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{{trope}}
[[File:
{{quote|''We'll try to stay serene and calm
''When Alabama gets [[Atomic Hate|the bomb]].''
|[[Tom Lehrer]], "[[Do Unto Others Before They Do Unto Us/Quotes|Who's Next]]?"}}
{{quote|'''Sam Donaldson:''' ''Governor Clinton, let's be frank. You're running for president, yet your only experience has been as the governor of a small, backward state with a population of drunken hillbillies riding around in pickup trucks. The main streets of your capital city, Little Rock, are something out of ''[[
'''Bill Clinton:''' ''I'm sorry, Sam, do you have a question?''
|''[[Saturday Night Live]]'', [http://snltranscripts.jt.org/92/92cdebate.phtml Debate '92].}}
The [[Deep South]]: home of fat redneck sheriffs, hillbillies, moonshiners, [[Politically
Although the real mid-southern and southeastern United States has a far wider range of locales and settings, the
If you're a liberal urbanite from one of the coasts, then this is probably the last place on Earth you'd ever want to visit. Especially if you're an ethnic, religious, and/or [[Heteronormative Crusader|sexual minority]]. In fact, it ''will'' be the last place on Earth you'll ever go to if you piss off the locals, since
Do ''not'' try to knock up one of the local girls there, or you will disappear, or, at the very least, [[Shotgun Wedding|be married to her for the rest of your life, whether you like it or not]]. Sex is [[Serious Business]] down there.
So ''don't'' complain about the war overseas, ''don't'' admit that you think ''[[Queer
People will often have two names, with men having the second name [[
Any part of the region that is not rural, backwoods, mountains, or bayous shows up on TV as merely [[The City]] or [[Suburbia]] with an accent. The sprawling metropolises of [[Atlanta]] and Charlotte might as well not exist. And while Nashville and [[New Orleans]] do exist, they're not without stereotypes of their own: N'awlins being a [[
This is where the [[Southern
Outside southern Louisiana, the region usually averts [[Christianity Is Catholic]]. Whether white or black, the churches are usually either Baptist or Pentecostal.
Compare [[Flyover Country]], as both regions might as well be Jupiter for screenwriters from the coasts, and [[Oop North]], which often receives many similar stereotypes in British media. Contrast [[Sweet Home Alabama]]. For the vicious [[Nightmare Fuel]] version, try [[The Savage South]].
{{examples|Examples}}▼
== Anime and Manga ==
* ''[[Blaster Knuckle]]'' is the story of a black man in the 1880's who battles demons who use the Ku Klux Klan to cover their [[I Am a Humanitarian|flesh-eating tendencies]] on the nearest safe target. As one might expect, [[Hero
== Comic
* ''[[Preacher (Comic Book)|Preacher]]''
* Doug TenNapel's ''[[Creature Tech]]'' thoroughly subverts this with the town of Turlock. First, the town's sub-literate rednecks turn out to be more accepting of a giant insect-man than the protagonist is. Second, several townspeople are revealed to be quite intelligent: the pastor was formerly a biologist, and another man taught himself quantum mechanics. Third, Turlock is actually in rural [[Hollywood California|California]].
* Seth from ''[[The Authority]]'' is pretty much the worst of Southern stereotypes blatantly distilled into a genetic freak of nature.
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** Friedman obviously never took into account the true story of Mount Airy, the North Carolina town after which Mayberry was modeled. Besides being the hometown of Andy Griffith, it was also the retirement spot for Chang and Eng, two conjoined Thai brothers and circus performers who were the original "Siamese twins." By all accounts, Chang and Eng enjoyed a pleasant retirement and were never persecuted either for being Asian or being "freaks."
*** It may have helped that they were quite wealthy (at least until after the civil war).
* ''[[
** The series also mentions several Earth-C southern cities, including "Memfish" (Memphis) and "Tallahatchee" (Tallahassee, Florida), along with Mew Orleans.
* In ''[[Bitchy Bitch]]'', Marcie surely comes from the deep south. She's a stupid and extremely prejudiced (but cute) [[Southern Belle]] type with a heavy accent.
* ''[[Scare Tactics (
== Film ==
* ''[[Smokey and
* Played straight in ''[[Gone with the Wind
* There are several racist rednecks in ''[[The Blind Side]]''; Lynne Tuohy lampshades this trope by calling one of them "[[Deliverance]]." On the other hand, the Tuohys are representative of [[Sweet Home Alabama]].
* The movie ''[[Deliverance]]'' is the uber example of this trope. Outsiders would be wise not to mention it to real Southerners for any reason but to mock it.
