Response to Southern Cartoons: Alexis Noel

Cartoon strips are a form of art. Some people may disagree, saying they're merely for entertainment purposes only, with no deeper meaning, but I disagree. They tell a story through images and words, allowing the reader to visualize easier. Southern representations can be told through comic strips, much like southern poetry, southern novels and southern films. While they typically aim to amuse or even "poke fun" at politics or stereotypes, they still present a post southern identity. After searching online for southern cartoons, I ran across a site called Down South Comics [1]. Here was the comic that I found:The full size comic can be found here. This comic strip reminded me of Bastard out of Carolina, with Anney working at the local restaurant and encountering all sorts of truckers, hicks and eventually Glen. The stereotypes are apparent through attire, language and interactions.

The south through comics

Well we've all grown up reading comic books and cartoons. I feel that a cartoonist is a person who puts the truth out there in such a way that it appears almost comical. A cartoonist is a person who takes a look into a stereotype and present it in a way that it has the most impact. On looking up about different comics or cartoonists about the south, I came upon the website about the Levine Museum of the New South. Even a museum found comic strips about the south important and presented them as an exhibit. The comic strip I would like you all to see is on the website whose link I have provided. For this week's blog let's all find a comic strip that somehow denotes a specific southern stereotype and also give it's explanation. It would be fun to look into and present.
[link to blog image]

Response to southern superstitions

So I'm at my friend's place during Spring Break in North Carolina. I am looking at his library collection and I run into the book "Weird Carolinas" mentioned in the blog earlier by Alexis. I was excited and so I looked it up. The first section I looked up was "fabled people and places". I came across many stories one of them being a story about how there were many places in both North and South Carolina that were named after the devil. Each place along with its Satanic name also carried with it a story explaining its name. For eg. there is a broken jumble of huge rocks behind Caesar's head in Greenville County, SC that is named the Devil's Kitchen and it is said to emit smoke when Mr. S is cooking his meal. Apparently, people also get the smell of brimstone when this happens. Thinking about why a place known to be filled with religious people would be filled with places named after the Devil I could only reach to the conclusion that what the people want is to instill fear. The impact of a superstition or a story for that matter, is on how believable it seems. Here, the only thing that people truly believe is the Bible and so many other people are able to take advantage of this and thus come up with various superstitions that the other people are not able to question. That was the main difference that I found between other superstitions and southern superstitions. While the other superstitions of ghosts and monsters instilled their fear through death, the southern superstitions instilled this fear through religion and afterlives.

Response to superstitions

When I was growing up, I was always told to never kill a cricket because they were good luck, especially if you found one in your house. I was always curious as to why and if it was only a southern superstition, but never really questioned it. So, I did a little research. Turns out there's a lot of folklore surrounding the cricket. In China, many people keep crickets in cages for good luck. I'm sure most of you remember in the Disney movie Mulan they were given a cricket in a cage named Cri-kee by the grandmother for good luck. Believe it or not, cricket fighting is actually a common gambling pastime in Southeast Asia. Of course we've all heard different stories about the sounds a cricket makes. The chirping of a cricket is recognized as a way to "humorously indicate a dead silence," a sign that a night scene is taking place (movies, tv, radio), and money is coming (Barbados).[1] In Barbados, a cricket must not be killed if it chirps in a house because it is said to bring money. This is obviously the most similar superstition to the one I grew up with, but its very interesting how this came to the South. With a little more research I found that in the 1600s, many Barbadians migrated to the Carolinas becoming some of the first settlers there.[2] Its fascinating to think that this superstition about a little cricket has survived about 400 years and still remained in the South.

Response to Southern Superstitions: Scott Horvath

I grew up around a couple of southern superstitions. The main difference between southern superstitions and more general superstitions is in the religious aspect. Southern superstitions tend to be more religious than others. They will contain beliefs about the devil or the afterlife of some kind. For example, back in my home town there was a belief that if you stepped on a certain grave you would be consumed by the devil himself. The person buried in the grave was hung long ago because they were believed to be possessed by the devil and still to this day the superstition that this is true still exists.

