Discovering the "Other America": Film Creations of Appalachian Deviance

• In Event: Posters II

Abstract

This presentation will discuss how early films of multiple genres helped shaped the original image of the “other” America seen during the early 1960s in rural Appalachia. Specifically, the presentation will focus more on the history and the continued presences of poverty within the area that drew in multiple groups to help “save” those seen as “left behind”. Finally, this presentation will provide a solid footing for explaining how the history and the presentation of such history in film provided basis for the now long lasting moral regulation and subjugation through both social and penal means of this lost population of Appalachians.

Author

• Stephen Toppings Young, Old Dominion University