* The movie ''[[My Cousin Vinny]]''. As it happens, Vinny (Joe Pesci) would've lost the case if he hadn't familiarized himself with some of the local culture. Overall, it was portrayed as unfriendly only when (and only because) Vinny (and sometimes Bill) was being, to them, outrageously condescending or irreverent.
* The stereotyped cruelty of the
* ''[[Song of the South]]'' became Disney's [[Redheaded Stepchild]] film due to its portrayal of [[Unfortunate Implications|happy sharecroppers]] (idealizing Reconstruction-era racism in the
* [[Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle|Harold and Kumar]] visit the Deep South when they ''Escape from Guantanamo Bay'', and encounter, among other things, [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|a Ku Klux Klan rally, an inbred mutant child, and Neil Patrick Harris]].
* ''[[Forrest Gump]]''
* ''[[O Brother, Where Art Thou?]]?'' takes place in the 1930's Deep South (it's never outright stated where), and was largely shot in Mississippi.
* Rob Zombie's ''[[House of 1000 Corpses]]'' and ''[[The
* ''[[Gator Bait]]'', ''[[Wild
* The whole premise behind the ''[[
* ''[[Hannah Montana]] [[The Movie]]'' takes place in the fake Tennessee town of Crawley Corners.
* Subverted in the documentary ''con'' fiction film ''[[Borat]]'', when the titular character dines with a family in the South. They are very courteous of this odd foreigner and patient with his rude and boorish behavior... that is, until his dinner guest, a transvestite prostitute, arrives, at which point they kick him out.
** The film also clashes at points with the common stereotype that the South is anti-Semitic. A cut scene (available on the DVD) has Borat visiting a dog kennel and asking if he can buy their most vicious dog, because he thinks he needs to defend himself against Jews. The kennel owner admonishes him not to think about Jewish people that way. And in another scene - which actually is in the movie proper - we are introduced to an elderly South Carolina couple who actually ''are'' Jewish!
* ''[[The
* The 2011 remake of ''[[Straw Dogs]]'' moves the setting from England to Mississippi. And the antagonists are a group of pickup truck driving redneck rapists.
* ''[[Requiem for
* ''[[Mississippi Burning]]'' & ''[[In the Heat of
* ''Southern Comfort'' pits a bunch of Nation Guardsmen against a gang of local [[Ragin Cajun]]
* The screenwriter of the ''[[Cape Fear]]'' remake directed by Martin Scorsese admits as a "New York Jew", he wrote Max Cady to be a "Monster of the South" speaking in tongues like something out of a tent show revival.
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* Played cheerfully and for humor in Joan Hess's ''Maggody'' mysteries.
* [[William Faulkner]], himself a Mississippian, ''loved'' to play around with this trope.
* [[Flannery O
* Subverted in ''[[Bimbos of the Death Sun|Zombies of the Gene Pool]]'', which is set in Tennessee. Jay Omega worries that he and his fellow professor-slash-girlfriend Marion have stumbled upon a diner like this. Then a big bearded man comes up to the table and starts intimidating Jay...until Marion tells him to knock it off. It turns out, the "redneck" is a Joyce scholar professor and a friend of Marion's who wanted to have a little fun at the expense of yet another "''[[Deliverance]]'' sucker" as he puts it.
* In [[Kim Newman]]'s ''[[Dark Future (
* ''[[Deliverance]]'', by James Dickey. Southerners will complain at length about the movie and the novel and the horrible stereotypes it represents. It's worth noting Dickey was born and raised in Atlanta, living and working in the Southeast for most of his life.
== Live Action TV ==
* ''[[American Gothic]]'' (the show, not the painting: that one takes [[Down
* ''[[The Beverly Hillbillies]]'': The early seasons featured Mr. Drysdale and Miss Hathaway as the straight men, looking on at those wacky hillbillies and how unfamiliar they were with the big city. They eventually shifted to Jed being the straight man, solving problems because his homespun wisdom made him smarter than city folk, with Mr. Drysdale being a comic character. Later on, much of the humor of the Clampetts' unfamiliarity with the modern world came from making fun of the stranger aspects of the modern world, like when the Clampetts meet a bunch of hippies
:Of course, as the title of the series states, the Clampetts are, specifically, "Hillbillies". That is, rural Appalachian hillfolk rather than just generic Southerners. The Clampetts were from Tennessee ([[The Movie]] incorrectly says Arkansas - whose hillfolk instead come from the Ozarks, which also stretch into Missouri), but Appalachian culture goes as far north as Ohio and Pennsylvania, so it's not even an exclusively "Southern" stereotype.
* ''[[In the Heat of
* ''[[The Dukes of Hazzard]]''.
* ''[[
* ''[[Green Acres]]''.