Most other superstitions deal with bad luck or other negative aspects of life but they never deal with religion like southern ones. This difference is what makes southern superstitions more fearsome than others. From my perspective, superstitions that go into the afterlife or the devil have a bigger overtone than bad luck for 7 years or something of those sorts.

Southern Superstitions: Alexis Noel

I was walking through Barnes and Noble the other day and I ran across a book called "Weird Carolinas". In this book, stories and folklore of the Carolinas were written down, as well as "haunted areas". Recorded in the book was a place called the Devil's Tramping Ground (located not too far from where I live). The story goes that the devil comes up to earth every night and walks in this circle, not allowing anything to grow. Strangely enough, no animals will venture near the circle, nor will anything grow on the circle. Is this a hoax made by locals to entice tourists to this location, or is it truly a North Carolinian phenomenon? In an area that is overflowing in religion, it is hard not to believe that these locals try to convince curious onlookers that the devil himself walks the circle.

On this blog, we have talked about a variety of things, including southern image, southern cooking, southern sports and southern tradition. But we haven't quite talked about engrained southern beliefs; that is, beliefs passed down through generations. I'm talking about superstitions and folklore. While there may be a wide variety of popular superstitions, such as black cats, breaking mirrors and walking under ladders, there are some superstitions that are native to the south. For example, in Tennessee: "If you hear two screech owls calling out to each other in the night, lay a broom lengthwise across the threshold or bad luck (or death) will follow."[1].

What type of folklore and/or superstitions have you heard southerners talk about? If you have no knowledge of this folklore, look up a southern folklore story/superstition. What makes this story different from normal folklore/superstitions?

Welcome to the south. As you cross the border, pull off I-95 to pick up your Bible, Budweiser and Confederate flag. Shed your Lacoste, educated vocabulary and BMW for a wife beater, southern drawl and pick-up truck. And forget about tinted windows and nice rims because all your new truck needs are over-sized tires and a shotgun rack. After all, these are your specious stereotypes for the southern United States. While Yankees are the first to ridicule southern gentlemen, they are simultaneously the frontrunners to sell their homes in the Hamptons for trendier, more climatically benevolent locations in Florida.
Though it is true that the North and South have storied and drastically different histories, to claim that the South is echelons below is not only erroneous but ignorant as well. The past decade alone has seen the growth of metropolises such as Charlotte and Atlanta, the latter being the latest American city to land the summer Olympics, a feat that New York has failed to accomplish after multiple subsequent attempts. Education-wise, while the South may not have the Ivy League, it has many prominent universities such as Georgia Tech, Emory and Duke.
So hop back in your car and merge onto I-95. Remove your Chanel shades and pejorative stereotypes to observe a lifestyle that the rest of America is still discovering and grappling to understand. As you accelerate into traffic, take a deep breath and embrace an experience outside your suburban mansion. Just don’t forget to apply sunscreen to the back of your neck :)

Response to Southern Stereotypes: Alexis Noel

Due to the fact that I live in a true southern county in North Carolina, I often get entangled with these stereotypes from day to day. I have a great example for this blog topic:
In North Carolina, fireworks are banned (except for the dinky sparklers). The good fireworks you have to buy down in South Carolina. So, earlier I had traveled down to Myrtle Beach in SC and on the way back I got a good amount of fireworks for fourth of July (the kind that shoot up in the air and go boom). Fourth of July night, I went out to a local soccer field. There were a few people burning off snakes and tiny little things. After I ran out of my fireworks, I started to walk back to my car when a pick up truck blasting country music skids up next to the field. Out pops this pot-bellied man in jeans and a white t-shirt, carrying an enormous firework (at least 2 or 3 feet wide and 2 or 3 feet tall). He pulls up a beach chair, takes a beer out of a cooler and lights his firework. His show lasted a good 3 or 4 minutes, then he finished off his beer, packed up his beach chair and drove off.
I agree that this stereotype fits a good many people in the south. You may see them at NASCAR, or at a local barbeque pit, or even lighting off an illegal firework on fourth of July.

