I Love You, Followers!

Before I get down to business on manuscript revisions, let's have a little post, shall we?

First, I want to say something to my dear followers: I love you all and thank you so much for following me!  You first few will always have a special place in my heart.  No, really, I mean it.

Let me get my hanky.

Actually, that's all I really wanted to say.  At least for now.  Cheers!

"I more than the others": accepting responsibility

Last week a friend called to tell me that he had recovered memories of something very harmful that happened to him when he was eleven years old. He wanted me to know about this because he felt it explained some of his behavior toward me and other people in the intervening years. He wanted to apologize for this behavior, and excuse himself for it.

My immediate response to his apology was to burst into tears and say that I was sorry, too, that I hadn’t been able to understand him better. When I said how sorry I was, I felt that I wasn’t only apologising for my own failure to be more sensitive to his needs and vulnerabilities. I was also expressing regret for everyone’s failures or inabilities in this respect. I thought of a speech from Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov which is repeatedly quoted by the philosopher Lévinas in his meditations on responsibility: “Each of us is guilty, before everyone for everyone, and I more than the others.” These words of a holy fool made perfectly rational sense to me in that moment (although like Lévinas, I would substitute the concept of responsibility for that of guilt).

In my recent opinion piece on climate change, I said that it is a mistake to confuse personal and collective responsibility. Was I making that mistake in feeling sorry about all the failures of care that have affected my friend, and wanting to apologise for them all, as if I were somehow at the root of them, “I, more than the others”?

If I had been burdening myself with a sense of guilt for all that he has suffered, then yes, I think I would have been confusing the two forms of responsibility in a way that was inappropriately punitive toward myself. If I felt that this all-encompassing sense of responsibility meant that it was up to me alone to make up for all the harm done to him, to “save him” from the course his life has taken, then again, I think I would have been making a mistake, denying to him and to other people their own responsibilities and misconceiving my own – and also failing to see all the good things in his life, the gleaming silver linings of the clouds he has experienced.

I realise that I did fall into both of these errors to some extent during the days that followed my friend’s call, as I struggled to assimilate what he had told me and tried to work out how to respond to it. My body pretty quickly let me know that it didn’t appreciate either of these views. I’ll spare you the details of its “argument” – let’s just say they were pretty compelling.

The Buddha spoke about “near enemies” of different forms of love, impulses that superficially resemble love, but actually block it. The near enemy of compassion is pity, the near enemy of loving-kindness is attachment. On my analysis so far, the near enemies of responsibility for collective harms are twofold: unbounded guilt, and a desire for control.

But if we avoid the dual excesses of inappropriate guilt and a compulsion to remake the world exactly the way we think it should be, then the impulse to express regret, not just for harm that I personally have caused, but for all the harm done to a person whose suffering is brought to my attention, without concern for whether it is my fault or not, is a good and powerful thing. It provides a connection between personal and collective responsibility that allows collective responsibility to be meaningfully expressed to an individual who has been harmed.

For the one who takes up this responsibility, it is a liberating experience to put aside defensive questions about where the boundaries of personal responsibility lie, and respond to a call for collective responsibility by saying, “I’m sorry.” I imagine that Kevin Rudd experienced this when, as Prime Minister, but also as one among many Australians, he apologized to the Aboriginal Stolen Generations.

The acceptance and expression of this kind of responsibility does not mean that you are suddenly in charge of solving every problem faced by the suffering, but it does make it more likely that you will find some practical, cooperative way to help. I say this because I think that if you personally accept collective responsibility, one benefit is that you are freed from the problems of misplaced guilt and the savior complex which both indicate difficulty in sharing responsibility with others.

Actively sharing in collective responsibility does not mean that the individual merges without trace into the masses. On the contrary, Dostoevsky’s character Alyosha says that “I more than the others,” am responsible. He does not say, "I instead of the others," or "I on behalf of the others." In this form of responsibility, personal identity is not allowed to replace, or to hide behind, the collective. Rather, I am asked to accept more than the others of a responsibility we share. 

