Rant – CNN’s Photo Blog Depicts Subversive View of South
(This story has been updated. See below and CLICK HERE for update.)
A nice hearty “Fuck You!” is due CNN today for posting a photo montage that depicts “everyday” people from The South as Klansman, snake preachers, and inbred fuckwits driving their clunkers through the mud.
The CNN photo blog entitled: “Life In Appalachia: Regression to the Mean” includes admittedly very powerful, well-done images that do give an honest interpretation of a very fringe, yet nonetheless present element of rural, Southern living. But the problem is these pictures are depicted as a realistic regional representation, as a global view into life in Appalachia as opposed to a case study of a diminutive periphery population on the rapid decline. Southern people are offered up as hillbilly oddity, like Barnum & Bailey circus fodder to be oogled at, as CNN expects its readers to marvel at deformity and ignorance as high art.
Why couldn’t CNN and photographer Stacy Kranitz depict this for what it is, a fringe case study? Instead it is Appalachia that is offered up as fringe for being “outside mainstream American culture”, yet the people depicted in the photos are labeled as “everyday” members of Southern society.
Photographer Stacy Kranitz is drawn to people outside mainstream American culture. Last summer she traveled through West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee for three months exploring the towns and the everyday lives of the people of Appalachia.
If CNN or this photographer were going to undertake this task, why not depict the other side of Southern living as balance? Main Street parades, fruit and harvest festivals, local church gatherings, family gatherings on the back porch?
What if you took pictures of poor black people in urban slums, with mothers smoking crack while babies were left unfed in dirty diapers and said this was a representation of the urban America, or black America? Wouldn’t this be wrong? Where are the black people in these pictures that are supposed to be representative of The South? The South has one of the largest concentrations of black people in all of the country. Was there not enough “regression” in those photos to make the piece? Why does Hollywood and the media inherently avoid the negative stereotyping of other races and regions in the name of political correctness, but has a perpetual open season on The South?
CNN and this photographer should take a step back out of their high-brow reality tunnels and think of how these pictures and caption will represent The South to people from Europe or Japan, from Long Island or Seattle that have never been there.
The reason that people cling to corporate culture, especially people from The South is because they don’t want to be perceived as weird or “outside mainstream American culture”. This creates a cycle of consumerism and debt, people working bad jobs and living unfulfilled lives as they sell their indigenous agrarian culture to chase the corporate ideal of success and acceptance. This is the reason that drugs and cultural subversions like country rap have infiltrated rural areas, preying on people whose self-esteem has been stolen from them by media in features just like this.
CNN should be absolutely ashamed of itself for its short-sighted attempt to create interest and awareness with such a shallow approach.
Disgusting.
Long live the culturally-rich, beautifully-simple people of The South!
****UPDATE****UPDATE****UPDATE****UPDATE****
Apparently the photographer of this photo blog, Stacy Kranitz found CNN’s choice to label the pictures “everyday life in Appalachia” (which was bolded in red above in this story) “just as offensive and shocking” as it was to the rest of us.
In a correspondence with a CNN reader, Stacy Kranitz explained how CNN was responsible for the caption that introduced the photo montage, as well as selecting the specific images used to “reinforce stereotypes” from a broader collection of photos.
…(Stacy Kranitz) was just as disturbed by the CNN piece as many of the commenters are. She explained that CNN’s decision to add the label “everyday life in Appalachia” to her image of the Klan was just as offensive and shocking to her as it is to the rest of us.
Stacy wrote that her project is meant to “look at regionalism and the factors and mythology that contribute to it.” To do this, she wanted to acknowledge the existence of stereotypes and then confront them and prove that they often don’t hold true. CNN chose to use only the images that reinforce stereotypes and present them as the whole project rather than a small part of the project as they are intended.”
May 7, 2012 @ 1:23 pm
This sickens me. The North continues to rape our culture.
May 7, 2012 @ 1:32 pm
Look, I am disgusted as you are, but lets not turn this into a regional war. I am sure there are many folks, if not the majority of folks from the North that find this just as repulsive as we do. Remember, CNN is based in Atlanta.
May 7, 2012 @ 9:19 pm
I am from the north and I didn’t do one Goddamned thing to your culture you simple prick.
