Where is squidbillies based on

Everyone changes out of high school. Once we both found out that writing was an interest we shared, we teamed up. Technique: A lot of the cast is very tight knit, and Squidbillies has brought on new actors that you both knew from high school. Is this the case for the majority of the cast? Some of our cast just happens to be friends of ours like Daniel McDevitt, the voice of Rusty. When we were choosing voices for the show, we really just wanted actors that could pull off an authentic Southern accent, not like Forrest Gump.

For example, the star of the show, Unknown Hinson [who plays Earlie Cuyler] was just some random guy. Initially, he was just this BMX madman to the voice of reason because our show needed one at that point. Cooke-Jackson and Hansen are even more strident in their claims about the negative impact of stereotypes. In their discussion of Appalachian women, they write:. This type of one-sided assumption that any media stereotype must ipso facto be negative, damaging, and utterly unquestioned by the audience is the typical reading of hillbilly imagery.

However, a few articles on otherness have taken an alternate tack, arguing that the 'other' is a position not necessarily devoid of goodness and positive value.

Though much of the series was simple hillbilly humor, the program had an edge to it which allowed for a critique of the modern urban lifestyle as well. It is along these lines that the present essay with move. For the balance of this paper, we will argue that while Squidbillies certainly devotes a substantial amount of time chiding hillbillies for their perceived backward ways, this chiding is used as a narrative device in order to bring the audience along on a critique of a far less often maligned population: themselves.

So, what is a squidbilly? So far as the audience knows, the Cuyler family and their progeny are the only remaining living land squids. The show itself is an exercise in surreal humor, using a juxtaposition of the hillbilly stereotype placed upon the fictitious land squid.

According to both Fortier and Willis , one benefit of this approach is that it allows for the use of relatively specific and topical humor — such as jokes about race relations and bigotry — while avoiding the complications of addressing such topics in a more traditional, more blunt fashion. However, it breaks from typical surrealism in that the show is nearly void of non-sequiturs; that is, the narrative progresses rather smoothly from start to finish.

The two episodes of Squidbillies analyzed for this study are the final two episodes of season four. Notably, the motive for their initial visit is not revealed to the audience until later.

At first, Early is far from upset about the loss of his child. Episode 50 begins with a visit from The Sheriff, who has come to the Cuyler home to deliver the government money check. The scene changes to Durwood and his family, who are driving back to suburban Atlanta with Rusty in the car.

This press conference is picked up on all major television networks, which Durwood discovers when his family and Rusty who appears with a newly-groomed haircut gather around their large, flat-screen television. Back in the mountains, Early and Granny continue to discuss their woes - and to plead for more money — on the television talk show circuit. Fiona and a hesitant Rusty retire to the bedroom, when Durwood comes home early from work to find them in a sexually compromising position.

Durwood and Fiona argue, beating Rusty savagely in the process, before sending Rusty back to the mountains in a burlap sack. This pentad is applied under the interpretive frame of satire, fitting in line with the expressed creative intentions of Fortier and Willis. However, as the narrative progresses, we see Fortier and Willis turn the tables on Durwood, showing him and his Chalkie family as increasingly absurd. In the end, the Cuylers are shown to be at least equal to Durwood and his Chalkie brood, and at most the Cuylers appear in some respects to be even more genuine and sincere.

As Fortier explains:. As the Chalkie family crumbles into dysfunction, the Cuyler family comes together, however fleeting the feelings of goodwill might be. In the end, the two Squidbillies episodes to which the afore-mentioned pentad are applicable serve to remind us of the absurdity of the white suburban status quo.

Fortier explains that:. Having this pentad allows us to perhaps understand more clearly the substance of Squidbillies narrative, but it also allows us to examine certain important ratios, or relations, between separate pentadic elements. This ratio is of particular importance, because it is the platform by which the rest of the show and, in the end, the commentary is based upon; moreover, it is a ratio not apparent at the onset of the narrative arc but painfully focused at the conclusion.

As the first episode begins, we see Early and his family literally eating dirt and celebrating their family dynamic outside of their dilapidated mountain home.

As Lil prepares the dirt pies, Early appears to blow off the entire shindig for a sit on the front porch when he spots Durwood driving up in his shiny red SUV. Willis explains:. While Early appears increasingly genuine and sincere, his adopted siblings appear increasingly shallow and bratty. Rather than using hillbilly humor as an endpoint for tendentious humor in which the laughs come at the expense of the moronic actions of the rural poor, Squidbillies uses its hillbilly stereotype in these episodes as a starting point for a more reflective form of what we call 'self-othering'.

In the Chalkie episodes, the Squidbillies writers seem to be answering Seldes' critique by playing both sides — the 'stupidities of the stupid' share equal billing with the 'stupidities of the intelligent,' or, to be more accurate, the stupidities of the hillbilly share space with those of the city dweller. The wind up for such a delivery is long and complex, and deserves lengthy attention at the outset, as it is the foundation upon which the self-critique rests.

Most overtly, this happens through inexplicable media savviness and racial coding; the latter is pursued from two angles: racism and 'passing'. To start with the simplest first, the Cuylers are not simply backwoods hillbillies; they are, in fact, preternaturally aware of the media and how it is used and abused. In typical fashion, the hillbillies are portrayed as not only lazy and unemployed but willing to leap at the chance to sell their image to the media see Figure 4.

The father figure, Early, calls Nancy Grace in attempting to have their plight televised for an audience. Though it is never clear how they know these things, their sensitivity to media turns the Cuyler family into decidedly modern bumpkins. Show writer Jim Fortier explains that while the dialogue and narrative are inspired by a satirical look at the world surrounding the Cuyler family that is, the perception of Georgia — and specifically rural Georgians — as racists , the transgression are being perpetrated by squids, and not any one recognizable human character Fortier, : [16].

In fact, only one white human exists in the family — the mother, Fiona. The father, Durwood, is actually a member of the Cuyler family relationship unspecified married to Fiona and 'passing' for white; on several occasions, he is shown touching up his 'whiteface' make-up.

Durwood and Fiona have also produced two 'mulatto' offspring, one with a squid face but a human body, the other just a squid with human hair. Effectively, then, Durwood is engaging in 'passing'; by concealing his land squid body in Chalkie clothing and altering the tone of his skin, he is able to construct a marginally convincing impression that he is, in fact, a Chalkie rather than a squid.

There are 10 episodes in the final season. Published in Slideshow , Top Stories and News. Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Squidbillies co-creator Dave Willis, left, with his mother who christened the Early Cuyler monument with a bottle of moonshine.

Dougal County Dougal County is a fictional county in the United States, located in the state of Georgia 's portion of the Appalachian Mountains which is located in the North Georgia mountains.

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