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The View from the Castle Reflections on the Kentucky Cycle Phenomenon Rodger Cunningham Just when Appalachian scholars, writers, and activists have begun to think that perhaps a quarter-century of their efforts had started to make some dent in public perception of their region, along comes The Kentucky Cycle. Robert Schenkkan's lengthy play cycle, inspired by a weekend visit to eastern Kentucky in 1981, won the Pulitzer Prize for 1992-the first play ever to do so without having yet opened in NewYork1-and though the play's reviews were mixed, it appears that little of the negative reaction on the part of non-Appalachians centered on the play's portrayal of mountain people. If anything, negative reviewers tended to regard Schenkkan as too far left for their tastes. Paradoxically , Schenkkan is a loudly self-proclaimed political progressive who says he intended his playas, among other things, an indictment of the industrial exploitation ofthe region. Nevertheless, asAppalachian commentators have noted, his work in fact adds to that exploitation. This essay will not deal extensively with the defects of The Kentucky Cycle itself. These have been more than adequately dealt with by others2-its inept dialect, its historical and cultural inaccuracies,3 and above all, its brutalizing andvictim-blaming portrayal ofmountain people (in spite ofwhich Schenkkan says, "I reject so strenuously the idea of stereotype.... 1feel quite bluntly that there is nothing in the play to bear that out. Nothing:'4 Rather, it is a study of the Kentucky Cycle phenomenon. It asks how such evidently sincere sympathy for the plight of Appalachia on Schenkkan's part could eventuate in such a damaging and disempowering portrait of its people. And it asks the related question ofhow such a picture can be taken at its own word as"progressive"by both the play's defenders and most ofits critics in a liberal media culture which professes multiculturalism and universal sensitivity. The Kentucky Cycle phenomenon is a particular case of a matter that has exercised Appalachians ad nauseam since at least the sixties: Why does sen- View from the Castle ~ 301 sitivity include everyone but mountain people? The answer has much to do with Schenkkan's chief ways of attempting to justify his work. Repeatedly and aggrievedly, as if it answered all objections, he claims that he is not writing about eastern Kentucky or Appalachia in particular at all, but rather, he is using Appalachia as "a metaphor for America:' In the first place, however, this would not eliminate the objections regardless of what group or region he were writing about. "Metaphorical" is not the opposite of "accurate:' as Schenkkan seems to think, judging from his use ofthe word as an excuse for all his work's failures of specificity. In his naive opposition between the "metaphorical " and the "documentary:'5 Schenkkan's metaphorization becomes derealization . He paints Appalachians with a brush as broad as that road that is paved with good intentions. Of course Appalachia illuminates America, but Schenkkan's confused approach achieves the opposite of illuminating either America or Appalachia.6 In the second place, ofcourse, there are special pitfalls involved in treating Appalachia in particular as a metaphor ofAmerica. All stereotypes are already unconscious metaphors for aspects of their perpetrators, and ''America'' has long used Appalachia as a projection-screen for the unacceptable7 parts of itself . The identity ofAppalachians as descendants (in large part) ofthe original settlers, as quintessentially''American'' but somehow also peculiarly"other"as "contemporary ancestors:' in W.G. Frost's notorious phrase--only accentuates that projective tendency. It makes members of the dominant culture less able to see that they are in fact victimizing a particular group of people in the process, as much so as when they label any other group.8 And it allows wellintentioned members of that dominant culture to feel free to "speak for" that presumably silent group-and hence to collaborate in its silencing-in a way that is now quite properly felt to be unacceptable for any other group. And this is what Schenkkan has done. Appalachia is not a metaphor for America; Appalachia isAmerica. Its relation to America is not one of metaphor to "reality:'but ofpart to whole. However , it has long been treated as a land"apart"by those who fail to see oppression as "a part" of the u.s. and global systems. Schenkkan tries to engage this fact, but he does not do so on a level that seriously challenges it. Appalachia is not, in...

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