May 7, 2012 @ 1:35 pm
I live in Minnesota. I am not raping anything. “DONTCHA KNOW?”
May 7, 2012 @ 4:57 pm
you betcha…
May 8, 2012 @ 6:30 am
Uff da!!
May 7, 2012 @ 2:17 pm
This reminds of me of the Bill Maher episode when they interviewed “ordinary, every day” Mississippi residents about their political views, supposedly not deliberately targeting the ones who looked like “white trash.” Except all of the people they interviewed were white males in camouflage baseball caps, many with missing teeth, one calling Obama a “half-breed.” They didn’t interview a single woman or a single black person, so they ignored about 2/3rds of Mississippi’s population. I don’t give a shit about politics, and I’m not for either party, but you can obviously tell that they purposely went after the dudes who looked like they would say something ignorant, and only used those clips. Then the panel went on to simultaneously mock and feel condescending pity for the entire rural South. For being too stupid to know what’s best for us.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb62fpsyhC4
May 7, 2012 @ 2:37 pm
That’s exactly what I thought of. They also avoided those white male Mississippians of us who are educated and might have something balanced to offer. They claimed those people were the first people they came across, but they didn’t mention where exactly it was. I’m guessing they got out of their vehicles outside one of the lower-rent casinos or near a particularly seedy bar.
May 7, 2012 @ 5:35 pm
Well they say in the full video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW6F_eeeumU&feature=related that those were just random people, but that’s probably bs. And why didn’t they interview anyone in the bigger cities of MS? There are some rednecks in most rural areas.
May 8, 2012 @ 9:16 am
And the very next episode of Bill Maher had the camera crew in New York at the Welfare office and showed a bunch of blacks proclaiming their love for “Obamabucks”. So, that’s not a fair comparison at all.
May 8, 2012 @ 12:47 pm
The point was that the director of the video went after walking stereotypes instead of everyday citizens in Mississippi. The fact that they repeated this process in New York, but from the opposite end of the politcal spectrum, just reinforces that the director’s intention was to find people who conformed to popular stereotypes. So yes, it is a fair comparison.
May 7, 2012 @ 2:17 pm
It’s not just the South; I think it’s rural America in general. The South seems to get it the worst of all though. Here in Iowa, a college professor wrote a long piece in The Atlantic about how we’re all meth junkies and rednecks with no hope and that all we do is farm, as if farming is a bad thing. I know you said you weren’t a huge fan of them, Trig, but DBT actually did a lot to debunk some of the ridiculous stereotypes people have of southerners. Regardless, there’ll always be people out there like this who think they’re doing some sort of service by making an entire group of people look like idiots when it’s really only a few.
May 7, 2012 @ 4:36 pm
Great article. I have done some reading on the same issues and would highly recommend “The Redneck Manifesto” and “Hillbilly: A Cultural History of an American Icon.”
May 7, 2012 @ 5:07 pm
Saw Jim Goad open up for Hank III in 2007 backed by Power of County. Was not half bad.
May 7, 2012 @ 4:40 pm
Why must rural America continue to be shit on?
May 7, 2012 @ 5:14 pm
This is repulsive, but to be expected from the liberal media. In the narrow mind of the progressive, socialist liberal, there is no place in society for rural America. They are a threat to them and their view of government because of their self-sufficiency. If they had their druthers, rural America would have been stamped out a long time ago.
For a historical reference of where that happened, read about how Stalin deliberately starved nearly 15 million rural Ukrainians to death during the early 1930s, and Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” which led to 40 million deaths by starvation in just 5 years. Both were plans to eliminate the rural population in favor of urban industrialism.
May 9, 2012 @ 5:44 am
Um, as a progressive liberal that lives in rural America, (1) you are out of your mind, painting with as broad of a brush as CNN, and (2) your Stalin and Mao analogies are wholly inappropriate.
This has nothing to do with politics, but more likely a bunch of urban, corporate media types which have had no exposure to real rural culture.
May 9, 2012 @ 12:19 pm
Y’know, honestly, I really wish I could rip your post for being cynical, jaded, and skewed directly from an extreme right-wing perspective. Unfortunately, I cannot, because I think your words were pretty much on the money!
