INTERNATIONAL

62
Gotch
Film Review
Nebraska: An Unexpected Cultural Journey
Donna Gotch, MA, Department of Communication Studies
California State University San Bernardino
While it may seem unusual to select the film Nebraska as a classroom vehicle
for analyzing “culture,” the film is valuable precisely because it illustrates that culture is
not found just in the diversity of big cities where people are exposed to a variety of ethnic
groups. It is not just the films of Spike Lee that offer insight into African American culture
or the movie Crash that explores how those who “crash” into strangers from different
cultures gain insight from those interactions. Rather a sensitive cultural portrait can be
found in a film situated in the very heartland of America, in Nebraska.
Nebraska is a 2013 comedy-drama film that provides a glimpse into the life of
an ornery and charming senior citizen Woody Grant, played by Bruce Dern, who takes
a road trip from Billings, Montana to Lincoln, Nebraska with his adult son to claim a $1
million sweepstakes prize he has supposedly won. Its black and white palette displays
an emotionally and economically parched homeland and reinforces the impression of
life stripped down to the essentials. As they travel through a Midwestern panorama of
bleak wintery plains and declining small towns, director Alexander Payne (himself born
and raised in Nebraska) provides an honest, heartwarming portrayal of idiosyncratic
but believable characters for whom he has evident sympathy despite their foibles and
weaknesses. This is not urban, coastal cultural snobbery ridiculing less sophisticated rural
life, as some might think, but an insightful examination of the interaction of people and
their environment, recognizing the constraints that shape life chances and interpersonal
dynamics. Woody, his family, and acquaintances can only be understood as products of
a particular place and time, a cultural setting that some critics have called 21st-century
“American Gothic.” The realism of insular, family-centered life is captured in low-key
scenes such as the one revolving around the foot problems of one family member. The
two bars in the movie, which look exactly the same, are indicative of a Nebraskan cultural
homogeneity. Music is also a cultural marker. The background music at the bar, We can
last forever, expresses bedrock Midwestern cultural values of perseverance and determination.
Nebraska helps students see that culture, conceptualized as a way of life lived
within a shared set of understandings and values, is everywhere. Especially for many
students from the dominant culture, for whom their own identity as “American”, “Caucasian”
or “white” embodies taken-for-granted norms, it is important to recognize that
culture is not just an attribute of “others” and that their own culture is an equally appropriate
subject of analysis. Thus, it is not just “ethnic” films that provide cultural insight
but films like Nebraska. The pedagogical value of the film lies in its ability to increase
students’ awareness that whether it is in the small mountain community of Running
Springs, the mid-size city of Corona or a large metropolis like Los Angeles, culture IS
indeed everywhere, even in the very classroom where they learn, the place they live, and
within their own family. Nebraska challenges student viewers to see a multiplicity of cultures
intersecting in everyday life, not only for the film’s characters but for themselves.
For example, they can identify and compare regional cultures (the Midwest and Southern
California,) age-based cultures (senior-citizen and youth) and even the micro-cultures of
the bars in the film in contrast to those they may frequent.