JOANNA CROSBY
Justified, like many programs in the era of TV that begins with The Sopranos, is full of complex and compelling male characters. But like The Sopranos, and Oz, The Wire, Deadwood, The Shield, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Boardwalk Empire, and Sons of Anarchy, women are, at best, supporting characters.
Raylan Givens and Boyd Crowder set the center on Justified, with Winona and Ava orbiting them as the planets circle the sun. While they may be more developed than many, and we may get an episode or two exploring their backstory, it’s not like Justified’s narrative is driven by anyone but Raylan.
Two of seventeen directors credited on IMDB are men. Of seventeen writers, IMDB credits three women. Is it a surprise the show is male-centric?
Season Two of Justified, though, did present a surprise. That season introduced the character of Mags Bennett, single mother, convenience store manager, and Harlan County’s queen of weed. A mixture of Ma Kettle and Lucrezia Borgia, Mags’s homemade ‘apple pie’ will make the room swim, if it doesn’t kill you. She’ll switch gears faster than a moonshiner being chased by the feds, humble hostess one moment and pissed off badger the next. A character so fabulous, Margo Martindale, who brought Mags to life, won an Emmy award for her portrayal.
Mags is strong, she’s fierce, but is she a feminist? Certainly, one would not associate smashing Coover’s knuckles with practicing care ethics, although, it’s just as unlikely that one would accuse her of being lady-like. Neither Gloria Steinem nor Ann Coulter are likely to consider Mags an ally. So, where does she fit? How do we evaluate her actions? Is Mags just a bad person?
There’s something in Mags akin to what, in post-colonial theory, is called the ‘subaltern.’ This is originally a logical term, indicating a claim implied by another, but that does not reciprocate the implication. For example, the claim ‘all of Boyd’s dialogue is wordy’ implies that ‘some of Boyd’s dialogue is wordy.’ However, the second claim can be true when the first is false. Yeah, logic. That’s why you slept through it.
Between a Rock and a Much Harder Rock
‘Subaltern’ in post-colonial theory, though, isn’t about logical relationships but power relationships. If the colonizer is at the center of a power structure, those in subaltern positions have been pushed to the margins. They either don’t participate in the reigning governing structure, or their participation is strictly limited.
While we don’t usually think of the Appalachian South as “colonized,” the land and its people have been exploited and marginalized in ways similar to resource-rich, underdeveloped countries. Consider the Bloody Harlan massacres of the 1930s. Unionizers and mine workers attempted to strike for better wages and working conditions to the opposition of law enforcement and mine owners. The latter resorted to violence including bombing and murder to discourage unionization.
Consider Barbara Kopple’s movie Harlan County, USA documenting the Brookside Strike against Duke Power in the mid-1970s. Kopple shows us miners living in squalid company-provided housing with limited access to electricity and no running water. In the same year that Duke’s profits increased 170 percent, the miners received a 4 percent raise. This didn’t do much to offset the 7 percent increase in cost of living recorded that year.
Consider Darrell Scott’s song “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive.” In its bleak view of options for residents of coal country, you’ll begin to sense the depths of the trouble. There’s really only one good employment opportunity, and no matter how hard you try to escape, it pulls you back in. And that’s just one county in Eastern Kentucky. There are mining towns in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina similarly situated.
Do we have sufficient reason, are we justified in thinking of an area within the continental United States as colonized and suffering under imperial rule from outside? Doesn’t seem likely.
Making You Do What You Do
Edward Said (that’s pronounced sa-eed) was a mighty smart Palestinian-American who pointed out something about the folks from European countries engaged in colonization and exploitation from the seventeenth century on. He showed how they produced a heap of scholarly work explaining just how different, even savage, those people and cultures were in the areas that the European folks wanted to colonize. If, for example, science could show that the people, language, culture, science, and art of India weren’t up to, say, European achievements, then it was perfectly acceptable for the colonizers to replace them. Those poor people needed Western intervention. It was rational, if not simply polite, and demanded by God, to bring civilization to those suffering without it.