May 7, 2012 @ 5:22 pm
It just shows how out of touch our “information” professionals are. We wouldn’t be having to save country music if it weren’t for these kind of assholes. I am born & bred way north of the Mason Dixon and I can see thru this garbage journalism. Thanks Trigger
May 7, 2012 @ 5:29 pm
I’m looking at Stacy Kranitz’ other work. Here’s a collection from California: http://stacykranitz.wordpress.com/category/california/
…and New York: http://stacykranitz.wordpress.com/category/new-york/
On the CNN slideshow it states “Photographer Stacy Kranitz is drawn to people outside mainstream American culture”. The pics from the Appalachia look typical of her work, which I’m enjoying. I agree that CNN is slighting southern culture.
May 7, 2012 @ 5:49 pm
I would recommend some of you go to http://www.theglobalreality.com for answers to your questions. The film “The Secret Right vol 2” will fill in some blanks. You wonder why there are articles like this and stories like the Trayvon Martin case sensationalized? Democrat v Republican, Liberal v Conservative, Black v White v blah, blah, blah! Divide and conquer. Keep the masses bickering amongst themselves.
Sorry for the rant, but it needed to be done. And since i am being so bold: i will take Bobby Bare Jr over Hank 3 and Shooter any day!!!
May 7, 2012 @ 8:28 pm
I’ve been a chest-thumping anti-pundit for years. I don’t think those pictures were published in that manner to bepolarizing, I think they were published out of ignorance. The CNN editors likely thought that the graphic, racist nature of the images would insulate them from backlash, that nobody would want to “own” or identify with those images enough to be angry about how they were presented. We were supposed to just be shocked and then admire them for their access and artistic nature.
May 7, 2012 @ 6:21 pm
What makes this even wose is the fact that CNN is headquartered in Atlanta which is in the greatest state in the country, Georgia. Which happens to be, guess where, in the South and at the very bottom of the Appalachian Mountains. CNN should be ashamed of themselves.
May 7, 2012 @ 6:31 pm
I say fuck CNN and Bill Mahr. The south don’t need
them. anyway. Same as we don’t need them. We’re doing just fine without them.
May 8, 2012 @ 1:26 pm
nobody needs those two.
May 7, 2012 @ 6:44 pm
“Where are the black people in these pictures that are supposed to be representative of The South? The South has one of the largest concentrations of black people in all of the country. Was there not enough “regression” in those photos to make the piece?”
Demographically speaking, isn’t the Appalachia region significantly “less black” than the South in general? For example, I think West Virginia is overwhelmingly white.
May 7, 2012 @ 8:16 pm
That’s probably a fair point. It’s probably also a fair point that the pictures were more about Appalachia than the South. I was pretty angry when I wrote this. It’s not perfect. But the point still stands, where’s any other demographic in this montage than poor white racists?
May 8, 2012 @ 8:25 am
I agree that your main point still stands, although only the two Klan pictures stood out for me as portraying blantant racists. The stereotype of “poor backwards white folks” definitely seems to be what they were going for, however.
Odd title to the CNN blog. My first take was that it meant to convey that the region was regressing to a state of meanness. Then I read that it’s meant to mean a statiscal phenomenon where the more measurements one makes during an experiment, the closer one gets to the “mean” or average. Yet, the blog consists of only 16 photos to represent an area as large as Appalachia and that seem to have been chosen to conform to the stereotype. Hmmmm.
Great piece and discussion.
May 8, 2012 @ 9:17 am
I would have more of a problem with it, if it weren’t part of a larger photo series with the goal of regressing to the mean. Her goal was to photo “everything interesting” and over time present a more representative set of images. As in all things, the outliers are the most interesting.
I hate to say this as someone who grew up in and around Appalachia, but this is a fair representation of *some* places I’ve been in poor, rural white America. The fact that some of this stuff exists at all is appalling and worthy of some coverage.
May 8, 2012 @ 11:03 am
Y’all please read the update above supplied to us by emfrank. Apparently the photographer is just as disturbed by this as we are.
May 8, 2012 @ 11:15 am
Saw it shortly after he posted it and it confirmed some suspicions I had. If anything, your “hearty fuck you” seems even more appropriate. Now we can add misrepresenting the artist’s work to the the list of transgressions.
