This week Karen L. Cox swings by to talk about the South, the 70s, and why Burt Reynolds was so damn cool. This is probably the first time you’ve heard Smokey and the Bandit on a history podcast, but that’s what we are here for. This one is fun.
About our guest:
Karen L. Cox is an award-winning historian and a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. She is the author of four books, the editor or co-editor of two volumes on southern history and has written numerous essays and articles, including an essay for the New York Times best seller Myth America: Historians Take on the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past. Her books include Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture, Dreaming of Dixie: How the South Was Created in American Popular Culture, Goat Castle: A True Story of Murder, Race, and the Gothic South, and most recently, No Common Ground: Confederate Monuments and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice, which was published in April 2021 and won the Michael V.R. Thomason book prize from the Gulf South Historical Association.
This week Karen L. Cox swings by to talk about the South, the 70s, and why Burt Reynolds was so damn cool. This is probably the first time you’ve heard Smokey and the Bandit on a history podcast, but that’s what we are here for. This one is fun.
About our guest:
Karen L. Cox is an award-winning historian and a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. She is the author of four books, the editor or co-editor of two volumes on southern history and has written numerous essays and articles, including an essay for the New York Times best seller Myth America: Historians Take on the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past. Her books include Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture, Dreaming of Dixie: How the South Was Created in American Popular Culture, Goat Castle: A True Story of Murder, Race, and the Gothic South, and most recently, No Common Ground: Confederate Monuments and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice, which was published in April 2021 and won the Michael V.R. Thomason book prize from the Gulf South Historical Association.
Jason Herbert (00:02.061)
you're not boring. So, um, so we'll rock out. You ready to rock? All right. Dr. Karen Cox, real historian, how are you?
Dr. Karen Cox (00:06.511)
I'm ready. I'm ready.
Thank you.
Great, I'm happy to finally be on this podcast with you.
Jason Herbert (00:16.961)
I know we've been trying to do this forever. And because of that, I am looking, I'm gonna make the sound here. Let's see if this works here. There we go. I got the popping of the beer in honor of both you and the movie we're talking about tonight.
Dr. Karen Cox (00:31.534)
Oh yeah, oh yeah. I don't, I should have probably got picked up some cores but I can't take it. No, you can't hear mine. I like shake my ice ball in there. I am having an old-fashioned made with Elijah Craig Rye.
Jason Herbert (00:38.333)
You know, you know, what are you drinking over there? What is that?
Jason Herbert (00:50.745)
Oh, okay. I like this style. Like I'm an old fashioned fan. I actually think I like the idea of an old fashioned more than the old fashioned stuff. Like I like, like it feels like I'm Don Draper ordering a drink at the, except for I don't smoke. I'm not like devilishly handsome. I don't have a sense of style. Actually, I feel nothing like Don Draper now that I mentioned it. I'm not philandering. Nope, not philandered. I just had to check my history here. No, no, I haven't philandered.
Dr. Karen Cox (00:52.598)
So, yeah.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:07.275)
Ha ha.
Jason Herbert (01:19.977)
So, yeah, but I do like the old fashioned. It feels good.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:24.162)
Yeah, even if you had, you wouldn't want to put that out there.
Jason Herbert (01:28.165)
I don't know. I feel like in the current geopolitical debate, right? Like, like, it's like, yeah, people love me. That's fine. You know, besides my heart is my heart belongs only to Robin Mitchell, of course. Paris and wire. If people are following on Twitter, that's actually the great love of my life. So from is out there not listening. She's out there in Buffalo being cold. Right.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:29.678)
I'm going to go ahead and close the video.
What?
Dr. Karen Cox (01:43.167)
Yep, yep.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:49.234)
Yes, absolutely. I've seen her pictures from her social media and I'm like, thank God she's on the inside when she's doing that.
Jason Herbert (01:57.641)
I got to see her in San Francisco like last week. So it was yeah. Do you ever go to the American Historical Association Conference?
Dr. Karen Cox (02:00.67)
Great, great.
Dr. Karen Cox (02:08.11)
I haven't been in a number of years. I think the last one I went to was in Chicago. And the reason that I didn't get, I was like, if you're not presenting, you don't get reimbursed. Like that's.
Jason Herbert (02:18.029)
Didn't I see you at that one? Didn't we bump into each other there in Chicago?
Dr. Karen Cox (02:21.795)
You, maybe, I know we saw each other at an SHA in, I think it was Louisville, but you may have, you may have, I think I met Kevin Gannon at the Chicago one because I just looked at him and said, are you the tattooed prof?
Jason Herbert (02:28.185)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. We definitely saw the logo. I don't know.
Jason Herbert (02:42.413)
I saw, I hung out with Ganon like nonstop at the most recent AHA in San Francisco, which is weird because I'm like, Ganon's a superstar and I'm just kind of a nerd. So I was like, oh, you want to hang out? Oh, we're friends? Oh, I know we're friends, but I'm like, don't you have like better cooler friends than me to hang out with? So I love him. I do. Actually, you came up in conversation.
Dr. Karen Cox (02:43.09)
Thank you.
Dr. Karen Cox (03:02.506)
He's easy going. You know, he lives here in Charlotte now.
Jason Herbert (03:10.021)
while we were talking, because I was like, did you get to see Karen yet? Because he's so happy. For those of you listening who don't know Kevin, again, he's the best we've got. He's actually the reason why I have tattoos. I kid you not. Like, because I was like, can I have a tattoo as a scholar? And Kevin's like, ha ha. I was like, well, it's pirates and turtles time now. So, yeah. You know, he's, I love the guy. Are you going to go to the Southern? Oh.
Dr. Karen Cox (03:28.543)
I don't know what...
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I invited him to lunch or something when he first got into town, but his family's moved, he's more settled, he's probably super busy at Queens, and I don't know, maybe we'll meet up. But I'm meeting with Hillary Green tomorrow. Yeah, Hillary just teaches up the road for me. And there's this...
Jason Herbert (03:53.165)
Hillary's my person.
Jason Herbert (03:58.16)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Karen Cox (03:59.43)
a bar, a wine bar we go to called Barravan. And we're going tomorrow, we're gonna have wine, we're gonna catch up on our lives and have a little charcuterie and some good bread.
Jason Herbert (04:13.709)
Can I tell you, so Hillary was just on the pod recently. She was on the glory podcast that we did. We were recording that. And the only way I could explain that, and I've explained it to a few people since then, because Hillary is on there and Adam Dombey, our mutual friend was on there. Chris Barr, who I know you know, Holly Pinheiro was on there. It felt like I was playing catch with the 27 Yankees is what it felt like. You know, it was just like, here's everyone who's amazing in this field. And you know, Adam, I like it. Adam knows this. Adam is my, one of my sweetheart.
Dr. Karen Cox (04:18.727)
Yeah.
Jason Herbert (04:43.513)
dear best buddies who is kind of goofy. If you guys know Adam and all, he's kind of this goofy guy. And then he opens his mouth and then just brilliance just pop, just pours out. And then there's Hillary, who I got to hang out with also in San Francisco. And I'm just like, and Hillary's not just one of my favorite historians. She's just one of my favorite people. Like I just love Hillary so much. So I'm jealous of you. Make sure you brag that you hung out with me tonight when you see her tomorrow. And be like, you know what? Jason doesn't really like you. He's still making his mind up.
Dr. Karen Cox (05:01.183)
Yeah.
Dr. Karen Cox (05:04.78)
Bye!
Okay, I'll do it.
Jason Herbert (05:13.001)
if you know, if he wants to be your friend or not. So, you know, so there's that. All right, before we jump in and people like, who are all the fucking people you guys are talking about tonight? Let's talk about you. Let's talk about Karen Cox. You want to introduce yourself and who you are, what you do?
Dr. Karen Cox (05:21.078)
Yeah, I know.
Dr. Karen Cox (05:28.299)
Ah, all right, well.
Jason Herbert (05:29.921)
I know, like who are you Karen? And what are you doing here?
Dr. Karen Cox (05:32.022)
Yeah, I want to start with this. I want to start with this. I'm a first gen student. Like I was first gen in my family to go to college. And then I didn't stop until I got my PhD. And I'm a historian of the American South. This is what I would say about myself. I think I started as really more interested in local history.
Jason Herbert (05:58.883)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Karen Cox (05:59.194)
because that's where I was. I couldn't afford to go anywhere, so as an undergrad, I was like, I want to go nearby. And thankfully, I lived in Greensboro, North Carolina, very close to the great archives of the South at UNC Chapel Hill and Duke University. So that's where I got started. And then I worked in the museum field for a while and was a historian for a museum that's no longer a museum. It's something else now. It's a different kind of
the Museum of the Cape Fear, which was on the Cape Fear River, close to, well, it was, I was living in Fayetteville, which is, was no picnic, let me just say. But I learned a lot. And then I went back to grad school and I thought, I'll go down to Mississippi. And not to Ole Miss, but I went to Southern Miss. And the reason I did was because my
Jason Herbert (06:50.806)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Karen Cox (06:54.818)
thesis advisor at UNC Greensboro. I went to public schools the whole way through. So was Bill Link, who's only recently retired. And he said, oh, he had a friend and historian down at Southern Miss that maybe I'd like to work with. And that was Marjorie Spruill, who's a historian of suffrage, but she also understands the South and women's history of the South.
And I went into that knowing that I wanted to, you know, write about the United Daughters of the Confederacy. So most people will know me because of the Confederate memory stuff, you know, that I've, I wrote a book about the United Daughters of the Confederacy. And I also more recently wrote this book on Confederate monuments. And, but my favorite book I ever wrote though was Goat Castle, which is,
Jason Herbert (07:29.602)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Herbert (07:52.057)
It's the best name book. I remember when that came out. I remember telling you, it's like, God, what a great name. Go ahead, I'm sorry.
Dr. Karen Cox (07:58.378)
Well, I mean, it's great. Well, I can also move in that direction. I did do a pop culture book, which I really enjoyed. And I kept a blog for five years called Pop South, which was about popular culture and the way in which it showcased the South. And then Goat Castle, which was the subtitle, was a true story of murder race in the Gothic South. And so that's what took me to Natchez. And I'm currently
still added on a new book that's set in Natchez. So really, you know, once I went to Mississippi, I kept dipping back into that state's history for the books I've written. And so, but yeah, I mean, for the last several years, I have had a steady diet of the lost cause and Confederate monuments. So I'm really thrilled to be talking about something else this evening.
