I watched a Netflix film tonight - NEXT OF KIN (1989). It was OK albeit violent, redneck and vigilante themed with Liam Neeson in it (Richard will love it). It's set mainly in Chicago with a cop (Patrick Swayze) looking for the Mafiosa-type killers of his younger brother. The brothers originated from Appalachia which complicates things as the cop's older brother (Liam Neeson) is seeking old-style vengeance not unlike the Mafiosa-types' code. The cop's conflict is between his role as a policeman and his family responsibilities. The film was directed by John Irvin, a British director who made a lot of high energy action films.
The Appalachian roots of the film were important to the family responsibility and vengeance theme and there were some outstanding scenes of the hills, valleys, streams and forests of the eastern US countryside where coal mining has destroyed the natural beauty, ruined the health of the inhabitants but somehow is bound up in an inexplicable nostalgia and a hankering for the old ways. The brothers' home town was named 'Carbon Glow'!
Valerie Carter's beautiful song
Face of Appalachia ( written by John Sebastian and Lowell George) captures this:
The screeching sounds of trains, cranes and mining machinery sound somehow beautiful in this recording which round out the 'hankering for the old ways' and trying to believe that the old days were better even though they were dirty, dangerous, impoverished and had no future. This is important to remember as it is these places and this way of life that the Donald Trump machine tapped into in 2015 and 2016 and is still doing so.
Why?
There is an incredible depth in America for the types of communities portrayed in this film and in TV series like Justified. The depictions of them are 'warts and all' showing poverty, joblessness, drug-dependancy and violence but the Americans love it. It has some kind of pioneering resonance in it to them which is tapped into by the fat orange fool. No matter that Trump is a ridiculously wealthy man of average intelligence and with an over- privileged and really dumb family, the 'boondocks' people somehow identify with him. The
Hester streets of New York City have been bulldozed and replaced by luxury buildings so the opportunity for nostalgia there and in other city and urban locations is
continually being worked over and replaced. It's harder to replace mountains, hills and valleys no matter how hard the mining companies try so these places in many of the USA states especially the mid-Eastern ones keep their resonance. The Appalachian scenes in NEXT OF KIN reminded me of my childhood in Vogeltown, Wellington and, more than 50 years later I have a vivid memory of the hills, valleys and streams that are now covered by streets and houses.
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