Netflix Hillbilly Elegy

Me, reading Hillbilly Elegy years ago: Good book.

Me, watching the Netflix Ron Howard movie of the book: Whut?

I can’t even with this “movie”

The movie is a mess. Didn’t read the book.

Well if you read the book it is even more of a mess.

:+1:

Ron Howard trying to make a Ron Howard movie out of the book, Good Lord this is all kinds of awful.

Haven’t seen the movie, but read the book a few years ago. The author gets a lot right and some wrong. Lack of Opportunity is the thing that hurts the people there more than anything. Mining jobs which have went the way of the Dodo bird was an area many of these people could get work at that could give them a shot at the middle class, and they were plentiful.

In some of these areas the only professional jobs are in medicine, teachers, and lawyers. After that it’s either the fast food store and gas stations. There is no IT, hedge fund, economic jobs, scarce factories in these places.

From what I remember (It’s been Awhile) Imho the place the author gets it a bit wrong was when he was talking about the election of Obama and how the area shifted to Republicans afterwords that’s really not the whole story.

Appalachian always had some blue in it even under Bill Clinton. But Bill Clinton never said he was going to take their jobs away from them or hardly ever uttered the words green energy.

Now I’m not here to say green energy is bad and coal is good, but to places like that it is everything, some of them are 100 miles away from a small city, and their family has lived there for generations.

I would like to believe no one wants to live in poverty. The problem both parties make is not trying to bring more factories or jobs into those areas. Which party does that will win them over. If not then we basically have decided that it’s ok to have a second world regions inside the U.S.

It reminds me of my wife’s country the Ukraine the area they have been having the war at since 2014 is in the Donbass region (She wasn’t originally from there the war is in the deep east), it is Ukraine’s energy region and that energy is mainly coal. Ukraine is a poor country and if you lived in the Donbass region chances are you worked in the energy sector. There is literally nothing else for them to do other than pick up a gun and fight for either the separatists or the government.

1 Like

Very good analysis! The fact is that throughout the early history of the US most people settled in the coastal parts of the country. Consequently the majority of industry developed on the coastal regions of the country and have maintained significant a presence throughout the years. The most significant change is that these companies have moved much of their manufacturing overseas instead of putting in places like middle America.

1 Like

It’s gotten some bad critical reviews, but there’s Oscar buzz for Glenn Close.

I would recommend the Italian filmed and poorly dubbed Suburra. Crime family saga with lots of action and few polizia around. Great visuals of Italian settings.

:it: