The Redneck Culture

Notice how respectful the young boys were to adults.

While I'm not a Southerner. I grew up in a very similar environment that the movie was extremely nostalgic to me. My parents are farmers. The small traditional farm kind with a few fields and a bunch of random animals, not the giant thresher machines kind with the endless fields and plantation mansions. We were never rich. I grew up in the outdoors with my younger brother and my cousins. We broke bones climbing trees, spent the entire day wandering all over woods and creeks looking for adventure (we found plenty, my younger brother got bit by a snake once), and earned pocket money helping dad out with the farm.

That said, people don't look down on Southerners. They look down on the actual rednecks and hillbillies who still insist on using the N word or calling people fags and then pretend it's part of their culture. Because if you hadn't noticed, the bad guys were southerners too. Southerners who beat up women and have prayer circles to help them kill someone. Are you proud of that too?

There are a lot of things to be proud of about the South. But bigotry isn't one of them. Stop waving your confederate flags for one. Because that right there, is NOT respect. That's ignorant *beep* and the entire reason why you're looked down upon in the first place. Ironic too, given that after Nixon, the South is now almost completely Republican. And the Republican party is Lincoln's party. The guys who fought the Confederates in the first place.

Yes, like everyone is else is saying. This captures the people and culture perfectly.

I grew up about 75 miles from where 'Mud' was filmed and it brought back a lot of memories.

Very interesting post.

I grew up in Mississippi and have a sort of love/hate relationship with the culture. I felt strongly enough to make a point of getting out of there but at the same time there are elements of it that I miss and I can't say definitively that I'd never move back.

I often watch movies set in the South to reminisce.

I think the politics of this movie are quite different from what herb supposes.

Regarding political events:

Note that the "bad guys" were a bunch of jerks from Texas, not Chicago.

Tom represented the American military before it was commanded by religious extremists.

And the 'rednecks' are having their houses demolished at the end. They're the ones going away...
The future for Ellis is an apartment with his mom, hopefully a decent education (which he clearly wasn't getting before), etc. The movie portrays this as a positive development.

Oh yeah, low lifes and losers voted for Obama....

^ Yes! very interesting you should point this out.

In JDB's mind what he was doing was completely just. An eye for an eye.

Oh please, talk about generalizations. Because we all hang out in parking lots of the Piggly Wiggly? We don't even have Piggly Wigglys in parts of Texas. Perhaps that's how they do it in the deep, deep South, in small towns. But to generalize just sounds ignorant. Jo Don Baker was supposed to be from Texas, no, we don't all get on one knee and pray like we're at a high school football game.




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I don't see that it's about that AT ALL.

This is a movie that's very close to a superhero film, like Batman, only set with seemingly normal people living in the south, but it could be anywhere.

Mud is a mysterious orphan, he was raised by a dude like Alfred, Mud has a secret base, the island. He's got a magic shirt, that may actually be magic if you watch the film, he's got a code of honor, is in love with a crazy girl he can't have, and he's a super honorable crime fighter!

There's another film called The Men Who Stare at Goats, which is basically Star Wars set in modern Earth times. It's the same kind of thing.

I loved Mud for the reasons I mentioned.

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