johnny cash, high class or white trash?

I know kids who act proud of being white trash or coming from trailer trash backgrounds. I'm one of them, sometimes. If you wear Versace or go to Yale or are in any way clearly not white trash, eating spam and living in a double-wide is something you play up for its campy appeal. But it's clearly a disparaging term; whereas I have no qualms about referring to certain friends as hicks, I would never call them white trash.

Interesting. I have not had that experience. For example, when I got my first job at an expensive private university, I was chatting with a colleague about my background, and he said, "oh, you're white trash, too", and we had a good bonding laugh about it. I've had many such conversations, so perhaps in some regions of the country there is no ironic use of the term and in some there is. Although, the person I mentioned above is from the east coast, while I am from the midwest. I don't think there's any authoritative connotation for this term.

Obviously, Johnny Cash is so classic that it need not be discussed here. ;)

"no authoritative connotation" for a historically offensive term = don't use it in a room full of people you barely know.

I may be a little hyper-aware of this subject because of all the hoo-ha surrounding this.

SUV = "white trash" term

"I did not intentionally hurt anyone" = "I didn't mean it like that"

"I would swear that she was driving at me on purpose" = my posts

There are all kinds of terms to denote WT, and since there's a fair amount of it in my family it's a term I've used, generally on my little sister, who goes to drag race meets, watches every talk show going, wears blue eye make-up, has perms, and listens to George Thorogood. When in high school she chewed watermelon Hubba Bubba in three-piece clusters. What I really hate is ironic use of it by people who've had a snobby/cushy upbringing, eg Harmony Korine, or those who make it their artistic metier as he does. Like Kerry and others, it became an ironic term of solidarity by me and friends at *very* expensive colleges on full-ride scholarships. Here is a simple litmus test: if your father thinks it's funny to ask his children to pull his finger, then releases a fart when you do so, feel free to use the term at will!

Harmony Korine = Dud. I'm dismayed he cowrote a song with Bjork on her new LP.

high class white trash - album of covers last year was gorgeous, appearenceeon U2's zooropa magnificent, low down and dirty - great stuff.

Trying to help stay on topic here: I think Johnny Cash has "class", if it is at all possible to use that term in a non-loaded sense. Probably not, but I like to think I'm transforming the meaning of that word when I use it. I mean, I don't like the origins of the word, either, but I like the connotation. He has style, elegance and cool, or are those loaded terms as well?

Gummo is one of my favorite movies, with probably the best soundtrack ever. Bjork is a hyperdud, though.

Gummo was a good film, way better than Kids. I never saw Julian Donkey- Boy, it looked better than Gummo. Ssab Songs (Korine's "band") are okay, I guess, if you're in the mood for sped-damage wrecked-music along the lines of NWW/Cromagnon, with a spoiled upscale self-styled white trash hillbilly vibe about it. Johnny Cash is better.

I'm glad somebody agrees with me on Harmony Korine re: dudness -- my admittedly limited exposure to his work had me wishing I was dreaming of pink clouds and cotton candy. Which might be the point, of course. Kids, how I loathe thee!

Oh, Johnny Cash, right -- duh, classic. Gidouddahere if you disagree. One Nick Cave amusingly introduced a take on "The Mercy Seat" back in March as 'a Johnny Cash number,' and well he should after that cover.

gummo is classic for 1) being a good reference point for something fucked up ('dude, that's like, something from gummo, or something!') and 2) making me think about it at bizarre random times. best thing ever read about chloe sevigny: 'she has the charisma of a young rudy ray moore'. too true.

Some days I think Johnny Cash is the Greatest Living Country Musician alive. Other days, I would give that honor to Merle Haggard. One's a hillbilly who can rock, the other's a hardhat who can swing.

Both are classics, of course.

I can't stand Johnny Cash's "singing". He sounds soulless and thick, as if he's unaware of the music around him.

It is rare but this time I 100% agree with you, Ned. When I listen to Cash's version I am on the mercy seat. I lie with (not in that sense!) him.

Given that there's a track on his last album called Country Trash, I'm guessing he wouldn't be too happy with the thread title.

As to the real question, I have a hard time coming up with someone who's more incontestably a classic. Paid his dues, went to hell and back, watched country turn into a circus and never wavered. Recorded possibly the best live album ever (At Folsom Prison), and may well beat the odds by making his definitive three or four albums at the end of his a career that includes nearly 100 of them. Unlike most of the other acts undergoing "critical reevaluation", he never tried to regain cool: he never lost it.

Plus, he's the man in black. And everyone knows that black is cool.

is that a cover for a comic book???

The funniest thing about this thread is reading all the previous posters scrambling for their white trash cred.

Johnny Cash is a twisted fuck out the mountains

Uh, Johnny Cash is from eastern Arkansas, there are no mountains there.

Johnny Cash is good on image alone; I like him fine but think there are better country artists (Haggard, Jones, Faron Young, etc.). For those of you who aren't familiar with Cash's epochal "The Chicken in Black" (Johnny's kiss-off to Nashville music biz in which he's gotten fed up with the whole affair, goes to NYC to get a "brain transplant," has his brain replaced with that of a bankrobber called the Manhattan Flash, and has his brain put into a chicken who steals Johnny's act and appears around the country as, yep, The Chicken in Black), well, you have to hear it.

White trash is not a term one uses loosely in the south; it implies all sorts of very negative things indeed. As should be obvious--I mean it's up there with "nigger" as a completely perjorative word. I like what Jim Dickinson once said: "hillbillies kill outsiders, while rednecks kill each other." "Redneck" as used by whoever that woman is who's at the top of the country charts with that stupid "Redneck Girl" song is now officially "ironic." I grew up around rednecks and good ol' boys and I know from "white trash," who are people who don't clean up after themselves, I would say as a simple definition. Good ol' boys and rednecks take care of their lawnmowers and equipment and so forth. My brother-in-law is a redneck who drinks Bud Ice beer but who gags when offered a Sierra Nevada or a Red Hook -- "they can keep this shit out in Colorado and California."

"Chicken in Black" is essential Johnny Cash!

i agree with nabisco, "white trash" has ultimately racist connotations.

pejorative.