What key elements, among them welfare, standardiztation, public schooling, etc, destroyed the south that the movies pretended so hard to hate in all those wonderfully vibrabnt stories..?

It is- to say the least- a strange paradox that makes the Hollywood love affiar with the south. For decades, particullarly in years past, movie directors have painted the south as open palate- a maismic backdrop for such vibrant stories from "Gone with the Wind" to "Long Hot Summer" "Cool and Luke" to "Chained together"- from the tender story of the 1939 classic "The Yearling", all the way to the Brutality of "Bonnie and Clyde"... and the sweeping brilliance of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" such colorful protrayl of the south and all it's characters has left many and audinece captivated.. seeming to half know a place that many many have never been.... Yet as decades pass, all of this exploiting has done little to shake to the the genral feeling about the south... keeping it, in the minds of many, a place of static bellegernace... unworthy of much thought or investiagation... a "backwards"nation needing always to "catch up" with the times...the sooner, the better.
As the banner for the rest of the world presses on with "cultural apprechiation" and "sensitivity" southeners continue to be laughed at, then adored- as though, in a kind of secret, love/hate relationship in all those deep dirt roads of the imagionation... the play pen for all sorts of flowing, Faulknarian stories and characters full of life and color of epic proportion... the wily backwoods boy, sweet, leggy hillbilly beauty, pot bellied watermellon farmerfather, complete with grizzeled chin,bushy eye brows,rolled cigar and stained felt hat... once a fedora, long since having taken on it's "hick" shape.... the "maw" type, weather sunken cheeked and smiling with tight, little secret lips... or, as was later the case, the more Elizabeth Taylor, or Sally Fieled steel magolia stamina... the young black boy with cane pole (already someone is suddenly afraid of stereotyping) the old negro (yes I said it, no it's not racist) smiling over his prided BarBQ... all of these characters no longer celebrated... have ceased to exist as the south makes a effort to throw out it's heritage... Perhaps from fear of falling in with the grittier stereotypes so moften loved, then charicatured and mocked by the media and genral "yankee" populuos... In 2007, Dixie is aloud to mean one thing, and that is the norths idea of stereotypical ignorance... a banner for white trash who know nothing of Big Daddy, the Civil War or Jeffersonian Individulism... but none the less keep her flying, bright, bold and now humiliated...
For these reasons,and others I havn't figured out yet, older southeners seem hesitant to talk about childhood trips to the chicken coop. In many cases, young ones never knew there was a south half like the ones in Movies.... if it this is mentioned, it's uaully in a joke. "Hay,listen.. Around here, we're just glad to be going to a WAlmart. Before that, it was the PIGGLIY WIGGLY!".
There are the hold outs. But they're few and far in between. After all, to be southern is- by mandate- to be conservative, and in a world that only recently finished it's bulldozer revolution- to be conservative is to be dead... resigned... at least from an artistic stand point of anyone trying to see the south for what it might have been before everyone saw the Clevers and decided to catch up. The south today is, in may ways, more closed then it was fifty years ago... fields for noon day romps have been turned to PRIVATE... bridges, once used for cane pole fishing are never historic but old... and the state-plan replacement seldom takes time to remember to leave a few feet of shoulder for the old guys who ues to fish off the side. The farm has usually been subdivided long ago... if not, turned to agrabuisness- a huge brick house, backing on a fresh paved dirve way... with no smell of pie or close line... or in the case of the "poor", the son in laws trailor parked lazily in the tall grass while Ma Kettles house falls slowly apart... And don't even THINK about asking why they dont fix it... Trying to talk to a modern southener about ties to the "sacred soil" and "old home place" leave a awkward feeling in the air as lips become tight... you reliaze the culture in increaingly anit-sentamental. Walking up a dirt road can easily result in police questioning in todays "close knit" communities... Asking what happened to Mayberry and Huckleberry Finn will proably not help your case any... allthough dead, the cops proably not as dumb as he'll pretend to be when you say, "I thought this was the south..." Though you'll never run into trouble, as long as you know your place, stay in the new strip mall, and buy somthing... Oh, yeah... and remmber not to mention Floyds Barber shop, the smell of honeysuckle, or the sexuality of landscape...
Though I can go out at anyhour and rent any movie about the south "back then", in the post modern world of a walmart at ten o'clock at night, it's hard not to miss the cotton field.