Jason Herbert (08:35.105)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Herbert (08:49.145)
Well, I'm sorry, but we're going to have to talk about the Lost Cause and Confederate monuments too. Mostly. Well, you know, and I'll tell you this and you and I've had this conversation, you know, this is particularly important to me for people who are just listening in. You know, there is still a statue of Robert E. Lee on my courthouse square, erected by the Daughters of the Confederacy in Murray, Kentucky. I want to say in 1922, sounds about right off the top of my head. You know, not only is it there on the courthouse square, really kind of pointing at the traditional black
Dr. Karen Cox (08:53.23)
Oh no!
Jason Herbert (09:18.841)
part of town. This is like a very real, you know, message that was being sent in 1922. And frankly, 102 years later continues to send a message because it's still fucking there. And, you know, Karen, your work has been so important to me. We don't have to talk about this all night because we have other we have other mustachioed things to talk about, which by the way, you know, this is for tonight.
Dr. Karen Cox (09:40.098)
Thank you.
Okay.
Jason Herbert (09:43.905)
people are not listening are like Karen is having to look in horror at my entire face right now since I shaved off my beard. Um, but you know, your work has been so important.
Dr. Karen Cox (09:52.179)
It's better that you have it than I do.
Jason Herbert (09:56.137)
I don't know, that might be fun. We could be like, we could be mustachioed pop culture to his store. I don't know what we're doing here. Anyway, but no, your work has been so important for helping people understand that and arguing. And you know, and I see you out there fighting the fight. And I'm like, and that's like, I just love Karen. So, and then I was like, hey, let's do it. You know, I was like, let's do a pod. And then you were like, hey, let's do a pod. And then we tried to figure out a time. And I was like, oh, what do you want to do? You don't want to do Gone with the Wind? You want to do something like that? You're like.
Dr. Karen Cox (10:02.802)
I'm sorry.
Jason Herbert (10:25.401)
Fuck no. Let's do something else. And you picked Smokey and the Bandit. So the second highest grossing film of 1977.
Dr. Karen Cox (10:28.11)
Thank you.
Dr. Karen Cox (10:31.914)
I did.
Dr. Karen Cox (10:37.334)
What was number one?
Jason Herbert (10:39.641)
Star Wars.
Doesn't that tell you so much about the United States in 1977? How dare there are Star Wars toys over my left. Look at where my dad is a tie fighter. The year that's a year of my birth. Oh, yeah, like I was watching this and just trying to pick up because I think so many times I'm watching this film is like a cultural artifact in a lot of different ways. I'm also trying to see what it's trying to say. And I was also just going, what Burt Reynolds and Sally Field? That was that was a thing.
Dr. Karen Cox (10:44.347)
I never got into Star Wars.
Dr. Karen Cox (10:53.574)
Yeah, I know. I know people are very dedicated.
Jason Herbert (11:12.365)
That was like a thing thing. That was that was big for a while. And. There's a lot to unpack here, so why Smokey and the Bandit? Why were you like of all movies? I want to lay claim to the first Burt Reynolds film, I think. We haven't done Boogie Nights yet on Historians of the Movies podcast. Oh, we're doing Boogie Nights. No, but I want to. Actually, the movie I want to do is. I want to do Cajun Deliverance.
Dr. Karen Cox (11:17.358)
Yeah. All right.
Dr. Karen Cox (11:29.722)
Oh god. You haven't done deliverance either, have you?
I couldn't do that with you. I just couldn't. Somebody else had a... What's that?
Jason Herbert (11:42.381)
I want to do the Cajun version of Deliverance. Have you ever heard of a film called Southern Comfort?
Dr. Karen Cox (11:45.58)
Oh god.
Dr. Karen Cox (11:49.305)
Yes, yes I have.
Jason Herbert (11:50.081)
with Powers Booth and Keith Carradine. It's a Vietnam film, but it's obviously playing in on Deliverance, where these National Guard guys go and mess up and get the Cajuns to clear war on them in 1981. It's fascinating.
Dr. Karen Cox (11:53.284)
Uhhh
Dr. Karen Cox (12:06.914)
That sounds like another blue one, Kathleen Blue podcast.
Jason Herbert (12:11.045)
No, no, Kathleen wants to do completely silly films. So Kathleen is coming on to do Red Dawn at some point in time. We have a keep every schedule because Kathleen is like the busiest person on the planet right now. And for good reason, she's amazing. She's staked out that one and also Meg to the shark movie with Jason Statham.
Dr. Karen Cox (12:24.011)
Yeah.
Jason Herbert (12:31.469)
Kathleen does not want to do like serious films at all and I do not blame her whatsoever. She's like...
Dr. Karen Cox (12:37.339)
same. I went like, I think that I wanted to do Smokey and the Bandit because it's not too serious a film. Because I do serious all the time. And I can get like, I was a kid in the 70s. I mean, I'm older than you, obviously. So, but I think it's all right. It's all right.
Jason Herbert (13:01.257)
I wasn't going to tell our audience, but go on.
Dr. Karen Cox (13:05.686)
But I wanted to do something that I remember from my childhood. And I remember in the way in which women reacted to Burt Reynolds as a kind of a sex symbol guy in the 70s. And also what, you know, then as a historian, I'm interested in it because of the ways in which it represented a departure from films that are about the South or set in the South.
that you saw in the 60s, but really post-voting rights, post-civil rights, post-voting rights act. Because you start to see something really, really different on film after that movement. And then it kind of flips again with these kind of, it's Burt Reynolds thing, because it's not just.
Movies, right? It's also television. It's Dixie Hazzard. Right. And then also just not forget, Jimmy Carter was elected president in 76. So I think there's an interest, you know, among, you know, maybe in film, you know, to like look at the South. And in some ways it's kind of, and the Smokey movie sort of in some ways.
Jason Herbert (14:05.565)
Oh, it's television? Oh, yeah, you have to have this conversation with Dukes, right?
Dr. Karen Cox (14:31.554)
pokes fun at itself a little bit. But we can talk more about that. I mean, as we go through it, because I was just looking at it, it's like, okay, there are some things I really enjoyed, and there's a few things that are like, ee.
Jason Herbert (14:47.409)
No, I mean, that's all right. That's part of the fun of these films and going back to look at them. And, you know, there's this fascinating thing because you referenced the South, which I would actually want to unpack here in a moment, because we often hear the South in some ways kind of referred to historically a lot like the West, where we're just like, OK, what is the West? You know, this idea is like, where is it? Is it a place? Is it a process? Things like that. But the South is different. And, you know, I'm a native Southerner like yourself. I grew up in Kentucky and Louisiana and Tennessee.
But my, you know, I ended up going to school in Wichita and then in Minnesota. And I'll tell you, like outside of the South, it was always like, you're from the South. And it was like, you're from this completely other space that is wholly un-American. It's American, but it's like its own weird country kind of like in the minds of people outside the South. And maybe Southerners bring that on themselves because yeah, I might say I'm from Kentucky.
Dr. Karen Cox (15:27.906)
Cough.
Jason Herbert (15:44.321)
Right. Or I might say that I grew up in Louisiana, but there is definitely an othering that goes on where it's like, Oh no, I'm Southern and you're not, or people might inversely say, you know, Oh, you're from the South and there's this whole other thing that goes on with that. And I always kind of felt like I was pushing back against it as a person or even as a scholar in, in history, you know, um,
Dr. Karen Cox (16:04.014)
I certainly did that a lot on the blog because I felt like every time you turned around, okay, certain stereotypes continue to play out and you're like, oh gosh, you know, it's like, it's too, to me it's lazy, right? Especially when comedians are doing it and they're like, oh, and I'm from West Virginia, so you can imagine, you know, here and that, you know, jokes about West Virginia or Appalachia, but also jokes about the South, I'm like.
Jason Herbert (16:06.87)
Yeah.
Jason Herbert (16:18.701)
It is.
Dr. Karen Cox (16:32.802)
Can you like come up with something else now? Cause it's really sort of boring and lazy on your part as a comedian to just like fall on that. So yeah.
Jason Herbert (16:42.089)
It's low-hanging fruit in a lot of ways. And I think in a lot of ways, you know, it's certainly as a Kentucky. You know, we were used to that, the whole stuff about, you know, family inbred, your family trees or whatever, and things like that. You've probably heard the same things, right? And Louisiana and Mississippians, we all, we've all heard these things, right? As a Kentucky, it was like, so it became this thing where I always call it bluegrass nationalism, where you become this thing where it's like.
Dr. Karen Cox (16:44.022)
Oh, absolutely.
Dr. Karen Cox (16:54.362)
Oh god, yeah, all that.
Jason Herbert (17:09.213)
Yeah, damn right I'm from Kentucky. And we do three things really well. Like my people are poor, I get this. We come from a traditionally poor state, whether you're from Appalachia or whether you come from like Western Kentucky like myself. We do bourbon, we do horse racing and we do basketball. That's what we do. And for me, those became things that I was like, oh yeah, but we have this, you know? So it becomes like a defense mechanism. And I don't know, did you have that coming from out of West Virginia as well?
Dr. Karen Cox (17:39.754)
Well, so I moved away when I was pretty young into North Carolina, to Greensboro when I was about 12. But I, you know, I was always aware of it. I was always aware of the stereotypes. And I was always aware, you know, of where West Virginia is set in that and Appalachia set in that. And there is a like a defensiveness around it. You know, it's like, look, I'm pretty damn smart. And I come from that place too.
Jason Herbert (17:47.747)
Love, North Carolina.
Dr. Karen Cox (18:07.602)
Right? You know, and my, you know, one side of my family is a pretty accomplished group of people that still live there. And then on the other side, they weren't going to college, but they were smart. They were kind of real world smart. They were smart about how to, you know, make do or whatever that might, or they had a great sense of humor. To me, humor is a sign of intelligence.
Jason Herbert (18:36.619)
Absolutely.
Dr. Karen Cox (18:37.106)
My grandmother was so sharp, I thought, and she never got to go past the seventh grade. So I do feel defensive about that because I'm thinking there are reasons why people in those states couldn't make it out. Especially of my grandmother's generation.
