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plaidpladd's review
informative
medium-paced
4.0
This was really interesting and I learned a lot. It could have been organized and edited a little better, since at some points it felt repetitious
me2brett's review
3.0
Cox looks at the construction of an idea of the southern US via popular culture from the late 19th century up to the end of World War II. She posits that "Dixie" was created as an exotic or idealized pastoral Other to sooth the psyches of a population dealing with the stresses of modernization.
I appreciate the breadth of the examples she's chosen, but I wish there was a bit more depth. This is a fairly slender volume, under 300 pages. Cox could have taken some time to contrast the created Dixie she describes with the actual South of the era. Economic depression, attempts to find new business models, race relations and Jim Crow are present but mostly peripheral. Southerners themselves barely appear in the book until the final chapter. Which, I suppose, makes sense in a way: the Dixie of Popular Culture, created on Madison Avenue and in Hollywood, didn't have any of those problems or struggles either.
I appreciate the breadth of the examples she's chosen, but I wish there was a bit more depth. This is a fairly slender volume, under 300 pages. Cox could have taken some time to contrast the created Dixie she describes with the actual South of the era. Economic depression, attempts to find new business models, race relations and Jim Crow are present but mostly peripheral. Southerners themselves barely appear in the book until the final chapter. Which, I suppose, makes sense in a way: the Dixie of Popular Culture, created on Madison Avenue and in Hollywood, didn't have any of those problems or struggles either.
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