Hollywood Always Gives Accurate Stereotypes, Right?

When you are asked to think about a region, what do you think about? Does the local cuisine come to mind, do the curious accents bring up memories, maybe the history of the place fills your thoughts, or maybe your mind drifts to one of the Hollywood hits that all too well describes this region. The South, while not so well defined geographically, has all to well been stereotyped in Hollywood. The once show and recent film, the Dukes of Hazzard was an attempt by Hollywood to comically portray the South. The show depicted two “good ole boys,” as Ted Blake calls them, Luke and Bo Duke and their many adventures in Hazzard County, a rural town somewhere outside Atlanta.

The Dukes of Hazzard show an interesting representation of the South. The two boys are always available to drink some whiskey or even make some money selling it. The boys are all for having a good time, and they can always rely on family and their wits to get them out of trouble. The show provides a view of the South where family takes care of each other no matter what, boys live to have fun, and girls are not only beautiful but better boys then the boys. I think this representation is entirely too generalized. Southern family dynamics are not at all similar to this representation with the exception that is few and far between.

A very interesting dynamic that persists through the show is the struggle between the Dukes and Boss Hog. Boss Hog is the greedy white man always trying to make a buck by generally trying to urbanize the small town. In the show the Dukes always foil the plots of Boss Hog. This in fact demonstrates the will of small rural towns to resist the changes that would lead to urbanization.