A Hilarious Movie That Understands the South

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Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer or editor reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is Annie Joy Williams, an assistant editor who has written about the end of Hooters and the Republican leaders who once thought January 6 was “tragic.”

Annie Joy enjoys listening to Michael Martin Murphey with her father, recommends watching Vengeance for some proper honey-butter-chicken-biscuit appreciation, and is a proud Alex Cooper apologist.

But first, here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic:

The Culture Survey: Annie Joy Williams

A musical artist who means a lot to me: Michael Martin Murphey. I have to thank my father for introducing me to him. My father was a pilot, so he was constantly traveling when I was growing up outside of Nashville. When he was in town, it was a special treat for me and my sisters to get picked up in his GMC truck, which was equipped with crank windows and decorated with enough bumper stickers to cause some serious fights with my mom.

There was always a Michael Martin Murphey tape in the cassette player. His song “Wildfire” brought my dad to tears. My personal favorites were “Vanishing Breed” and “Children of the Wild World.” When he played “Pilgrims on the Way,” my dad would slap his Wrangler jeans in time with the lyric “The cowboy slaps the dust away.” Some combination of hay, dirt, and dust would fly into the air (he moonlighted as a farmer), and I thought it was hilarious. He and I went on a trip to Montana this past winter, and Murphey was once again our soundtrack, for the first time in about 15 years. We both cried as we looked out the window.

My favorite movies: La La Land, Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, and (500) Days of Summer are all top films for me. A less widely known film that I just adore is B. J. Novak’s Vengeance. I find that many films about the South are offensive to those of us who hail from there. And I get it, it’s easy to make southerners the butt of the joke—we really tee it up for people sometimes. Rarely do I find a film that adequately captures both the good and the bad of a place so storied and complex. Novak spent substantial time in West Texas before filming to better understand its people. “I want this to be Texans’ favorite movie,” he told Texas Monthly.

The film is hilarious. I saw it in D.C. with a group of friends I once lived with in Texas, and we kept saying how its portrayal of the North-South disconnect is spot-on. Plus, it pays proper homage to the honey-butter chicken biscuit, which I appreciate. [Related: The podcast spreading the love of cowboy culture]

The last museum or gallery show that I loved: The Alvin Ailey exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art, in New York City. As a dance teacher, I’ve always admired the contributions Ailey made to modern dance. He was a gay Black man from rural Texas who used choreography as a form of protest during the civil-rights movement. He eventually became a household name in New York, showcasing routines inspired by the river baptisms and gospel music of his Texas childhood. My favorite part of the exhibit was the collection of notes he wrote to himself, a mix of manifestos and eight-count choreography. I visited the exhibit with my mother, who sacrificed a lot to put me through dance classes and endless competitions, so experiencing that together was sweet.

A quiet song that I love, and a loud song that I love: I’m more of a quiet-song person myself, so I’ll give you three: “Boyhood,” by the Japanese House; “Bathroom Light,” by Mt. Joy; and “Into the Mystic,” by Van Morrison.

A loud song that I love is “Love It if We Made It,” by the 1975. Also, “Yoü and I,” by Lady Gaga. Makes me wish I was from Nebraska.

A cultural product I loved as a teenager and still love, and something I loved but now dislike: It wasn’t so much a cultural product as it was a cultural moment, but I’d like to think I grew up in the era of peak Disney Channel. My sisters are firmly Millennials, so I got to bear witness to the greats of their generation, such as Lizzie McGuire and Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century, as well as those of my generation—Hannah Montana, The Cheetah Girls, and, perhaps most notably, Disney Channel Games. I might have been too cool to love this stuff by my teenage years, but I’ve recently returned to these classics. My best friend and I discovered a Disney Channel Original Hits dance class at a studio in Brooklyn. We’ve gotten really close with the instructor, and it’s quickly become the highlight of our week. Now, the concealer lips, ultra-thin eyebrows, and extreme side parts from that era? We can leave those in 2005. [Related: What tween TV teaches kids]

A favorite story I’ve read in The Atlantic: “Jenisha From Kentucky,” by Jenisha Watts, and “The Day I Got Old,” by Caitlin Flanagan.

An online creator whom I’m a fan of: Look, say what you will, but Alex Cooper is a mastermind. I used to be a skeptic. The first time I listened to Call Her Daddy, I was stunned. It was 2019, and she was still tag-teaming the podcast with Sofia Franklyn. The episode was truly one of the most vulgar things I’d ever heard. Now I know she was scheming from the start. Cooper grabbed the world’s attention through her sex-forward crassness, and right when the public was ready to cast her out as a buxom blonde with little more to her than sex tricks and a pretty face, she showed her smarts. In the new, sans-Franklyn version of her show, she often gets rare sit-downs with pop-culture phenomenons, political candidates, and renowned actors. And they actually share revealing things with her because they’re thinking: This girl was just detailing her sex life in front of the whole world—she can’t judge me. Her unconventional openness invites openness from anyone sitting across from her. Not every interview is groundbreaking, but at least she’s getting every interview. Is her approach my style? Maybe not, but I’m a proud Alex Cooper apologist.

A poem that I return to: I’d like to think that I’m above bias here, but my sister is a poet, and I have spent my life trying to be half the writer she is. I always come back to this one poem she wrote about our experience as girls in church. Now we watch our nieces grow up and discover God.

God was not a girl. The earth he made
with apples seeds, the heavens with half-priced glitter.

We danced, and God smiled.

Drop the crayon,
take a tampon.

Sundays are for silver crosses
and I’m sorry, prayer groups circling

rumors. God is purity vow and camp deposit.
God is a one-piece swimsuit.

God is not a girl. Our hips he made
with hunger, our tongues with minty silence.

We kneel, and God tells us to smile.

The Week Ahead

Warfare, a film based on the co-director Ray Mendoza’s experiences during the Iraq War (in theaters Friday)
Season 7 of Black Mirror, a satirical sci-fi series (premieres Thursday on Netflix)
Authority, an essay collection by the Pulitzer Prize–winning critic Andrea Long Chu (out Tuesday)

Essay

Why You Should Work Like It’s the ’90s

By Chris Moody

One Friday afternoon 10 years ago, Andrew Heaton, then a cable-news writer, joined his colleagues for a meeting. The show’s producer asked the staff to keep an eye on their email over the weekend in case they needed to cover a breaking news event. No one seemed to mind—working full days in person while remaining on call in the evening and on weekends has always been a standard practice in the news business—but Heaton had a simple request.

He said he would be happy to go in but asked if his boss could call him on the phone instead of emailing him. He didn’t want to spend his time off continually monitoring his inbox for a message that might not even come …

Heaton was onto something.

Read the full article.