Ricky Bobby’s William Faulkner, Or, Talladega Nights as Cultural Critique

Nutt Auditorium

At the close of the 2006 film, Talladega Nights, William Faulkner makes a surprising appearance. More specifically, as the credits roll, we enter a bedroom, where Faulkner's short story, "The Bear," is read and discussed with great seriousness by two children - the progeny of Ricky Bobby - under the watchful eye of their grandmother. The film is a lowbrow, farcical portrait of Southern folkways. The intimate conversation - a debate over competing literary interpretations, really - is, at first glance, a part of the farce, so random and so obscure that it begs for laughter. But there is more than a joke here, and more, too, than mere randomness. The coda signals the dead seriousness of a film that has, on the surface, no real reason to be viewed seriously. Guided by feminine virtue, and supplementing their love of KFC and NASCAR with a sober study of Faulkner, the once troubled children are redeemed. And so, too, it seems, is the South. What does it mean, I ask, to discover a restorative representation of Faulkner in such an unexpected place? Is Talladega Nights a Faulknerian text? And is Faulkner now a part of the national popular?