Dressed-to-killbillies

IDEAS: From Depression-era folk music acts to the midcentury comic strip "Li'l Abner" to the wildly popular 1960s TV show "The Beverly Hillbillies," denizens of Appalachia and the Ozarks have been portrayed as commonsensical but also ignorant, "natural" but also lazy, violent, and carnal -- and audiences have clamored for more. Why?

HARKINS: Americans have long enjoyed the antics of rural white yokels, from Davy Crockett to "Devil Anse" Hatfield of the Hatfield-McCoy feud, who could be mocked without raising cries of bigotry or racism. But it wasn't until the early 20th century that the "hillbilly" figure emerged, allowing a generally nonrural, middle-class American audience to romanticize a premodern past while simultaneously congratulating itself on being modern. It's because "hillbillies" are such ambiguous constructs -- both noble and venal -- that they're so popular.

IDEAS: CBS recently backed off from a planned reality show called "The Real Beverly Hillbillies" after a public outcry. Isn't "The Simple Life" equally offensive?

HARKINS: "The Simple Life" is supposed to be a reality-show version of "Green Acres," so ostensibly it's poking fun not at the rural poor but at the urban rich. However, the producers clearly want to tap into our obsession with hillbillies -- hence the banjo score, the "Dukes of Hazzard"-style folksy narrator, and the chicken-plucking scene in the first episode. And why else would they set it in the Ozarks, instead of, say, Iowa or Oregon?

IDEAS: What's funny about the show is how well its "heirhead" stars conform to the negative hillbilly stereotype themselves -- they're lazy, shiftless, promiscuous, and ignorant.

HARKINS: It's true -- Hilton and Richie seem culturally oblivious and totally incapable. Remember what Granny once said on "The Beverly Hillbillies" about Beverly Hills? It's "full of the laziest, greasiest, unfriendliest mess o' people I ever laid my eyes on!"