Library Homepage: Hillbilly Stereotypes in Media and Performance: Home

Mountain Dew Beverage

During the mid-20th century several soft drinks, or soda pops if your prefer, were branded using a moonshine-hillbilly theme. This is an early television advertisement for the beverage Mountain Dew. Mountain Dew is the best known and survived the longest. It was especially popular during the 1960s, during the same period as the Beverly Hillbilly's television show and Hillbilly Bread brand. Later, during the 1980s, Mountain Dew was re-branded to appeal to active teenage boys. Although, several "throwback" ad campaigns have briefly revived its hillbilly brand imagery.

JIm Varney's Characters, especially Ernest P Worrell

Jim Varney was a classically trained actor from Lexington, Kentucky. His most famous character is Ernest P Worrell. Ernest displays a distinctive accent and style that might seem to indicate that he is from Appalachia. The character was crafted by Varney and Nashville advertising executive, John Cherry, as a universal everyman to serve many different advertisers. Earnest was featured in local and national ads for car companies, milk brands, and many others. Varney's Ernest was such a success in advertising, he became the basis for a series of successful movies in the 1980s.

Ernest P Worrell displays many of the same characteristics of "Jack" of the Appalachian Jack tales. He wanders through life getting into many situations. Through it all, he has a good heart, but appears to lack intelligence. Yet, his heart and deep wisdom always seem to carry him through and even benefit others.

Varney grew up in Lexington, Kentucky, and made it his home his entire life. Varney's character-based comedy drew from this own identity and his observations of people around Lexington, a locale near Appalachia. His characters blended stereotypes of rural people, Kentuckians, and Appalachians. Below is one of Varney's early standup routines from 1979.

"The Beverly Hillbillies" Television Show

The Winston Cigarette Company paid for advertising from multiple different television shows during the 1960s. The most famous example of this was the first two seasons of The Flintstones, which featured an ad for the cigarettes in the opening credits. Here, the Beverly Hillbillies are portrayed with the cigarettes. Interestingly, R J Reynolds was from Patrick, Virginia and founded Winston Cigarettes in Winston Salem, North Carolina, both of which are in Appalachia.

Ma and Pa Kettle

Ma and Pa Kettle are a fictional couple that first appeared in "The Egg and I," a novel by Betty MacDonald. When Universal films created a film based on the book, audiences, especially those in small towns, loved the couple so much that Universal created a series of movies from the couple. Small town viewers especially connected with the quasi wisdom the couple seemed to possess. Ma and Pa Kettle live a charmed life. Though they are not well educated, things just sort of work out for them because of their wholesome qualities. The characters Ma and Pa are from the Ozarks. The Ozark and Appalachian hillbilly stereotypes mirror each other, both emerging as people from a highland region interact with a surrounding dominant culture. At times in the media the two regional stereotypes merge and blend.

Hillbilly Bread

Hillbilly Bread was created by Robert L Roush, the founder of Roush Bakery Products. Roush Bakery Products sold commercial bakery mixes and licensed associated trademarks to regional bakeries. In 1963, Roush named his newest commercial bread mix "Hillbilly." According to his accounts, the name was partly inspired by the popular Beverly Hillbillies TV show but also because he thought "Hillbilly," despite its negative connotations, brought to mind wholesome food. Many local/regional bakeries bought the bakery mix and sold it under the "Hilllbilly" label. Examples are known from such varied of locations as Washington State, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Southern California, and Louisiana Even in the year 2020 it is still being sold in a few parts of the country. These commercials were produced for WFAB in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, around 1965 and central Ohio in 1978.

Minnie Pearl

Minnie Pearl was a character created by Sarah Colley. Sarah Colley was classically trained at Belmont College in Nashville, Tennessee. Minnie Pearl became famous appearing on the Grand Ole Opry. The character hailed from Grinder's Switch, Tennessee, a small town. Grinder's Switch is a real town near Centerville, Tennessee.

Toby's Mattress

This advertisement is for a mattress store in Western, North Carolina. It was one of the most recent videos featured in this guide. The lady in this video could be mimicking Minnie Pearl.

John Boy and Billy Big Show

The John Boy and Billy Big Show is a radio show recorded in Charlotte, North Carolina. Most of their bits concern how unintelligent John Boy is, as well as rural life. The radio show is broadcast nationwide.

James Gregory

James Gregory's comedy concerns rural American life. He grew up in a rural area outside of Atlanta, Georgia, which puts him close to Appalachia. Much of his comedy concerns his crazy relatives, a topic, which while universal, is often associated with the stereotype of the Appalachians.

Donnie Baker

Donnie Baker is a ruccuring character on the Bob and Tom show. He is a crass fellow, and is often trying to sell a boat. He speaks in a thick accent which seems to be southern in origin.

Jiggle Belly

Jiggle Belly is a doll on the Cartoon Network television show "Aqua Teen Hunger Force." He displays many of the hillbilly stereotype attributes, including a jug with XXX on it and a gun. Another doll in the show refers to him as a "backwoods retard."

Comments from Curator

This guide is an exploration into the hillbilly stereotype as found on YouTube. A few years ago, Student Curatorial Associate Travis Rigg said: "If it ever appeared on film or tape, someone has put it on YouTube." We decided to spend a few days mining YouTube for videos related to the Appalachian hillbilly stereotype. This virtual exhibit presents the results of that search and attempts to contextualize the clips we found.

