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I grew up in a town under 10,000, and later moved in between 2 unincorporated villages as a kid. I've spent considerable time in woods and forests all my life. I know way, way more about the middle of nowhere than you ever will. The fact that I also understand urban environments allows me perspective on what this thread is really about - feelings of inadequacy, and not Hollywood's disproportionately poor coverage of small towns and rural areas.
If you want to address your feelings of inadequacy, start by knocking off the know-it-all BS and pretending that you know more than other people will ever know..
I grew up in a town half that size, and by the looks of your screen-name, probably in the same state. As an adult, I've lived in towns a lot smaller that that in six other states -- none of which had a cinema at all.. I've also lived in five major metros of over three million.
I explained the reason why movies show small towns and country in bad light -- it's economics. They are in business to make money, and one way is to use stereotypes to control the emotions of people with ticket money in their hands..
If you want to address your feelings of inadequacy, start by knocking off the know-it-all BS and pretending that you know more than other people will ever know..
I grew up in a town half that size, and by the looks of your screen-name, probably in the same state. As an adult, I've lived in towns a lot smaller that that in six other states -- none of which had a cinema at all.. I've also lived in five major metros of over three million.
I explained the reason why movies show small towns and country in bad light -- it's economics. They are in business to make money, and one way is to use stereotypes to control the emotions of people with ticket money in their hands..
No, you used a false stat to "prove" your "point," and when I called you out, you lied and tried to back the erronous stat with false information instead of backing off because YOU are a know-it-all. As I showed linking to actual stats, this is 100%, proveably false:
Quote:
Originally Posted by jtur88
Because 90% of the movie-going public lives in big cities, and they pay ticket prices to have their egos stroked -- to be validated that they are among the trendy, who are beautiful and fashionable and drink the correct lite beer.
17.4% of the population of the US is rural, and that's not even including small towns. Add in this:
Quote:
Originally Posted by EnricoV
I'm guessing it's just the movies you go see.
How about:
Field of Dreams
Sweet Home Alabama
Fried Green Tomatoes
Bridges of Madison County
Brokeback Mountain
Bull Durham
Shipping News
Doc Hollywood
Goonies
Hope Floats
Breaking Away
Mystic Pizza
Baby Boom
Just to name a few
And where is your causality? And when are you going to admit that you made up a stat in order to try to support your point? I'm pretty sure you'll never address that one again!
Again, for the millionth time, Hollywood is in the entertainment business, not the accuracy business. They get "big cities" wrong all the time; they get small cities wrong; they get small towns wrong; they get rural life wrong. Get over it, this is about you, NOT reality.
Obviously you haven't been to enough small towns. There are also more doctors, lawyers, millionaires, etc in big cities. I don't see your point.
The country probably has higher poverty rates than most cities.
No they don't, you have on rose colored glasses and obviously don't watch many movies either.
People need doctors if they eat junk they sell in big supermarkets and fast foods, i live in Los Angeles and have not been to doctor for last 5 years and not too much before that.
Layers layers are for middle class and millionaires, other people even in big city don't know their rights or use layers? Anyway how having layers and millionaires in 50-100 mile radius makes your personal life any better?
People not self sustainable in terms of food i mean in city what you eat is coming from the store you cannot grow your food there and poor people cannot buy this. Also poor people in city miss much more than poor people in the country because you ain't need that much money in the country as you do in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago etc every day. Ever count how much money you spend on total BS from 7 eleven and other junk.
I did not start this topic to say that life in BIG cities sucks.
"To each their own" there's no clear based on facts and statistics ones like to live in big cities others don't its matter of preference.
I just trying to find out small towns / country are represented negatively in movies.
P.S. After i created this topic i watched plenty of country / small town movies just by coincidence and i just see that i am right on this one. If you like i can post titles and you see for yourself.
17.4% of the population of the US is rural, and that's not even including small towns. Add in this:
Quote:
Originally Posted by EnricoV
I'm guessing it's just the movies you go see.
How about:
Field of Dreams
Sweet Home Alabama
Fried Green Tomatoes
Bridges of Madison County
Brokeback Mountain
Bull Durham
Shipping News
Doc Hollywood
Goonies
Hope Floats
Breaking Away
Mystic Pizza
Baby Boom
Just to name a few
Good job get a cookie you proven that you are ignorant. 17% is pretty close to 10% besides whats the point of talking to someone who cannot think outside of the box, you rather stay in your normalcy bias than admit that something is wrong.