Why more? Not because I am worse or better than others, but because in the moment when the acknowledgment of collective responsibility is called for, I am no longer an anonymous individual in the crowd. The ethical spotlight rests on my face: I am the one who has become aware of harm and is called upon to show compassion for the suffering it has caused. The Aboriginal community called upon the Prime Minister. My friend called me. For those whose hearing is attuned to nature, it seems to me that the environment is now calling to each one of us.

Relationships and Writing

I think I will make a great spinster someday.  Personally, I am not in a rush to get married or to be in a "relationship" or whatever.  (Note: I'm not trying to sound cynical.  For those of you married or in relationships, I am happy for you!)  The truth is, I love God, my family, my cat, and I love writing.  And freedom.  I can just see myself ending up like Emily Dickinson or Jane Austen--unmarried women writers.  Okay, so they both had a disappointing love life.  Thankfully, that is not my case.  I don't have any love life.  ;-)

SO...as I was saying, I can see myself living in a little house, filled with cats, visited by my nieces and nephews, and writing stories like a maniac.  Today I read an entry in Gennifer Albin's blog about motherhood mixed with writing.  Let me just say, this woman is amazing!  I don't know how she manages to do all that.  I certainly couldn't.  But basically, that list of stuff sealed the deal for me.  Yup, being single is just dandy.  At least for a while.

What's your take on writing and relationships?  If you're married or in a relationship, is it harder to write?  If you're single, do you like it that way or not?

Funny Monkey Drinking Cocacola

A shower? What's that?

Yup, I haven't showered in two days.  Maybe three...I kind of lost track.  That's because I've been working on a query and getting this fabulous blog up and running.  It's really time to take a break and--no, not shower, but get started on a new round of revisions on my Pansy manuscript.  The story won't do it on it's own!

I'm not one of those writers who craves revision...I prefer generating.  But I really love this story and want it to pack a wallop, so I'd better get to work.

Any tips on how you get excited for revision?  On how you revise?  Comment and let me know!

What's in it for me?

I write because I have to.  It's that simple.  If I didn't write, I would explode.  And I would probably explode into words.

What better option than to write for a living?  I don't feel a need to get published.  I would be happy to write novels just for me.  But there is a thrilling joy in sharing my work with other people.  Also, seeing my own story bound in a glossy book (although I haven't experienced that yet).

It didn't really hit me until I began researching agents that if I get published, I get PAID.  Oh yeah, there is that thing called money that I kind of need to survive.  In fact, I should probably get on that...

I guess what I'm trying to say ("trying" is the key word) is that it's nice to be so sure about my calling.  When there's an occupation you love so much that you're willing to do it without being paid, it should be one of your first career choices.  Just stating the obvious, that's all.

Things that make you go...DUH!

A few things to keep in mind...................

When commissioning a study, be sure you cover all your bases. 

So I was wondering one day, if I put $15.00 in one of my pant pockets and gave it to the cleaners, would I get my money back? I took it a step further and started to wonder, if I did it here in Crawfordville and had someone at the same time do the same in NY city with the same amount of money, what would be the results? Would I see the Southern hospitality and get the money back? Would the NY cleaners keep the money, would I be surprised with the results? So I recruited someone from NY via twitter to do the NY test, sent them the $15.00 via pay pal, never heard from them again.

 When buying a chicken, make sure it's a chicken. 

The guy at the local flee market says they were very nice and healthy chicks. I don't know if I would be able to detect an unhealthy chick unless it was drooling and laying sideways in a death grip or something. Anyways, I bought two and thought having a couple of chickens (Hens) around the house would be different and good for the kids. Little did I know that these chicks were actually roosters....jokes on me at 4:00am in the morning,,,,, 

You can read the full story here: http://yankeeexposure.blogspot.com/2011/01/rooster-daze.html

Have it your way - But not with grits

So when I explained to my new southern Friends that I put Sweet N' Low on my grits....You would have thought I was trying to evoke Civil War 3 .. details here: http://yankeeexposure.blogspot.com/2010/04/true-grits.html


Down South, They have Bugs! 