And then my mother did a little bit better and then I did better Right and so and I'm lucky in that way because I did get out, you know but I still love those people very much I love that state and I don't like to I'm not here to tolerate stereotypes. I will call that stuff out in a second I'm gonna say can I say shit? Yes, I'll tall that shit out in a second
Jason Herbert (19:25.885)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Uh, Karen, I've dropped like four F-bombs already.
Dr. Karen Cox (19:33.966)
I know you have. I was like, okay, I'm gonna not hold back now.
Jason Herbert (19:38.205)
No, no, I'm not gonna hold back. She says as she dives into her old fashioned. So yeah, absolutely. That.
Dr. Karen Cox (19:44.15)
Listen, I got another one set up. So if I have to sneak out here for a second, I'm going to.
Jason Herbert (19:50.325)
You know, if you were just out listening in, Karen was telling me before we came on, she's like, I'm a little I'm a little worried I'm going to be not as exciting. I'm like, I know you, it's going to be fine. And then like, did I see like, the glove, the tumbler with the ice in the right? I'm like, yes, it'll be fine. So, all right. Before we start jumping into the film, let's lay out a basic idea here, because this isn't a thing where we've actually had a chance very much. The West has come up a lot on this podcast. And for good reason, it tends to often be the subject of
Dr. Karen Cox (20:06.614)
Yeah.
Jason Herbert (20:18.753)
history, quote unquote, films and things like that. The West is very popular. We're seeing that a lot right now. A research is even now in film with, you know, TV and film and things like that. But the South hasn't been as much. So Karen, in your own mind's eye, when you mentioned, when we talk about the South and certainly there's the idea of the antebellum South, the old South or even the new South, but I say the South, can you kind of define for us what the South is? And that'll take us about all night. So have fun.
Dr. Karen Cox (20:48.138)
Yeah, that could take us all night. Well, when I teach courses on the South, that's one of the questions I start out with my students. And I'll say, OK, we ask, where is the South? What are the borders of the South? That kind of thing. What defines the South? I mean, there's so many things, right? So my feeling as a cultural historian, I think it's
Jason Herbert (20:50.166)
You good?
Dr. Karen Cox (21:15.934)
you know, it's wherever you can find the culture of the South beyond what we, most people will say, oh, it was the states of the former Confederacy, which I don't, I don't go by that. Right. What I want to say, yeah, is like, okay, where, where can you find the culture of the South and you can find it in a lot of places and especially because there is a Southern diaspora, right? There is a, you know,
Jason Herbert (21:29.401)
Too easy.
Jason Herbert (21:38.891)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Karen Cox (21:45.494)
people from the region have moved on, have gone west, they've gone north, northeast. So you have that, and then when they do that, they take those things with them. I mean, you could go to the south side of Chicago and find what you would consider southern food, or that kind of thing. And so, I think about that, I think about music, I think music is a...
something that the South has given that's given us jazz and given us blues. And this is something that, you know, that transcends those borders. And, you know, and so in the other thing I think about is like, I think, I think it's this has changed a lot in the last several years, but there was a time when you said so-and-so was a southerner, there was an assumption that they were white. There was a time when that and I think that's changed.
Jason Herbert (22:38.621)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Dr. Karen Cox (22:42.802)
a lot, you know, in the last 50 years. And I think that, you know, we, you know, when we talk about who is a southerner, it's like they can be anyone, you know, and, and I read a lot of Black scholars, I mean, not just in history, but sociology and literature and that kind of thing. Because it's like, who gets to lay claim to that moniker, you know, who gets to lay claim to that, and it could be new immigrants.
Jason Herbert (23:08.683)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Karen Cox (23:12.438)
you know, Latina immigrants. So it's, and it's so varied, right? We even within the region, you can't define it in some ways, right? There are certain things that people, you know, assign to the South about whether it's about food or this nebulous thing called Southern hospitality.
Jason Herbert (23:37.697)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Karen Cox (23:38.058)
or whatever, but it varies. There's an Appalachian South, that's very different than the South of New Orleans, for example. It's just, you know, it's a huge place. And why would we think that it was, you know, monolithic? I don't know, but that so often, and you know, over in the history of our country, it's been treated as a monolith. Oh, the South is conservative. Well, guess what?
Jason Herbert (23:45.077)
Absolutely.
Dr. Karen Cox (24:06.874)
I live in a blue city, you know, or, you know, things like that.
Jason Herbert (24:13.141)
Yeah, it's far more diverse than folks outside the South would imagine. And it shouldn't be surprising because most places are incredibly diverse. Most places are very heterogeneous. My favorite place to eat here in Colorado is actually a Southern barbecue joint in Colorado Springs. Started by two guys from Alabama, so I knew I could trust it. So there's your diaspora, right? But it absolutely is. And I love what you're talking about as far as these ideas, but.
Yeah, there's Appalachia, but then there's the Upper South. And then, you know, then there's New Orleans, which is this whole other space entirely. And then what do you make of Miami and Tampa and all this amazing, you know, Latin fusion that has gone on there? They that is also, you know, the South is challenging, I think, in 2024.
Dr. Karen Cox (24:51.34)
No.
Dr. Karen Cox (24:58.762)
It is. It is. I mean, I feel like, you know, you're
Dr. Karen Cox (25:05.162)
You're being, you know, I think when I never think of the Miami is the South, right? And maybe I'm wrong. It feels like it's more, you know, is coming from the Caribbean or something like that. There's an influence there, which can also be felt in a place like New Orleans as well. You know, like and so, yeah, it's so diverse and so layered. And you can't just like define it really.
Jason Herbert (25:11.065)
That's right.
Jason Herbert (25:15.305)
It is, sure.
Dr. Karen Cox (25:35.378)
You try, but I think that, and that's why I ask this to my students when I would start to teach a course on the South, and we come up with all kinds of things about the politics, it's the religion, it's this, that, and the other, but even within the South, I mean, it's like you have very Catholic regions of the South, Louisiana or the coast of Mississippi, I mean, to what, you know, it's, yeah, yeah.
Jason Herbert (25:55.562)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Herbert (26:00.229)
I grew up Southern Baptist in Western Kentucky. You know, it's like that was the stronghold, you know, and I remember there were there was and it's probably still to this day. Yes, you did. Yeah, you're one of the few people who have, right? Oh, that's right. We got to get into that, too, because it was dry when you were there.
Dr. Karen Cox (26:07.17)
I know, I mean, it lived in Nuri, you know, for a little bit and couldn't get alcohol off.
Dr. Karen Cox (26:17.122)
God, it was awful. It was awful. It was like, you know what I thought about it? It's like, instead of keeping people from drinking, it encouraged more drinking, because when you went to a place to get it, whether you crossed the line in Tennessee or went to Paducah, you're like loaded up. Like, I hate it. I hate it.
Jason Herbert (26:35.401)
Yeah, right. I mean, that was always the thing was like, people would drive say from my hometown, Murray, Karen, you taught at Murray State for a couple years for a year, right? I flunked out of Murray State twice. So there's that. And then like you would drive from Murray into Puryear, Tennessee, which is right across this right across the state line, which is probably 3540 minutes. And you're absolutely right, people would load up, get all their alcohol, bring it back, drink the whole way back.
Dr. Karen Cox (26:43.97)
For a year, that's all I could take.
Jason Herbert (27:05.021)
And then have their car accidents, all that kind of stuff, or go to Paducah, the metropolis of Western Kentucky with population 60,000. Um, it's like, it was, it was this, it was this duality. This is what's, what's the word I'm looking for. It just felt fraudulent, you know? So Murray finally goes wet. My hometown finally goes wet in 2000. I moved away in 2000, moved to Florida full time in 2000. It goes wet where you can buy alcohol.
Dr. Karen Cox (27:10.094)
Alright!
Jason Herbert (27:34.873)
in per drink at a restaurant. And then I think in like 2015, 2016, something like that, they finally made where you could go and buy a bottle of wine, you could have liquor stores. And I remember, I went to school with so many people who were now pastors and they were, the uproar I would see on Facebook was like, oh my gosh, they're gonna put them next to our churches. I'm like, well, do the churches have to be there? Because I feel a lot closer to God when I'm drunk. So no, but it's.
Dr. Karen Cox (28:02.343)
Well, I remember my interview because there was no place to go, you know, because you can't have decent restaurants. You can't have, you know, if you can't serve alcohol, right? So the dinner that they took the job candidates to was a Mennonite restaurant.
Jason Herbert (28:04.511)
Uh-huh.
Jason Herbert (28:19.417)
Did you go to Dutch Essen House?
Dr. Karen Cox (28:21.654)
Probably, I guess that's what it was.
Jason Herbert (28:23.781)
Yeah, I know this place. It was good, but yes, absolutely right. Like, you know.
Dr. Karen Cox (28:27.154)
Delicious food, delicious food, but that was that was it. That was it.
Jason Herbert (28:29.997)
Like, yeah, you got sweet tea with that. Yeah, but you know, okay, so here's our natural segue. So much of that actually is reflected in this film, right? Because of liquor laws in the South, apparently. So the whole point of this film, if people are just saying, can we spoil it? How old am I? 46 year old film? I'll be 47 this year. So it came to, oh my God, I need to go weep. But the whole idea is these guys have got to get down and go get alcohol.
from what was from Texas into Mississippi was it Georgia, Texas into Georgia.
Dr. Karen Cox (29:02.454)
Texas. They're going from Texas to Georgia, right?
Jason Herbert (29:07.145)
Right. And they've got to do that because you can't, you can't bring Coors beer across the line.
Dr. Karen Cox (29:14.742)
You couldn't, Coors beer was not sold east of the Mississippi River. So yeah, I know, I know. And so that gave it a mystique, I gave it a mystique that made people, I guess, wanna bootleg it and go and get hundreds of cases and bring it back wherever in the South. In this case, in the Smoky movies, it's bringing it back to Georgia.
Jason Herbert (29:19.67)
So weird.
Dr. Karen Cox (29:45.374)
Yeah. Oh my god. Can I find you a get it like some more bourbon?
Jason Herbert (29:45.393)
so much here to unpack, right? And that's the entirety of the film.
Jason Herbert (29:53.417)
Oh my gosh, do you need to go get your bourbon?
Dr. Karen Cox (29:56.342)
Yeah, I'm gonna get some more because that's gone. Can I like, I'm gonna put it on the camera for a sec. Hang on, I'm coming. I'm gonna go get it.
