Peace, Love and Billy Ray Cyrus?
Make fun of his mullet, his crappy song Achy Breaky Heart or his sappy Pax Television program Doc, but that won't make you a better person. In fact, taking jabs at Cyrus will most likely drop your karma score and cause Saint Peter to down grade your suite at the AfterLife Resort and Spa. To be certain if you are making fun of Billy Ray Cyrus it is because he is a better person than you are.
Cyrus kind of embodies the typical position of Appalachia in American society. No matter what Billy Ray or Appalachians do to demonstrate their true quality of character the outsiders and the media will focus on those things which are basically superficial in order to degrade the whole. It may strike some as odd that I bring up Billy Ray since he is not really a force in the country music industry and even his show Doc has stopped production (although it still runs on Pax) but that is the whole point. America finds some aspect of Appalachia interesting, they obsess over it for awhile either as a curiosity or object of ridicule and then they forget about it or absorb it. Mind you the obsessive period usually entails some non-Appalachian making an ass-load of money while the Hillbillies involved make much less if anything at all.
There have been a number of folks who have called Billy Ray a one-hit wonder. If you qualify “one-hit” as being a number one hit on the pop charts, then yes perhaps Cyrus was a one-hit wonder, but the guy had a number of follow-up top 10 and top 40 hits on the country charts. What people don't understand is that there are very few one-hit wonders in that the single hit song is usually preceded by years of gigging in bars and night clubs before the artist is discovered. Cyrus and his band Sly Dog spent years as the house band in local night clubs in the Huntington, Ashland, Ironton tristate area. America kind of makes the same mistake with Appalachia. They assume that Hillbillies didn't exist before the Hatfields and McCoys, coal mines or Harper's local color stories. Billy Ray Cyrus and Appalachians paid their dues before they were noticed by the national media and it is a crying shame that that fact doesn't buy them any credibility.
Have you seen the garbage on television? There are things on both broadcast and cable television that would make even the most ardent First Amendment civil libertarian flinch. This is the context in which we find Pax's Doc starring Billy Ray Cyrus in the title role. For those unfamiliar with the show, Billy Ray plays a country doctor from Montana (why not Kentucky?) practicing in a small clinic in New York. Is it a sappy morality play? Sure, but it is of decent quality and most Cyrus detractors would have to admit that he is a fairly steady actor. The apologists for television are fond of saying, “if you don't like it change the channel.” But “if you don't like it change the channel” is only valid if there is an alternative. Instead of complaining about the cesspool which is cable television Cyrus and company gave viewers an alternative. (I personally advocate chucking your set out the window.) Appalachian society offers an alternative to the the overly commercial, urban society of America. This may be why the mainstream media is so hostile toward Appalachian and rural lifestyles.
Does anyone have any doubt that the mullet would not be such an abused coiffure if it had not become popular with Hillbillies and related cultural groups. Lest we forget that the mullet was a popular hair cut with all kinds of folks before it came to rest as a Hillbilly cultural artifact. If the popular culture of America adopts an item of Hillbilly culture it is not long before the origins of the item becomes obscure and pretty soon even Canadians are singing country songs and making whiskey. If Hillbillies adopt a common American cultural item it becomes an object of ridicule.
Billy Ray Cyrus probably fairs better individually that Appalachians do as a group. I am sure he is relatively comfortable financially and he is still out there rocking his true fans at county fairs. It is a shame that he doesn't get more recognition for being a philanthropist and all round nice guy, but lack of positive recognition doesn't keep Billy Ray from working like it does the average Appalachian. We can just be thankful that there are Appalachians like Cyrus who are willing to take what fame and success they have and try to improve the lives of their fellow Appalachians.
I recently viewed an episode of Doc, where Raoul's teacher asked him to re-do a school project on whether or not, "In God We Trust" should be removed from the public eye, taking into account both sides of the argument. The wording used by Doc Cassidy to explain to Raoul how the First Amendment was about Freedom of Religion, and not Freedom from Religion, was incredible. Is it possible to obtain a copy of those exact words used in that particular episode?
Posted by: Leslie Flynn | June 08, 2009 at 03:42 AM