A whole scholarly field grew up, called Orientalism, based on the separation of the world into the Occident (the west) and the Orient (the east). The Occident was civilized, rational, organized, and moral, while the Orient was its opposite: exotic, chaotic, inscrutable, and amoral. Think of it like comparing the safety of civilized, urban Lexington to the untamed wilds of Harlan.
Let’s just say, there’s no song proclaiming you won’t leave Lexington alive.
If, while bringing the joys of civilization to the wilds of the Orient, you were also able to, say, exploit the natural resources and, thus, bring enterprise and industry to those suffering from its lack, why, wouldn’t that, too, fulfill one’s duty as a Christian and a capitalist?
This looks a little different, however, from the ‘Oriental’s’ point of view. As Boyd Crowder says to a Detroit mafia representative, “Your a lucky man, Mr. Quarles. You get to come down here, a place you got no right being, you get to eat our food, you get to drink our whiskey, and you get to look at our women, as you try to take it all for yourself. Well, you know what you are? You’re a conquistador!
“Only, we are not your savages.” (“Guy Walks into a Bar”)
Orientalism, according to Said, is the construction of people and cultures as other and subordinate to one’s own. Its strength is that it presents itself as objective knowledge, providing large, abstract categories to explain ‘those people’ who are different enough to be considered beneath us. Whether we then choose to save, civilize, or exploit those others, well, that depends upon which actions we want to justify; and if you’re really good, you can accomplish all three. In any case, Orientalism provides us with the necessary knowledge for that justification.
Of course, Justified takes place not in India, China, Iran, or any other area known as ‘Oriental.’ Justified takes place in Eastern Kentucky, the heart of Appalachia. What we have isn’t Orientalism, but ‘Appalachianism’.
Coal Keeps the Lights On
We see Appalachia not for itself but through a frame established by popular culture and the archetype of the hillbilly and the redneck. Whether in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, or Georgia, our expectations of the people who live there will, we expect, refer to these archetypes. Appalachianism shows us things about the mountains and the people who inhabit them that they, themselves, with their humble origins and ignorance about the ways of the world, cannot see. Things that only ‘objective experts’ can see.
Said exposed the representation, or misrepresentation, of the Orient in western science, showing how it was used to justify colonial exploitation of land, labor, and resources. However, today, we don’t need science when we have images. The Image is a much more powerful representation of what is obviously true than anything science might prove.
We rely not so much on science for our understanding of Appalachia, but popular culture, and not even fiction, like the sodomy and incest in Deliverance, but reality TV. Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, Appalachian Outlaws, Moonshiners, Mountain Monsters, and Kentucky Justice; even Duck Dynasty and Swamp Men: all presentations of The Other that do nothing to challenge the archetype, rather they reinforce our prejudices while showing us urban folk how we are so much more civilized than ‘those people’.
I will simply mark the coincidence of growing criticism of King Coal and the popularity of these programs. Of course, the fact that the Duck Dynasty guys used to be a bunch of clean cut, golf-playing, preppy-looking, rich boys before Hollywood backed up a truck full of money at the warehouse and started shoveling it out we should all just ignore. Colonization cannot work without collaborators.
You’re Playing Harlan Roulette, Dumbshit
It’s easy to distance ourselves from the plight of Appalachia. Most of us are so different from ‘those people:’ Dewey Crowe, Dickey and Coover Bennet, Helen and Arlo Givens. However, what would happen if oil, coal, or natural gas was found under your home? Don’t think that the corporate interests would refrain from presenting an unattractive image of you in order to justify taking control of those resources. Just look at what has been said of people who have lost their drinking water to fracking.
Appalachianism, if it is to follow Orientalism, would portray stereotypes of Appalachian people rather than present them as three-dimensional, complicated people capable of good and bad. Orientalism criticizes the assumption that ‘Orientals’ actually long to live the civilized life of the Occident, to replace their poorly developed culture for the rich treasures of European culture. While no one will deny that a few modern conveniences, like, say, clean running water, and dependable supplies of electricity are things that would raise the living conditions of those without them, this does not imply a desire to abandon your culture and traditions for all things Western.
