Circling Dixie: Contemporary Southern Culture Through a Transatlantic Lens

by HelenTaylor (Author)

• New

  Illustrated
  2001

  $28.12

  For Europeans gazing across the Atlantic, American culture is often the site of desire, fascination and envy. The rich culture of the American South has made a particularly strong impact in Britain. In this study, Helen Taylor explores the ways in which contemporary Southern culture has been enthusiastically engaged - produced and reproduced - in a British context. Taylor examines some of the South's most significant cultural exports in discussions that range from literature and music, to film, television and theatre to advertising and tourism, focusing on how and why Southern themes and icons have become so deeply embedded in British cultural life. The enduring legacy of Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind , for example, is evident today in the popularity of theme weddings based on the novel, but also travels back to the casting of a British author to write the long-awaited sequel to the book. The conversation between these cultures is further explored in British responses to Alex Haley's Roots , the British theatre's special affection for Tennessee Williams's plays, the marketing of New Orleans as a preferred destination for European tourists, and the popularity of Maya Angelou in Britain, especially Scotland. The author's interdisciplinary approach offers a broad perspective on the creative and critical nature of this cross-cultural exchange. The transformation of Southern culture - itself a hybrid of the European, African and American - as it circulates back across the Atlantic suggests not only alternative views of the history, racial politics, music and art of both Britain and the American South, but also an enhanced understanding of the dynamic flow of culture itself. Bringing together Southern history and literature, feminist and postcolonial theory, literary and cultural studies, Taylor draws on interviews with writers, musicians, directors and advertisers to provide an added and unqiue dimension to this work.