Sweet Home Alabama

The first movie that popped into my head was Sweet Home Alabama. It doesn't necessarily present ideas of the old South. It is more presenting what people think the stereotypical South of today is. Gone with the Wind is about a family with southern money, however Sweet Home Alabama is mostly about middle-class folks. I feel that when people think of families of the old South they imagine rich plantation owners, but when they think of Southerners from today they think of rednecks. This stereotype is represented in the movie Sweet Home Alabama. The movie suggests that just about everyone drives a truck and that it is commonplace to dress up in a Confederate uniform and shoot mortars around the backyard of the plantation house that was owned by our relatives. It also suggests that everyone goes to watch or participate in the Civil War reenactment and then goes to get drunk at the bar. The overall feel of the movie is that Southerners have lost what "class" they had and have not forgotten about the Civil War and believe that "the South will rise again!" and northerners are heartless and cold (well, that partly is true). A large portion of Southerners probably know very little about the Civil War.