Well good luck to you and other fellas who scream that showing false information in movies is normal because they are for entertainment only and everyone have to get over it.
There's always things you can do, for example stop watching BS and give it bad reviews on IMDB as starter, but first you have to admit that there is problem before you can attempt to fix it.
If someone make movie about Germans during WW2 being good folks helping world by killing bad jew's, and if jewish people will protest against this would you come out and say that they should get a life and get over it because moves are for entertainment purpose only?
Quote:
Originally Posted by EnricoV
Besides which, I could probably name you hundreds of movies set in small towns that aren't disparaging them.
Go ahead i seriously want to see few for the change, hopefully they not going to be from 50's.
Last edited by Petrovich; 06-28-2014 at 06:46 AM..
Go ahead i seriously want to see few for the change, hopefully they not going to be from 50's.
I just saw a good one recently that fits the bill. Heaven is for Real. It's almost entirely set in a small town and does promote a lot of small town characteristics. It's really good too. I highly recommend it.
A young woman with a Southern background runs away from her husband in Alabama and reinvents herself as a New York socialite.
Quote:
Originally Posted by EnricoV
Fried Green Tomatoes
A housewife who is unhappy with her life befriends an old lady in a nursing home and is enthralled by the tales she tells of people she used to know. 23 years old movie that features story from 50's.
Quote:
Originally Posted by EnricoV
Bridges of Madison County
Photographer Robert Kincaid wanders into the life of housewife Francesca Johnson, for four days in the 1960s.
Quote:
Originally Posted by EnricoV
Brokeback Mountain
Sorry i am not in to gay movies.
Quote:
Originally Posted by EnricoV
Bull Durham
26 years old.
Quote:
Originally Posted by EnricoV
Shipping News
Great movie based on trailer, director Lasse Hallström from Sweden (European) moved to US in 1995 maybe he felt that there were no good movies as well and made this one.
Quote:
Originally Posted by EnricoV
Doc Hollywood
23 years old
Quote:
Originally Posted by EnricoV
Goonies
29 years old, you even seen this one has nothing to do with subject
Quote:
Originally Posted by EnricoV
Hope Floats
Good green light, 17 years old though.
Quote:
Originally Posted by EnricoV
Breaking Away
35 years old
Quote:
Originally Posted by EnricoV
Mystic Pizza
26 years old
Quote:
Originally Posted by EnricoV
Baby Boom
Stereotypical BS from 17 years back.
You got this list by keyword or just random finds its really does not account for what we see here and now. Many young people will never see those.
Last edited by Petrovich; 06-28-2014 at 07:46 AM..
I was talking with a group of southerners one day about the Coen Bros treatments of the South in their movies. They went on and on and on about the injustices, the stereotypes, the inaccuracies, the bad accents, etc.
I said, "well, now you know how Upper Midwesterners feel about movies like Fargo!"
To a man, everyone said, "well, but that was accurate."
Moral - nearly everyone's a victim in/of his own mind/making. Hollywood makes bank on stereotypes and has never been and never will be 100% accurate regarding regions and people. Get over it.
I LOVE Coen movies. Exaggerated for humor, but not way off base.
As for small towns, I was always jealous that my little town never remotely resembled the idealic ones they showed in movies.
Every single movie i see that features small town or country has something negative to say about this life style. Its either someone saying casually that they trying to "escape this life style" or there's some horror going on and there's no one around for miles to help.
Is this just me or someone in hollywood wants people to think country life sucks? Why they doing this?
I think a couple of reasons:
1) Small towns do have some drawbacks. People in small towns due to tend to be less tolerant of people with different attitudes and lifestyles than city folk, gossipy, and they also tend to be more wary of outsiders. Small towns and the country do have their good qualities, but they also have their bad qualities too. Just like cities have their good qualities, but people tend to be less friendly, more likely to form shallow relationships, and less polite.
Now, small towns can sometimes be tolerant in their own way. A lot of small towns have their resident weirdo or village idiot who is sometimes very much loved and respected by the townspeople. I'm just speaking in generalities here.
2) Small towns suffer from a lot of the same problems that big cities do. Number 1 was about how small towns are different, this one is about how small towns are the same. You still have drug use in small towns (a lot of domestically produced meth and homegrown marijuana), you have prostitution (I've seen the "lot lizards" hanging around truck stops with my own eyes), you have gangs (bikers and local copycats of the LA and Chicago gangs), and so on. It might not be on the same scale as a big city, but a lot of small towns have their seedy side as well.
