Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Unsurprising nerd alert: I love F. Scott Fitzgerald. I love the way his literature captures the greed-driven darkness of man and the divide between new and old money. I love how The Great Gatsby and This Side of Paradise explore otherness and realms largely unseen by people who are not in the know. I even perversely love how his disastrous relationship with Zelda Fitzgerald influenced his literature, like in The Beautiful and the Damned. I really don’t love how F. Scott plagiarized Zelda’s ideas, but that’s another article entirely.
This is all to say that I desperately want to love Amazon’s Z: The Beginning of Everything, but I can’t. The series’ portrayal of Southern accents is so grating, it ruins the entire show for me.
Z documents Zelda Fitzgerald’s life and eventual marriage to her husband, exploring this larger than life figure that has come to define American literature. It’s an incredible concept that I very much want to enjoy, but I can’t because I am petty when it comes to portrayals of Southernness. The new series is far from the first property to butcher Southern accents. For whatever reason, Hollywood seems to have two settings when it goes to the South: sickeningly sweet (think The Help, which is problematic for many reasons other than its accents) or trailer park adjacent (any comedy set in the South). Sometimes that combination works. Would the villains in Deliverance be as horrifying if they spoke in a typical Southern drawl, or would the tone of American Horror Story: Coven feel as cheeky if its accents weren’t so over the top? No is the answer to both. However, those accents were intentionally gimmicky. That’s not at all the case with Z, which is packed with old-timey Southern slang and phrases that might pass for Southern colloquialisms in a writer’s room but never in real life. Sadly, a lot of this criticism will be pegged on Z‘s protagonist Christina Ricci, who is otherwise charming and fun to watch. I’m sorry Ricci. I do not think this accent work was your fault.
Look, I get it. Playing with a Southern accent is fun. As I know from personal experience, there are few people on this planet who can cut deeper than an angry Southern woman hiding behind a smile. That combination, danger cloaked with happiness, should be almost irresistibly delicious to any artist. However, making those accents cartoonishly candy-like instead of just sweet is insulting to the tact and intentionality behind Southern insults. This is an American subculture that has convinced the country that its most biting F-you — “Bless your heart” — is actually an endearing compliment. Southern communication dwells in subtly, context, and double meanings. It is an art form in and of itself, and it does not mess around.
The art surrounding Southern communication is a main reason why I have a hard time excusing Z when I have tolerated so many bad accents in my past (there are a lot of terrible accents out there). Fitzgerald was an author who stood the test of time because he was able capture the unseen rules of invisible realms. His work dealt with subtly, explaining every character’s background, motivation, and social status without directly stating it. Both F. Scott and Zelda spent their lives in the liminal states their work explores, equally close enough to remember poverty but too far away from true wealth to ever be fully embraced by their upper class friends. There is a sense of knowing the unknowable in both of their work. Other shows and movies have captured that odd conceit when it comes to Southern culture, including My Cousin Vinny, Atlanta, and Nashville. Z: The Beginning of Everything is not one of them, bless its heart.
