America of the '30s

“It reminds you a little bit of the America of the ’30s, people up here don’t realize that.”

I agree with some of my classmates when they say that at some point in this documentary, it seemed a bit pointless. But as it went on, I got the sense that McElwee was actually acting as a modern stand in for Sherman, traveling from city to city, observing different forms of southern culture in each place. The part that stuck out to me the most was when he meets Claudia, and she introduces him to her band of extreme survivalists who, if anything show that McEllwee himself isn’t nearly as strange as we thought. I saw a few of the characteristics that we used to describe the south on the first day of class in this little isolated settlement. Family is the dominant factor in this environment, reminding us a little of little house on the prairie. They are free from all regulation from the U.S. allowing them to shoot their guns whenever and wherever they like, manufacture their own alcohol whenever they want to drink it, and remain and isolated and have that sense of unity amongst their small settlement by keeping anybody they don’t want in with them out. This settlement relied on the bible for their information on the nuclear holocaust and the apocalypse, going back to the idea that the south is highly religious. I couldn’t help but laugh when one of the men was pleading to the federal government that they had better leave them alone, all while chewing on his Red Man tobacco in the woods, if that doesn’t exemplify southern stereotypes I don’t know what else does. The quote says it reminds them of America of the ‘30s, and to me it did, showing us that idea of the South never quite progressing with the rest of the U.S., still believing that at any time Nuclear Warfare was going to end civilization, an idea that had pretty much died out throughout the country some years back. This settlement, for better or worse, is to me what the south is. Although it is a different form of living than many of us are used to, these people know who they are, what the want, and are proud that the south is part of their identity.

Question: Did all of the cities seem like they were still in regression, favoring the pre-Sherman forms of themselves?