Jason Herbert (29:59.885)
We'll go get it. OK, go. I'm right here. So for those of you listening, I am now checking the Kentucky basketball score. While Karen is away, I foolishly scheduled a podcast during a Kentucky game. Let's take a look. We are up by 14, which is not. Oh, no, wait, 24. I don't know how to count. I am a historian. So that's good.
Jason Herbert (30:33.273)
For some reason while we're doing this, Karen decided to black out her camera so we couldn't see her chair. But that's okay.
She can hear me laugh. She can hear me. I hear her laughing in the background. This is a great time to practice for Jason Herbert's Velvety tones for my late night DJ audience.
Dr. Karen Cox (30:53.334)
All right, you talking smack about me, I'm thinking.
Jason Herbert (30:55.985)
I am I'm talking smack. So we're having a new production company come in and do those stuff. So if they're, they're listening in right now, I hope they're having, hope they're having it because.
Dr. Karen Cox (31:03.927)
in case I'm not gonna avoid getting up again, right? I'm sorry.
Jason Herbert (31:08.277)
All right, this episode is not brought to you by Elijah Craig Rye, but should be. And if Elijah Craig, you're out there listening, we would be happy to sell ourselves for much of your tasty beverages. So, all right, let's jump into Smoky the Bandit. Comes out in 1977, starring Burt Reynolds, who was arguably the biggest star in Hollywood at the time.
Dr. Karen Cox (31:11.978)
I'm sorry.
Dr. Karen Cox (31:30.454)
Yeah, he was big for the 70s. Yeah, I mean, he had, you know, I think it started out with the longest yard, the football film, and then deliverance, of course. And then he, you know, did these, you know, Smoky and the Bandit movies because, and he would do his own stunts. He kind of did stunts, right? And I wanted, yeah, go ahead, go ahead.
Jason Herbert (31:55.061)
Well, he was good. He was a naturally athletic man. I mean, kind of famously played football at Florida State University, ended up hurting himself really badly. Where he had to kind of go into acting because the football team did. This was a, Burt was really kind of a man's man in the 70s, in a lot of ways. Was he not? I mean, he seemed to be the avatar for what men wanted to be.
Dr. Karen Cox (32:11.443)
Oh yeah. Yeah.
I think so. Yeah, I think so because even though like women absolutely loved him, you know, he was still a guy's guy or a man's man, cause you know, it's like so both, he could appeal to both of those audiences with his films and especially something like Smokey and the Bandit. And yeah.
Jason Herbert (32:26.391)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Herbert (32:38.197)
Yeah, he was masculine, he was physical, you know, he was like that alpha guy really, you know, a lot of deliberate tinges around the fact that he's kind of sidelined, his physicality is kind of sidelined early on because he gets hurt in the film. But then he's also, he's fun. You watch this movie, he's just, he's the fun guy that everybody wants to hang around with. Yeah.
Dr. Karen Cox (32:59.498)
Yeah, he's very cheeky. He's very cheeky, right? And yeah, yeah. And he, you could see like he kind of enjoys playing that kind of guy, right? Yeah, I mean, I was thinking he looked like, when I watched Gator, the film that came out before, when he played Gator McCluskey, he's a similar kind of guy and he's got that laugh that he does, you know? And...
Jason Herbert (33:11.341)
Well, it fits him well.
Jason Herbert (33:17.472)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Herbert (33:26.485)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Karen Cox (33:29.47)
Yeah, I mean, he's a very likable guy on screen and he could, you know, he didn't always do serious stuff, but he, you know, he did some serious things. But these movies were all about the fun and the cars and the speed and getting the girl and, you know.
Jason Herbert (33:50.229)
Yeah, it just always kind of doing this with the Wink. And kind of winking at the audience the whole time. I kind of felt like watching this film, going back to rewatch it, so watch this a couple of days ago, it was like, he was really kind of, he was felt like he was always winking at us. It, you know, twerk in the film.
Dr. Karen Cox (34:05.814)
He is, and there was actually one scene, I would notice this, where he blows past some sheriff in whichever state it was, and they go off to take off after him, and he outruns him, and he pulls up behind this building, and then he just turns and looks at the camera and grins at it, you know, like, yeah, absolutely.
Jason Herbert (34:29.473)
He felt like we were in on the joke. And you know, maybe that kind of spoke to his magnetism. But speaking of his magnetism, since we're talking about Bert, you've been chomping at the bit on this one. Do you want to talk about it now? Do you want to talk about the spread?
Dr. Karen Cox (34:31.56)
Yeah. Oh yeah.
Dr. Karen Cox (34:47.915)
I mean, are you going to put that picture out there? Because if you don't, this is a waste of my time. You better put it out there. No, but when you advertise it, maybe I'll put it out on my, you know, when I put something out there.
Jason Herbert (34:52.541)
No, I'm not on this pod. I'm no but like you'd later on Twitter. Oh absolutely probably oh Absolutely, in fact, I feel like what you need to do is superimpose my face over Burt Reynolds whenever you're doing that, but like I don't have that much hair
Dr. Karen Cox (35:08.326)
I'll let you do that. But yeah, so yeah, so I mean, look, women were crazy about him. And I was reading that he, I was reading about this, he was a centerfold in Cosmopolitan magazine. And I think it came because I don't know if somebody will probably correct me but here, but I think what I read was he was doing a
Jason Herbert (35:24.19)
Mm-hmm.
What year was this?
Dr. Karen Cox (35:36.574)
He was temporarily hosting The Tonight Show. And
What's her name? Hurley Brown. No, the woman who like was editor of Cosmopolitan. Oh God. suggested.
Jason Herbert (35:45.753)
Is it fair, Fawcett?
Jason Herbert (35:53.221)
There it is. For those of you listening right now, I've got them right over here. So go on, Karen.
Dr. Karen Cox (36:00.194)
So the woman, the editor of Cosmopolitan, I think in a break suggested that, you know, to him that he should, you know, do a centerfold for her magazine. And he thought, oh, that's interesting. But when I was reading about it, he was, I think he regretted that decision because, again, it's kind of part of his cheekiness, right? He was gonna be this spread, do this centerfold for Cosmopolitan.
But it was in the same 72s, it was the same year that Deliverance came out. And so he feels like people saw this centerfold of him and then didn't take what he did seriously in Deliverance. He felt like he might have made a mistake there.
Jason Herbert (36:47.349)
Yeah, you know, so it felt like Burt Reynolds could do this bread because Burt Reynolds could and somebody else could not. Like Burt was kind of, it kind of felt like in the time in the era that Burt knew he could get away with stuff that maybe other men could not. And I kind of wonder.
Dr. Karen Cox (36:59.33)
Maybe so. I mean, he certainly, I think he liked a challenge and he was, like I said, he just like, that sounds interesting. Yeah, sure. Why not? You know, he's, you know, not thinking about what, you know, so on the one hand, you know, women like were crazy about this, right? They that they snagged that their copy of Cosmopolitan just to see that centerfold. On the other hand.
Jason Herbert (37:18.958)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Karen Cox (37:26.354)
I think he wanted to be taken seriously as an actor.
And he felt like maybe his performance and deliverance gets overlooked a little bit because of doing that centerfold.
Jason Herbert (37:41.633)
Well, here's my other question is like it wasn't just women buying this magazine, right? I mean, I kind of wonder what was the effect, was this centerfold spread big in the gay male community as well? And I kind of wonder if that was part of the concern was like, because men at that point in time weren't really known for doing that. Like, I kind of wonder if there was an effect on that.
Dr. Karen Cox (38:06.882)
I don't know. I mean, I'm if I'm that would be a question for Jim Downs. But I think that in the set, because he writes a book about the 70s called Stand By Me. But I don't think that it's.
Not nationwide, let's just say that, right? I think you're gonna see maybe in like gay enclaves in New York or San Francisco or something like that. I'm sure they were like, that's hot. And he sort of looks like the 70s leather guys that people drew with the mustache, but much more muscular guys with the leather hat and everything.
I do believe that it was just more of like, you know, for women, and Cosmo was for women, you know, and I think that I can think about my neighbor, this woman, when I was a kid, she was like, just to hear her talk about him, I was like, God, what is this? You know, because they were just, you know, he was like unattainable, but except for, you know, you know, and people.
Jason Herbert (39:11.274)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Herbert (39:15.257)
unless your name was Sally Field who obtained a lot of time with Burt Reynolds for many years. Okay, I want to talk about Sally Field coming into this film because this is another person who kind of feels like in some ways, she was worried that this film was sidelining her career as a very serious actress. And I read that later on, she was like kind of regretting, you know, of course, Sally ends up winning a lot of awards later on in her career. But, you know, looking back, the Burt-Sally dynamic is...
Dr. Karen Cox (39:23.244)
Okay.
Dr. Karen Cox (39:37.707)
Right.
Jason Herbert (39:44.921)
I mean, boy, that's the highlight of this film is like, these two, they just get on.
Dr. Karen Cox (39:50.532)
Yeah, yeah, they're, they've got good chemistry and they both have, I think they both wear the same size jeans.
Dr. Karen Cox (40:02.039)
Ha ha ha!
Jason Herbert (40:04.697)
I was watching this and thinking, Jackie Gleason. How does Jackie Gleason end up in this film?
Dr. Karen Cox (40:09.651)
Oh gosh.
Dr. Karen Cox (40:13.59)
He's in, oh God, that's interesting. He does a lot of bit parts or these parts in films of the 70s. He plays a Southern sheriff really pretty well. I think that that's very, yeah, he's having a good time. He's having a good time. Yeah, I mean, there are people like, okay, so.
Jason Herbert (40:29.045)
He's having more fun than Burt Reynolds in this movie.
Dr. Karen Cox (40:39.51)
that he works with, Burt Reynolds works with, I guess Jackie Gleason, he probably knew all these people, of course, it's like, oh yeah, he'd make a great one. Jerry Reed is his buddy through a lot of films. I love him and he's, yeah, he's a lot of fun and the song is really good, you know, the song. He's sounding, oh, you wanna tell me something I don't know.
Jason Herbert (40:51.225)
God, I love Jerry Reed. I love Jerry Reed in this movie so much.
Jason Herbert (40:58.745)
Do you know the history of the song?
