Capturing Southern Identities

Historically, Hollywood fiction films have presented the South through three representational lenses: the South as Old South, the South as other, and the South as battleground of the Civil Rights movement. In fact, by the mid-twentieth century, these fictional images began to seep into the public imagination of the region and its people. In Framing the South, Allison Graham claims, "By 1957, many white southerners knew their necks were red, and most black southerners knew they were voiceless images in a tale of blood and vengeance. They'd read it all before ... They'd seen it in the movies" (1-2). It is not surprising, then, that with the emergence of accessible documentary filmmaking tools in the late twentieth century Southerners began to comment filmically on their cinematic image. In my project, I examine the ways in which auto-ethnographic Southern documentaries utilize the medium to respond the constructed nature of the abovementioned cinematic representations of the South. Moreover, I discuss how each auto-ethnographic Southern documentary highlights the ways in which films, including their own, manipulate cultural representation. Specifically, I examine Ross McElwee's Sherman's March (1986), Elizabeth Barret's Stranger with a Camera (1999), Andrew Douglas's Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus (2003), Christie Herring and Andre Robinson's Waking in Mississippi (1998), and Charlene Gilbert's Homecoming ... Sometimes I am Haunted by Memories of Red Dirt and Clay (1999). By analyzing these films against their respective Hollywood representations, I illuminate the methods by which the directors take back their image through illustrating the constructed nature of depictions in their own films. In doing this, the auto-ethnographers undermine the representations in fiction films and highlight the fabrication involved in capturing Southern identities.