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The "R" Word What's So Funny (and Not So Funny) about Redneck Jokes Anne Shelby Ifyou happen to be from eastern Kentucky, as I am, then other people's stereotypes ofthe place you are from are as much a part ofyour landscape as the hills themselves. They can loom as large and seem as permanent. You have to find your way over or around them. But unlike the mountains, which can be seen from some distance, stereotypes jump out at you in ambush-at parties and meetings, at dinner with friends, from movies, from magazines and newspapers , from your favorite TV show. Even in college classes. "And this group:' a University of Kentucky professor says of the eastern Kentucky population in a study oftelevision viewing habits, "probably doesn't even know how to tum on their sets:' I think about Lillie Fae, my neighbor, who has a party every New Year's Eve. There's no drinking at Lillie Fae's, but there is a lot ofeating-shuck beans, com bread, dried apple stack cakes-and lots of homemade music. "Great party:' I tell her. "You can watch it anytime you want to:' she says. "I've got the last eight New Years on videotape:' The down-and-out neighbors on The Drew Carey Show ask him to give them a fake job reference by saying they were his interior decorators. "Right:' he says. ''And I'll hire an Appalachian family to do my garden:' I think about my own neighbors' gardens, about perennial beds bordered with river rock, carefully tended rose bushes, late patches of greens, and ripe corn and tomatoes ready to put up for the winter. The fifth-grade teacher is introducing me to her class at a private school in Louisville. "This is Anne Shelby, our visiting author:' she says. "She lives in the middle of nowhere:' No, I protest, I live in the middle of somewhere, a real place. Maybe that's the trouble. We live in a real place that other people see as a symbol. And in the wide gap between the reality and the symbol-we have to live there, too. BeingAppalachian means being presented throughout one's life 154 ~ Anne Shelby with images ofAppalachia that bear little or no resemblance to one's own experience . The difference between the image and the reality creates dissonance, a contradiction to be resolved, and people try to do that in different ways. When I was a young teenager and photographs from the War on Poverty began to appear in the media, some of them from the area where I lived, I understood that the people in the pictures lived in Appalachia. It was the first time I had heard the word outside of geography class, where it referred to a chain of mountains, like the Rockies or the Poconos. But now it seemed to mean something else, a place where dirty children sat listlessly on the porches of old shacks, a place that existed only in black and white. I had seen people and houses like the ones in the pictures, but not many, not in comparison to most of the people and houses I saw in eastern Kentucky. So I figured Appalachia must be in West Virginia. Much later I had a student from West Virginia who said he'd always thought they must be talking about East Tennessee. Many people resolve the contradiction between image and reality in this way, which enables them to escape the stereotypes without the trouble ofquestioning them. The "real hillbillies:' whoever they are, are hard to find. They're always over the hill somewhere, or on up the holler, one county over and one class down. Another response is just to go along. For every briar hopper joke they tell you, tell them two. "Why did they build a bridge across the Ohio River?" "So the hillbillies could swim over in the shade:' Yuck it up. Pretend not to be all that bright. Manufacture and exaggerate your hillbillycredentials. I have a friend who practices this method and recommends it highly. "You're pulling their leg all the time:' he says. "And they don't even know it:' But a more common response to the stereotypes is anger. Ifyou hang around long enough and the subject comes up, you will see it. It can come across as mere testiness or oversensitivity, but it is the product of a thousand insults, small and large. In this huge and...

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