Jason Herbert (41:03.545)
Well, maybe, I don't know. Maybe you know this. But like, apparently, so the producer of the film said, hey, you know, we want for you to come up with a song. So he goes back and comes back with his guitar and plays an acoustic version of the song two hours later. And he starts playing it and the producer cuts him off. He's like, and Jerry's like, oh, I'm sorry. If you want me to be ready, he goes, no. He's like, if you change this, I'll kill you. It's like the song is perfect. You know, it's.
Dr. Karen Cox (41:15.925)
Oh wow.
Dr. Karen Cox (41:24.574)
Yeah. Yeah, no, it's it is. It's great. And I love, you know, like Jerry Reed's greatness. And he's perfect sidekick, and he's not a sidekick in Gator. He plays sort of a foil to Gator in that film. But they work so much better together. It's like a buddy film, you know, a buddies on that. And.
Jason Herbert (41:33.057)
He's a perfect sidekick to Burt Reynolds-ness.
Jason Herbert (41:42.36)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Karen Cox (41:51.574)
You know, Jerry Reese kind of, he's kind of fun too in this film.
Jason Herbert (41:56.373)
Well, Jerry Reed's no such, he holds his own against Reynolds and the rest of the cast. He's fun. And when Jerry Reed is on, you know, it's the Jerry Reed moments of the show. When Jerry, he's getting his ass kicked in the bar or when he's, you know, when he's fussing with the dog, you know, he's just like, this is the comic levity that you need. And of course, he's the one actually driving the beer. Right. So we need Jerry Reed in this, you know, in this film. He's he's good. There's another star to this film.
Dr. Karen Cox (42:07.479)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Karen Cox (42:16.907)
Yes.
Dr. Karen Cox (42:21.091)
Ew. We did.
Dr. Karen Cox (42:27.234)
The dog?
Jason Herbert (42:27.617)
The car. The car. Not the dog! I do love Basset Hounds though. Apparently they chose the Basset Hound because the Basset Hound would not listen to directions. Yeah! You can't think about this movie without the trans-am.
Dr. Karen Cox (42:33.43)
These I'll say the other star is the trans am Yeah
Dr. Karen Cox (42:43.95)
I wonder how many tires they went through in this film.
Jason Herbert (42:48.297)
So apparently the story behind the trans am goes they asked for five trans am or for a certain number trans ams and Pontiac did not want to give them very many. So they end up with like four trans amps. And by the end of the film, there are no trans amps working, you know, they'd asked for a whole bunch of like Bonneville's or whatever for the cop cars. There's none of them working at all at the end. This film is a huge success. How many trans amps get bought after them?
Dr. Karen Cox (43:04.173)
Yeah.
Dr. Karen Cox (43:11.235)
They destroyed so many cars in that film.
Jason Herbert (43:17.157)
I can't imagine how many more iconic cars are there?
Dr. Karen Cox (43:18.494)
Okay, here's where I can weigh in with my old self here right now. I entered high school in 77. I was a freshman in high school. So I'm going to... And I can't tell you, you know, the cool guys in my high school had the trans-ams. Yeah, you know they sold big after that.
Jason Herbert (43:22.721)
Alright.
Jason Herbert (43:40.281)
It's a car with the black, with the teatop, with the, with the, the Phoenix, it's the Phoenix, that gold Phoenix on the, on the, on the, I'm shocked that we haven't seen GM try to continually repackage some version of that car to this day, because I think it would still sell.
Dr. Karen Cox (43:43.89)
and the big phoenix on the cover or something. Yeah.
On the hood.
Dr. Karen Cox (43:58.09)
Yeah, this is a great car and people loved it. I mean, everybody was like, yeah. And I do think, when I saw him driving, I was thinking about my high school. It's like, yeah, man, that was like the guy, the cool guys had trans amps. Weren't very many of them, but they were there. And I bet you after this film.
Jason Herbert (44:17.229)
Did you?
Jason Herbert (44:21.193)
I bet you after this podcast people are going to be buying Trans Ams. That's what kind of reach we've got. This is brought to you now by Car and Driver.
Dr. Karen Cox (44:30.474)
Yeah, somebody needs to like just get, you know, restore one just for you.
Jason Herbert (44:36.873)
Yes, that is correct. Someone needs to give me lots of beer, money and trans amps. I think it's the idea. Uh, it's like the law. Yeah. It's really like the Warren's Yvonne song, like lawyers, guns and money, or only it's like, uh, beer bourbon and cars. I don't know. Um, did you see what's on the front of the trans am?
Dr. Karen Cox (44:45.516)
And Eliza Craig.
Dr. Karen Cox (44:56.252)
Yeah.
Dr. Karen Cox (44:59.972)
Yes. Is that?
Jason Herbert (45:01.089)
You wanna talk about it?
Dr. Karen Cox (45:04.078)
I meant to look that up beforehand. That looks like the Mississippi flag. Is that the Georgia flag?
Jason Herbert (45:11.883)
All I saw was stars and bars. Alright.
Dr. Karen Cox (45:14.158)
I saw the stars and bars, right, but I'm saying what I'm saying with yeah I saw that but I couldn't
Jason Herbert (45:19.553)
Alright, I'm googling Smokey and the Bandit Trans Am right now to see if I can pull up.
Dr. Karen Cox (45:25.178)
I think that was the Mississippi flag, right? It might be the Georgia.
Jason Herbert (45:29.497)
You would you would be more qualified. Golly. God. That is such a cool car the wheels. I'm looking at pictures of this right now Like we don't need a Burt Reynolds. Oh Got it. Here it is. Here it is right here It's the Georgia. It's the Georgia flag Georgia has since changed his flag Right, Georgia has since changed its flag, correct?
Dr. Karen Cox (45:38.798)
Okay, it wasn't. That must have been the Georgia flag then. Yeah, cause he, it was still, yeah, it's the Georgia flag. Yeah, so yeah, I absolutely saw that. What's that?
Oh yeah, they have. And you know what's interesting is like, it's a version of another Confederate flag. The first national flag of the Confederacy.
Jason Herbert (46:02.721)
Why isn't it just a white flag? That's what I want. I want Mississippi State flag to be like the... Was it Mississippi that just redid theirs? Or is it South Carolina? Oh. It's beautiful, that flag, the Magnolia flag. It's very pretty.
Dr. Karen Cox (46:08.574)
There you go.
Dr. Karen Cox (46:13.566)
Yeah, it was more recent and it's of a magnolia blossom It is but it was a magnolia blossom before they changed it
Jason Herbert (46:24.261)
It was. Now I feel worse about this. So because I was like, oh, I really like the Magnolia thing. It's like Mississippi is a naturally beautiful state.
Dr. Karen Cox (46:32.094)
No, I think it is 10 times better. It is better.
Jason Herbert (46:35.581)
Yeah, okay. Yeah, it's well, can we talk about where the I don't want to dive too, too deep into this, but where is the Confederate flag in American culture in 1977? We see version to this still on state flags, obviously. Is it this is very much a hey, because we have to talk about Dukes of Hazzard. We're talking about cars. The General Lee. I grew up with it.
Dr. Karen Cox (46:51.277)
Yeah.
Dr. Karen Cox (46:57.216)
Yeah.
Jason Herbert (47:00.945)
I certainly grew up with the myth that this is states' rights, these are our folks, tragic war, good old boys doing the right thing, our family was not about slavery, or our kinfolk or anything like that. We were just trying to defend Kentucky. Where's the war in the lexicon in the late 70s? Are these conversations happening about rethinking it at that point in time?
Dr. Karen Cox (47:07.35)
Right.
Dr. Karen Cox (47:26.691)
Honey.
Dr. Karen Cox (47:30.234)
Not yet. There is, it remains a symbol of defiance, but it's also this symbol that people, the white South has a difficult time letting go of in the 70s, even as, in the 70s represents the time when you have the first black elected officials since reconstruction.
at the local level, let's say at the city council, county commissioners, whatever, you know, and you might maybe a state representative here and there. But they're still celebrating Confederate Memorial Day, right, and so you'll still see people trot out the flag on those days and put those, do a little ceremony around the Confederate monument on the courthouse lawn. And certainly, you know, black representatives in these local communities,
bristled at that and commented on that and said, this is not a place for that. And so it's still there, but it's still like, it's falling into that, you know, heritage thing. You know, it's not about, yeah, I mean, it's a little early for Heritage 98, but it's still there.
Jason Herbert (48:43.969)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Karen Cox (48:53.75)
But I think it doesn't, not until we really get into the 90s do we see this sort of like, okay, it reemerges full force as a symbol of defiance. And it's still a symbol of defiance in the 70s. I'm not saying it isn't. But you have people in place who will question it and challenge it, and challenge Confederate symbols generally. Because you finally have.
black representatives speaking for that, you know, the members of their community for which these symbols are an insult. So yeah, so it's an interesting time. It's like on the one hand, because I wrote about the United Daughters of the Confederacy, of course. The 70s is this time when the UDC, or even civil rights, post-civil rights, they kind of like just become.
You know, you might see them on the social pages of the, you know, local newspaper, you know, that they're getting together and having their meeting and blah, blah. And so they've kind of like, they've pulled back. But what you'll see beginning, you know, in the 70s, but really in the 80s, the rise of, you know, of the sons of Confederate veterans as they're kind of replacing the UDC on some level as the leaders of this, you know,
movement over Confederate heritage. But in the 70s, we're still in this sort of like place where it's not clearly defined yet. It's like, you know, we've got, you know, again, it's like the early post voting rights, civil rights, and things are sort of in flux. And it really is when there's enough
progress following the Voting Rights Act that you start to see these symbols reemerge and be become part of the backlash. So you get essentially African Americans in the South get or we could say nationally but let's just focus on the South get 25 years of progress before the shit hits the fan and they start like pushing back on it.
Dr. Karen Cox (51:17.214)
right? And they start pushing back on it. 1994, when you have the rise of the, you know, the Republican Party takes over the House with their contract with America or contract for America, that's 1994. 1994 is also the year that the League of the South is formed. And the League of the South is a really hard right Confederate sort of organization.
that still believes in secession and believes in the whole, yeah. I mean, it's a total pushback against the progress of civil rights after these acts are passed in the mid-60s.
Jason Herbert (52:06.421)
So are you saying that Newt Gingrich is a fan of Smoky and the Bandit?
