Ghost Dancing on the Cracker Circuit: The Culture Festivals in the American South

By Rodger Brown and Rodger Lyle Brown

Book Overview

Everybody knows about community festivals that celebrate the good ol' days--events like Rattlesnake Roundup, Peanut Days, and Mule Day. Countless towns around the South stage them. They set aside one weekend a year, rope off some parking, and celebrate some local theme on the courthouse lawn or in a nearby pasture, touting lost days of imagined glory.

The phenomenon is rapidly proliferating across the region, but until now the deeper significance of these hometown events has not been explored. In Ghost Dancing on the Cracker Circuit Rodger Brown takes the reader on a road trip across the South. He visits many festivals and unweaves their webs to find the meaning that underlies them. Contrary to popular interpretation of them as times of celebration and fund-raising, Brown discerns them to be times of mourning. Behind the scrim of jolly slideshows he find communities responding to economic restructuring and cultural change. As he travels across the South, he absorbs vivid impressions of boosterism and cornball symbolism. Along this comical trail that he terms the cracker circuit he perceives how these seasonal events are staged by white sponsors attempting to resurrect a splendid past that actually never existed. He likens them to legendary Indians ghost dancing in ceremonial performances staged to conjure up a lost paradise. In chapters with such titles as Stuffing Sin in a Lard Bucker and Aunt Bee's Death Certificate Brown not only sketches intriguing portraits of people and places but also makes fascinating revelations--the political meaning of Green Acres and Gilligan's Island , the real story behind the Hatfield and McCoy Feud, and the surprising role of The Andy Griffith Show in contemporary southern mythography. Brown's adventurous, good-natured inspection of this pervasive cultural curiosity discloses the state of the South at the turn of the millennium.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0878059067
• ISBN13: 9780878059065
• Release Date: February 1997
• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Length: 230 Pages
• Weight: 0.94 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Excellent, insightful read.

Roger Lyle Brown has successfully penetrated the mass psyche of the Southern festival culture. At first glance, one might not consider "festivals" to be an engaging topic, but Brown explores this subject like a psychoanalyst, providing real insight into the southern mind via one of its most cherished traditions - the festival. A unique piece of work.

From the Associated Press:

"Every so often, a book comes out that is entirely, refreshingly new -- not just in approach and style, but in idea, scope and theme. Rodger Lyle Brown, while doing doctoral work at Emory University, decided to weave his journeys to Southern festivals into a tale that has most ambitious task: to show that the way Southerners celebrate history and heritage is part of a tapestry of melancholy that illustrates the fading of community. He succeeds mightily....For anyone interested in the South, social history or the human condition, this is a book that is not to be missed." --Ted Anthony, Associated Press National Writer. April, 1998.

What a great read.

Amazing. Outstanding. Check out www.creativeloafing.com/cracker and read all about it.

Provides excellent insights into the contemporary South

Cool book. Great for the lay reader and also for use in the classroom