Weird South: Interview + Analysis
In form with my subject of study, instead of going with the ‘mainstream’ or expected choice in interviewee I decided to ask the mother of a close friend, Mary L — (25+ Georgia resident, New York-native), for an interview on her thoughts about the South and what she considered weird or different from her hometown, in a small Long Island community in Syosset, New York State, that she left for Georgia in 1984. Mary’s perspective is a unique one in that, as she was in many ways an outsider to her adopted home in the South: no family nearby, mother to young children, ‘Lapsed’ Catholic with an unpretentious, New England accent — reminiscent of Jackie O., (think Drew Barrymore in Grey Gardens), she has always maintained a refreshingly unique perspective on herself and her home. Through this interview, I observed that by simultaneously being a perceived (and often treated like) an outsider, to the region and community she lives within, and is a apart of, she is an unexpected, or untapped source for observation of the South and what makes it a distinct region in the U.S. The easiest place to start about the Southern Identity, is to ask someone what they find (or believe) to be unique to the South. Naturally, I want to know what she initially thought was weird about the South, back in the ‘80s and what, if anything, is weird to her now (or still weird).
Comparing her first impressions of Georgia and the South, from the mid-1980s, to now, I asked to hear more about what stood out to her, what still does, and what changes, if any, has she observed.
By tracing a ‘Northern-transplant’s observations, like Mary’s, about the differences in life and cultures between the two once rival regions, we might begin to trace an outline of the Southern Identity. Seeing the South from an unlikely outsider’s perspective is detrimental in keeping an accurate and rounded impression of the region. This may be even more relevant when that perspective is from a long time, unassuming resident of both rival regional factions. So to start, I asked her about the circumstances that brought her to the South back in the 1980's:
0:05 “…To, live. It’s more affordable, here, [in the South] than it is up North. [in New York.]” “And really this is like a melting pot just like New York now. Because, you’ve [the South] got a lot of Northerners. You’ve got people from all over, here.” “When we first moved down, in 1983, maybe — Joe was born in ’84 — so, it was ’84 I guess, he was 10 months old when we moved here.”
0:46 “What was the reasoning to move? With Joe being ten months old?”
“His dad got a job. He wanted to move here, so that’s why we moved.”
Mary’s former husband got the job through a friend he had left NY, months earlier, to visit. “When he got back, he said pack your bags, we’re moving to Georgia. He said, ‘I got an apartment and a job.’ And we just had to follow.”
She sites Stone Mountain and Kennesaw Mountain State Park as the locations / attractions she would take her visiting relatives from New York, to. What seemed most odd to them and her was the heavy amount of attention paid to the Civil War and the negative portrayal of the Union (namely the popular Yankee exploit of Sherman’s fiery march to the Sea). Mary made a personal connection to this stereotype in Southern tourist attractions as being biased and overly sentimental about this one national conflict, (my visit to the Hampton, GA Civil War Reenactment is an alluring testament to this) to one of her more negatively ‘weird’ experiences in regards to her something she experienced in her early days in the South. From among her own (Southern) neighbors, once they knew she was not only an outsider to the South, but a ‘Yankee,’ their treatment towards her is surprisingly hostile, (besides being completely unwarranted), in nature when you take into account that these people are referencing a 150+ year old sentiment. Listening to Mary’s account, the once familiar use and casual phrase of “them Yankees,” takes on an almost malicious undertone; and adding to the myth of ‘Southern Hospitality’.
4:05 First impression of Georgia?
“Right, a lot of people had negative feelings towards Northerners. A couple of them — quote me on this — said that, “I was a damn yankee.” [laughs] “They said, “You damn Yankees. Come down here and decide to stay!” and “We don’t like it!”” “They don’t mind us coming down here to spend our money and visit, but they don’t like us staying.” “So, several neighbors made wise cracks like that to us, they’d say, “oh your just one of those damn Yankees,” and we were just so…[perplexed] by it. Because up North, we just think everyone blends, … Up North, people are people. That’s the way I was raised, … But here, people judged all the time. And that’s back when we first moved here. I don’t think it’s that way anymore. But now I think since there so many of us ‘damn Yankees’ that they can’t, [laughing] they can’t keep up with us.”
Further Explanation for my choice in Interviewee in relation to the weird locations I have visited thus far:
Being that much of this project has been inspired and progressed with the help of my own family members, all of whom are long time residents of the South, I thought it would be interesting to hear what aspects a “Northern transplant” to the South, would find weird, or odd. Alongside this, the family aspect of my sources and perspectives feels like it is important in gaging the “average joe” quality to the attractions I study. With Mary being the mother of three children, she spent her fair share of afternoons taking the kids to those less consumerist attractions, and perhaps subsequently those that were more of the home grown variety. My goals for the interview were to hear about some of those homegrown attractions, and talk about the ones that struck her as strange or offbeat. As a sort of test to my “southern-weird gage-blindness,” just in case there were sites I was missing that didn’t strike me as odd because I was too close to them to recognize it. What I learned from my conversation with Mary was something different from what I had expected, but not completely irrelevant to my project.