It landed on my bare arm while I was mowing the lawn, a freaking prehistoric type bug  with horns, long feelers, and some claw type grippy things that looked like it could rip flesh. For a moment, I was thinking alien and quickly thought to protect other parts of my body from probing type activity . But alas, one quick swipe and it was on it's way. I don't have an inch of skin exposed anymore while doing the lawn.

More bug encounters here: http://yankeeexposure.blogspot.com/2010/04/jurassic-bugs.html


They should NEVER make bathing suits with back pockets!

Why do they do that anyway? People like me will put things in them, like a wallet. The little fishes had my credit cards for awhile. They could have ordered the box set of Sponge Bob Square Pants if they had more time......
Look here for the wet details:  http://yankeeexposure.blogspot.com/2010/06/southern-mishigas.html


If you want a lot of comments on a blog post. Talk Donuts! 

This really started the Next Civil War..........people are passionate about their Donuts! 


Donut War Stories: http://yankeeexposure.blogspot.com/2010/07/donut-wars.html

Here I Am

The title of this post pretty much says it all.  With equal reluctance and excitement, I have begun my first weblog ever.  Excitement because I like to write.  Reluctance because I dislike posting anything on the Internet.

I decided, however, that it must be done.  Why?  Because I'm an author!  Authors use blogs!  (Albeit, I am an unpublished author, but what difference does that make?)

I decided that it must be done tonight.  Why?  Because I wouldn't sleep otherwise.    

I also started using Query Tracker (a website about...well, tracking queries).  For the first time ever, I feel part of a writing community--virtual people united by a common passion.  Exciting to be sure.  

"Here I am" is not just my announcement to the blogging world.  It is also a phrase commonly used in the Bible by God's people.  When He called a man or woman's name, that person stood before the God of the universe, ready to listen, ready to obey.  

So here I am, ready to hear God's call and to embark on a new phase of my life.    

Who Wants to Try ?

Anybody interested to hold this girl on your hand or shoulder? 

Sleeping beauties

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve come across a series of disturbing filmic images of women who are (metaphorically or literally) sleeping through their lives.

The first was in an Australian film called Sleeping Beauty, written and directed by Julia Leigh, who was a year ahead of me at Sydney Uni. The second was in an American film called The Future, made by a woman who is also close to my own age: Miranda July, an American performance artist who is the star of her own film (and life, I would guess). The third was a film of the Paris Ballet performing Coppélia, a ballet based on E.T.A. Hoffmann’s story ‘The Sand-Man.’

The three films were completely different in mood. Leigh’s film depicts a dramatic, desolate world full of disturbing experimental encounters, scientific and sexual. In pursuit of money, and perhaps an experience that can break through her emotional frozenness, the main character takes on more and more transgressive forms of work, eventually allowing herself to be drugged so that men can spend the night with her beautiful, unconscious, naked body. This is a form of prostitution with heavy literary associations – Yasunari Kawabata and Gabriel García Márquez both wrote famous stories on this theme. The film also clearly alludes to the work of Haneke and other male European film-makers. One way of reading Leigh's film is that it evokes the disassociation and repressed trauma of a young woman who is almost completely immersed in a male cultural perspective for which women are passive, mute, disturbing bodily presences (there is an audible female literary voice in the film, that of Ingeborg Bachmann, but even she speaks, or rather is spoken, through a male character). She cannot break free from this heavy inheritance; it is as though she is enthralled to it, even though she is also clearly oppressed by it.

Paw Paw the cat

July’s film, by contrast, portrays a humorous, slightly fantastical, but very recognizable world of self-absorbed people stuffing things up. In this film a cat, who has her own squeaky soliloquies to the audience, ends up euthanized because the couple who have decided to adopt her are so busy having a crisis about the meaning of their lives that they forget to pick her up. It occurred to me that you could see this cat as a figure of divinity, the Second Coming in female, feline form. This time around, God is not persecuted or hated. Rather, she suffers and dies because people simply forget about her. There is clearly a message about our relationship to the environment gently embedded in this story of animal neglect.

