'Appalachia': Few Peaks, Too Many Valleys

Unless you care deeply about rocks, Pangea, lycopods and fungi, skip right over the first episode of PBS's new four-part series, "Appalachia: A History of Mountains and People," which starts tonight on Channel 26, and tune in at about the midway point of the second episode, when George Washington, the British and the French show up and start fighting with the Indians.

The Appalachians are a people, a culture and a chain of mountains stretching from Newfoundland to Alabama. The mountains took millions of years to form. "Appalachia" seems to take nearly as long.

The four-parter -- which airs Mondays through May 4 -- is touted as a documentary by PBS, but it feels more like director Ross Spears has filmed a textbook. Even the title of the first episode, "Time and Terrain," reads like a chapter heading ripped from the pages of your eighth-grade Earth sciences text. The series lacks the dynamism and narrative sweep of, say, a documentary by Ken Burns who, for all his melodrama and self-seriousness, knows how to tell a story with old pictures.

Partway into Episode 2, I found myself thinking: How much longer do I have to wait until I hear a hammer dulcimer or see someone making apple butter?

Clogging? Anyone? Please?

Though painfully budget-conscious, this is not a terrible documentary. It is not historically inaccurate, or ill-focused. Sissy Spacek ("Coal Miner's Daughter") provides fine narration. It earnestly tries to cover everything that has hit the region, from the continental collisions that created the Appalachian Mountains to the Indian genocide to mountaintop-removal coal mining. It's a rush of data, with all bytes equal. As a result, nothing stands out.

"Appalachia" is flat and uninspired, which not only is ironic, it's a shame.

Because it's a terrifically rich thing, Appalachia, full of treasures and horrors, eye-popping beauty and jaw-dropping destitution.

As a native West Virginian, I proudly consider myself an Appalachian American, despite sneers from my more-Appalachian-than-thou brethren, for whom I am simply not Appalachian enough. My line on my beloved home state: West Virginia has all the problems of the South with none of the Gothic charm.

We Appalachians are tired of being discovered, improved, discovered again by JFK, and uplifted by so many good-hearted outsiders, come to bring edjoomacation to the rustics. The worst portrayals of the region romanticize us as a collection of simple, superstitious folk held rapt by the Magical Caucasians among us -- the banjo-plucking inbred or the spooky little girl who speaks in tongues. The Faulknerian idiot-manchild conceit didn't really help our image, either.

"Appalachia" does add value to the study of the region by highlighting the Indians, who were treated as badly as you would expect. (Perhaps not coincidentally, the Cherokee Preservation Foundation is listed as an underwriter of the documentary.) First, Spanish explorer/mass-murderer de Soto helped eradicate as many as half of them with European diseases. Then, the remaining ones were fought by the white settlers. Then, they were pushed west of the Mississippi. Today, they have casinos.

Too often, the history of Appalachia is limited to white folk, largely because there were so few blacks in the region for so long. Unlike the flatlands of Virginia and the Low Country, the hills of Appalachia could not support plantations and, as a result, had fewer slaves.