No, what Palin does is clearly isolationist, provincial, xenophobic, deadpan, and political. Big difference
Not to mention religous.
Of course, no matter how you interpret American Gothic, you’re going to have a hell of a time convincing anyone that Grant Wood was an “East Coast artist.”
I grew up in a lot of small towns within 30 minutes of Normal, IL. It was always our closest city. I need to do an “Ask the Odd Man from Normal, IL Thread”
I look at the cultural divide a different way - it’s not so much about location as it is about occupation and temperament.
On television, people who work as plumbers, mechanics, shoe salesmen, shopkeepers, small businessmen, or other such occupations are subjects for ridicule or stereotypes (“the angry mechanic who comes home in greasy overalls and yells at his wife, the home handyman who ruins everything, the shoe salesman who is a complete boob, the angry, stupid bus driver”). On the other hand, lawyers, doctors, professors and teachers are portrayed more often than not as heroic. There’s a handful of ‘heroic’ blue collar jobs - fireman and police officer come to mind. Factory workers are heroic - but only if they’re fighting to unionize or being put down by the evil factory owners.
When was the last time there was a show that followed say, an engineer who built up his own company and solved problems for people? The only one I can think of was ‘Tucker’, but even that had even bigger businessmen as evil villians.
I would chalk this up to the simple fact that Hollywood screenwriters and television writers are generally liberal arts majors, and many of them are from elite backgrounds. They simply don’t know how to write compelling drama about anything other than being a reporter, or a doctor, or a cop, or a fireman, or a lawyer.
It didn’t used to be that way. In the early days of television there were a lot more people writing who came from farms in middle America or who came from poor working class backgrounds. So you got shows like Little House on the Prairie and The Waltons which did celebrate rural/farming life and managed to make compelling drama out of it.
It’s bias, but it’s not intentional. It’s just people writing what they know. Unfortunately, a lot of writers in Hollywood no longer know very much.
Scott Adams recounts that when he was working with Hollywood writers on his short-lived “Dilbert” show, every one of them was trying to develop and pitch a sitcom about… sitcom writers.
I’ve always said, from the days of the NYC garbage strike decades ago - one sanitation worker is worth 10 overpaid boobs in suits. Now it’s one sanitation worker is worth 100 overpaid boobs in suits. One guy picks up your garbage, 100 guys fuck up the economy and feather their own nests.
So one garbageman is worth more than 50 professional women? There’s no need to be sexist, you know . . .