可借阅:*
图书馆 | 资料类型 | 排架号 | 子计数 | 书架位置 | 状态 | 图书预约 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
正在检索... Central | Book | 394.2 BRO | 1 | Stacks | 正在检索... 未知 | 正在检索... 不可借阅 |
链接这些题名
已订购
摘要
摘要
Everybody knows about community festivals that celebrate the good ol' days -- events like Rattlesnake Roundup, Peanut Days, and Mule Day. Countless towns around the South stage them. They set aside one weekend a year, rope off some parking, and celebrate some local theme on the courthouse lawn or in a nearby pasture, touting lost days of imagined glory.The phenomenon is rapidly proliferating across the region, but until now the deeper significance of these hometown events has not been explored. In Ghost Dancing on the Cracker Circuit Rodger Brown takes the reader on a road trip across the South. He visits many festivals and unweaves their webs to find the meaning that underlies them. Contrary to popular interpretation of them as times of celebration and fund-raising, Brown discerns them to be times of mourning. Behind the scrim of jolly sideshows he finds communities responding to economic restructuring and cultural change.As he travels across the South, he absorbs vivid impressions of boosterism and cornball symbolism. Along this comical trail that he terms the cracker circuit he perceives how these seasonal events are staged by white sponsors attempting to resurrect a splendid past that actually never existed. He likens them to legendary Indians ghost dancing in ceremonial performances staged to conjure up a lost paradise.In chapters with such rifles as Stuffing Sin in a Lard Bucket and Aunt Bee's Death Certificate Brown not only sketches intriguing portraits of people and places but also makes fascinating revelations -- the political meaning of Green Acres and Gilligan's Island, the real story behind the Hatfield and McCoy Feud, and the surprising role of The AndyGriffith Show in contemporary southern mythography.Brown's adventurous, good-natured inspection of this pervasive cultural curiosity discloses the state of the South at the turn of the millennium.
评论 (1)
《图书馆杂志》(Library Journal )书评
Brown (American studies, Emory Univ.) has traveled across the South attending small community festivals and delving into their origins and traditions. He has created here a social history of small-town Southern communities. Using festivals such as the Rattlesnake Roundup in Whigham, Georgia, and the Chittlin' Strut in Salley, South Carolina, he successfully shows a cross-section of an America rapidly being gobbled up by larger urban areas. He maintains that the festivals are a last-ditch effort to maintain community cohesion and identity. Brown compellingly combines sometimes humorous scenarios from these festivals with revelations on the social significance they might represent. Recommended for public and academic libraries.Sandra Knowles, Univ. of South Carolina, Columbia (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.