Deconstructing the Stereotypes: A Study of Popular Culture in Eudora Weltys The Robber Bridegroom

Name of Author : Lisa Pavithran

Abstract: Deconstructing the Stereotypes: A Study of Popular Culture in Eudora Weltys The Robber Bridegroom The American South has existed largely as an imaginary landscape in the popular art of the United States. Mass produced and commercially circulated images about the region bore little relationship to its history or geography. Constructed as the reverse image of the mass media mirror, the South has always been Americas other. It was also the setting for the nations ongoing melodrama of race and social class and also inhabits the violent residents. The villainy and buffoonery of the rednecks, the flirtation belles, cheerful darkies, the comic adventures of the hillbillies and crackers are some of the old South characters depicted in both fiction and movies. The hellish counter America is exemplified in the images the nightmarish landscapes of ruined fields, mutant faces and broken bodies. Stereotypical negative images of the people from the South occur in popular culture, especially in connection with the frontier life. Eudora Weltys novel The Robber Bridegroom abounds in the myths and local legends of the region. In the novel Welty deconstructs the negative images of the region by highlighting the necessity of the existence of violent men in the history of the region.

Keywords : The American South, rednecks, hillbillies, crackers

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