Red Belly Day

I think I received my highest ratio dosage of Southern stereotypes at an event I attended once near my family's property on the Suwanee River. About a ten minute walk or forty second boat ride from our place and you end up in Fanning Springs, sporting a good amount of stereotypes on any given day. This event however, is the creme of the crop so to speak. Red Belly Day, as it's been coined, is held every year in Fanning Springs; an event that involves an innumerable amount of belly flops to so who can get, as you may have guessed, the reddest belly. It is organized and ran by the Dixie County Chamber of Commerce , and is the biggest annual event in all of Dixie County, so often times the turn out is quite enormous.

When I attended Red Belly Day three years ago, I was bombarded with near every redneck stereotype I can imagine. A large portion of the parking lot was filled with a pickup of some persuasion, most often of American build. There were, that I could see, at least three televisions set up around the park with a NASCAR event on it, and any number of t-shirts with some sort of NASCAR portrayal. Many were those missing teeth here and there, there were a few pots littered across the park either boiling or frying something. If you can think of a stereotype, you could probably find an example there. But that isn't to say that everyone there fit into these categories, and in fact a good number of them didn't, on the surface at least, but there were enough to solidify my belief that Southern stereotypes are not founded on nothing.

Southern Generalities: True or False

We just talked about NASCAR but I want to go back to it. I went to the Kobalt Tools 500 this Sunday at Atlanta Motor Speedway (AMS). I went because I had heard it was a really cool experience. I also was looking forward to finding a couple of extremely drunk fans to laugh at. NASCAR fans are generally perceived as the backwards redneck type such as in Talladega Nights. I never really believed this generality though because all the NASCAR and racing fans I have ever met are normal every day people.

I got to AMS early in the morning so I could tailgate with some friends. As I was tailgating I noticed a couple of events that could lead to people perceiving NASCAR fans as rednecks. One of my favorites was a scruffy farmer looking man riding around the parking lot on his motorized cooler scooter. I wasn’t fortunate enough to get a picture of him but I did find a picture of the motorized cooler I’m talking about.

When I got to my seats I looked around and noticed that about half of the people sitting around me fit the stereotype and the other half did not. One guy sitting in front of me decided it was a good idea to wear extreme short “jorts” and no shirt (seen above). Through a series of events I eventually came to the conclusion that the fans at this particular NASCAR race fit the stereotype almost perfectly. My question is have you ever had a southern generality or stereotype confirmed or dispelled by and event in your life? If not, pick your favorite southern stereotype and do a little research and try and figure out whether it’s true or not.

Response to NASCAR and the South

Growing up in a family that loves racing and NASCAR, I never really considered it a lifestyle. Although, looking back, it actually may have been. My dad went to many races; I played with only NASCAR hot wheels; I had more Dale Earnhardt t-shirts than anything else; my family came together on Sundays to watch races; I could go on all day. But, my favorite thing of all was going to dirt track races on Saturday nights. A lot of people don't realize how dirt track racing is almost the backbone of NASCAR. It's where the best drivers grow up and learn. "Dirt track racing is the single most common form of auto racing in the United States." [1] It is also very popular across the world. I think that I consider it a Southern sport because that’s the only place I’ve really seen it. The same with NASCAR. Because I grew up going to races in the South and seeing only Southern people at those races, I only considered it a Southern sport. Over the past decade, my family’s interest in NASCAR has significantly decreased. Was it because of the influx of non-southerners to the sport? Or the nationalization of it? I personally feel that because of the spread of NASCAR across the nation, it became just another sport. It no longer had that Southern identity. The true excitement and understanding of the sport were lost in translation. I found this journal that talks about Southern geography and has a great paragraph that perfectly describes what the expansion of NASCAR really means to Southerners.