* ''[[Hee Haw]]''.
* Seen in several ''[[Murder, She Wrote]]'' episodes, except that garrulous New Englanders who interfere in everyone's business ''don't'' come to horrible ends.
* ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000]]''
* Although the trope is based on an exaggerated stereotype, the ''[[Top Gear]]'' team proved that it's still not a good idea to drive around in Alabama with cars sporting such slogans as "NASCAR sucks" and "Manlove rules OK", to say nothing of "Hillary 4 President". They pulled in for gasoline and eventually had to flee while rocks were chucked at them. The jury's out on whether the locals kicked off as a result of being offended by what was written, or at being trolled with the stereotype...
** Arguably an (unintentional) subversion since it appears [[Documentary of Lies|no attack took place]]. There is no footage whatsoever of any of the supposed attackers throwing a single rock (or doing anything threatening at all), despite the fact that the show had multiple cameras focused at the gas station.
** Strangely, the [[Serious Business|locals reacted most strongly to NASCAR being dissed]], so maybe the stereotype of the
* ''[[Matlock]]'' is set in a version of Atlanta which apparently neglects to include the sports teams, the multiple Fortune 500 companies, the obscene traffic and overflowing interstate system, and focuses primarily on plantation style houses, small town streetscapes, and a sense of general Suburbia (which, to be fair, Atlanta has a lot of, especially to its north).
* Somebody in the crew making ''[[True Blood]]'' must have been reading TV Tropes, because the opening credits show all cliches from the main entry, pretty much in the order they are listed. The Sookie Stackhouse novels - upon which [[True Blood]] is based - explores this trope as well, but with a far more balanced perspective.
* At least one episode of ''[[The Incredible Hulk]]'' had Banner running afoul of a [[Corrupt Hick|corrupt sheriff]] in a little Southern town.
* ''[[Hannah Montana]]'' never lets you forget the main character's Southern roots (specifically, Tennessee). Taken to extremes when a snooty set of parents spent the entire episode mocking the [[
** Interestingly enough, Disney apparently originally tried to make Miley Cyrus speak in that standard bland SoCal dialect that all their other personalities use, but even the most rigorous dialog coaching failed to erase her accent, so they just gave up.
* ''[[Justified (TV series)|Justified]]'' does this, although it's much more nuanced than many other TV shows.
* ''[[ER]]'' brought Dr. Benton to the backwater town of Pascagoula, MS, where minorities were looked upon with suspicion and residents were wary of treatment from him. When this episode aired, it caused residents of the real Pascagoula (a medium-sized city), to protest its portrayal.
* ''[[Whose Line Is It Anyway
{{quote|
'''Colin:''' (miming driving) Mississippi... I'm ''still'' in Mississippi...
'''Wayne:''' Mississippi... '''I'm''' still in Mississippi!
''[From a different session: "Unlikely state songs"]''
'''Wayne:''' (singing) Oh, you won't find me in Alabamaaaa... }}
* ''[[
* The [[American Broadcasting Company|ABC]] show ''[[GCB]]'' is about a single mother and widow who moves from Santa Barbara, California to her hometown of Dallas, Texas. The show pretty much plays up all of the stereotypes of the South and Texas.
* [[CMT]] has a tendency for these types of show, most of them were reality shows.
== Music ==
* [[Tom Lehrer]], "[https://web.archive.org/web/20081030071405/http://members.aol.com/quentncree/lehrer/dixie.htm I Wanna Go Back to Dixie]."
* [[
* [[
* For a [[Take That]] at "Sweet Home Alabama" itself, see Warren Zevon's "Play it All Night Long." The first line is "Grandpa pissed his pants again" and that sort of sets the tone.
* "Sweet home Alabama / Play that dead band's song..." Ironically, [[
* [[
* "The Night the Lights Went Out In Georgia"
* Occurs in [[
* Nina Simone's [
* Anthony and Those Other Guys' [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqnWQgU5AOU&feature=plcp&context=C3982292UDOEgsToPDskLtPcZIM_hmZZGJkqDag9Pd "Sunburn"], which is loosely based on a real person.
* Tends to be a favorite setting for [[Randy Newman]], especially his controversial hit "Rednecks" and the more subtle, but just as pointed, "Birmingham".
* [[Ray Stevens]]' song "Mississippi Squirrel Revival" invokes this trope.
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* The musical ''[[Finian's Rainbow]]'' is set in the fictitious state of Missitucky. What undoubtedly will help carry this Southern state "forward to yesterday" (to quote the stirring words of Senator Billboard Rawkins) are its poll tax, restrictive covenants and black servants carrying mint juleps (the traditional minstrel shuffling and "yawk, yawk" accents, however, are evidently not taught at Tuskegee).
