Entertainment For Lively Minds
I player tip-off :Dirty South by Rich Hall
Posted by Chris G on 13 July 2010 - 6:27pm.
Just caught up with this excellent documentary about how American culture in general and its films in specific have portrayed the south. It has the wonderful quality of being an authored piece so Rich Hall doesn't equivocate in telling us what he thinks. His take on musical biopics is for instance wonderfully blunt but he gives the impression of having seen the films he's discussing more than once and has enough background in critical theory and writing etc to explain why certain films work and others don't. Oh and at 1hr.30 the film gives enough time to this fascinating subject.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00t26zf/Rich_Halls_The_Dirty_South...
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Yep
watched this last nite and was ace
"That is a picture of Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash in the same room. If rock n roll was a religion that would be the equivelant of a picture of Jesus, Buddah, Mohammed and Carl Perkins in the same room"
Expat iPlayer viewing problem
Does anyone know a way of watching the iPlayer if you're abroad? I usually don't mind missing out on the TV side but I really fancy watching this.
If you google "how to watch BBC Iplayer abroad"....
....you'll find a fair share of suggestions. I believe some of them do work. Trial and error.
Thanks for the tip-off for this. Just checked the listings and its repeated tomorrow night after the Live Aid documentary. And again later in the week. Skyplus box duly programmed.
Tor
That's all I will say on the subject.
Expat double posting problem
sorry about that - had to happen eventually.
I watched most of it
and I have to say apart from a good one-liner or two and the odd interesting idea - I thought it was a confused and confusing ramble through some familiar territory.
For example, with the whole "Inherit The Wind" sequence was it his intention to say that the South was a place of enlightenment and balanced teaching - and that it was the Hollywood machine that re-imagined it as a drama between the forces of old-time religion and the impetus for progress?
Firstly, I would say that the factual basis of that premise is questionable - and secondly, the insight that Hollywood demonizes, glamourises or otherwise distorts its subject matter is hardly a new one.
The South is a deeply complex, nuanced and layered place and the artistic response to the nexus of race and religion, indulgence and denial, suffering and emancipation that it embodies is equally varied and contradictory. At once, celebratory and compromised, granular and mytho-poeic.
The South is the location for much of my favourite work in literature, film and music. I'm not sure Rich Hall's film added to my understanding of it as a place or the art it's fostered.