In These Times: Why Kansas Matters

[marmar]

Why Kansas Matters
A new documentary details how politics and religion intersect in America.

By John K. Wilson


The new documentary What’s the Matter With Kansas? is a funny, smart and important look at the intersection of religion and politics in America today. Loosely based on the 2004 book by Thomas Frank, it tells the stories of several conservative Kansans who care deeply about hot-button cultural issues like abortion and gay marriage. According to Frank’s polemical thesis, Republicans succeeded in getting poor whites to vote against their own economic self-interest by focusing on these issues.

However, filmmakers Laura Cohen and Joe Winston devote little of the film’s 90 minutes to Frank and his argument, focusing instead on the lives and motives of their subjects. The documentary begins by following a Democratic canvasser who visits the home of a Republican who explains that he could never support the Democrats because they’re “pro-abortion, pro-homosexual, pro-gun control.” Then it shifts to a market where the Kansas Democrats booth can’t attract a crowd, while the “Choose Life” booth is busy signing up recruits and selling plastic babies for 25 cents.

Frank’s book and this movie are both vulnerable to accusations of condescending elitism, Frank for his thesis and the movie for its focus on the eccentric Kansas personalities. To be sure, the film sometimes provokes laughter at its subjects’ expense, such as on the Barden family’s trip to the always-ridiculous Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky. Still, the depth of the connection that develops between the subjects and filmmakers—and, eventually, the audience—stops this from being mere mockery.

In the hands of someone determined to ridicule conservatives, Angel Dillard’s CD release party, featuring performances of such tracks as “When Satan Comes A-Callin’”, would make an easy target. But that scene comes late in the film, after we’ve learned to understand her as a person rather than as a stereotype. As Joe Winston noted in the Q&A that followed a Chicago screening, “This movie’s all about not generalizing about people.” .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/4752/why_kansas_matters

[izquierdista]

1. A lot more hurt before they hit bottom

It's going to take more than losing Grandma to insurance company profits and gas at $5 a gallon for these people to wake up and vote their own self interest. When they lose their children for insurance company profits and they can't afford food, let alone gas, maybe then they will realize they have been had all along.

[barbiegeek]

2. Even then they will NEVER admit it

[izquierdista]

3. There is a point

When they get to the level of Russian peasants in 1917, or Chinese peasants in 1948, then they will change their mind. But you are right on one thing, they will never ADMIT that they had a point in prolonging their own hurt.