Dr. Karen Cox (52:13.394)
He probably is. He probably is. But you know, like, he likes, you know, but the thing is, it's like, it's, you know, so how, I was curious how old he was in when that hat came out. He might be, I don't know. But see, here's the thing where, you know, here's the thing where you can see things happen and you can see like people who are like sort of neo-confederates.
Jason Herbert (52:16.534)
He's probably
Jason Herbert (52:25.377)
He was probably, I don't, he was, he's.
Dr. Karen Cox (52:39.278)
probably love Smokey and the Bandit. Don't you think? And then...
Jason Herbert (52:45.541)
Oh, absolutely. Listen, any film where the South is prominently featured. And this is an interesting thing because we see this film, and of course, Deuce becomes one of the biggest shows on television. You see a rise of the South and pop culture that we hadn't seen in a long time, right? I mean, it's like the South is not a space that had been.
Dr. Karen Cox (53:10.042)
Yeah. Well, it's also very-
Jason Herbert (53:12.045)
prominently displayed.
Dr. Karen Cox (53:16.37)
aside from the battle flag on top of the general Lee, I mean that it makes it seem benign. This is what, this is.
Jason Herbert (53:22.537)
Absolutely is benign, and that's what I was instructed when I was growing up as a kid, was that flag WAS benign.
Dr. Karen Cox (53:26.858)
And that's what's problematic. That's what's problematic about when popular culture treats these things as benign and allows them to grow in popularity because there's real serious damage that's done by these symbols in this sort, and kind of a wink and a nod at really what is something that's very neo-Confederate. Because it seems fun. It's like, oh, they're just like,
You know, I mean, all those, you know, I mean, I did this teaching hard history podcast. And I'm going to get these confused. Is it? Hakeem Jeffries is the historian. OK, I want to mix them up and Hakeem Jeffries. And he talks about how he is a young kid would like run and jump and slide over the, you know, the hood of the car like he saw in the Dukes of Hazzard. Right. And.
Jason Herbert (54:09.301)
Mm-hmm. Yes.
Jason Herbert (54:23.862)
Absolutely.
Dr. Karen Cox (54:26.718)
you know, he's a young black child, right, doing this kind of thing. But I guess, you know, you don't like then when you look back on it, you're going, oh, my God, it's very subtle and insidious in some ways.
Jason Herbert (54:41.549)
Well, yeah, I mean, the flag itself had taken on in some ways, right? Like different meanings, or at least it was being pushed to have different meanings. Like it wasn't being pushed as a thing of as a symbol of slavery and of treachery, towards the American government or anything like that. It was just like, oh, these are just like good old boys, right? They don't mean any harm. I mean, quite literally from the song, right? And we talk about it being benign. Well, look, I mean, I come from poor white.
Dr. Karen Cox (55:01.214)
Yeah, exactly.
Jason Herbert (55:10.921)
roots in Kentucky and Louisiana. Of course it was benign to me. That whole fucking war was about supporting people like me. Right. And the white plantation owners, of course it was benign to me. It wasn't assembled towards people who look like me, who had my ancestry of oppression, of, you know, of slavery, of race based injustice. But that's what it is. You know, so it's. What happens is becomes targeted.
Dr. Karen Cox (55:36.001)
Yeah.
Jason Herbert (55:40.009)
says much more eloquently than I can care. But it's like, it becomes targeted people like me who are voting now.
Dr. Karen Cox (55:41.858)
What? Well, you know!
Well, you know, too, this is why, like...
I think it, you know, how important history is right now and that we like recognize these things and we are able to still teach these, teach the, you know, the, you know, so what is the, you know, legacy of the Confederate battle flag or the Confederate monument or whatever that might be. And, and, you know, because it's so amazing to me.
coming from West Virginia, that people don't appreciate the legacy of labor unions, labor efforts in that state. And they've all like folded into this, well, to become Trump supporters, I mean, it's turned into this red state. I'm thinking, do you not understand your history? Even as West Virginians, y'all fought the man.
Jason Herbert (56:48.409)
identity is going to trump history. And I mean, that's what I'm seeing. I see these arguments that say, how could people vote against their own interests? These are the arguments I see. I'm like, look, if you look at the way people vote, that tells you what their interests are. And in this regard, when people like that are voting for a person like Trump, what it tells me is that they're far more interested in identifying with, quote, unquote, a winner, with this, that, or the other.
Dr. Karen Cox (57:00.299)
Yeah, I understand.
Jason Herbert (57:17.585)
than solving problems of inequality, poverty, environmental degradation, things like that, it's about aligning themselves with someone. That's what I've seen. In some ways, I get it.
Dr. Karen Cox (57:30.67)
Sure, but I kind of was just like, you know.
For example, what I'm saying is that what history has taught me is to question that stuff, right? It's to be, you know, and that's where I think it's important that we're like, that students are getting a chance to learn this kind of history and enable them to challenge these things. And of course, West Virginia is like any other state in which there are surely there are, you know,
There's a lot of support for Trumpian politics, but there I know really like solid people who are like don't fall in that camp, you know, from that state. It's just interesting. You know, it's kind of, I'm thinking about a film and I was gonna, one of the things you kind of sent me an email about was like, what are my favorite Southern history films? I don't know that I would call it, it is sort of Southern and it isn't.
But Mate One is one of my favorite films, in part because of the labor story there.
Jason Herbert (58:40.665)
I've got a question for you about this film as an archive. I started sketch sketching. This film is an archive. And here's why. Like this film as I started looking at this film, sketching things down and thinking, oh my gosh, oh my gosh. So I went through a couple of things.
Dr. Karen Cox (58:43.84)
Is that the what?
Dr. Karen Cox (58:53.428)
Okay.
Dr. Karen Cox (58:59.23)
Okay.
Jason Herbert (59:01.265)
Smoking in the restaurant. When was the last time you went into a restaurant and there was like a smoking section or this one, there's not even a smoking section. I mean, the whole idea like of a smoking section was always silly, right? But.
They go into the place and the people are just smoking left and right. Do you did you did you pick up on this? I wonder about the smell of America in 1977.
Dr. Karen Cox (59:23.522)
What did I do?
Dr. Karen Cox (59:27.95)
smelt like, like Winston's. When's the last time I, you know what, when I came to Charlotte, there was a, they took people to this little breakfast joint and they were still smoking there. And you can still go in Kentucky places, they're like little diners where there's still a big giant smoking section. It's like, and there'll be like,
Jason Herbert (59:31.213)
Guess.
Jason Herbert (59:40.365)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Karen Cox (59:55.238)
barely a wall between the two of them. And you're like, it's all a smoking section.
Jason Herbert (01:00:02.225)
It's your plausible deniability wall. It's just nonsense.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:00:07.087)
So yeah, so the things I saw is like, oh yeah, the smoking. You know, you always say, you know, of course, the fashion of the period. But you know, one of the things. Get a hat and get some tight jeans. OK.
Jason Herbert (01:00:16.889)
I mean fashion now, I'm getting a hat tomorrow.
Jason Herbert (01:00:23.093)
That's not gonna work. That's not gonna fly. I post way too many gym pictures on social media anyway. Everyone knows I have no ass at all. It's just not gonna work. The tight jeans, no.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:00:32.15)
Well, you know, Burt was showing off his package. He didn't mind.
Jason Herbert (01:00:36.673)
Bart Reynolds could do things that Jason Herbert simply cannot. Ugh, not working well. Alright. Okay. Oh, I've got that right... here. So go for it. CB Radio.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:00:38.326)
He could do those things. Here's what I wanna talk about in that film, was CB radios.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:00:49.47)
Right, CB radios were, they were the shit in the 70s. I mean, I remember going to my cousin's house in West Virginia and they had the CB radio and then you hear, you know, and then it is a whole lingo with the CB radios. And, you know, my uncle was a long haul truck driver. He drove those big rigs and, you know, RIP to my uncle Donald.
Jason Herbert (01:01:11.337)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:01:18.382)
and he died this past year. And he, you know, the CB radio craze, I mean, people were all, I mean, I don't know where they, they were in it too, in my family, you know, like certain, and then they have, you know, and then they're in their handle. So you got banned it. And then he called, he gave Sally Fields the name.
Jason Herbert (01:01:32.638)
Everybody had a CB.
Jason Herbert (01:01:39.498)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:01:46.486)
frog that was her name that was her handle what was i forget what jerry reid's handle was handed to that okay i don't know okay
Jason Herbert (01:01:47.661)
Mm-hmm, right.
Jason Herbert (01:01:53.313)
He was bandit two, wasn't he? Bandit one, bandit two.
Jason Herbert (01:01:59.905)
I mean, Nethlore is cool as real historian for bandits, for handles, but you know, I mean, that's what we have on Twitter. Is, you know, we've got our own CV handles, right?
Dr. Karen Cox (01:02:04.626)
Yeah. This is true. In a way, yeah. Well, we're just going back to the CB days.
Jason Herbert (01:02:13.277)
I read that long-haul truckers hated this film for what it did to CB radio Because everybody got on the CB wanted to like have their own handle and weren't these guys were like trying to communicate and do their job and Then you've got somebody out and their Astro van You know or someone's kids online or on the airwaves, you know It was bad
Dr. Karen Cox (01:02:32.566)
Yep.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:02:37.026)
So yeah. Yeah, they got CB, oh, and one other thing that I noticed, when Sally Field had to go to the bathroom, she asked for a dime. Because she used to have to pay a dime to use the toilets. Do you not know this story?
Jason Herbert (01:02:42.393)
What's that?
Jason Herbert (01:02:52.597)
Oh, no, but that happened when I went to Europe in 2022. I was in Prague and you had to have coins to go to the bathroom. I was like, what is this about? I had no idea.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:03:01.762)
That's right. There were, you know, and he's, and Burt Reynolds says to her, just crawl underneath the door.
Jason Herbert (01:03:10.413)
Hehe
Dr. Karen Cox (01:03:12.086)
I'm sure that was a lovely floor there. Yeah, yeah. So, so yeah, I, when she had to pay a dime to go to the toilet, that just cracked me up because I had forgotten about that. You did have to pay a dime to go to the toilet at some point.
Jason Herbert (01:03:14.502)
Lovely. Oh, yeah.
Jason Herbert (01:03:28.629)
I got a couple more for you. Use of the word boy in this film. Do you do?
Dr. Karen Cox (01:03:30.391)
Alright.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:03:34.922)
I have that written down. I have that written. Yeah, I did. I was like, oh my God. Because, yeah.