The Appalachian Hillbilly Stereotype

In recent years, Appalachian Studies scholars have done considerable work with the hillbilly stereotype. They have exposed some of its roots, developed typography, and delved into the universals of social psychology that underlay stereotyping. The hillbilly stereotype is rooted in the more general rural, "bumpkin," "redneck," or "rube" stereotypes. These predate the Appalachian region. One can also subdivide the hillbilly stereotype into variants such Ozark, Appalachian, and the Western "mountain man." At times they are distinct but often in media they blend and merge. Beyond America, there appears to to be a generalized highlander stereotype found in many other places in the world where a mountain subcultures exists in relationship to a more dominant culture. For example, in Ukraine and Poland, the "Hutsul" group label can function much like "Hillbilly" in America.

The Appalachian stereotype is also complex with built-in tensions. It often displays both backwardness AND nostalgia, ignorance AND earthy wisdom, and laziness AND hard work. Stubbornness is at times a weakness and at other times a strength.

About This Guide

This guide was produced by the Loyal Jones Appalachian Center at Berea College. Student Curatorial Associate Travis Rigg researched the context, selected the videos, and edited this guide in 2013. Student Curatorial Associate Shadia Prater did additional technical work in 2015.

From the Library Catalogue

Hillbilly by Anthony Harkins
Call Number: 975.009 H282h
ISBN: 019514631X
Publication Date: 2003-11-20
In this pioneering work of cultural history, historian Anthony Harkins argues that the hillbilly-in his various guises of "briar hopper," "brush ape," "ridge runner," and "white trash"-has been viewed by mainstream Americans simultaneously as a violent degenerate who threatens the modern order and as a keeper of traditional values of family, home, and physical production, and thus symbolic of a nostalgic past free of the problems of contemporary life. "Hillbilly" signifies both rugged individualism and stubborn backwardness, strong family and kin networks but also inbreeding and bloody feuds. Spanning film, literature, and the entire expanse of American popular culture, from D. W. Griffith to hillbilly music to the Internet, Harkins illustrates how the image of the hillbilly has consistently served as both a marker of social derision and regional pride. He traces the corresponding changes in representations of the hillbilly from late-nineteenth century America, through the great Depression, the mass migrations of Southern Appalachians in the 1940s and 1950s, the War on Poverty in the mid 1960s, and to the present day. Harkins also argues that images of hillbillies have played a critical role in the construction of whiteness and modernity in twentieth century America. Richly illustrated with dozens of photographs, drawings, and film and television stills, this unique book stands as a testament to the enduring place of the hillbilly in the American imagination.
Appalachia on Our Mind by Henry D. Shapiro
Call Number: 301.2975 S529a
ISBN: 0807841587
Publication Date: 1986-04-01
Appalachia on Our Mind is not a history of Appalachia. It is rather a history of the American idea of Appalachia. The author argues that the emergence of this idea has little to do with the realities of mountain life but was the result of a need to reconcile the "otherness" of Appalachia, as decribed by local-color writers, tourists, and home missionaries, with assumptions about the nature of America and American civilization. Between 1870 and 1900, it became clear that the existence of the "strange land and peculiar people" of the southern mountains challenged dominant notions about the basic homogeneity of the American people and the progress of the United States toward achiving a uniform national civilization. Some people attempted to explain Appalachian otherness as normal and natural -- no exception to the rule of progress. Others attempted the practical integration of Appalachia into America through philanthropic work. In the twentieth century, however, still other people began questioning their assumptions about the characteristics of American civilization itself, ultimately defining Appalachia as a region in a nation of regions and the mountaineers as a people in a nation of peoples. In his skillful examination of the "invention" of the idea of Appalachia and its impact on American thought and action during the early twentieth century, Mr. Shapiro analyzes the following: the "discovery" of Appalachia as a field for fiction by the local-color writers and as a field for benevolent work by the home missionaries of the northern Protestant churches; the emergence of the "problem" of Appalachia and attempts to solve it through explanation and social action; the articulation of a regionalist definition of Appalachia and the establishment of instituions that reinforced that definition; the impact of that regionalistic definition of Appalachia on the conduct of systematic benevolence, expecially in the context of the debate over child-labor restriction and the transformation of philanthropy into community work; and the attempt to discover the bases for an indigenous mountain culture in handicrafts, folksong, and folkdance.
Hillbillyland by J. W. Williamson
Call Number: 791.436 W731h
ISBN: 0807845035
Publication Date: 1995-06-30
The stereotypical hillbilly figure in popular culture provokes a range of responses, from bemused affection for Ma and Pa Kettle to outright fear of the mountain men in Deliverance. In Hillbillyland, J. W. Williamson investigates why hillbilly images are so pervasive in our culture and what purposes they serve. He has mined more than 800 movies, from early nickelodeon one-reelers to contemporary films such as Thelma and Louise and Raising Arizona, for representations of hillbillies in their recurring roles as symbolic 'cultural others.' Williamson's hillbillies live not only in the hills of the South but anywhere on the rough edge of society. And they are not just men; women can be hillbillies, too. According to Williamson, mainstream America responds to hillbillies because they embody our fears and hopes and a romantic vision of the past. They are clowns, children, free spirits, or wild people through whom we live vicariously while being reassured about our own standing in society.