Blue Col­lar Blues – South­ern iden­ti­ty and dis­il­lu­sion­ment in the cin­e­ma of Jeff Nichols

Just as Rea­gan had Die Hard and Bush had The Dark Knight, so America’s 44^th Com­man­der in Chief, Barack Oba­ma, will come to be asso­ci­at­ed with spe­cif­ic films from the last eight years. So what exact­ly is Oba­ma Era Cin­e­ma, and what does it reveal about the world we live in today? Have your say @LWLies #Oba­maEraCin­e­ma.

Nation­al elec­tion polls tell us that white work­ing-class vot­ers are sup­port­ing Don­ald Trump’s hate­ful pres­i­den­tial cam­paign at a dis­pro­por­tion­ate rate com­pared to oth­er demo­graph­ics. Those loy­al to the busi­ness mogul-turned-dem­a­gogue have con­sis­tent­ly expressed a dis­dain for the polit­i­cal sys­tem, see­ing it as ​“rigged” in favour of the polit­i­cal and social elite. The cin­e­ma of Jeff Nichols hints at why this dis­il­lu­sion­ment has become so pronounced.

Begin­ning with Shot­gun Sto­ries in 2007, the Arkansas-born writer/​director made four films that span the length of Barack Obama’s two pres­i­den­tial terms. Each explores white South­ern iden­ti­ty through a prism of var­i­ous crises: eco­nom­ic, psy­cho­log­i­cal, emo­tion­al and reli­gious. They fea­ture false prophets and allude to the con­se­quences cre­at­ed by failed insti­tu­tions. For his char­ac­ters, life is a tor­na­do (some­times quite lit­er­al­ly) of com­pet­ing chal­lenges that threat­en to rip apart their slice of the Amer­i­can dream. Pro­tect­ing one’s fam­i­ly is the only thing that makes sense.

Issues of race are almost entire­ly ignored, but to say that Nichols believes we are liv­ing in a post-racial world would be naïve – his next film, Lov­ing, which pre­miered at the 2016 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val and will be released in the US in Novem­ber, grap­ples direct­ly with present day racial ten­sions by way of his­tor­i­cal melo­dra­ma. Still, the deci­sion to bypass even the most casu­al ref­er­ence of African-Amer­i­can life is a curi­ous one, and when looked at in close suc­ces­sion Nichols’ films can’t help but feel unaware of press­ing social con­cerns relat­ing to 21^st cen­tu­ry community.

Still, Nichols stub­born­ly remains stead­fast in his exam­i­na­tion of how white fam­i­ly dynam­ics are test­ed by exter­nal forces. Bad deci­sions made by des­per­ate men come to rep­re­sent the trick­le down effect of failed poli­cies involv­ing health care and free trade. The scope of these sto­ries is decid­ed­ly nar­row, yet that focus allows Nichols to high­light ful­ly devel­oped char­ac­ters whose expe­ri­ences evoke an organ­ic con­nec­tion between body, mind, and nature.

Like Shake­speare in minia­ture, Shot­gun Sto­ries spe­cialis­es in ghost­ly pres­ence of revenge. It exam­ines the ways in which broth­er­hood can go rot­ten because of awful parental guid­ance. As the old­est of three broth­ers who begin a vio­lent feud with their father’s sons from anoth­er mar­riage, Michael Shan­non embod­ies this sense of coiled rage in his sullen pos­ture and stur­dy man­ner­isms. Past trau­ma lingers like an invis­i­ble cloak shroud­ing his bul­let-scarred back. Pride­ful resent­ment helps feed what becomes a pre­cise nar­ra­tive of esca­la­tion. Self-destruc­tive pat­terns from both sides are made worse by root­ed class divi­sion and eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ty that has been fes­ter­ing for years. Released in the year before Obama’s inau­gu­ra­tion, Shot­gun Sto­ries fore­shad­ows a sense of per­pet­u­al anx­i­ety with change that per­me­ates through­out Nichols’ films.

