Anmelden
dnalorsblog: The Troll’s Monster Manual: Hillbillys – The terror that came out of the woods
Published by The Troll on 16 August 2018
I’ve just watched Tucker and Dale vs Evil. It’s a great film and an ingenious, warm-hearted but also splatteringly bloody parody of teen horror films and the whole Backwood genre . Backwood is a type of horror film in which some guys from the city get stranded in the middle of nowhere and then have to defend themselves against incestuous, mutated, cannibalistic country bumpkins, hillbillies. Wikipedia lists a whole 40 films that belong to this genre. Frankenstein, no, better Frankenstein’s monster, after all a veteran of horror, only makes it to 33 films and the mummy is a distant second (15 films). Actually, when you get right down to it, Backwood is a sub-category of the slasher flicks (Wrong Turn at least appears in both lists).
Anyway, a few interesting questions now arise: Why are the city dwellers so scared of us country bumpkins (we just want to play
)? Are hillbillies any good as opponents or heroine characters and what the hell are hillbillies anyway? And how can I interpret the whole thing in a new and exciting way?
Hillbilly, redneck and waidler – definition of the terms
Before we start defining the individual terms: These are all external ascriptions. Someone else has labelled a certain group as hillbillies, rednecks or whatever. The groups then adopted the external attribution and turned it into a group identity. The foreign attributions are also relatively recent, from around the end of the 19th century. Before that, this attribution did not exist because almost the entire population of the USA and, in the case of the Waidler, Bavaria lived similarly (poor). The attribution was also a characterisation that was based on city dwellers and described country dwellers.
Hillbilly: The word hillbilly first appeared in The Railroad Trainmen’s Journal (vol. IX, July 1892) and a few years later the term was used in the New York Journal as a
[…] a free and untrammeled white citizen of Tennessee, who lives in the hills, has no means to speak of, dresses as he can, talks as he pleases, drinks whiskey when he gets it, and fires off his revolver as the fancy takes him“ Source
defined. The word itself is probably a reference to the fact that they are the descendants of Scots who fled Highlandsto the in the 1660s and supported King Billy. Hillbillies are the inhabitants of the Appalachians and Ozarks, especially those from Tennessee and Alabama
Redneck: The word describes people whose necks have been burnt by the sun while working in the fields. Geographically, it refers to residents of the southern states of the USA, especially Texas, Georgia, Oklahoma and Kansas. Today, the term redneck is no longer necessarily associated with a poor, less educated lower class, but rather with a middle class that has developed its own sense of status.
Cracker: On the plantations in the south of the USA, there were white overseers who often liked to crack the whip. After the American Civil War, they were unemployed. They developed into crackers, named after the whip they wielded. The word cracker was not only used to describe former slave drivers, in Georgia and Florida the term was also used to show that one’s own family had lived here for generations.
Waidler: And here’s a Bavarian, rural personal attribution. I’m using it here because it has similarities to the hillbillies and is intended to demonstrate that the ideas behind the concepts can also be applied in Germany. Waidler are the inhabitants of the Bavarian Forest. For me as a Gaibonbiffe (disparaging term for all inhabitants of the Gäuboden), the Bavarian Forest begins beyond the Danube, the people of Parkstetten and Bogen have identified Viechtach as the border, Deggendorf calls itself the gateway to the Bavarian Forest and the people of Engelmar can no longer deny that they are Waidler. Waidler are rude, stubborn people who speak an incomprehensible language (for Bavarians, that is; Bavarian must sound incomprehensible to Fischköpf) and have wild customs. They also brew a terrible schnapps. They are not stupid, but in order not to be poor, they commute to Regensburg, Dingolfing and Munich on weekdays.
City dweller vs. country bumpkin – the horror of rural life
At the moment, it seems to be a kind of idealised dream among city dwellers to move to the country. As a country bumpkin, I can understand it, country life is really nice. Space, peace and quiet, community, tamed nature (at least in Germany)…
But I can also understand those who have fled to the city to escape life in the country. After all, country life has a few horrors in store, which are thematised in exaggerated form in the backwoods films.
When Billy and his cousin – incest and family ties
This clinching is true… in part. Not so much the incest thing, which may have existed in Hinterkaifeck in the past, but rather the family ties. In my home village, before the new settlement was built, there were three large family clans to which most people in the village were somehow related. My grandmother memorised family relationships down to the cousin of her aunt’s nephew’s brother-in-law. Her husband, my grandfather, was a Bukovina German who came to Bavaria as a refugee. He did genealogical research and would have traced the family tree back 200 years, including all the side branches.
Foreigners vs. long-established residents
Foreigners (be they city dwellers or refugees or even Prussians) find it difficult to integrate into a village. Everyone is somehow related to everyone else and has known each other since childhood. Strangers first have to show who they are and get to know the others. The biggest mistake the newcomers can make is to wait for the country bumpkins to approach them. Why should they? If necessary, you can manage without the strangers.
Tips from a landing egg for village immigrants
- Go to the fire brigade. There is hardly such an integrating force as a bottle of beer after the exercise.
- Get to know your neighbours and let your neighbours get to know you.
- Take part in festivals, whether profane or religious.
- Buy local, as far as possible.
- Get to know the surroundings of the village.
Individual vs. collective
This is the conclusion from the first two points, so to speak, and probably also the reason why many of my homosexual and transsexual friends have fled from the villages to the cities. It’s possible to be an individual in a village, but you’re still a part of it because of family ties or simply because you grew up in the village and everyone knows who you are (in our village, the question is: „Yes, where do you belong?“). The older ones ask which family you belong to and who your parents are. Children learn to answer this question at an early age). The disadvantage, however, is that the whole village has probably seen you drunk or knows what a snot you used to be. This is certainly not easy for those who deviate from the norm (please don’t take this negatively). Such closeness can overwhelm you.