* Larry Shue's ''[[The Foreigner]]'' takes place in rural Georgia, featuring KKK members as the villains.
* ''[[Oklahoma!]]''<ref>Its twangy dialect aside, the "Southern-ness" of the actual state is debatable, due to it being settled largely from non-southern Kansas.</ref>
* [[Tennessee Williams]] was from Mississippi, and all of his plays are set in the Deep South.
** ''[[A Streetcar Named Desire]]''
** ''[[The Glass Menagerie]]''
** ''[[Cat
== Video Games ==
* ''[[
** The Terran Confederacy were originally comprised of prisoners who crash landed in the Korprulu Sector. It is pointed out that the Terran Confederacy (using a modified Confederate States Army naval Jack as their flag) is considered corrupt, is plagued by several rebel groups, has nuked a rebelling planet (Korhal) and is eventually [[It Got Worse|overthrown by the even worse]] [[The Empire|Terran Dominion]]. Actually, most of the human factions [[Humans Are
* The villains in ''[[
* ''[[Oddworld]]: Stranger's Wrath'' is set in an alien version of this, populated by hillbilly chicken people and toadlike outlaws.
* ''[[Left 4 Dead|Left 4 Dead 2]]'' chronicles the journey of four survivors of a [[Zombie Apocalypse]] making their way from Savannah, Georgia to New Orleans. Two of the characters are Southerners: Ellis, an overly energetic mechanic who loves guns, rambles at length about "[[The Munchausen|my buddy Keith]]", and is generally too good-natured to be a [[Good Ol' Boy]], and Coach an African-American high school football coach who loves food and plays the [[Team Dad]]. They are joined by two Northerners, Rochelle, a reporter from Cleveland, Ohio who takes on the dual roles of [[The Chick]] and [[Team Mom]], and Nick, a Vegas con-artist and borderline Guido [[Deadpan Snarker]]. Much of the humor in the game is based on Rochelle and Nick's observations of the Rochelle and Nick's
** In the second level of the game, one possible dialog has Ellis say he knows of a gun store where they can get better equipped. Nick snarks "Looks like living in this place is finally paying off", and Coach gravely responds "Mister, I don't like your attitude."
* ''[[Destroy All Humans!]]''
** And, in light of the "I Like Ike!" snippet described above, it's worth pointing out that the South was one of the few places where Dwight Eisenhower was ''not'' popular during the 1950s.
* ''Death on the Mississippi'' and ''Till Death Do Us Part'' missions in ''[[Hitman]]: Blood Money''.
* ''[[Fallout 3]]'''s Colonel Augustus Autumn has a reasonable, and at times quite good, Virginia plantation accent. Somewhat strangely for a game set partly in the ruins of northern Virginia, no other character has an accent remotely like his.
** Something of a [[Truth in Television]], as DC and the associated metro areas in Maryland and northern Virginia (NoVa, as the locals call it) consists almost entirely of standard urbanized populations drawn from throughout the country to take jobs in the Federal government. Once you leave the DC metro area and head further south, there's a marked change in culture. In a map showing election results by county in Virginia, you'll see two blue sections in a sea of red - the suburbs of DC and [[Wacky College|Blacksburg]].
** The Point Lookout DLC is a straighter example, with its moonshining and subhuman "swampfolk" who tote double-barreled shotguns. However, it's based on a real-life location (Point Lookout State Park, MD) that remained Union territory during the Civil War, and arguably, like most subcultures in the Fallout universe, it has more to do with 200 years of isolation.
* ''[[Redneck Rampage]]'', of course, ''rolls'' in this trope.
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== Western Animation ==
* ''[[Family Guy]]'', set in Rhode Island but written by a bunch of Southern Californians. God, where to even ''start'' with this one:
** The show visits one of these locales in an episode entitled "To Live and Die in Dixie". The South is one of the series' favorite punching bags, and it receives a ''lot'' of low blows from the show. According to the show, the people in the South are still bitter about losing the [[Civil War]], and are behind about a hundred years in terms of culture and technology. The neighborhood schoolkids, who go to class in a one-room schoolhouse
*** That particular episode, though, also ended showing some of the South's positive qualities ("We look after our own!"), so it wasn't quite as low a blow as... some ''other'' episodes (see below).
** The episode "Brian Wallows and Peter's Swallows" has a (Emmy-winning) musical number that contains the throwaway line "The country's changed, that is, except the South", accompanied by a shot that looks like it belongs in "To Live and Die in Dixie".
** Despite not even going to the South this time, the episode "Airport '07" starts with Peter becoming a redneck, making fun of said stereotype.