May 7, 2012 @ 7:30 pm
When my folks came to the states from England, we moved about a bit before settling in the south. We had seen a bit. Try being Irish in the UK in the sixties; it was by no means an easy thing. (Try being a mixed Irish marriage for that matter. If this means nothing to you, good).
The south was a total shock. We were greeted by a covenant on the house we eventually purchased forbidding it to be resold to a Black person. My mother threw a fit and it was reluctantly taken off the house contract. I have dense curly hair typical of the Black Irish, my dads folk. One summer I was invited to a birthday party at a local pool. I was denied entrance to the pool. I had tanned a bit over the summer and my complexion runs dark anyways. My mum came to pick me up and the lady at the pool accosted her for mating with a Black man. Although “black” was not the word she used. Jaysus, my dads folks are from freaking Kerry.
There’s plenty of fine things that come and came out of the south. Music being one of them. But there’s also some pretty foul history. In that way ya’ll are a lot like the British. I’m still alive and I remember this crap, and plenty of the fine folks who threw this crap– and were accepted for it– are still alive as well. And there’s still rivers of this crap flowing through the South. It’s gotten a lot better, and like so many things in life it’ll never be perfect. Yes, the KKK grandmaster ain’t quite as accepted, but it’s pretty easy to find some uniquely Southern garbage.
So you deal with it, accept that history and move against it. But until my generation and one or two after it is gone, you’re gonna have folks who are gonna bring it up. Frankly, I’m sufficently horrified that various media outlets have such an easy time finding these idiots. But I’ve lived here long enough to know it really ain’t all that hard to find them. I do it more than enough and I actively try to avoid these morons.
Deal with your history. And do what you can to make the chapter you’re writing now better than the last one. It’s really all you can do.
Some of you good folks are probably going to get riled by this post. That’s okay. I’ve been an outsider in just about every culture I’ve ever been in , so I’m used to a bit of anger from the status quo. But before you haul off with a giant “Fuck you” in my direction understand that the past is always going to have some life in the present. This photo essay is part of that. You don’t have to like it and I’m glad if you don’t . Means you don’t want any part of the pictured fools attatched to you — down to their thinking. And the future might be an improvement.
And yeah, I know there’s racism aplenty in the north. Alas, it seems a basic and venal human sin– ask the British. Heck, the KKK was formed in Indiana to keep people like me off these fair shores. But Bull Connor is more recent. Folks do remember their history, especially that they’ve lived through. And sometimes they forget it when it doesn’t put them in a good light, too.
May 7, 2012 @ 7:46 pm
Well said
May 7, 2012 @ 8:21 pm
Make no mistake, I’ve got less love for those two morons up there with the pointy hats than I do CNN. But perpetuating negative stereotypes just makes both sides dig in even more. The way to solve this problem is by being honest about it, and there was nothing honest about that depiction of Appalachia.
May 7, 2012 @ 10:50 pm
“Deal with your history. And do what you can to make the chapter you”™re writing now better than the last one. It”™s really all you can do.”
Well.. yeah. That seems to be the point of the above article. Many people are sick and tired of being portrayed and dismissed as klansmen and snakehandlers. We are NOT. We can’t and won’t apologize endlessly. My Catholic grandparents moved from Germany to Indiana. Does that make me a Nazi KKK child molester? How should I “deal with” this history? I deal with reality, and my reality doesn’t involve these stereotypes.
May 8, 2012 @ 8:03 am
Yeah, I’m from Arkansas, the state even the rest of the South makes redneck jokes about. My people came over here from Ireland and England over two centuries ago. Why should I pay for the sins of rich white guys who’ve been dead for decades? My family was in the middle of a big pine forest, not a cotton plantation. They act like anyone with a Southern accent is automatically a guilty party. I never oppressed anyone or kept anyone down. I can’t even afford the gas in my tuck to keep anyone down. I read somewhere that the only true racists are the ones with the power to oppress. And that ain’t me. I don’t care who people are or what they do, but I’m tired of all the elite Hollywood types’ demeaning depictions of us as stupid, racist rednecks. A redneck, maybe. But certainly not stupid and definitely not racist.
