338 pages | September 8, 2005 | PDF | 7 Mb
Harkins, assistant professor of history at Western Kentucky University, means to examine the “cultural and ideological construct `the hillbilly’… rather than the actual people of the southern mountains.” To this end, he examines some obscure early American printed material, Paul Webb’s Esquire magazine cartoons from the 1930s and ’40s, a handful of famous newspaper comic strips (e.g., Snuffy Smith, Barney Google, L’il Abner), the careers of some “hillbilly” musicians, a series of mostly minor motion pictures and, finally, a few popular TV sitcoms, especially The Beverly Hillbillies. He argues that the “hillbilly” label has vacillated from indicating degraded ignorance and savagery to something almost idyllic, a premodern, rural simplicity. Curiously, Harkins makes only passing reference to some influential novels (e.g., The Grapes of Wrath; Harriette Arnow’s The Dollmaker), which not only became highly successful films but arguably did more to influence public understanding of the “hillbilly” than a film like Stark Love