We started to get off track when we got into the treatment of Northerners and LGBTs by majority of locals here in GA: (in the 60's-80's back home in Rural-Suburban New York, vs Rural-Suburban Georgia in the 80's-present). Suburban sprawl of Acworth, where she raised her family.
I made the connection to the Barbie Beach attraction because of the comment made in one of the featured videos from that medium post, where the couple behind the display, explain how they are guilty of playfully teasing the conservative public, also referred to as “their detractors,” by making not so subtle displays for the more ‘controversial’ occasions like Gay Pride. “We do pride. Put up funny signs like: ‘Love is a many splendor.’ Just to, you know, stir the pot a little.” This and having dozens of naked Barbie dolls in a display in their front yard seem to be talking about the same thing Mary touched on: the treatments of the fringe groups and backgrounds (Catholics, Jews, LBGTs, Northerners, Nudist Barbies) all seem to be aware, or are being made aware, of their ‘otherness’ and therefore (for some reason) open to critique by that same opinionated, conservative posse of faceless detractors.
From the interview with Mary, it began with her mentioning the tragic suicide of a (homosexual) boy from her high school in Syosset, NY. Which lead her into a story about a similarly tragic experience that happened rather recently in Georgia, where a person of differing lifestyles is under very real pressure from their immediate community.
“That was in New York.” “And then the same when I moved down here, there was a young woman who worked with, in Target. She was a lesbian, she was a closet lesbian, I guess you’d call it, and she wound up doing the same, [voice gets an octave or two higher] because, I realized it’s hard for people that are different. They get ostracized and ridiculed.”
“Well, a lot of southerners are Baptists. And they think if you’re not in their group, you’re condemned. And that, that bothered me.” “I remember, so many people would try to pressure me to go to their church, and convert to being a Baptist instead of being a Catholic. And they acted like being a Catholic was terrible.”
Project Analysis
Project Origins:
Our only task for this project was to pick something within the South to research about in order to understand it and its role in defining / representing / perpetuating the “Southern Identity.” Pretty straight forward, right? Initially, I was worried that I wouldn’t, couldn’t find anything of substance to say towards this all but definite subject/term of the ‘Southern Identity.’ But as the weeks and the research went on, I realized that the locations of these weird or intriguing sites and locations for study, simply by being located -in- the South, were imposing on, and being imposed on by, — in some way or another — their Southern addresses.
With this project, I’m hoping to excite people about local and offbeat Tourist Attractions; and more overtly, I want to encourage de-familiarizing whatever is familiar to you in order to unlock an entirely new perspective on it. What I found most satisfying about my project was discovering the scholarly or academic aspects of what I considered to be one of my less scholarly interests. I want to invite everyone to do the same, ask yourself what you wouldn’t mind doing a research project on, no matter how out there or unscholarly it may seem, and do it. Look for the connections. Discover something about yourself through investigating your interests and the world makes a little more sense. That, and please go out and look for your own weird local oddities, learn something, share it with others, and myself!
I thoroughly enjoyed my project this semester, and see in it the potential for a lifetime of continued documentation for these types of places. There is just a wealth of knowledge to stumble upon about ourselves, and about the environments we come from, and the places we go to on weekends to “escape” those environments.
My choice to study the weird attractions of the South as a fortunate one because, no matter what I find, there’s an unexpected story there. If only for the fact that as tourists, you can forget that this is a built place that many others have been and will go for the same reasons that brought you there. There is a sort of collective bonding going on at these sites and whether or not we are conscious of it, there is an a importance to what messages or ideas the site is creating and broadcasting on its immediate environment. It’s the thrill of the hunt and gathering of an unexpected intellectualism in these “campy” attractions that most people, or tourists aren’t even aware of. There is a satisfaction found in taking a unassuming, “must-see” type sites and through research, finding out the more dynamic story or dimensions at work within it.
Possibility For Further Study
It doesn’t have to be restricted to happy tourist attractions, or manufactured experiences for ‘escape’. What about all the negative or the dark side of the “Weird South” platform? There’s a possibility that it be even more important to visit and research about all the negatively “weird” stuff that goes on in the South.
What about news media corporations like CNN or NBC? Aren’t they already doing this? To this, I will highly recommend watching this classic movie:
The films we screened in class this semester would all be very intriguing places to start for this initiative. I am thinking specifically of those documentaries on the post-Hurricane Katrina Gulf Coast, Non recognized tribes of Native Americans, the continued legacy of the Atlanta Child Murders, and so on. There is certainly plenty of cruel and unusual inconsistencies in the South worth investigation in order to document a “Southern Identity” with this project.
