The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia
This insightful documentary depicts the quality of life in Appalachia, the differences in culture, the unique view of the world. It follows a year in the life of one family.
The documentarians featured the use of graphics to help understand the family structure. Using an interactive family tree, of sorts, the White family was connected and brought to life, used as a bridge between people featured.
The White family’s claim to fame was D. Ray White, a former miner turned famous tap dancer. D. Ray was notorious in the area for his uncanny ability to monopolize on undeserved government benefits.
D. Ray started his entire family on government welfare checks when they were each eleven. The family continued to monopolize on government services long after D. Ray’s death. None of the white family works. They all receive social security.
This White family is notorious in the area for their bad behavior, lack of respect for abiding the law and general contempt for authority.
This was a fantastically unreal story. Although I enjoyed the ridiculousness of the White family, I found myself wanting more of a message in the documentary.
It wasn’t until the last 20 minutes of the documentary that I received any message at all as to what the documentary was even supposed to say. Throughout most of the piece, the documentarians do nothing more than talk about the drug habits of the family members.
And, suddenly, in the conclusion, the audience begins to understand why they have no respect for the authority, why they live for the present, why they have no respect for life. In an attempt to wrap up the unanswered questions raised in the first hour and a half, the story of D. Ray is told.
A former miner, exploited by the coal companies, D. Ray saw how much advantage was taken of him by the coal company, who had control of the general store, control over every good he purchased.
In an attempt to give his family what he wouldn’t otherwise be able to, he learned to take advantage of the social security system, beginning to get pay for doing no work. He went through various loopholes in government in order to allow his family to have a normal life.
Because of the nature of coal mining, the culture in West Virginia focuses on the present, not the future. The White family embraces this philosophy, using government loopholes to support themselves without an actual profession.
Overall, I enjoyed the documentary. I thought it was strong on character development, but marketed itself more as a social documentary. As such, it was weak due to its lack of in-depth exploration of the topic introduced in the beginning and left for dead until the end.
