To simplify things, I will only briefly discuss the long-acknowledged epicenter of redneck cinema, to wit: Smokey and the Bandit.
One would imagine that this picture positions itself squarely in the camp of the German proto-Romantic resistance to eighteenth-century classicism with all of its rational trappings. After all, the film is about flagrantly rebellious disregard for law and order, beginning with its main plot problem: how to transport a truckload of Coors beer to Atlanta when it is illegal do any such thing east of Oklahoma. During this harrowing journey, practically every law enforcement officer in every state is ignored, abused, accosted, wrecked, or disgraced. Our heroes — Bandit, Frog (Sally Field), Cledus (Jerry Reed), and Cledus’s dog Fred — break every imaginable law in order to fulfill their mission.
Yet I would submit that the heroes never truly aggravate the dominant class ideology of reason and mistrust of enthusiasm. Examples abound of their cool heads in the face of certain capture or death, their stiff upper lips as set against the wild outbursts and flailings of their antagonists (epitomized by Jackie Gleason’s Buford T. Justice), and their refusal to engage in activities requiring excessive energy or volume. They are the very image of eighteenth-century restraint, bringing reason to bear on every situation and repudiating every temptation to give in to easy emotion or passion.
In truth, Smokey and the Bandit is a cinematic realization of Wordsworth’s charge to poets in his famous preface to Lyrical Ballads: art should be policed by restraint and the rational; moreover, the best poetry is both prosaic and disciplined, subsuming emotion under the influence of our better faculty.
Therefore, go to, ye misunderstanders. Say not that Burt flies in the face of rational imperatives (or even Larry the Cable Guy). Learn from what is set before you. See what is as plain as the nose on your face. Never again accuse redneck cinema of promoting either the sturm or the drang.
I understood some of these words.
Are you this entertaining with your students?
If not, you should be. Cripes on crackers.
I try to be entertaining, but I usually don’t connect. I fail to scream and say “actually” in every sentence like a youtube celebrity, so I’m not beloved. The guy who offices next to me uses more big words but is somehow popular. He has entourages. Students cluster in his office at all hours. They follow him around like ducklings. My office has cobwebs growing on the visitor chairs. I seem to have some form of leprosy that keeps students away. This is all right. That other guy can’t get any work done. I expect he’ll start doing something to bore his admirers and chase them off.
Fixed a p0rblem: changed “this rational trappings” to “its rational trappings.”
Clearly they’re intimidated by your elbow patches. I know I would be.