What really struck me though, seeing this film the day after Leigh’s film (they were both shown at the Sydney Film Festival) was that The Future also depicts a woman who is in thrall to a culture in which women are seen primarily as attractive bodies, with no capacity or concern for moral agency. In this film the picture of femininity is drawn from popular rather than high culture, and the lines are not so sharp, the trauma is ordinary and visible rather than unexplained and hidden, but the problem seems essentially the same. 

In The Future, the main female character is a dance teacher for kids, who competitively aspires to create a series of sexy dance clips that she hopes will go viral on the internet. Finding herself jerkily and self-consciously incapable of this and lacking any other clear direction, she pursues an affair with a random stranger who offers her the opportunity to let herself be absorbed into his life and avoid working out what to do with her own. As a result she breaks her boyfriend’s heart, and her pet-to-be meets a clinical and premature death. The message for anyone who can identify with her: wake up! and live your sexuality - and your life - in a more conscious and authentic way.

July’s film seems more optimistic than Leigh’s about the possibility of this kind of awakening, but there is no redemption at the end of her story, either. What seems to be missing for both film-makers is any sense that there exists any widely-established cultural support for a view of women as active and responsible – as fully awake, especially in sexual relations. They both portray young women struggling with this soporific situation, which is a start, but it feels like there’s still a battle for consciousness to be fought.

As for the ballet, remembering having been enchanted by a live performance of Coppélia when I was a child, I took my 9 year old niece, Caitlin to see this filmed version of it. She commented authoritatively as soon as it began, “Very good dancing.” And it was. But it also gradually sent both of us to the verge of sleep. As Caitlin said on the way home, it seemed an achievement to get through it without nodding off.

Partly this may be the nature of ballet on film. Partly it may have been the result of us both having stayed up late the night before – I had been out dancing tango and Caitlin had had a sleep-over with a couple of her girlfriends. But mainly, I think it was due to the fact that in this production, the director, Patrice Bart, made a psychological interpretation of the story which was too subtle to be appreciated by anyone who didn’t have the original clearly in mind already (Caitlin and I both belonging to this category on the day of viewing).

As I found out later, the Hoffman tale is about a young man whose love for his intelligent, calm, beautiful and loving fiancée is interrupted by his deluded passion for an animated mechanical doll, an enchantment which develops during a period while he is living away from his fiancée. The doll is created and brought to life by a couple of men, one of them a very ugly, mysterious and threatening character. It is by looking through a glass created by him that the young man falls into the ultimately fatal trap of confusing this false, mechanical version of femininity with the woman who loves him.

In Bart's interpretation of the ballet based on this story, a single dancer performs both parts: the fiancé and the doll. Not only does this blur the distinction between them, it also suggests that it is the young woman herself who is giving life to the figure of the doll, rather than this being solely the work of men. As a result, the potential for confusion between woman and mechanical doll, fantasy and reality, dream and waking states, is exponentially increased.

When I saw it with Caitlin, this complex interpretation combined with perfectly executed but somewhat repetitive dance moves just made me sleepy. Now, though, it occurs to me that rather than simply presenting a dilemma concerning male perceptions of women, this version of the ballet opens up the same contemporary problem addressed by Leigh and July. Not only her lover, but also the young woman herself is in danger of being lulled into an artificial sleep by the power of images portraying women as passive sexual commodities. As she struggles to conform to their mechanical patterns, she compromises her agency, as well as her moral intelligence. And when this happens, perhaps beauty itself, as something inseparable from self-consciousness, is surrendered - unless and until she wakes up.

Funny Bodybuilder Dogs

A little thing

“And then he showed me a little thing, the size of a hazelnut, in the palm of my hand, and it was as round as a ball. I looked at it with my mind’s eye and I thought: ‘What can this be?’ And the answer came: ‘It is all that is made.’ I marveled that it could last, for I thought that it might suddenly have crumbled to nothing, it was so small. And the answer came into my mind: ‘It lasts and ever shall, because God loves it.’ And so all things have being through the love of God.”

