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"We are red-necks!"
Declares a sunburned, blonde child, flashing a toothy grin at the camera. Her morbidly obese mother, similarly red, dismisses this statement. But the verdict is already in - Here Comes Honey-Boo-Boo is all about a family of rednecks. The show’s opening features a wide shot of the whole family smiling and waving over some idyllic guitar music, bordered to look like a framed photograph. The music stops when one member of the family farts, and then the photo-frame falls to the floor. It is very clear that this family is not normal, and are not trying to be. Here Comes Honey-Boo-Boo is a spin-off series depicting the life of one of Toddlers and Tiaras’ most prolific contestants. Although pageantry remains a prominent part in the series, the show mostly follows the family’s antics in the small town of McIntyre, Georgia.
This is just one of the freakshows TLC has peddled since its inception - 1000 Pound Sisters, Hoarding: Buried Alive, My 600lb Life, and Gypsy Sisters, to name a few. These programs might be initially praised for their openness in depicting the less glamorous elements of modern day society. But their content, entirely dehumanizing and focused on pure entertainment value alone, suggests otherwise. The channel focuses on disabled people (Little People, Big World, and 7 Little Johnstons), the morbidly obese, and minority religions and cultures (My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding, Gypsy Sisters, Breaking Amish, Return to Amish…). It is an irresistible mish-mash of the elements of America outside of Gossip Girl, Friends and Sex and the City. The channel, an acronym for Tender Loving Care, is a reassurance to watchers all around the globe that no matter how weird or outcast they may feel, there are always figures on the dark underbelly of America that out-weird them.
TLC’s decision to portray unconventional lifestyles has been criticised, with Forbes, The Guardian, and The Hollywood Reporter naming its work exploitative, not only of children, but also of the families they depict. While this is valid criticism, it’s not particularly revelatory to the viewer, or even to the people paid to appear in the programs. There is a massive market for this, and TLC provides. Illustrator Matt Furie states that “there's a part of that culture [consumer] that does satisfy us. It gives us entertainment and junk food. But there's [a] part of us that also just feels kind of sick to our stomach about it.” TLC’s work is exploitative and is cheap entertainment at the expense of its characters— but this is all very clear to the viewer as they sit down after a hard day’s work to watch Tammy and Amy Slaton’s antics in Kentucky.
Of course, TLC is not the first to assign the role of the outsider to individuals in modern day America. Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends juxtaposes the awkward British journalist with some of the wackiest Americans the country has to offer. The docuseries is arguably much less exploitative, diving into extreme ideologies rather than focusing on living situations. In the follow-up novel, The Call of the Weird, where Theroux revisits the people he met filming the series, one of the subjects expresses disappointment about not being filmed again. The series, while not relying on children for its humour, is still a delicious reminder to its British viewers of the oddities across the pond by contrasting the excessive, illogical American against the reserved, shy Brit.
The role of the ‘outsider’ in film was often fueled by eurocentrism— and later ethnocentrism— as America began to produce more films. This is illustrated in Zinnemann’s The Nun’s Story (1959), in its depiction of Native Congolese people versus Hepburn’s role as Sister Luke. The hospital setting allows for the white characters (the doctors and nurses) to play an active role as the saviour, while the black characters are restrained to the passive role of the patient. Sister Luke purely wishes to convert her patients to Christianity, creating further division between the two parties and seemingly rewriting the actions of the Belgians in the Congo. Although far less extreme and with far less serious social implications, the directors of the series discussed earlier make great use of this position. Salvato’s Television Scales notes the difference between the viewer and the figures on screen:
“The little men and women who are delivered into one’s home become playthings for unconscious perception. There is much in this that may give the viewer pleasure: they are, as it were, his property, at his disposal, and he feels superior to them".
Such a statement is certainly applicable to television series like Theroux’s and TLC’s. However, we may also extend it to cover the modern film-viewing experience as a result of many releases coming to streaming services due to lockdown.
One of said releases, rolling into the driveway of both television and cinema, was Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland. The film follows the life of Fern, a widowed nomad making her way around America in a van, played by actress Frances McDormand. Zhao cruises along the middle of many roads. Her casting of “real nomads '' - the nomads that inspired the initial novel rather than trained actors - further adds to the duality of the film, which at times takes on the characteristics of a documentary. Against the changing landscape of America, Nomadland paints a sensitive portrait of Fern and her life as a van-dweller, intertwining the physical and mental issues that she faces. Fern’s life is not presented as idyllic or glamorous, and this is part of the intimacy that Zhao curates within the film. She is not someone we idolise or someone we gawk at, but rather someone we feel that we know intimately. The beauty of the film, whether based on the natural world of America or the sense of community created between the nomads, feels entirely earned by its characters. This beauty is always fleeting - the seasons change, people go their separate ways, and this is what makes it even more authentic.
