Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia (2009)

Directed by Julien Nitzberg

Where to begin? The White family is a big splattery mess of rednecks that live in Boone Country, West Virginia. The patriarch, D. Ray White, was a coal miner and a "mountain dancer" who invented his own style of dancing with tap shoes, it's about as redneck as entertainment gets. At the same time, it's an art form, carefully perfected over many years.

Just ask D. Ray's son, Jesco, the most "famous" of the white family for his documentary "The Dancing Outlaw", about how Jesco could've been a big famous star if it weren't for his troubles with the law, drugs, alcohol, and plain stupidity.

Then there's Mamie White, Jesco's sister, the tough-talkinist, nastiest mean bitch you could ever encounter. But only when she's drunk, most of the rest of the time she is busy taking care of her sisters and brothers.

They break down the family tree from there, but it all gets a little confusing, especially when you can only understand half of what anyone says and 3/4 of the family members look exactly alike, and the interrelations of each are questionable at best.

To tell the secrets of the White family would be an injustice to anyone that wants to actually sit and watch the movie, but it's a wild bunch of people.

What this documentary sets out to find is not who's in jail, who's not, who's talking to who, etc, but rather what made them all this way. There has to be a reason, right?

That's the main theme explored, how coal mining created a culture of contempt for the law via questionable safety practices, near slave wages for backbreaking work, and the general rape of everything that made early West Virginia culture special.

This same culture of economic and terrestrial destruction has created the pill-snorting, hard drinking, non-working, government check-gettin' White family and all of their problems. A very interesting, if infuriating, documentary for how much it makes you entertained by this family. This family, that as a hard-working, tax-paying American, you should despise with every fiber of your being. But how could you do that when they're so goddamn entertaining? Such is the parable of the White family of West Virginia.

"I mighta came into this world with nothin', and I'll probably leave it with nothin', but at least you know who the fuck we are" - Mamie White

9.2/10