Skewed Perspective.com Presents...

A Case for Not Fellating The Appalachian Cultural War
or:
“Only Suck it if You Mean It”
or even still:
Signing The Back of Your Counterculture Membership Card*

an essay of sorts by Dig Doug

"Geography is fate."

This one-liner from one of the most interesting and intelligent people I have ever met has hauntingly proved the truest axiom I ever began to digest.  It is encompassing, true and while basic it is relatively affirming and provable.

And so armed with the near metaphysical baggage of fate in that context we can look at Appalachia and say, via this possible truism, that we are not the face of Appalachia.  Hell most of us don't even live in the absurdly politically determined area of Appalachia.

We hear about plants closing.  We remark about new industries as if we have a clue.  "Tourism is big here" ignores that there are many who would like tourism to be big, but we don't even remotely compete with many areas of Virginia—yet.  It is in no way a replacement for the fleeing textile and furniture industries; hundreds of people are not being employed at an Appapalooza Theme Park (run by Anheuser Busch of course).  If tourism was big than the idea of taking NASCAR from Martinsville would be silly, right?  (Come back in a year for that one.) 

Youth culture today is decidedly metamorphic and challenging, but by no means is it some unique byproduct of our amazingly, super-after-school-special upbringing.  Looking at this area through our myopic lens we begin to make statements attesting to the cultural upheaval our mere presence suggests.  We ponder aloud and delight in the Chinese-water-torture effect of bumper stickers, tiny buttons, clever tees and publicly read periodicals seen by little old ladies and the Good Ol' Boy network of fatcats with cigars.  I've been there.  Shit, I still do it.  I don't wear my "Year of the Rabbit" shirt to please or even connect with a large number of people- I do it because I dig the shirt, the band and I have a confidence that anyone who recognizes the name or symbol will be delighted, either openly or in private, to find someone with similar taste.  But we mustn't overestimate our importance when it comes to changing any area's face.  That face was there far before us.  And it exists independently of its inhabitants.  Our railing against what we perceive as any kind of ingrained and stalwart heritage only serves to expose how limited our perception is—we're a blip on this radar culturally.  That's not to say that we can't or don't have our set of eccentricities, but when we throw around words like "decades" and "centuries" we risk of exposing our complete lack of historical context and reality.  The German settlers caused an upheaval.  Civil War shook this place up.  World Wars brought in realities outside of America before cable TV did.  Native Americans just "centuries" ago were certainly appalled and displaced by what was to come and it wasn't a 20-something with accessories from Hot Topic.

Not that there is anything wrong with that.  This isn't about right and wrong here.  Remember, we hate the guy who said all the absurd "evil do'er" shit.  This guy famously declared war on a concept, "terrorism" which David Cross eloquently compared to the absurd notion of declaring a war on "jealousy."  So where is G.W.'s problem in his statements on "The war"? Or is it in the notion of "on terror"?  I'd say both.  But in saying that we should be declaring something as ridiculous as war on something so abstract we might do well to see how silly it sounds when we in regions that may or may not be defined as Appalachia say we are a part of a "culture war" of any sort.

Seeing what you feel is a cultural caricature at Fud's does not a war make.

Cable TV & the Internet should not be mistaken for the outside world.  Feeling a sense of accomplishment for watching BBC America instead of Who Wants to Maintain Our Country's Sanctity of Marriage With a Millionaire is fooling yourself.  Anyone who has walked the streets of Kowloon, Hong Kong can tell you how completely fucked the American sense of entitlement is (young and old) and anyone who has ever explored Sweden by foot can describe an entirely different sense for freedom.

But even our own perception of our surroundings are pretty much fucked.

It's easy to tag any of our movements with political sloganry.  We advocate choice and rail against those who try to suppress ours- as we should.  And every now and then we get in an argument with a well-meaning person who isn't as loud as us and we make them feel embarrassed—not because they tried to stop our choices but because we didn't agree with theirs.  This is the language we see when we again limit our super-special-X-men-vision to only our own causes and we mutter things such as, "that's so redneck" or "that's so hetero" or in any way think that the situation of mountain life is born out of any aggressive force that you can change.  You can't affect it- you can only be a part of it and if it changes it certainly will regardless of your crusade.

So I ask for you to answer in your own head during your tenure as a citizen in this area:  Why would anyone perceive a cultural war here?  Are we misusing the word "war" in that context?  Do we even know what the fuck we are talking about?

That last one is the real doozy.  With our cable TV and "outside influence" we also have become the poster children for- well, everything really.  We can rattle off 5% of the context for a myriad of world issues and the federal and state problems within our own country.  We often make no effort to dig towards context or connect dots.  We protest animal cruelty outside a traveling circus at the Civic Center wearing or leather shoes we bought from a really quaint second-hand store.  We argue how Avril Lavigne is nothing but trite manufactured syrup that nobody with taste should like and we feign appalled faces at the masses who automatically give her shit music a free pass; then we write nothing but glowing or moderately approving reviews of local artists while listening to our collection of three thousand stolen MP3's by indie bands or at least those Best Buy hinted might be an indie band (they opened for so-and-so, therefore they can't be bad).

I know it because I do it to. I catch myself doing it to even in the most mundane of situations.  Example: I really liked this new CD by Fiction Plane, until I found out Sting's son was a member of the band.  I was disappointed and I stopped listening for awhile.  It was one of the best examples of self-absorbed snobbery—the same kind we rail against all the time. 

Obviously I'm using "we" throughout here loosely.  But to borrow a phrase: it's the context, stupid.

So.  We say "The Cultural War" which is what?  Who is on what side?  Are the youth "hoppin mad" at the Wal-Mart customers while we wear our eBay or Amazon purchases?   Are we for or against the people out of work?  If they overlap with the people we suspect are racist, white and politically polarized- do we really care?  It is imperative you spend some time thinking about these kinds of questions before hopping on any bandwagon.  If we truly were this group of special people with unique ideas and thoughts than we would abhor the kind of jargon that suggests we are in any way a part of some movement we never really signed up for.  Suddenly, we're a club.

We're creative, but we're getting lazy.  Creatives take more pride in their eccentricities and bother to discover and utilize context in their work.  It's referred to as perspective.  They don't sell it at Hot Topic. 

The "face" of Appalachia is not you or I- it is the geography itself.  Ah, the probably over-emphasized line from my former professor, "Geography is fate."  But he's probably right, you know.  When Bill Hicks uttered, "you're children are NOT special" he wasn't just talking to you, indicating that your children won't be special—he is essentially talking to all parents—our parents.  We're the ones that are not all that special.  Not automatically anyway.  People that think they are all individually special and yet acting in unison under unconsidered causes without any situational context are essentially frats.

So it comes down to this advice from me, which is no where near as erudite as my professors:  Fucking read the book.  Do the math.  Grasp the context.  Know what you are getting yourself into.  Use words with at least the consideration of the weight they might have.  And for the love of fucking god—if you advocate choice and diversity so hard, don't fucking knock other people's choices.  I'm not saying anyone should lay down and take it—I'm saying that you need to be careful that you don't become the people you detest in your zeal to find acceptance.

This has been your completely unsolicited public service announcement.  You may now return to your regularly scheduled War for a New Appalachia.

End.

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