Jason Herbert (01:03:42.113)
You want to talk about it? They don't just use it for to apply to Africa, you know, because traditionally you would, you would see this as like, go ahead.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:03:49.752)
Use it!
Yeah, no, he does use it for African. I did notice he used it with a white guy. Right, right. It wasn't exclusively.
Jason Herbert (01:03:57.185)
But not exclusively, he uses it towards everyone, right? This is the sheriff, Jackie Gleason.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:04:03.17)
But the first time you hear it is applied to an African American sheriff. But what he followed up with was you sounded taller on the phone.
Jason Herbert (01:04:17.889)
Yeah.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:04:18.174)
That was just like, okay, well you know what that's about. That was a little... You're just like...
Jason Herbert (01:04:22.205)
Mm hmm. Yeah. And I know that we're supposed to not like the sheriff and the sheriff is still supposed to be a relic from this bygone age. And that's part of the idea is that smokey's running from all of this stuff, or that bandit is running from all of this running away from all of this old south kind of stuff. Right? I mean, I think that's maybe part of this is like tongue in cheek. He's getting away from all of that. And when we see the African American sheriff, I don't have his name
He's actually, he's the voice of reason in this film. He is the guy who is good at his job. Yeah, he's like, he's the guy.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:04:58.078)
Yeah. And I'm thinking he's probably also one of the first sheriffs in Arkansas, because that's where he's from, he's one of probably one of the first black sheriffs they've had in Arkansas. And that goes back to that whole 1965 like Voting Rights Act thing, right? You get, you start to have representation at various levels of government.
Jason Herbert (01:05:07.881)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:05:26.868)
And he's doing that. And then I liked.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:05:32.374)
when you know everybody cheers on Bandit. Everybody's helping. The prostitutes are helping. The old ladies are helping. The other truckers are doing it. And there's a black funeral.
Jason Herbert (01:05:43.041)
Other truckers, absolutely.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:05:51.67)
where they pull out, yeah, everybody loves Burt Reynolds, it loves Bandit, and they do that. And I notice in Gator, he's a little...
Jason Herbert (01:05:51.897)
Everyone loves Rirk Reynolds.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:06:05.066)
He is very sympathetic.
two African Americans in that film. And I think there's a little bit of that here, but at the same time, you don't have any major black characters or actors in this film.
Jason Herbert (01:06:22.453)
You really don't. You've got Sheriff Bradford as the one African American sheriff, and then you've got some folks they encounter, but no major characters for African American instincts.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:06:27.615)
Yeah.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:06:33.814)
Now, there is this little stereotypical scene where the guy is fishing off the end of the pier, and then they're chasing Bandit, and he goes, and then the sheriff's car comes over the pier, knocking the black guy that's fishing into the water. Like, I don't know, there's certain things like that were like, ugh, a little uncomfortable.
Jason Herbert (01:06:58.485)
All right. I got one more thing for you.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:07:01.435)
Okay.
Jason Herbert (01:07:02.713)
There's no GPS in this film. How do you get from Texas to Georgia with no GPS? I mean, the whole idea is that you've got the blocker and I assume these guys know these routes, right? Like the back of their hand, right? Right, it's the CB, right? How do I get from here? Oh, you take a right.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:07:05.342)
No.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:07:16.45)
That's right, it's the CB. It's the CB. Right, because they like, they know, they know that, well, first of all, they've driven over those roads many times. You know, I'm sure my uncle who drove for, God, I don't know how many decades he drove the long haul truck, coast to coast, he probably knew those roads like the back of his hand. And so,
You know, they could say, oh, I'm coming up on blah, you know, use the CB to like signal each other and do those kinds of things. And they were probably themselves always trying to.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:07:58.014)
outwit the law, right? Because they have to deliver goods. And they're, you know, they don't want to be slowed down.
Jason Herbert (01:08:06.773)
Well, you get the sense of like this, almost like this underworld where the christers like, oh, no one's ever done this in 26 hours before, right? It's like, it's well known that this run takes X amount of time. Other guys have done it before. You know those other guys and we've got to do this. There, it was like the Jerry Reed song, so no one says, it's impossible to do it or whatever. It's like, there's the idea that there's this whole other Confederacy of drivers and...
folks who are outwitting the law, doing their back roads, looking out for each other, which is kind of fun to think about. And I get the sense that actually existed. I mean, these ideas don't come out of nowhere, right?
Dr. Karen Cox (01:08:48.834)
Right, right. And then, you know, in the end, they set it up for the next movie, right? They're going to go get Clam Chowder in Boston.
Jason Herbert (01:08:51.405)
Are there?
Jason Herbert (01:09:01.457)
Also, listen, are there parts of this film that drive you nuts? Looking back.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:09:03.513)
I'm sorry.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:09:13.037)
I know, not too bad. I mean, I flinch a little bit when he calls the black sheriff boy. That calls me to flinch. There's a little bit of sexism involved and objectifying women, like Sally Fields having a good ass or whatever.
Jason Herbert (01:09:21.881)
course.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:09:43.086)
blah blah, but she sort of placed that off in that scene. But for the most part, it's kind of, you know, I don't know. I was just like re-watching it and thinking, oh, this is kind of a fun film. You know, it says there's nothing much to think about here. You know, you're just like, it's a kind of film that like, sometimes I like to watch, which is like, it's not requiring a lot of thought on my part.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:10:14.57)
So, I don't know, did anything make you crazy?
Jason Herbert (01:10:18.005)
No, but you know, I actually think that there's something to it about the idea about the appeal of the so we were talking earlier about this being the second biggest film of 77 behind Star Wars. And I'm kind of wondering if maybe the reason why it's so successful is you're coming out, you're, you're coming out of the malaise of the 70s you're coming out of Nixon you're coming out of Ford. I forget exactly in the V in Vietnam. Maybe Americans just felt like they needed something to relax to.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:10:26.851)
Ahem.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:10:38.154)
the Vietnam War.
Yeah, I think there's like this.
Exactly. I did think about that. That is just like, you know, let's like, we don't want to talk about hard stuff. Let's just talk. Let's just have fun with this.
Jason Herbert (01:10:55.353)
Can we just laugh with this? Yeah, because the jokes, you know, even as uncomfortable as like the sheriff's treatment of Sheriff Bradford and things like that make us feel, it's that helps us to not like Jackie Gleason's characters. Understand that is rooted in an old South and maybe this is something new, right? Right, right. These are signs of his moral shortcomings, I guess.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:11:12.127)
Yeah, yeah.
Right, because it's only he's the only one doing that. He's the only one.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:11:24.673)
Yeah.
Jason Herbert (01:11:26.561)
I want to talk about other films in the South, because you do so much pop culture stuff. Yeah, I've, I've watching you on TikTok lately. I'm trying to still understand like what TikTok is and things like that. Like I'm trying to get it. My, my friend, Rachel Gunter was like, you have to get on TikTok. I'm like, but, but I, I have the brain the size of a pea. I can't do all of the social media.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:11:30.332)
Pfft Alright then
Dr. Karen Cox (01:11:35.161)
know what the hell.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:11:47.314)
Yeah, you know, this is the thing. This is what I'm having a hard time with is that we're having to do four or five, maybe exaggeration, three or four apps to accomplish what one app was doing. Until it imploded. And so it's like, yeah, I don't want to have to go to Blue Sky, Instagram, TikTok threads. I mean, it's just too much.
Jason Herbert (01:12:05.849)
I just want Twitter back in 2018.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:12:17.174)
So I think I've decided that I'm like, I'm just going to like stick to one, which is blue sky. Okay. And I play around with TikTok, but I'm not like that good at it. And I'm like, you know, she's really good at it. And she's figured out how to use it well. And that's not me. You know, it's like, I try, I'll get on there and mess around, but I don't think that's, you know.
Jason Herbert (01:12:17.557)
I don't even.
Jason Herbert (01:12:38.573)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:12:46.302)
who I am. I mean, like, that's not for me. You know, I'm still like that Twitter person, but I'm doing it over on Blue Sky. I do LinkedIn.
Jason Herbert (01:12:54.321)
I just want Twitter back. You know, I want Twitter from 2018 back. I keep waiting for Blue Sky to develop that technology. And since it's all the same people, I thought they would have it by now.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:13:01.346)
Yeah.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:13:04.63)
Yeah, I don't know what's going on, why they're taking so long to get there. I'm not crazy about threads. I'm, I don't know, I'm like, you know, and somebody, Claire Potter said, she posted, I said something about that on threads and Claire Potter responded with something I thought was kind of interesting, which was that maybe this
Jason Herbert (01:13:09.537)
maddening.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:13:32.322)
kind of social media or this era of social media is like no longer useful or not, I don't know. You know, and I think about that. And then I was listening to an NPR story the other day, which someone was saying,
you know, given all the crazy, unlike the ways in which you can't even like figure it out sometimes is like how they got an email. They said email is like, has made a comeback.
Jason Herbert (01:14:05.631)
I Just feels I just I essentially get ready for the chain emails to come back You know Remember this
Dr. Karen Cox (01:14:11.966)
Yeah, oh god. Oh yeah. Well, I remember mimeograph machines, so I'm kind of old.
Jason Herbert (01:14:20.649)
Okay. I was gonna say I remember dot matrix printers. All right. Let me ask you this. This is a film rooted in the south about the south and a lot of different ways. What are other films about the south that you like? There's a whole bunch we don't like. What do you like?
Dr. Karen Cox (01:14:29.442)
Right.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:14:36.138)
Right. I really love Tennessee Williams. I really love Tennessee Williams and I love Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
Jason Herbert (01:14:46.921)
Oh, that's Paul Newman, right?
Dr. Karen Cox (01:14:49.746)
Yeah, he was like, and I like all Paul Newman stuff. He did Cool Hand Luke. That's another good Southern film. I mean, it is.
Jason Herbert (01:14:57.437)
It helps when you're the... It helps when you're the handsomest man to ever walk the earth.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:15:03.506)
It's true, but what's interesting about that, and this is the one that, oh God, I'll think about it in a minute. What was the one with Martin Lawrence that was like a prison film? Y'all did it, I think on life. Okay, life is like the funny version with black characters of Coolhand Luke. Right, it is. So I like, you know, but I really, and then,
Jason Herbert (01:15:18.226)
life with him and Eddie Murphy.