May 8, 2012 @ 2:01 am
I can”™t quite rap my head around this”¦ Liberals are all about acceptance correct? Huh. All I see is “acceptance” of people that historically haven”™t been accepted. My personal point of view is I don”™t care what color, race, or sexual preference anyone is. If a person”™s personal beliefs are different than mine, I don”™t care; just leave me the hell alone. I don”™t need another friend, and I”™m sick and tired of being bullied by the damn left about accepting different people. If they don”™t accept me, then why in the hell should I accept them? It”™s America”™s greatest double standard.
I want to know how many radicals live in suburban areas. Throughout the course of American community planning, suburban communities were created mainly for whites, though this fact is hardly even thought about. What would a radical living in a suburban area be then? Other than a hypocrite?
May 13, 2012 @ 8:04 pm
So much blah blah blah about the left forcing their views on everyone. I find that to be fucking hilarious. I mean, let’s totally ignore reality.
Nobody is forcing shit on you, fuckers. You are the ones who are taking someone else’s lifestyle as a personal attack on you and your “beliefs”. Why don’t you take your own advice. Live and let live.
May 8, 2012 @ 10:12 am
“The reason that people cling to corporate culture, especially people from The South is because they don”™t want to be perceived as weird or “outside mainstream American culture”. This creates a cycle of consumerism and debt, people working bad jobs and living unfulfilled lives as they sell their indigenous agrarian culture to chase the corporate ideal of success and acceptance. This is the reason that drugs and cultural subversions like country rap have infiltrated rural areas, preying on people whose self-esteem has been stolen from them by media in features just like this.”
Blame blame blame. It’s corporations that ruin music, and now it is corporations that ruin the south??? Hmmmm…isn’t WalMart the brain child of the deep south?
Bill Cosby, yes, the African American Bill Cosby, has said to his ethnic group, and the message to those who write things like this blog, should be the same…. stop blaming others.
And a final thought…stereotypes aren’t made from thin air. The inner city is what it is, as much as the mountains are in the mid-south. How many people that are ripping CNN for this love watching the show “Justified”? You don’t hear motorcycle riders whining about “Son’s of Anarchy” do you?
May 8, 2012 @ 10:13 am
My first instinct was to criticize the photographer, but not after reading some of the comments at CNN. Someone emailed the photographer, and had this to say:
“After being personally upset by this project, I emailed Stacy Kranitz, and she wrote me back almost right away. Stacy seemed to be very open to engaging in a dialogue about her project as a whole and the way it was re-conceived by CNN. She told me that she was just as disturbed by the CNN piece as many of the commenters are. She explained that CNN”™s decision to add the label “everyday life in Appalachia” to her image of the Klan was just as offensive and shocking to her as it is to the rest of us. Stacy wrote that her project is meant to “look at regionalism and the factors and mythology that contribute to it.” To do this, she wanted to acknowledge the existence of stereotypes and then confront them and prove that they often don’t hold true. CNN chose to use only the images that reinforce stereotypes and present them as the whole project rather than a small part of the project as they are intended.”
Looks like a decision at CNN is to blame. It have to say, though, that I think this is more about sensationalism in journalism than “liberalism” or any intention to polarize. They chose the most shocking photographs to publish. The comments are overwhelmingly negative, and I suspect there are as many on the left as on the right who are writing those comments.
May 8, 2012 @ 10:17 am
Great post. Nice to see some investigation into things before just throwing the whole thing under the bus. Although Trigger was directing most of his agnst at CNN, who we see was the ultimate decision maker.
But Trig should know a little about sensationalism and putting up a headline to attract attention.
May 8, 2012 @ 11:05 am
I stand behind my post and the title 100%, especially after hearing what the photographer had to say.
May 8, 2012 @ 10:25 am
Excellent information emfrank, I am going to add an update to the story about this. As I have stated numerous times, my issue is not necessarily with the photos, but the caption and how they were introduced. That is why I put those very lines of “everyday life in Appalachia” highlighted in red. I am glad to see the photographer was just as offended and shocked as we were at this misrepresentation of Appalachian people.
May 8, 2012 @ 1:53 pm
I took a few minutes to review the article and read the full text of the story. I know I’ll get skewered here but I am just not seeing anything that is attempting to portray all southerners as monsters. As Trig pointed out the text for the story does state “Photographer Stacy Kranitz is drawn to people outside mainstream American culture.” So she sought out and CCN has presented some of those kinds of photos but most (if not all) of the photos could have been clicked anywhere. The caption for the Klan couple says simply “A couple poses for a photo at a Ku Klux Klan gathering in Virginia.” Jeez the couple could have been from New Hampshire and attending a gathering in Virginia. Sorry but as an expatriated southerner myself I didn’t see anything that me feel like I or the south was being picked on.