These words were written by a woman known as Julian of Norwich. 

She lived in the 14^th century, and is the first woman we know of to have written in English. Her biography is uncertain, although it is thought she may have been a wife and mother who lost her family, possibly in one of three bouts of the ‘black death’ that reduced the population of Norwich by about one third during her lifetime. At the age of thirty she became very sick herself, and during this illness received sixteen ‘showings’ from God, which she recorded in a small book.

Subsequently she became an anchoress, meaning that she lived in a small room adjoining the church from which she took her name. She spent the rest of her life in this room. It had a window into the church, and another on to the outside world. She had a couple of servants who brought her food, and a cat who kept the rats from coming in to nibble at her ears. She spent her time in prayer and in advising the parishioners who came to her with their troubles, something she is said to have done with great wisdom and compassion.

She also wrote a longer commentary on the first small text describing the ‘showings.’ In this commentary she grappled with the problem of how to reconcile the message of unlimited divine love she had received in her visions, with a world in which she was acutely aware of human suffering and conflict – the fourteenth century saw the 100 years war between England and France, harsh suppression of the Peasants Revolt against taxation during years of famine, and an intensity of religious rivalry and doctrinal controversy that would make the Holocaust references and ad hominem attacks of the recent debates over climate change look like polite conversation.

It was this later effort to make sense of her revelations of divine love, and their meaning in the human world, that made Julian one of the greatest of all theologians (in the judgment of Thomas Merton, among others). She began with her experience of divine love as all-encompassing, blissful, and unlimited, with no room for anger or judgment, or for craving or confusion. Then she grappled with the multiple questions that flow from the seeming incompatibility or inaccessibility of this kind of love in a human social world in which anger, craving and confusion so often seem to be the elemental components of experience and expression.

Her vision of creation as a ball the size of a hazelnut, sitting in the palm of her hand, is perhaps the most famous of the images she has left us. It has particular resonance at a time when space exploration has given us images of the earth as a tiny ball and awareness of global warming has led us to see the future of this small planet as resting in our hands. Julian's message is that it is divine love that ultimately sustains the world, but also that this love needs to pass through us - we need to stop blocking it with greed and anger and ignorance.

If only we manage to do that, then to my mind Julian’s teachings suggest that the awesome analytic and creative power of science and the human capacity for social and political cooperation will be able to operate unhindered, and as she put it:

“All shall be well, 

and all shall be well, 

and all manner of thing shall be well.”

Earthrise viewed from Apollo 8, December 1968

(With thanks to John and Joy O’Connor for introducing me to the thought of Julian during a wonderful day at their house recently.)

Are you a Yankee or a Rebel ? ~ Take the test

You can figure out just how much of Southerner you are by taking an online quiz called "Are you a Yankee or a Rebel?" It asks questions about how you pronounce certain words and phrases and then calculates the amount of Dixie in your speech. Take the quiz and report back your findings! My score?:  The computer said "Wow! You are a Duke of Yankeedom!"

Online Quiz linked below: 

http://www.alphadictionary.com/articles/yankeetest.html

A Glossary of Quaint Southernisms

A selection of "quaint Southernisms" from Dr. Robert Beard of AlphaDictionary.com:

a- A prefix added to the present participle to make it purtier, e.g. "Abe's a-workin in backer t'day; Ma's a-talkin to you, son!"

Ahere adv. In this direction, as in, "Yall come ahere; I got sumpn a show yuh."

Backer n. A large cultivated weed you can smoke legally. (Southerners don't get all that excited about the syllables in front of the accented one.)

Bard v. Past tense of the infinitive "to borrow." Usage: "My brother bard my pickup truck in never brung it back."

Caint v. aux. Cannot.

Carry on v. Overdo your actions or make a lot of fuss, as in, "Yall young'ns stop a-carryin on so; we cain't hear each other talk."

Catty-corner(ed) adj. Diagonal.

Damyankee n. City-slickers from exotic places like New York, Chicago or Philadelphia. (Notice down South it is one word.)