When we think of the hillbilly and the redneck, the typical inhabitants of Appalachia (if we are to believe either reality TV or most portrayals of those folk), what sort of characteristics spring to mind? Ignorant, backward, simple, and insular, to name a few. Avaricious, illiterate, and even incestuous, if you want to get mean about it. Why aren’t these stereotypes questioned?
Unfortunately, the past few seasons of Justified have had more of these kind of characters than not. But in Season Two, we get a few hints that, not only do some people in Appalachia not fit this sketch, some are even capable of complexity. I’m thinking specifically of when Boyd barely watches the video Carol Johnson shows him of a man protesting mountain top removal killed by a boulder rolled over the edge of a mining site. Carol asks whether Boyd would like to watch the video again. Boyd, who looks like he’s going to be sick, states unequivocally that he would not.
This is Boyd Crowder, no stranger to the death of other human beings, touched by what we might call the death of an innocent.
No Bridge to Cross
Appalachianism hides the contest for coal beneath our archetypes of the hillbilly and the redneck. The wholesale exploitation of people and place in the pursuit of coal is justified by our knowing hillbillies and rednecks as people less equal than others. Let’s not underestimate the power of the coal industry, the railroad industry that transports it, or the power companies that burns it to create electricity. Carol Johnson is not wrong when she says coal keeps the lights on; half of the electricity in the US still comes from burning coal. According to the documentary The Last Mountain, we burn sixteen pounds for each of three hundred and eighty million people every day. There are many powerful vested interests in making sure that we keep doing exactly that.
The mining companies have convinced some of the folks, particularly those to whom they provide a livelihood, that mining jobs are their only option. And they are pretty much right in counties where coal is dug. In “The Spoil,” Carol Johnson puts Raylan on the spot during her public meeting, asking him how much he makes as a federal marshal, pointing out that an employee of Black Pike would receive similar compensation. While $60,000 a year sounds great, particularly in a depressed economy, we have to remember that it only lasts until the coal runs out. The coal company takes the coal and its profits out of Appalachia, leaving very little besides fast food restaurants and broken dreams. Because coal companies broke the unions in the 1980s, that sixty grand does not come with benefits or security. One coal executive explained that it is much harder to replace equipment than workers. You can always just go hire more workers, and there are always people who will take the jobs.
The mining companies, and the politicians in their pockets, have made sure of that. Digging coal, of course, is hard manual labor. Honest labor, and some find it rewarding. Blowing the tops off of mountains, though, is mostly mechanical in nature. And while the coal industry may bring jobs, over the last thirty years in West Virginia, while the industry has increased production by 140 percent, they have eliminated 40,000 jobs (The Last Mountain). However, the loss of those jobs cannot be laid at the doorstep of environmentalists, but rather industry cutting costs, mechanizing, and, of course, doing more with less.
Coal may be the only employer in coal country, but throughout Kentucky, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Georgia, the counties without coal have tourism, viable main streets, and diversified economies. Coal companies actively discourage manufacturing or other industries coming to Appalachia as that would create competition for workers and push up labor costs. Companies have broken the unions, impoverished communities, and have lobbyists in state capitals and Washington to help them pass favorable legislation.
In his book Coal River, Michael Shnayerson says:
This could never happen in rural Connecticut, Maine, northern California, Washington State, or other places where such devastation would stir outcry, and people with money and power would stop it. But Appalachia is a land unto itself, cut off by its mountains from the east and Midwest. Its people are for the most part too poor and too cowed after a century of harsh treatment by King Coal to think they can stop their world from being blasted away.
The people of Appalachia can be exploited because they are poor, and in the US, we still think poverty is a character flaw as much as it is an economic condition.
Now Sit Your Bony Ass Down
Where’s Mags Bennett come into all of this? Well, Mags stands in for hundreds, if not thousands, of strong Appalachian women who have fought for their families, for their cultures, and against the exploitation of mining companies, railroads, and politicians that can be traced back to the discovery of coal in the late eighteenth century. That fight is not pretty, it is not always fought fair, and survival has taken priority over ethics and principle more than once. But while the energy of their men have been spent in the mine, the women of Harlan County have demonstrated strength portrayed by Mags at regular intervals.