** It comes up yet again in "Lois Kills Stewie", this time targeting North Carolina with a sign reading "First in Flight, 48th in Education" ([[Did Not Do the Research|note that this information was very out of date - at the time of the episode's 2007 airing, N.C. was ranked 24th in education]]). An amnesiac Lois is lost in North Carolina, but finds work at a fat camp for obese kids who keep trying to eat each other. She soon makes a friend at the local small-town diner, who turns out to be a white supremacist, and is assaulted with a blunt object after an anti-Semitic joke when she tries to point out [[
** The episode "Boys Do Cry" is set in Texas.
** The recent episode "Back to the Pilot" hits two of the writers' favorite targets, the South and [[George W. Bush]], at the same time. Brian manages to prevent [[The War
** [[Jerkass|Seth MacFarlane]] hosted an evening of ''Family Guy'' on Cartoon Network, and at one point made sure to state outright that his apparent disdain and hatred of the South was 100% sincere and that he wished every Southerner dead.
* ''[[Futurama]]'':
** Pays a visit to the submerged, forgotten city of... [[Atlanta]]. Yes, ''Atlanta'', largest city in Georgia and a major metropolitan area. Apparently the 1000-year timeskip has regressed this city back into a municipality inhabited by southern dandies, as all the "quality" people ([[My Friends and Zoidberg|and Jane Fonda]]) left when they airlifted the entire city out to float the ocean, built too much on it, and it sank. Appropriately, the episode this is from is called "The Deep South".
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* ''[[The Flintstones]]'' featured two episodes revealing Fred's paternal ancestors were hillbillies from the state of "Arkanstone", and that they were all wiped out in a long-running feud with the Hatrock family. Said feud was revived when the Flintstones and Rubbles visit Arkanstone to claim an estate Fred had inherited.
** Although "Arkanstone" works as a typical Flintstones [[Punny Name]], it's also a case of [[Did Not Do the Research]] since the Hatfield/McCoy feud occurred along the Tug River, which forms part of the border between Kentucky and West Virginia (both culturally very Southern but historically ambiguous), nowhere near Arkansas.
* In the episode "Inherit the Judgement-The Dope's Trial," ''[[Duckman]]'' heads to the
* ''[[Squidbillies]]''
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20110615080154/http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-570997817440305842 Alabama Man] from the ''[[South Park]]'' episode "Chinpokomon".<ref>"Not all people from Alabama are wife-beaters."</ref>
** They did it again in "Worldwide Recorder Concert" where the class all travels to Arkansas, and Mr Garrison is forced to confront his father about molestation, {{spoiler|specifically, why his dad ''didn't'' molest him.}} The episode goes on to insinuate that Arkansans {{spoiler|other than Mr Garrison, Sr.}} are a bunch of child molesters.
* David Banner's ''That Crook'd Sipp'' was a [[One
== Other ==
* When the Olympics were held in Atlanta, the ''New Yorker'' had a cartoon ("Too Busy City") on the cover in sepia (like an old photo), with a hayseed with straw in his mouth at the Olympics, and at least one chicken. It received some very angry letters.
** On the other hand, when [[Jeff Foxworthy]] made very similar (if not worse) jokes about the very same subject, there was no uproar whatsoever as [[N
* In ''A Walk Across America'', Peter Jenkins described how he did just that, from New York to Louisiana. In the picture he paints of the South in the 1970s, certain parts play this trope straight; others avert it. In one town, a small contingency of police basically ordered him to leave and vaguely threatened to hang him if he didn't. In the next town, however, a hospitable family actually "adopted" him for a few months as he worked at a local factory to replenish his cash. In an Alabama town, he was threatened by a group of men, but when he explained to them that they were confirming this trope's stereotypes, they backed off. One of the men felt so bad about the incident he invited Jenkins to come eat with his family.
* The portrayal of churches as Baptist is pretty well justified. The only states in the country that are majority-Baptist are in the South, except Missouri (which is itself sometimes counted as part of the South, or at least parts of it are). Louisiana and Texas have long had large native Catholic populations that the rest of the South lacks. Florida is majority Catholic (due to the massive influx of Cubans and Northern retirees). Texas is split geographically: East Texas outside the major cities is overwhelmingly Baptist; Hill Country, most of the cities, South Texas, and the Rio Grande Valley are all staunchly Catholic.
** Of course, that's by the numbers over very large areas. For example, small parts of Texas have a surprising amount of ''Buddhist temples''.
* [http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/14/us/bubba-southern-stereotypes/ This article] talks about the portrayal of the South in fiction and compares it to reality.
{{reflist}}
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