In Hillbilly Elegy (2020), during the firm week at Yale Law School, when top law firms scout and recruit students for summer internships, the U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance finds himself completely out of his depth at a formal dinner. Overwhelmed by the number of utensils laid out before him, he leaves the dinner table and calls his classmate and future partner Usha Chilukuri, “Why are there so many fuckin’ forks? Usha, what am I supposed to do with all these forks?” he asks.
J.D. Vance, Vice President of the United States, accompanied by his partner Usha Chilukuri, is on a four-day visit to India. Here, Vance is largely perceived for his hardline stance on immigration, crackdowns, and visa revocations of Indian students, as well as his support for economic protectionism through tariffs.
Mr. Vance, who comes from a white working-class family riddled with instability, is the face of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement through which Donald Trump became president twice. The movement that calls for the resurrection of the country’s glorious past attributes the plight of the white American working class to immigration and multiculturalism. They state that the country’s adherence to diversity, equality, inclusion, and more has led to the disfranchisement of the white-working class population in the country and loss of opportunities.
During a conservative conference in Detroit ahead of elections last year, Mr. Vance had said, “We stand for an American nation built by American people, American workers. We have to see the problem and find the solution. Make more of the stuff that we need in our own country. That is the solution. Twenty million people who have no business being here are here because of Joe Biden. The solution is to deport each one of them”.
Flashback
Mr. Vance’s memoir-turned-film Hillbilly Elegy (2020) shows Vance growing up in a poor, working-class family in the Rust Belt town of Middletown, Ohio. It traces his family’s roots from Jackson, Kentucky, in the Appalachian region and explores the cultural and economic challenges faced by the white working-class Americans.
Through his memoir and movie, one sees Mr. Vance in the pursuit of the American dream, the one we see in the literary works of F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Steinbeck. The American dream is built on the belief that anyone, regardless of where they were born or what class they were born into, can attain success in a society in which upward mobility is possible for everyone.
Vance’s turbulent life is marked by poverty, instability, and addiction. His single mother, Bevereley Vance, is a drug addict who constantly gets into trouble, leaving the family with uncertainty and making their life miserable. Despite all these hardships, his grandmother, whom he calls Mamaw, remains a constant source of support for Vance, helping him overcome his hardships.
This great American dream that is uttered by a preacher in the beginning of the movie, “the singular hope of many” has remained “elusive” and “out of reach” especially for the Appalachian region.
During his current visit, while delivering a lecture on US-India ties in the Rajasthan International Centre, Mr. Vance spoke about his background. He comes from Middletown, a town known for manufacturing. “Some of us were called ‘hillbillies’, – Americans who came from the surrounding hills of West Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky, in pursuit of the manufacturing jobs that were creating widespread prosperity.”, he said.
This demographic that Mr. Vance belongs to suffered when the steel plants and other factories were shifted to countries like China rendering them helpless. Due to affirmative action in all spheres of the American society that provides quotas to Blacks and other minorities, many of these people are being left behind. The plight of these people has found its in J.D. Vance.
Class-based contempt
Hillbilly Elegy explores the experiences of class divide inherent in the American society. At the dinner during the firm week, Vance feels completely alienated. The kids that he sees at Yale are the rich liberal elites who are completely different from him in their stature and behaviour, and none of them have had to go through the difficulties that he had to go through in life.
Mr. Vance is looked down upon by the people seated with him at the dinner table, including Philip Roseman, a recruiter present to scout interns for his law firm. When Vance shared his Appalachian roots and mentions that his grandfather worked in steel mills, he is met with sneers and derogatory terms like “redneck,” all said without feeling apologetic when Vance gets angry. This class-based contempt that Vance faced created a disdain for the liberal elites, and this has played out in U.S. politics over the last few years with the emergence of Donald Trump in the country.
Firm week scene
In the scene described in the first paragraph, Mr. Vance is overwhelmed by the forks on the table during the firm week. It was Usha Chilukuri, the daughter of Telugu immigrants who settled in the U.S., helps Vance navigate the confusing dinner etiquette and explains the various cutlery. She also teaches him a simple trick: to form a “b” and “d” on the right and left hand by joining the ring and thumb for bread and drinks, respectively.
When she jokingly tells him to hold his hands to his face and he actually does it, J.D. laughs in embarrassment: “Oh my god, I’m such an idiot. Why are you even with me?” Usha smiles and replies, “Well, because you’re not a douchebag… and you don’t know how to use forks.”
Speech at the International Centre
At the Rajasthan Cultural Centre, Mr. Vance said they are working hard to realise the great American dream. He said that the U.S. economy was earlier centred around industry and production. But jobs soon evaporated and the working class was demoralised.
Mr. Vance, who talks about the American dream, doesn’t address the inequalities in the society but rather focuses on individuality. While his success story might be an exception, others of his background continue to reel.
Published – April 22, 2025 07:05 pm IST