PrettyFakes

Reading Don McPherson’s review of Mike Mignola and Richard Corben’s recently completed Hellboy – The Crooked Man mini-series reminded me of something that irked me in the second issue but that I withheld comment on until the series was completed, just in case later developments undercut my ire.

Alas, they did not. Crooked Man takes place in Appalachia in 1958; as Don notes, Mignola does a good job of exploring some of the myths and superstitions attached to the region without turning all of the characters into inbred hillbilly stereotypes. So kudos for that. The problem comes when one of the characters tells Hellboy about the terrifying Melungeon witches—who are allegedly trapped in a nearby coal mine. Hellboy asks, “The who?” And gets this in response:

Scary stuff! But see, here’s the thing. The Melungeons are an actual ethnic group. You can read about them at the Melungeon heritage association website, or read Lisa Alther’s memoir about her possible Melungeon roots.

As this article documents, the history and nature of Melungeons is complex and much debated, and there’s more argument about geographical roots and proper anthropological labeling than I have time, space, or knowledge to get into here. It’s true the term “Melungeon” was at one point synonymous with “boogeyman” in parts of Appalachia—which seems to be how Mignola is using it here. But as documented at those links above—and by dozens of other links a quick Google search away—Melungeons are no longer considered monstrous outsiders but are, rather, a recognized ethnic group in Appalachia, part of an ethnic subset referred to by some anthropologists as “tri-racial isolates.” During my time in east Tennessee, I knew several self-identified Melungeons. (Though “Melungeon” was once an offensive term, it’s been re-appropriated with pride.)

My goal here isn’t to score pc points on Mignola, and there may be a level of meta-commentary in the treatment of the Melungeons that I’m missing. (Mignola might give himself a little cover when he has a character first refer to the trapped monsters as “Melungeon witches,” as though maybe referring to a particularly witchy subset of Melungeons—but that distinction, and I’m not sure it’s meant to be one, is not recognized throughout the rest of the series.) A fuller analysis of the depiction of Melungeons in Crooked Man would probably talk about anxieties about racial mixing and about the nature of labor: It’s interesting that the racially mixed, cannibalistic Melungeons—who allegedly go down and devour miners trapped in a cave-in—become in local lore the villains of the “big cave-in of ‘02,” a convenient diversion from the more likely real villainy of the mining company—and note that the Melungeons also seem to be trapped in the mine, as much victims as the miners themselves . . .

. . . which is only convincing until they start using their powers to attack one of Hellboy’s allies from below, which would complicate this attempt to suggest there may be a subtle, Melungeon-sympathetic counter-narrative implicit in the text. Ultimately, it looks instead as though Mignola has made a rare misstep and perpetuated a negative and pernicious stereotype—not uncommon for even the most sophisticated writers when it comes to writing about poor white or “white trash” people in the South and especially in Appalachia.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 14th, 2008 at 9:29 am and is filed under Comixx, In the South, Professor Fury. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.