Such con­flicts of tran­si­tion are more pro­nounced in Take Shel­ter, where Shan­non plays Cur­tis, a blue-col­lar fam­i­ly man who dreams of a com­ing storm that rains down motor oil and dri­ves peo­ple insane. Caught between a fad­ing sense of real­i­ty and com­pro­mised mas­culin­i­ty, Cur­tis tries to get help from the med­ical com­mu­ni­ty only to receive inad­e­quate treat­ment because of cost and prox­im­i­ty. Due to a dimin­ish­ing men­tal state, his reck­less actions at work and home threat­en to derail the very foun­da­tion of his life. Pat­terns of cause and effect are impor­tant to Nichols, espe­cial­ly when it comes to the over­lap between an indi­vid­ual and the com­mu­ni­ty (and by exten­sion gov­ern­ment) respon­si­ble for pro­tect­ing them. Take Shel­ter evoca­tive­ly por­trays one man’s ten­u­ous tightrope walk between per­cep­tion and real­i­ty, and the pan­ic felt when he is left behind by an uncar­ing soci­ety pre-Obamacare.

Nichols gets weepi­er with Mud, a sweaty ode to unre­quit­ed love and per­se­ver­ance that could dis­avows most of the sub­text from his pre­vi­ous efforts. Ellis (Tye Sheri­dan) and his friend Neck­bone (Jacob Lofland) are young riv­er rats who come across Matthew McConaughey’s epony­mous crim­i­nal hid­ing out on a desert­ed island hop­ing to con­tact his estranged girl­friend (Reese With­er­spoon). Because the film embraces pri­or­i­ties and curiosi­ties linked to a child’s per­spec­tive, the adult world comes across as pulpy, thin, and apo­lit­i­cal. Ellis grap­ples with dis­ap­point­ment and heart­break at mul­ti­ple turns, includ­ing the dis­so­lu­tion of his par­ents’ mar­riage. Mud fix­ates too hard on long-ges­tat­ing patri­ar­chal con­tra­dic­tions, a key theme in a film that ends with Ellis and his moth­er leav­ing rur­al life for the city.

While Mud suf­fers from nar­ra­tive bloat and slop­py inten­tions, Nichols’ Mid­night Spe­cial is bril­liant­ly stripped-back. It’s a lean amal­ga­ma­tion of sci-fi, action and dra­ma with a spir­i­tu­al under­bel­ly. ​“Good peo­ple die every­day believ­ing in things,” says Lucas (Joel Edger­ton), a Texas State Troop­er gone rogue to help out a child­hood friend (Michael Shan­non) whose son might be the mes­si­ah. Gun-tot­ing dis­ci­ples of a cult and the FBI are track­ing them relent­less­ly, lead­ing to an ambi­tious­ly hope­ful finale.

Like Take Shel­ter, Mid­night Spe­cial blurs the line between fan­ta­sy and real­i­ty in order to achieve a nec­es­sary sense of won­der in a world where lit­tle exists. Nichols grav­i­tates toward tran­scen­dent expe­ri­ences that car­ry uni­ver­sal emo­tion­al impact while ignor­ing peo­ple of colour and LGBT per­spec­tives. In Nichols’ cin­e­ma, white blue-col­lar char­ac­ters obtain a lev­el of peace­ful res­o­nance and clo­sure despite the obvi­ous fail­ures of gov­ern­ment and social insti­tu­tions. The same can­not be said of their real-life coun­ter­parts involved in fuelling the Trump train.

As a slo­gan, ​“Make Amer­i­ca Great Again” sug­gests that the Oba­ma Admin­is­tra­tion has sin­gu­lar­ly set the coun­try off course. Nichols close­ly cri­tiques why so many white peo­ple might be vul­ner­a­ble to believe in this kind of sim­plis­tic rhetoric that con­ve­nient­ly dis­avows the dis­as­trous pres­i­den­cy of George W Bush. Even more impor­tant­ly, he forces char­ac­ters to look them­selves in the mir­ror and ask dif­fi­cult ques­tions about moral­i­ty instead of blam­ing every­thing on Big Broth­er. The low road is nev­er an option.