Jason Herbert (01:15:26.826)
It is.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:15:33.514)
Streetcar Named Desire, other stuff, but Cat on a Haunt Tin Roof, you know, it's got the little plant, it's got the plantation setting, it's got the best looking man, Paul Newman, the best looking woman at the time, Elizabeth Taylor, you know, and then Burl Ives, Burl Ives is Big Daddy, you know, it's like, it's an entry, I just, I don't know, I like that film. I really like In the Heat of the Night.
Jason Herbert (01:15:49.849)
They knew what they were doing.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:16:03.126)
because I love Sidney Poitier. And this is one of those things where, that's one of those films, I'm gonna say 67, that might've come out, seven. He is challenging.
Jason Herbert (01:16:14.061)
Feels right.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:16:21.558)
you know, the legal structure of the South, the way the sheriff's office operates. And it's so good. And it's like, you know, you have that scene where he slaps the guy, the white man. White man slaps him and he slaps him back. We call that the slap heard around the world because he's just like, it's like, we're not taking that shit from you white people anymore. Although he is a Philadelphia detective, I think.
Jason Herbert (01:16:36.818)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:16:51.51)
he's in Mississippi, but it challenges the way the South was. And I think that's what I love about it. Plus, I love Sidney Poitier, and he's so good in that. OK, so that's another. One I don't think you've done, but you really want you to do it, is The Apostle with Robert Duvall. Oh.
Jason Herbert (01:17:09.601)
What's that? I don't even know this movie. Oh, I do know this movie. I've seen trailers. I haven't seen, I have not seen it.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:17:17.674)
Now you gotta watch it. Robert Duvall, the apostle. Because you wanna know about like Pentecostalism and things like that, you need to like a scholar on that. And he, and Farrah Fawcett is in it. And she's really good in it. She's really good in it. No, I'm not like, she's really good in it. It's a great film. I mean, it's one of these things where
Jason Herbert (01:17:20.405)
Why? My most southern why.
Jason Herbert (01:17:36.514)
Man.
Jason Herbert (01:17:42.061)
Good good. All right.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:17:47.166)
you know, you know, people who grew up in that kind of religious environment, like they recognize that guy, they recognize him. And he's both religious. He's also a violent guy and a controlling guy. I mean, it's a great film for me.
Jason Herbert (01:18:08.065)
Sounds like half the pastors in my hometown, but you've been to my hometown, so you know that. So.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:18:10.73)
Yep. So you watch The Apostle, just watch it one day when you have some time. It's a really good film. So that's one of my favorites in Mate One, which is Appalachia, but Mate One. But it's just, because I'm from West Virginia, I want to know that my great-grandfather was a minor in Mingo
Jason Herbert (01:18:17.793)
Alright, I'll do that.
Jason Herbert (01:18:23.299)
Mate one.
Jason Herbert (01:18:35.5)
Oh yeah.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:18:40.778)
You got the young preacher guy in that. You got James Earl Jones is in that film. And it's like, you know, he's representing like the black miners. And then there are the Italian miners. And it's like, and then there's like, you know, the. Oh, who are the thing that Bob Hutton's working on? The police force, the Pinkerton's. Yeah, yeah, that's a great anyway. It's great film.
Jason Herbert (01:19:03.765)
Oh, mhm. Pingers, yeah.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:19:10.41)
So those are the ones at the top of my list, I guess.
Jason Herbert (01:19:14.777)
Here's my final question for you. The thing we're building up to all night is Smokey and the Bandit, a history movie.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:19:26.231)
I think it's a history movie in the way that we see movies in terms of like...
what they represent about their era, whether it's.
fashion, music, what people are into, CB radios, a changing South in some ways. I think it is about that. I mean, I think that's because I'm a historian and I see it that way, right? I see that this is about a changing South. I don't know if other people would recognize it as such, but it is. And...
I mean, it's not teaching us history lessons in particular, you know, but, um, you know, it's, it's a fun to revisit that period. If you grew up during that period, you know, you need trans-ams in your life. That's what you need.
Jason Herbert (01:20:25.877)
I like watching these movies just so I can see what it looked like. I mean, here's real documentation of like what life was like in 1977, all the way down to the ketchup packets they were using, uh, which I looked at. Cause ketchup packet technology did not change until only recently. I was watching when they were in the diner. You can do the dip thing now. Yeah. Which I like, but you know,
Dr. Karen Cox (01:20:43.714)
That's right, because yeah, you're right. There's still the little packet. Yeah. And it's also, you know, it's like, you know, who is sexy in 77? This hairy guy. The hairy guy with the mustache. He's a bear.
Jason Herbert (01:20:54.537)
Yeah. What are the representations of that? Absolutely. Yeah. His very here suit.
Jason Herbert (01:21:02.537)
Oh my God. Somewhere out there, my friend Mike Ryan, it's ears just popped up right now. Whatever you said that. So I'll have to text him in a moment. Like, hey, is it? And forgive me, because my words may be wrong. Is there's bear and otter? And I don't know the other words I've come. I'm so confused. I this is a whole world, Karen. I just don't begin to understand about a great many things. Everything. Go ahead.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:21:20.275)
Oh my God, and bear cubs, there are bear cubs.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:21:31.416)
But you know what? That's what's beautiful about it. There was this space for people who could be themselves. I mean, I know we're not saying what we're talking about here, but he's like. But yeah, no, it's kind of like what people, like,
Jason Herbert (01:21:46.829)
70s room magical time.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:21:56.426)
what people, especially women thought was sexy at a certain time, but I bet you he had gay male fans. Absolute.
Jason Herbert (01:22:03.645)
Oh, absolutely. He did. I certainly did. And listen, watching now, I am still I'm 100% in on Sally Field in this film, although she's 30 in this film and I'm 46. So I felt a little weird. But whatever, it's fine. Hey, Karen, where can people find you on social media online? You mentioned Blue Sky and TikToks and 14 other platforms. Where can people find you?
Dr. Karen Cox (01:22:11.938)
He's a cutie.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:22:18.446)
I'm going to go to bed.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:22:27.895)
No, I don't want to say. I mean, yeah. I mean, you know, I'm, I have a website, kare
Dr. Karen Cox (01:22:39.926)
And I am on TikTok at real historian, r-e-e-l historian, which I'm not consistent with. So I don't know.
Jason Herbert (01:22:39.989)
Go there, people.
Jason Herbert (01:22:52.525)
Listen, the way social media is moving around by the time this episode's out, there could be 14 different platforms come and go between now and.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:22:58.006)
I'm on LinkedIn. I actually find LinkedIn's kind of interesting these days. I'm like, on there, you know, I don't know. I mean, it's like, we all like, are just like throwing jelly at the wall, right? At this point, just see what sticks. So as they, you know, and in some ways, you know.
Jason, I feel like in some ways this may be like given us a chance as historians just relax a little bit I mean, I want to relax a little bit because what I was thinking was About Historians and social media and I've been thinking about this a lot, especially in the last few days is that People were like, you know people would built up a
Jason Herbert (01:23:34.264)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:23:44.398)
Following on Twitter and then Twitter imploded right and so everybody sort of casting about but it feels like Such a competition and a hustle and it's like exhausting In a way that I don't want to be part of and I feel like also I think what's happening in this new environment To be honest with you. You may break through or whatever
Jason Herbert (01:24:10.922)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:24:13.366)
But I really feel like that the people who are going to still, right at this moment at least, have the following. And are the people who already have a column at MSNBC, they're all from the Ivies or the Northeast. They already have, you know.
and they can keep that up because they've been given this platform. All you know, the, what the thing about Twitter was, it was like, it kind of leveled the playing field just a little bit that people from state schools like myself could build up a following and that all imploded. And now you see like, and it feels like a horse race to draw on Kentucky a little bit. It feels like a horse race.
all the time and I don't know, I'm not so interested in that anymore and I'm curious as to where it all, everything falls out. I'm not sure. I don't want to start a sub-stat because that's not where I'm at in my career. I think I want to just focus on writing my book and doing what I can.
Jason Herbert (01:25:33.845)
I can tell you, Karen, like because HATM is so dependent upon social media and things like that. And I'm an early career scholar, even though, you know, I'm older than most early career scholars, right? But I'm exhausted because of the demands I feel I've got to do to tweet, a loose guy, TikTok, Substack. And then I stop. You know, most people don't even know about my own scholarship because that's the last thing that comes up because I...
Dr. Karen Cox (01:25:38.849)
I get it.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:25:47.137)
Yeah.
Jason Herbert (01:26:01.525)
Spend so much time talking about movies and things like that, which I love, right? This gives me great joy to sit and talk to my friends and do this kind of stuff. But you're actually right. It doesn't feel organic anymore. And it feels like we're scrambling to reclaim territory in a lot of different ways that we lost. Um, it's frustrating. There's this.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:26:14.218)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I, yeah, no, I get it. I mean, I hear you when you say that, it was just like, we're trying to use four different platforms for what one did for us. And now I'm exhausted and I don't wanna do that because I'm like, and what's interesting about it is also is like, okay, so recently a journalist reached out to me to talk to them about
Jason Herbert (01:26:28.984)
Yeah.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:26:42.326)
how the big lies like the lost cause. I'm like, I wrote a whole New York Times op-ed about it and you don't even know about it? I mean, you're like here today, gone tomorrow.
You know, it's crazy.
Jason Herbert (01:26:57.493)
I think that's a good way of saying we got other shit to do. Yeah. All right, Carol, we have other shit to do tonight. I'm hungry. I want to go get some food. What are you going to do tonight? Are you, are you all done tonight? What's, what's going on in your world?
Dr. Karen Cox (01:27:00.462)
We do.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:27:09.742)
Well, you know, it's a little bit later here. And you know what I'm gonna do? I may go watch a little more Netflix or get on Peacock and watch The Holdovers, which I've heard is great. And tomorrow I get to go hang out with Hillary Green.
Jason Herbert (01:27:12.142)
It is.
Jason Herbert (01:27:23.763)
I've heard this good.
Jason Herbert (01:27:31.433)
Never heard of it. Don't know where she died to me. She's not out any other friends. So good.
Dr. Karen Cox (01:27:32.814)
Ha ha!
Stayin' warm, because it's cold here tonight.
Jason Herbert (01:27:38.493)
I know it is. All right, we're gonna hit pause here, hold on.
There's one.