A further element of duality that we may attribute to Zhao herself is that of her role as both the storyteller and the audience. It would be very easy to present Nomadland as some wacky story about Americans experiencing midlife crises. There are scenes where veteran van-dwellers explain in great detail how to go to the bathroom. The character of Swankie is featured in a particularly wacky scene where she uses a pirate flag as an indication that she does not want to be bothered. Instead of Zhao emphasising these elements for comedy, or choosing to omit them completely in favour of something more flattering, she plainly depicts them alongside the beauty of the American desert. Zhao is not a nomad— having grown up in Beijing, Brighton, and Los Angeles, then attending film school in New York City, her life appears greatly tied to big cities and urban environments. This background, I feel, is to her advantage. Zhao fused “my [Mcdormand’s] truth into her [Fern’s] truth” and enabled the intertwined nature between a character and its actor— which became a testament to her sensitivity as a director. “I realized I’m not the kind of writer-director that can create this character on my own in a dark room”, Zhao details in an interview with Vulture, indicative of the authenticity of the film. Zhao describes speaking personally with those who acted in her film, and those conversations provide the framework of the characters we see. Perhaps this authenticity is most shown in a small clip sent to Fern from Swankie of baby swallows hatching. It is as well-filmed as one might expect a video by an older woman holding a smartphone in a canoe to be— shaky, short, and slightly pixelated. But it is seen through the character’s eyes and is entirely shot by her, a bright and beautiful recognition of the natural world as seen by a nomad.
Divergence from the norm, or what the norm aspires to be, is not condemned in the film. It is also not particularly celebrated. Divergence just is.
The Nomad life works for some, but does not present itself as some sort of path to enlightenment. In one scene in the film, Fern visits her sister’s family. In comparison to the national parks, blizzards, and sunsets, the cropped lawn and carefully tended gardens of the suburban scene are not very interesting. While it is not a damning depiction of the American dream, Fern’s visible discomfort and inability to get along with her peers in this scene makes clear how little this environment suits the character. It’s likewise when Fern visits Dave, a fellow nomad, at his son’s house for Thanksgiving. Having become used to eating on her own, she starts her meal before the family has prayed. This is not condemned in any way (she quickly puts down her knife and fork and nothing is said on the matter) but rather, it is a neutral indication of her lack of belonging. We are reminded of the transitional nature of grief when Dave, a widower, decides to stay with his son and grandson, while Fern declines his invitation to settle down in favour of more life on the road. The house-dwellers, stationary characters who have ‘made it’ in life, are not condemned in any way (save for the real estate agent who gets into a spat with Fern at her sister’s place). Rather, they are reminders of the norm and the efficacy of it. Zhao is not telling us to pack up our belongings and start living in a van. Rather, she is reminding us that the American dream of normalcy, patched together by millions of hands, might not be the one-size-fits-all ideal it is made out to be.
When Fern attends a meeting of van-dwellers, an instant sense of community can be felt through the screen. This is entirely juxtaposed against the aforementioned visitations to her friends and families’ houses. The idea of space and home becomes charged with spiritual meaning rather than material. To an audience who has spent the vast majority of the year in isolation from others, these honest, earnest tales feel especially charged.
Seeing the nomads together, talking to one another around a campfire versus the aforementioned visitations asks us to reconsider what ‘home’ is, and how physical that structure actually is.
Traumatised veterans, those who are grieving, the terminally ill and people who have lost their jobs, are among the nomads in the film. It is here that Zhao reaches beyond the screen, inviting herself and the rest of the outsiders - that is, the audience - to sit around the campfire. Parallels can be drawn from the financial insecurity and deaths of the pandemic with the issues discussed in the film, such as healthcare and home insurance. The film is not a distraction, like TLC or Theroux’s outsider series are, but is an exploration of the path of grief and where it may take someone, both physically and mentally. Nomadland is an intimate introduction to the lives of modern day nomads, but also plays the role of an extended hand beyond the screen, a warm invitation to the outsider to join the community that they have spent the past two hours watching.