Dinner n. The meal et around the middle of the day.

Err n. A colorless, odorless gas containing oxygen, as in: "He cain't breathe. . . givvim some err!"

Ever adj. Quicker form of "every."

Fixin v. aux. Getting ready to: "I'm fixin to leave."

For crying out loud! exp. Well, I'll be darned!

Gol darn (it)! exp. An expression of surprise or frustration.

Haid n. The uppermost part of a human or animal body.

His'n poss. pro. Belonging to him, as in "Are them-air boots mine, yourn or his'n." (See "her'n" for more.)

If'n conj. Variation of "if". (Southerners love their new suffix, -n, so much, they stick it everywhere. See young'n and his'n.

Kin to adj. Related to (someone) .

Like-to adv. Almost, nearly. "Hit like-to kilt d'man when he saw his boy a-wearin' a kilt."

Lord a'mercy! inter. What you say when thangs get out of control.

Mawnin n. The early part of the day.

Might could v. aux. Might be able to. Auxiliaries don't scare Southerners they way they scare Northerners; we string them together fearlessly, "I might coulda finished choppin the wood if'n hit hadn't rained."

-n Suffix for creating nouns from adjectives: young-n, little-n, big-n, that-n over yonder. However, Southerners are so proud of it, they stick it on a lot of other words: if'n, his'n, her'n, sos'n, etc.

No 'count adj. Worthless.

Pitcher n. (1) a vessel for holding and pouring water; (2) a visual representation of something, as a photograph. The "t" is silent.

Plumb adv. Completely: "Are you plumb crazy?"

Purt near adv. Nearly, close to.

Saerdy n. The sixth day of the week.

Story (tell a) Well, sorta, you know, tell a lie. For example, "That's a story, mama! I never told his girlfriend he et snails!"

Sugar n. As in "Gimme some sugar": affection, a chance to snuggle your neck, huggin' or kissin' or both.

Supper n. The meal (supposed to be) et around 5 o'clock.

Them pro. Those. "Jimmy John, where in the world did you git them pants?"

Them-air pro. Variant of "them": "Jimmy John, where in the world did you git them-air pants?"

Uppin v. aux. To do something suddenly or unexpectedly: "I toad him we's havin liver puddin fer dinner and he uppin left."

Whup v. Inflict physical pain on someone younger and/or smaller than you using a leather strap or switch.

Funny Kang Fu Cat

Funny Sniper Cat

Is climate change science inconclusive?

In my Sydney Morning Herald opinion piece on climate change I wrote:

“I doubt that many people question the truth of climate change because they truly find the science inconclusive.”

Quite a few people wrote to me to dispute this claim, saying that the science is not settled, there is still room for doubt that climate change is a problem that we need or can do anything about.

In response to these people, I take back my claim – there are obviously a significant number of people who do find the science inconclusive, and who have real doubts about the trustworthiness of the mainstream scientific community and their declarations regarding climate change.

As I said to my friend in the record shop, who is a scientist, I’m not a “believer.” I don’t espouse quasi-religious faith in climate change science, or in scientists (sorry, Neal). I’m open to the idea that reasonable questions and challenges can be addressed to the scientists who maintain that climate change is real and caused in significant part by human activity.

But I’m also happy to leave this discussion to the scientists, and to show what I consider to be rational and friendly (rather than blind or mystical) faith in their expertise. Right now, the Climate Change Commission and a large majority of scientists agree on the reality of climate change, and that’s good enough for me. It has to be, because I know I don’t have the scientific training to look into the science directly. To attempt to assess all the evidence for myself would be a mistake that would be likely to lead me into confusion and false conclusions – I’m humble enough to recognise my limits in this regard.

Contemporary science is a highly complex and interdependent form of knowledge. It is not something that each individual can assess independently, making his or her mind up based on direct experience and individual use of reason. This is another reason why climate change science should not be treated as if it were a religion.

