, negative, judge, been, 2002, world