Hillbilly Elegy (2020)
Director: Ron Howard
Notable Cast: Amy Adams, Glenn Close, Garbriel Basso

A significant part of the success of Vance’s 2016 memoir was due to the fact that it appeared at a time when many Americans were trying to better understand the opioid epidemic affecting large portions of the country and the related disaffection of white working class Americans that had helped propel Donald Trump the White House. While the reactions to Vance’s memoir were mixed, it helped many of its readers put the struggles of the Americans caught up in these crises into more a more human perspective. Audience opinions of the movie adaptation, which was released four years later (just a few days after Trump’s 2020 defeat), were also mixed, but more negative.

Some who applauded Vance’s memoir for its eye-opening view of Appalachia felt that the film also helped to humanize the difficulties of the people it depicts. However, even some who admired the book complained that its movie adaptation erased key elements of empathy for and understanding of the people surrounding Vance as he grew up (family as well as members of the community at large) that they saw in the memoir—instead depicting Vance as some sort of exceptional being who had the misfortune to be born into a awful place inhabited by miserable people. Another group found little or nothing to admire in the book or the movie, including Kentucky-raised author Barbara Kingsolver, who said the following in a 2024 Observer interview: “…it’s very condescending. There’s this subtext all the way through it that suggests we’re all sinking because we’re lazy, unambitious, and uncreative, which I resent.”

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