Starring The Landscape: The Horror of Po’ White Trash — Classism in Horror (Pt. 1)

In 1974, Tobe Hooper released The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which seemed to release some sort of valve, because city people have been visiting the rural South, so they can die horribly at the hands, chainsaws, and shotguns, of its residents for decades. I cannot entirely blame it all on Hooper, because in 1972, Deliverance was released, a movie about a hunting trip that goes horrifically wrong, after four city men meet some banjo playing locals. Country people have been terrorizing city people ever since.

The country is the place city people go to to be tortured, raped, and/or consumed, by poor people, (and sometimes chased by bears). But it wasn’t always like that. Before the fall of the studio system, the destruction of the Hayes Code, and the rise in popularity of graphic horror, during the sixties, the country was seen as a place to get away from the hustle and bustle of city life, where the mood was one of bucolic serenity, and oneness with nature, “the locals” were often depicted as ignorant, but well meaning comedy relief, like Maybery RFD, or The Beverly Hillbillies. Occasionally, some city person would be trapped in the country, (Green Acres), and would itch to be away from it, not because the residents were unfriendly, but because living in the country was, well, kinda boring.