As a side note, saw Justin Townes Earle last night and he is the shit. Trig I gotta tell ya I see JTE has a bit of hipster style going on himself. Thoughts?
Okay, hit me with your best shot. Fire away!!!
May 8, 2012 @ 2:25 pm
I think ones level of disgust with the way the photos were portrayed depends on a number of factors and can be different for all of us. All else I’ll say is the photographer herself was disgusted, and in my book they goes a long way to telling the true story behind how the photographs were meant to be portrayed, and how they were portrayed by CNN.
Yes, Justin does have some hipster elements to his style, or maybe hipsters have some Justin elements to their style. The guy is seen as a trend setter and has been GQ’s “Best Dressed” before. For whatever reason, how weird or silly it is, JTE is a national fashion trendsetter. I think he’s actually gone less “hipster” over the past couple of years. I try to not let any of that cloud my feelings about his music. If that is a passion of his, hey, let it out.
May 8, 2012 @ 11:02 am
What? CNN biased?
May 8, 2012 @ 11:24 am
The bottom line is that CNN chose to present the pictures in a blatantly stereotypical fashion. There are people of this nature everywhere throughout this country. It has nothing to do with North or South. However those of you from the North that have decided to defend yourselves through name calling and trash talking toward people who are defending their region, just goes to further incite the issue. Hatred begets hatred and ignorance begets ignorance. CNN sensationalized the photographer’s pictures to the most offensive form to create a news story… And that they did very well. Look how many people are talking about it here. Well played CNN, you are however still stereotyping, hate filled, ignorant, douche bags. I do expect the see your region’s “Dirty South Scene” represented with photos of drug dealers, sagging pants, cars with 36 inch wheels, 40 oz’s, and smoke filled rap concerts… You know, just to be fair and unbiased. No??? I didn’t think so…
May 8, 2012 @ 11:48 am
“However those of you from the North that have decided to defend yourselves through name calling and trash talking toward people who are defending their region, just goes to further incite the issue. ”
To be accurate, the person who “defended their region”, as you call it, did so by accusing the North of raping Southern culture. And yes, one person responded by calling him a prick. Big deal.
May 8, 2012 @ 12:05 pm
you missed the point of my reply and like CNN focused in only on the negative. People are passionate and loyal to the areas they call home, I agree that rape was a strong and unnecessary way to describe it. But directly attacking an individual who made a comment that was not directed at any one here was rude, offensive, and out of line as well. And a “who cares” or “big deal” type of attitude just guarantees that these types of issues will continue in this country.
May 8, 2012 @ 1:14 pm
I didn’t really miss the point of your reply. I just responded to a part I took exception to. My point was that only one and only Northener replied viscerally (and rather mildly so, for a blog comment) and that to an extremely strong statement aimed at the North. I interpreted your “those of you from the North” comment to mean that there were many such people attacking those who were simply defending their region. I don’t see that.
May 8, 2012 @ 1:29 pm
But again, the comment from the “southerner” was not directed at anyone in particular. The comment from the “northern” was a direct verbal attack on that individual. If your issue was with my wording that is my bad. But in my opinion, the verbal attack was much more out of line than a general statement.
May 9, 2012 @ 12:33 pm
It is truly a shame that we live in such a cultural divide at this time in our history. It’s my belief that there are definitely some really ugly stereotypes that are supported and portrayed by the majority of national media. So, the South, and the rest of rural America for that matter, is merely comprised of ignorant white trash? Really? Well, how do we explain people like Dr. Martin Luther King, William Faulkner, George Washington Carver, Anne Rice, and several U.S. presidents, just to name a few, all of whom came from the South? As a transplanted Southerner who now lives in LA, I long ago gave up on the notion that anyone not from the South, will never really ‘get it’.
Doing The News Sucks Tiddy Bits
May 10, 2012 @ 10:32 am
[…] He’s got a point.  […]
May 11, 2012 @ 6:13 pm
The Klan saved the White South after the War Between the states, something to be proud of not ashamed.