Voices from Appalachia

Often, the people of Appalachia, especially West Virginia and Kentucky, are subject of stereotypes: stereotypes that are hurtful and offensive. But, if we stop and ask ourselves where these stereotypes came from, we might be surprised.

No stereotype springs from thin air. They must be based in some form of general truth. People today claim that West Virginians don’t wear shoes because their ancestors could not afford many shoes and tended to go barefoot and save them for Sunday meetings. People say we all make moonshine because moonshining was a common practice during depressions and the Prohibition as a way to support oneself and one’s family.

The one stereotype I don’t understand is inbreeding. It is not, and has not ever been, common here. Since the dawn of marriage as an institution, there has been a taboo against marrying members of one’s own family. Perhaps, since in the early years there were few families in the mountains, it comes from the marriage of cousins. If that is the case, however, why don’t people mock the aristocracy of the Old World instead, where the practice of marrying cousins, to “keep all that lovely money in the family,” was so common it is almost passé?

But I digress.

When Robert Schenkkan uses common stereotypes in The Kentucky Cycle, he does not create them. The stereotypes in his play existed already in society, and for good reason. The bloodthirsty Rowen family sprang from the average outsider’s idea of how the fiercely independent mountain people lived and behaved towards each other and strangers. These ideas aren’t wrong so much as…over-concentrated. A truth, that may have only been true sometimes, was boiled down into a generalization, which was further reduced to an extract or essence of behavior and mindset.

So, we could all benefit from a good lesson in letting it go. Schenkkan didn’t use stereotypes to make the people of Appalachia angry at him. He did it to sensationalize the play, to sell more seats, to make more money. Society doesn’t used stereotypes malignantly, just misguidedly. Since that’s not going to change any time soon, the only thing left to do is grin and bear it.

-M