Mags speaks in the voice of The Other during the big community meeting with Carol Johnson, representative of Black Pike Mining, come to Bennett to secure land rights, opening the way to taking the top off of Green Mountain. “Take it from me,” Mags says, “story’s always been the same”:
Big money men come in, take the timber, and the coal, and the strength of our people and what do they leave behind? ’Poundments full of poison slurry and valleys full of toxic trash. You know what happens when five hundred million gallons of slurry breaks loose? The gates of hell open! . . . And all that runs down through the hollows and poison the water and the land and everything it touches. (“The Spoil”)
We all know about the January 2014 chemical spills in West Virginia’s Elk River sending 7,000 gallons of chemicals used to wash coal into the drinking water of 300,000 citizens around the state capital of Charleston, and another 100,000 gallons of chemical slurry into the Kanawha river, of which the Elk is a tributary. The companies involved? Freedom Industries and Patriot Coal. Talk about your doublethink.
One of the best things about the timing of the disaster was that the West Virginia legislature was in session. All sorts of important and powerful people and their families were in Charleston and were exposed to the drinking water containing toxic chemicals.
Slurry in the impoundments are only a possible danger; as long as the earthen barriers hold, there is little problem. In mountain top removal, however, the parts of the mountain that are not coal must be blasted off and pushed aside to get to the coal. This is called the ‘overburden.’ It is not trucked away, but rather is pushed over the side of the mountain, into the hollows and valleys below. This fills streams and destroys habitats. “Mining company has a word for those leavings, dunnit?” says Mags. “The Spoil. The Spoil! And that is what our lives will be if Black Pike has its way with our mountain.” Residents beyond Harlan, particularly those is certain parts of West Virginia, just might agree with Mags after this past January.
Bluegrass, Baseball, and Apple Pie
Mags reminds us of the human side of the hillbilly, explaining to Carol, who, as a West Virginia native, should know better, that Appalachia has a culture its people value highly:
It ain’t an easy life here. No ma’am. To an outsider, it’s probably hard to understand why we’re not all just lining up and saying ‘Where do we sign?’ But we got our own kinda food, our own music, our own ‘likkah’. We got our own way of courting, and raising children, and our own way of living and dying. And to protect all that, we have to say ‘No thank you’ to Ms. Carol Johnson and Black Pike Mining. Sometimes we need to stop and remember just what it is we got to lose. (Mags, “The Spoil”)
Yes, there is something to lose, something most of us don’t know how to see, let alone attribute worth: Appalachian cultures. Yes, cultures, because not everyone who lives in the hollows are exactly the same. Music, food, distilled products, and everything else undergoes subtle changes north to south, east to west, just as it does up and down the I-95 corridor, running parallel to the Appalachian mountains from New York to Georgia. Just as Atlantic City is different than Savannah, so too is Scranton and Harlan, or Matewan and Patton Junction.
Mags does more than just talk, she throws a party to remind folks of all the good parts of Appalachian life. There’s bluegrass music, dancing, food, and the famous apple cider. We see folk warming themselves around the still, enjoying each others’ company. During the scene, I kinda felt like I coulda shown up, thrown some wood on the still declaring my peaceful intentions as Raylan suggested, and felt welcome. Ava even made it okay to be a white girl with no clue how to dance.
Shitkicker-on-Shitkicker Crime
Appalachia is more than what we see on reality TV. When we demean the area and its people, we are complicit in Appalachianism, treating its the residents as less-than-human, dismissing their culture as a poor example of civilization, if you recognize it at all, and the wholesale exploitation of people and their land in order to take the coal in the mountains for our electricity.
Mags Bennett is no angel, however, she plays the hand she’s dealt. If she didn’t make bad choices, she wouldn’t be a dramatic character. She may not win mother of the year, but I wouldn’t want to raise three boys in Kentucky coal country as a single mother. Before we judge her too harshly, remember she knows exactly what the coal companies want to do to her and her way of life. She sells it all out, but in an attempt to get her grandchildren out of Harlan. Maybe she should have listened to the song one more time.