3) A lot of film producers, screenwriters, and directors come from or live in either Los Angeles or to a less extent New York and there is a bit of regional rivalry and prejudice towards small towns, rural areas, and the Midwest and South, so of course they are going to be portraying those areas in a negative light if they have a personal bias against those areas they are going to pick those areas to set their story about bunch of inbred cannibals.
4) The countryside affords a lot of opportunities for dramatic license and to play with our deepest fears.
There is a sub-genre of horror and thrillers that is sometimes call the "Backwoods Brutality Cycle". In this sub-genre people from the city (which represents civilization) find themselves in a rural area or in the middle of nature and they run into some malevolent country folk (who represent uncivilized man) who proceed to torment them and the only way they can survive is by becoming equally (or even more) brutal; representing the fragility of morals and ethics and how quickly we can revert back to our animal instincts. Deliverance and Straw Dogs are the most famous examples. But Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I Spit on Your Grave, and Last House on the Left also have elements of the Backwoods Brutality Cycle.
Those last three have elements, but don't quite fit into the sub-genre. The main protagonist in Texas Chainsaw Massacre only wants to escape. The tormentors in I Spit on Your Grave are actually rather developed and are less a force of nature and more a couple of misogynists and one mildly retarded man who are lead by a charismatic sociopath (he is pretty much like Ted Bundy). Last House on the Left is almost a reversal of the Backwoods Brutality Cycle in that it is a group of criminals from the city that terrorize people in the country, but they certainly end up the receiving end of brutality that equals their own.
Also, the countryside would provide a lot of sick people the opportunity to do a lot of sick things. In real life, Ed Gein decorated this entire house with body parts from graves he had robbed and people he had killed. That is a lot harder to pull off in an apartment* than a farmhouse. A story like Texas Chainsaw Massacre makes a lot more sense in rural Texas than it does in Dallas.
The countryside is also sparsely populated enough to give tension and a sense of isolation. Also, if we are talking about a horror movie or thriller set nowadays, you can always compound the sense of isolation by saying that the main characters can't reach a signal on their cell phones (can't really do that in the city, suburbs, or even small towns).
Every single movie i see that features small town or country has something negative to say about this life style. Its either someone saying casually that they trying to "escape this life style" or there's some horror going on and there's no one around for miles to help.
Is this just me or someone in hollywood wants people to think country life sucks? Why they doing this?
Because Hollywood was spawned from a culture of highly urban people who see small towns as flyover and "barbaric". Actual country contributors to the movie industry like George Lucas show it in a more positive light. BTW, many movies based in small towns were based on books. See it's much more common for a novel writer to be based in a small town, or be familiar with them. Hollywood writers operate out of Hollywood or NYC, where all the casting agents, actors, and studios are.
Last edited by Hamtonfordbury; 06-29-2014 at 10:37 PM..
Good job get a cookie you proven that you are ignorant. 17% is pretty close to 10% besides whats the point of talking to someone who cannot think outside of the box, you rather stay in your normalcy bias than admit that something is wrong.
Well good luck to you and other fellas who scream that showing false information in movies is normal because they are for entertainment only and everyone have to get over it.
There's always things you can do, for example stop watching BS and give it bad reviews on IMDB as starter, but first you have to admit that there is problem before you can attempt to fix it.
If someone make movie about Germans during WW2 being good folks helping world by killing bad jew's, and if jewish people will protest against this would you come out and say that they should get a life and get over it because moves are for entertainment purpose only?
Go ahead i seriously want to see few for the change, hopefully they not going to be from 50's.
He was saying that 17% of the people in the country are rural, meaning they don't live in any city; additionally, people who don't live in big cities or rural areas probably take up quite a bit more than 17%. Add that together, and I don't belive that even 50% of the country "lives in big cities." I think that's a valid point, next to the other guy's claims that "90% of the people in the country live in big cities."
I have to agree that Hollywood simply gets everything wrong, not just "small towns." If someone can point to where TV or Hollywood has nailed Milwaukee, please let me know. All I can think of is Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, That 70s Show, and Step by Step, all of which are so far off base it makes Hollywood's treatment of America's small towns look like Ken Burns documentaries!
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