Not a Monolith, but a Multiplicity https://ift.tt/KRfh51J
What is it about the American South that inspires so many writers? Craig Renaud, the Peabody and DuPont award-winning filmmaker of the PBS documentary series Southern Storytellers, isn’t the first person to pose that question; nor is he the first person to show that a definitive answer is elusive. But though the answer eludes, the question itself — and the quest it inspires — still manages to illuminate.
Southern Storytellers comprises three 50-minute episodes that follow some of America’s most renowned contemporary artists to the Southern places they call home. They are mostly writers — writers of novels, songs, screenplays, and poems; they include Billy Bob Thornton, Jason Isbell, Qui Nguyen, Lyle Lovett, Jericho Brown, Jesmyn Ward, and Tarriona (“Tank”) Ball. They hail from all over the South, from North Carolina to Louisiana to Mississippi to Arkansas.
Each episode includes artistic conversations with writers, who speak thoughtfully about what it means to them to be an artist from the South. These conversations are punctuated by soaring views of mountains and rivers; clips of films and concerts; and taped historical interview reels of famous authors such as Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams, and Maya Angelou.
Writers are filmed in their natural surroundings. They walk, cook, eat, teach, sing, play, read, drive, visit. These are not studio interviews; in fact, they are often conducted outdoors. Novelist David Joy, for example, hikes and hunts while he talks about social class, population displacement, and land development in the North Carolina wilderness. Singer-songwriter Adia Victoria and her new husband plant a magnolia tree on their wedding day. Isbell plays guitar on the banks of the Tennessee River in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. YA author Angie Thomas and her mother visit a park where she used to play in Jackson, Mississippi. Poet and novelist Natasha Trethewey reads one of her poems at the base of a plinth where a statue of Robert E. Lee once stood in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Renaud lets his film breathe and the writers lead. He takes his time and stays out of the way. We listen to entire songs, start to finish. We meander. We stew. The camera acts as a stand-in for the viewer; when the writers speak, they address the camera, but it feels as if they’re addressing us. There is an intimacy to it.
The gestalt of Southern Storytellers seems to be that there’s just something different about the South. I can’t say I disagree. I sense it when I see the faraway look my father gets in his eyes when he recalls his Memphis, Tennessee childhood. And I feel it myself when I’m with my sister, who lives in Charleston, South Carolina, paddling our kayaks through the marsh on Shem Creek.
There is a concept in environmental psychology called “place attachment,” defined as an emotional bond that develops between a person and a place. A physical landscape or geography is somehow assimilated. It becomes part of a person’s identity. “Story is rooted in landscape,” Joy says. “My entire neighborhood is in my books,” echoes Thomas.
After watching Southern Storytellers, I don’t know what the South is to the evolution of an artist, but I feel it. The South is not a monolith; it’s a multiplicity. And it’s where all that is tragic and all that is beautiful meet. It’s a paradox and gives rise to paradoxical feelings that beg to be understood. Trethewey, the daughter of an interracial couple in segregated Mississippi, exemplifies these contradictions when she says, “Who I am and why I write has everything to do with those early years in this place. My mother and my grandmother are in the ground here, so they’re part of the landscape. How could I not both love it and hate it?”
TELEVISION Southern Storytellers
Produced and created by Craig Renard
Available to watch on PBS
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