In the case of religious or moral knowledge, it is legitimate and important for each individual to make up their own mind, based on their own interpretation of teachings, use of reasoning powers and reflection on direct experience. While the support of good friends is essential for anyone’s personal ripening and not everyone is at the same level development, you have to seek spiritual enlightenment or grace for yourself, you can’t delegate that task. Similarly you have to make moral decisions for yourself, otherwise they’re not fully moral.

Everyone is capable of making moral judgments about climate change, even if only a few of us are qualified to make scientific judgments about it. More that this, we are all obliged to address the moral challenge posed by climate change, and I think the volume of debate about it shows that many people feel this keenly. This issue raises important questions about how we relate to one another, and how we operate as a moral and political community (or interacting series of communities). It also raises the question of how we relate to the authority of science.

I think it is this last question, about the authority of science, that underlies the splitting of speakers on climate change into opposing camps of believers and skeptics. To my mind, this suggests that for both sides, science is taken to be a new form of religion, to be defended or challenged in the same way that a religious faith might be. This is where I see people on both sides of the debate making a crucial error. Modern science is not religion (or it's an "inverse cripple" form of religion, to borrow a phrase from Nietzsche).

No matter how strong the science on climate change is or becomes, it will never give us the answers to moral questions about how to communicate about it, how to respond to it personally, or how to shape collective identities with the power to do something effective about it at local, national and global levels. On these sorts of questions, I agree that the science is inconclusive.

Climate change pagans

This week's blogpost has made it into the mainstream media! You can read it here.

Yankee goes to Hollywood - Southern Style

I consider myself somewhat of a movie buff. I am a TCM (Turner Classic Movie channel ) fanatic and appreciate a well done movie. The TCM android app is one of my favorite apps! 


I thought I would highlight some films that I have seen and enjoyed, movies that give a glimpse of some real life southern traditions, customs and characters. These are all great movies, please feel free to comment on them and let me know the Southern themed movie (s) I may have overlooked and the movie you consider your favorite. . They are in no particular order. Kudos to Wikipedia for helping with some of the movie notes. 


GONE WITH THE WIND (1939)
This may be the ultimate iconic movie of the South.  
The title is taken from the first line of the third stanza of the poem Non Sum Qualis eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae  by Ernest Dowson: "I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind." The novel's protagonist, Scarlett O'Hara, also uses the title phrase in a line in the book: when her home area is overtaken by the Yankees, she wonders to herself if her home on a plantation called "Tara," is still standing, or if it was "also gone with the wind which had swept through Georgia." More generally, the title refers to the entire way of life of the antebellum South as having "gone with the wind." 

A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (1951)
Stella.....STELLA..... S T E L L A !
The film presents Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh), a fading, but nevertheless attractive Southern belle, whose pretensions to virtue and culture only thinly mask her alcoholism and delusions of grandeur. Her poise is an illusion she presents to shield others, and most of all herself, from her reality in an attempt to make herself still attractive to new male suitors. Blanche arrives from her hometown of Laurel, Mississippi (changed from Laurel in the play) at the apartment of her sister, Stella Kowalski (Kim Hunter), in the French Quarter of New Orleans, on Elysian Fields Avenue; the local transportation she takes to arrive there includes a streetcar route named "Desire." The steamy, urban ambiance is a shock to Blanche's nerves.

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD(1962)
One of my all time favorites, love the plot and the feel of this movie. 
The story takes place during three years of the Great Depression in the fictional "tired old town" of Maycomb, Alabama. The narrator, six-year-old Scout Finch, lives with her older brother Jem and their widowed father Atticus, a middle-aged lawyer. Jem and Scout befriend a boy named Dill who visits Maycomb to stay with his aunt for the summer. The three children are terrified of, and fascinated by, their neighbor, the reclusive "Boo" Radley. The adults of Maycomb are hesitant to talk about Boo and, for many years, few have seen him.The movie touches on many racial themes of the times. 

DELIVERANCE(1972)

Needed to put this one on the list! 

