Ron Howard’s Hillbilly Elegy debuted this month on Netflix, offering an undeniably grim portrayal of Appalachian southwest Ohio. To be fair, it is not quite the darkest portrayal of Appalachian Ohio on Netflix this pandemic year. That dubious distinction belongs to The Devil All the Time, a remorseless horror movie adapted from the novel by Donald Ray Pollock, depicting a freakshow of religious mania, sex abuse, suicide, and serial murder. While Hillbilly Elegy claimed to reflect urban Appalachian life in southwest Ohio, The Devil All the Time offered a slice of gothic fantasy set in the state’s rural southeast. Both films topped Netflix’s most-watched list on their first days of screening.
What the popularity of such brutal viewing says about America’s view of southern Ohio—and Appalachian Ohio in particular—I’ll let others debate. This review of Ron Howard’s adaptation of J.D. Vance’s controversial memoir is simply my two cents. Nor is it a review of Vance’s book. Others have written at great length on that account, most of them better qualified than myself. (Notably, Vance’s memoir inspired a critical collection of essays and writings: Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy (2019). And this December 3, Downbound Books, the UACC, and West Virginia University Press present “Don’t Cry for Us J.D. Vance,” an online public event with readings by Ohio authors sharing their perspectives of Appalachia: register here.) I will confess, my interest in Hillbilly Elegy is personal. Like many folks, I have witnessed the angry passions unleashed by Vance’s memoir. I’ve also taught Intro to Appalachia classes at Miami University’s Hamilton and Middletown campuses. The reaction of my students, often from the same demographic background, was striking. Some rebuked the book’s stereotyping of their culture, not to mention Vance’s conservative social critique. Others took pride that a working-class kid from Middletown, Ohio put his hometown on the map. These polarized opinions suggest why Vance’s work is so controversial. Many writers have traded in stereotype about the culture, but Vance’s background raises awkward questions of identity. Who gets to speak on behalf of Appalachia? Vance’s family, like many others, were economic migrants, moving to urban Ohio from rural Kentucky in the last century, and keeping a foot in both places ever since. Admittedly, Vance’s world is not the timeless Appalachia of scenic mountains, but it is Appalachian nonetheless. Sadly, the strangeness of Vance’s world explains Hillbilly Elegy’s phenomenal success. Director Ron Howard, a Hollywood liberal with a solid track record (Apollo 13, Cinderella Man), is just the latest in a long line of commentators who see Vance’s story, not as the story of a young man from Middletown, Ohio, but implicitly the key to understanding Trump’s America. Thus, Howard boils drama down to fable, sprinkling the ordeals of Vance’s family, including his mother Bev’s heroin addiction and numerous unstable relationships, with voiced-over narration explaining the meaning of the story. “My family’s not perfect,” concludes J.D. Vance (Gabriel Basso), “but they made me who I am, and gave me chances that they never had.” Throughout, the elder wisdom of J.D.’s formidable “Mawmaw” (a chain-smoking Glenn Close) is contrasted with the downward spiral of his addicted mother (Amy Adams). These relationships are at the heart of this film, which like the book’s subtitle, offers “A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.” J.D.’s rise from poverty to Yale Law School and his mother’s eventual recovery offer some kind of happy ending, but the lack of explanation for this resolution is weirdly unsettling. Mercifully, J.D. Vance’s much-criticized sociological musings are axed from the movie (few viewers wish to be lectured to), but like it or not, his welfare critique lay at the heart of the book. Without this focal point, the movie struggles to make do with half-baked platitudes about family values. Admittedly, Hillbilly Elegy was better than its YouTube trailer, which strung together the film’s shoutiest moments. Ron Howard is normally a gifted director, but here inspiration escaped him. Amy Adams and Glenn Close gave strong performances, and Owen Asztalos (young J.D.) showed great acting potential. Arguably, Hillbilly Elegy’s ultimate failing is how it rides slipshod over history. As my friend Sam Ashworth (Middletown Historical Society) pointed out, the film contained several historical inaccuracies, great and small. Sam drew my attention to a quote by Stephen Stoll (Ramp Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia): “Seeing the world without the past would be like visiting a city after a devastating hurricane and declaring that the people there have always lived in ruins.” Among the details screwed up was Middletown’s Armco steel plant, depicted in the 1950s, displaying a logo not used until the subsequent decade. “Imagine the outcry if a detail like this had been overlooked in Ron Howard’s Apollo 13?” asked Sam, pertinently. GRADE: C-
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AuthorMatthew Smith, PhD (History). Public Programs at Miami University Regionals. Historian of Appalachia, the Ohio Valley, & the early American republic. Archives
February 2024
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