The gentle reader may object that I have described villages so far, but Letherface and co. live in lonely huts somewhere in the wilderness. Yes, that’s true. But even Letherface can’t produce everything he needs to live on his own and needs an infrastructure in the background. Clothes, canned beer, medicine… Letherface also has to communicate with the environment in order to survive. In some of the backwoods films, sheriffs or shopkeepers support the murderous hillbillies. Completely self-sufficient groups or families who have no connection at all to any kind of village life are likely to be crass outsiders, even among backwoodsmen.
Strange customs
The Waidler and the Bavarian Forest are a treasure trove of strange customs. In one place Rauhwuggerl are driven, in a neighbouring village wolves are hunted for, there a slain saint is sought, elsewhere people ride on horseback to pilgrimages either to Georgi or to Leonhard. Or a spruce wrapped in wax across Bavaria is carried and the last few metres up a hill. Not to mention the Corpus Christi procession, various parades and other (religious) customs. Many of these traditions are incomprehensible to foreigners. Foreign. Mysterious. Threatening. They primarily serve the cohesion of a village. Those who do not join in the celebrations are not part of the community.
Two more comments on this: Firstly, I am aware that there are also strange old customs in some cities. But by no means in every city, as these customs need a certain amount of time and a certain social cohesion in order to grow. They are a reflection of a past time and a past community. And yes, there are also customs that are more than 20 years old, but they too have grown and are a reflection of the society that created them. My main concern is that these customs are strange or even bizarre to outsiders.
Hillbillies and rednecks also have such customs. The annual chilli festival somewhere in Texas, Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney or a battle for some godforsaken hill during the Civil War, including getting drunk on Negro kiss schnapps … nothing is so crazy that it doesn’t exist on this planet.
Guns and beer – the weapons of a hillbilly
Hillbillies and rednecks without guns? Unimaginable. Of course, a real hillbilly needs an AR-15 and a Reminton 870 . And a good old double-barrelled shotgun. A triplet. And a revolver, from granddaddy Abraham.
Even if some city dwellers may not believe it, hunting is part of rural life. Here in Bavaria it’s less to ensure food security and more to decimate pests, but in the USA things are a little different (hunting is cited there alongside the 2nd Amendment as a reason for the right to bear arms). If you are indifferent to hunting, I recommend that you visit a hunter, ask him for a wild boar salami or sausages and cevapcici made from deer or venison, prepare them and enjoy them. Dear Franconians, with your three in the Weckla you can pack your bags when a venison sausage is on the barbecue. By the way… good barbecue food doesn’t need sauces, the flavour of the meat alone is enough.
As for the accusation that we country bumpkins consume a lot of alcohol… Beer is a very ingenious, flavourful drink…
Welcome to the horror – hillbillies as monsters
Hillbillies as monsters / enemies are well established in the Backwoods films. There are cannibals, incestuous mutants, chainsaw-wielding psychopaths… all familiar. Hillbillies also lend themselves to cultists who worship Shub-Niggurath (or adhere to another cult) and do unspeakable things in the woods. A hillbilly mafia is also a way to present the country bumpkins as an enemy. Remote barns or self-dug bunkers in the woods are a good place to distil moonshine or cook meth.
It should not be forgotten that the enemies are rooted in the area and that the population of the rescuing village may be related to / friends with the hillbilly opponents. There’s nothing like the look on the players‘ faces when they realise that all the deputies are related to the cultists from the forest and that they’ve just checked the number plates of the heroine’s broken-down car…
„These are my cousins Jack, John-Boy and Jim… they’re going to help us!“ – A hillbilly as heroine
Hillbilly heroines should have huge advantages in their home region. Not only should they be very familiar with the area (after all, they grew up there), have certain natural skills (woodworking, hunting and fishing skills, basic botany), they should also be socially rooted there.
In terms of rules, this could translate into a kind of Minions. No matter what the heroine wants to do, she always knows 1W10 relatives, friends or former lovers who are immediately ready to get their shotgun out of the cupboard and stand by her side. All it takes is a phone call or a visit to Uncle Billy. Of course, the relatives also want to be paid… in beer, schnapps and BBQ or a favour that triggers a side quest. The latter means that you have to use the hillbilly connection wisely, otherwise you’ll suddenly have 10 side quests on your hands and lose the central theme of the game, which imho also exists in a sandbox.
The fascination of landing ice – a brief summary
What is the fascination of land ice cream? To be honest, as a country bumpkin, I don’t know. But I could imagine that you city dwellers out there are envious of us. Of our culture, of our family ties, of our healthy, savoury country air…
Your envy has led to hillbillies always being the bad guys in backwoods films. Fair enough. It’s also a cool idea to equip the enemies with social contacts to the „normal population“ (vulgo NPCs) and thus make every NPC a potential hillbilly opponent. The forest or wilderness as the setting is the canvas for the whole thing. The focus here is on remoteness and the lack of resources. The hillbillies know their way around the area, they know where to get medicine and food or ammunition.
Oh well… this post is of course another role-playing breakfast. In keeping with the theme:
Role-player breakfast: white sausages with sweet mustard, a pretzel and a nice wheat beer.
Harp sounds: Wir sand im Woid dahoam and the Straubinger Zuchthauslied.