Four Atlanta businessmen, Lewis (Reynolds), Ed (Voight), Bobby (Beatty) and Drew (Cox), decide to canoe down the Cahulawassee River in the remote Georgia wilderness, expecting to have fun and see the glory of nature before the river valley is flooded by the construction of a dam. Lewis, an experienced outdoorsman, is the leader. Ed is also a veteran of several trips but lacks Lewis' machismo. Bobby and Drew are novices.

From the start, it is clear the four are aliens in this unknown location.

FRIED GREEN TOMATOES (1991)

A good Southern "Chick Flick" 
Evelyn Couch (Kathy Bates), a timid, unhappy housewife in her forties, meets elderly Ninny Threadgoode (Jessica Tandy) in a Birmingham, Alabama, nursing home. Ninny, over several encounters with Evelyn, tells her the story of the now-abandoned town of Whistle Stop, Alabama, and the people who lived there.
If you thought us Yankees were the only ones who have driving and parking issues, watch this scene.

The soundtrack to this movie is awesome as well. 

SONG OF THE SOUTH (1946)

An early Animation and live action flick

The setting is the Deep South, at some indeterminate point during the latter half of the 19th century (it is not clearly indicated when in relation to the American Civil War the story takes place: whether during the Antebellum or Reconstruction periods). Seven-year-old Johnny is excited about what he believes to be a vacation at his grandmother's Georgia plantation with his parents.

STEEL MAGNOLIAS (1989)
 Another good Southern Chick Flick
On a spring day in the Chinquapin Parish, a fictional suburb of Natchitoches, Louisiana, a young woman is seen walking down a residential street. She goes into a home-basedbeauty salon owned by Truvy Jones (Dolly Parton). A recent beauty school graduate, Annelle Dupuy Desoto (Daryl Hannah) has come to answer Truvy's request to the college for a new employee.

ALL THE KINGS MEN (1949)

A chicken in every pot - Huey Long 

The main story is a thinly disguised version of the rise and assassination of real-life 1930s Louisiana Governor, Huey Long. Also included is a series of complex relationships between a journalist friend who slowly sours to his ways, the journalist's girlfriend (who has an affair with Stark), her brother (a top surgeon), her uncle (a top judge who is appointed to AG then resigns).

When his son kills a female passenger in a drunk driving incident (and paralyses himself) Stark's world starts to unravel and he discovers that not everyone can be bought off.

OH BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? (2000) 

A fun movie, love the soggy bottom boys!

In 1937, Ulysses Everett McGill (George Clooney), Pete Hogwallop (John Turturro), and Delmar O'Donnell (Tim Blake Nelson) escape from a chain gang at Parchman Farm and set out to retrieve the $1.2 million in treasure that Everett claims to have stolen from an armored car and buried before his incarceration. They have only four days to find it before the valley in which it is hidden will be flooded to create Arkabutla Lake as part of a new hydroelectric project. Early on in their escape, they try to jump onto a moving train with some hobos, but fall off due to Pete's inability to get on. They then encounter a blind man(Lee Weaver) traveling on a manual railroad car. They hitch a ride, and he foretells their futures.

DRIVING MISS DAISY(1989)

I drive like this all the time....

Mrs. ("Miss") Daisy Werthan (Jessica Tandy), a 72-year-old Jewish widow, lives inAtlanta, Georgia, alone except for an African American housemaid named Idella (Esther Rolle). In 1948, after a driving mishap where her automobile is demolished, Miss Daisy’s son, Boolie (Dan Aykroyd), tells her she will have to get a chauffeur because no insurance company will insure her. She refuses, but Boolie is determined to find her one. Meanwhile, she is stuck at home and is unable to run errands or visit friends.

THE COLOR PURPLE (1985)

Hello Oprah and Whoopi! 

Taking place in the Southern United States during the early-1900s to mid-1930s, the movie tells the life of a poor black woman, Celie Harris (Whoopi Goldberg), whose abuse begins when she is young. By the time she is fourteen, she has already had two children by her father (Leonard Jackson). He takes them away from her at childbirth and forces Celie (Desreta Jackson) to marry a local widower Albert Johnson

I am sure I have missed many, can you name some not here? What is your favorite Southern themed  film of all time?