I am a proud redneck. I am a country boy that likes to do country stuff. I have no desire to be an international traveler and I perfectly ok with just staying in the state that I live in because we have so much stuff here that I enjoy. The other day when someone asked me what my dream vacation would be I said that I'd like to go to the Outer Banks but just in a nicer rental unit on the beach. This is where my family goes on vacation every year already. Maybe I just got lucky and found the perfect place on the first try.
Who knows. Rednecks kind of share in this idea of enjoying the simple things in life and not really ever aspiring to much more. Many people believe this makes us simpletons and if they want to believe that, I can assure you, there are very few people in the redneck community that actually care that people think that. We carry on with our lives in a mostly happy sense regardless of what the outside world thinks of us.
Here are some movies that I think at least in somewhat of a sense, capture the redneck life to some degree and made me laugh as a consequence.
Joe Dirt and Joe Dirt 2
src
David Spade doesn't get much of a chance to be in movies that are decent ever since his buddy Chris Farley died years ago. His buddy Sandler throws him a bone every now and then but for the most part the things that he is the star of aren't very good. I feel like Joe Dirt is an exception to this.
Joe is a kind soul that does we has to do and just "keep on keepin' on" in his life. He thinks that his style and way of talking is the coolest despite the fact that in the eyes of others it is anything but. He is kind to everyone, even people that are very unkind to him. He embraces the redneck lifestyle of muscle cars, cut-off shirts, and mullets even though all of those things went out of fashion a long time ago. He likes what he likes and he doesn't care what anyone else thinks about those things. In the end his refusal to comply with societal norms is something that I believe most real-life rednecks also enjoy. We carry on with our lives without paying much attention to marketing trends and fashion and all the while I think we are happier because of it.
src
This is a silly and mostly family-friendly movie and I have seen it a lot of times. Of course this is a gross exaggeration of actual rednecks but it is still a lot of fun and shows a lot of our core values.
Tucker and Dale vs Evil
src
I recently went back and re-watched this and it was what inspired me to write this. This film starts out in a typical "teenagers are going on a vacation and meet some Deliverance type boys in the woods" but it isn't what it appears to be at all. In this movie the teenagers are the bad guys but from the teens' perspective Tucker and Dale, who simply want to be left alone in their fishing cabin in the woods, keep accidentally killing all the teens who wont stop pestering them.
src
What makes this film so funny to me is because it exhibits the stark difference between rednecks and city-folk and how people who grew up in metropolitan areas tend to now have a clue about how things in nature or on a farm operate and therefore end up hurting themselves badly such as in the wood-chipper above.
There is no actual "Evil" in this movie. There are no spirits, no demons, no killers. It is just a clash of two very different lifestyles that results in the two groups butting heads and as an accidental side consequence, most of them dying despite the fact that Tucker and Dale have absolutely zero evil intentions towards the teens.
I think this is a good representation of the fear that a lot of people have about country folks like me and the others in my community. We are NOT a bunch of uneducated backwoods killers but we DEFINITELY ARE skeptical about strangers being on our property. If someone comes onto my land unannounced I am going to approach them in an aggressive manner but on the flip side if someone is in need of help near or on my land I will definitely go out of my way to help them, regardless of who they are or why they are there. Tucker and Dale are like this although, yet again they take the stereotype to a higher level for the sake of making an entertaining and wildly under-appreciated movie.
I had thought of listing Roadhouse as well but that movie is far too ridiculous to be realistic. It also paints the wrong kind of picture of country people in it and is one that as far as I know, doesn't really exist. It is a good fun film though and with likes like "Pain don't hurt" I can't help but enjoy it.
Do you have any favorite "redneck" films? I'd like to hear about them if you do