I think NASCAR is definitely a southern sport. Although I agree that it has grown and has a broader audience than it used it I would still consider it a primarily “Southern Sport”. The majority of the true NASCAR fans still act and look like southerners. There are NASCAR followers from the north who aren’t the stereotypical southern man/woman but these are just fans, not the heart of NASCAR. The heart of NASCAR is still in the Deep South. This is where NASCAR originated and until it changes so much that it no longer resembles southern racing, it will always be a southern sport. Akshay said it well, even though hockey has gone global, it’s still associated with Canada. Although noodles are used around the world they are still associated with Asia. I would disagree about the pizza though. Pizza has changed so much since it left Italy that is losing its resemblance to its original form. When this happens you begin to lose the association. At this stage I would associate pizza more with America and New York than Italy.

Nascar: A sport or a lifestyle? Alexis Noel

Why does it seem that southerners have such a large attraction towards cars zooming around a track at 160 miles an hour? Is it because the sport originated in the south, and just kind of stayed there through the generations as a pleasurable thing to watch, or is it more a lifestyle that people carry around day to day? If it is indeed the latter, what would constitute a "NASCAR lifestyle"? Is it just the "white trash" apparel seen on TV (such as in "Talladega Nights"), the family gathering and the tailgating? Or is it something more? I searched online to see what exactly a NASCAR lifestyle would be, and came up with "NASCAR Illustrated" (sort of like Sports illustrated except solely devoted to the cars). [1]
NASCAR Illustrated is very similar to the magazine Southern Living, where it portrays how true NASCAR racers and fans should act, dress and fashion their home. It interviews NASCAR stars on their day to day hobbies and apparel.
I also referenced another blog that talked about a NASCAR lifestyle [2]. In this blog, the writer interviews his friend on what constitutes a NASCAR lifestyle. His friend states that you have to "live in a small town, drive a pickup truck, have a NASCAR plate on the front on my truck have a “14” sticker on my back bumper, I enjoy drinking beer versus wine, listen to and enjoy country music – mostly “old school” country, get to races on a Thursday and generally on leave on Mondays and enjoy the parties / atmosphere of a race weekend a great deal. "
It seems that this lifestyle plays off of rather general stereotypes of "redneck" southerners. Perhaps those two stereotypes intertwine with each other, some stuff being truth and some stuff being fiction.

NASCAR representing the south??

Well Mike in response to your question I would like to pose you a question. Do you or do you not associate Canada with Hockey or England with Cricket? Further, do you not associate Italy with Pizza or China with Noodles? I would be highly surprised if you said no. Every sport, food , dance, in fact any form of entertainment always carries with it a piece of history. Not only does it remind one of the place where it came from but also where it was most cherished. Coming down to NASCAR. NASCAR started fifty years ago in the South. It gained popularity there first and that's where people started associating it to. In fact it became a sport so addicting that people made it their lifestyle. Then came the best part. They made it their own. It became so famous that is started being counted with the Gone with the Wind houses, White trash and all other stereotypes. How can one then not associate it with the South. Like every other field nowadays, entertainment grows in all directions. This is how it got to all around the country. It is now the largest sanctioning body of stock car racing in the US. Everybody knows about it, just like your article said people not even from the South have actually started enjoying it, but it always carries with it it's history. It's reference, it's representation, the South.
Also attached with this blog I give an article in the Washington Post on how people are accepting to be an all country sport but still associating with the South.[1]

NASCAR and the South

For most of its history, NASCAR as been considered a Southern sport, with all the best race tracks and all the best racers coming from the South, not to mention that most of its fan base was southerns. When I was looking around however, I saw that NASCAR has changed over the past decade. While reading this article I started to think of how many places had race tracks, and how many of them weren't actually in what most would qualify as the South. I wonder, although these races weren't always taking place in the South, nor that every driver was Southern, is NASCAR still considered a Southern sport because its audience base is still in the South, or does it make it a more national sport? Has NASCAR every truly been just a southern sport? What are your thoughts?