At The New Republic, Michael Washburn explains today's fascination with Appalachia:
(via Book Forum)What’s changed instead is our relationship to isolation. The very thing that made Appalachia a horror story [in 1972's Deliverance], or at least a land of dumbasses, has evolved into something that we find laudatory, charming, and most importantly, endangered. It’s in Appalachia that the invasions of the contemporary world—cell phones, ubiquitous surveillance, insidious immersion marketing, strip mall monoculture—has been, in our minds, kept in check. Everything—everything—is so abundantly available in America, but often lacking in character. In the distorted Appalachia of the cultural imaginary nothing is abundant, so what’s there feels uncompromised. And the isolated economic systems of Appalachia seem largely immune to the interconnected, seemingly omnipotent financial systems that have been malfunctioning for five years.
Penns Valley in Central PA
There has long been a confusion between simplicity and authenticity—the latter being a fraught, elastic concept. For the Williamsburgish [Brooklyn] consumption enclaves that dot the country, authenticity has become the signature paranoia of the age, hence the fascination with artisanal, small-batch anything. And "out there," in the countryside, the simple life has long been seen as the authentic America. What seems to be overlooked, at least in the popular precincts of American culture, is how much economics dictates the look of authenticity. Within (or despite) the enduring poverty and perceived backwardness, Appalachia seems to boast some pure, historically isolated bastion of this simple, authentic America. The historical and continuous mis-imagination of Appalachia has allowed the region to retain an aura. It now has on its side that fact that it’s viewed as a place that has never changed, and this lack of change seems like strength.
