Imagine Entertainment has teamed with dairy and food giant Land O’Lakes in an effort to modernize the portrayals of rural America in movies and TV shows.
The deal calls for Imagine to work with Hollywood’s creative community and other producers to encourage them to develop more nuanced depictions of how people live and work in small-town America.
The partnership reflects the growing ties between consumer brands and top film and TV producers. It also comes as the nation is increasingly polarized along political and ideological lines that many see as defined by a big divide between urban and rural America.
“Authentic representation matters. Rural communities are not monolithic — they’re dynamic, innovative, and essential to our shared future,” said Heather Malenshek, senior VP and chief marketing officer at Land O’Lakes, which operates as a collective of agricultural and food-related businesses spread across all 50 U.S. states, with corporate headquarters in Arden Hills, Minn. “At Land O’Lakes, we’re committed to challenging outdated stereotypes and elevating stories that reflect the true nature of rural America. This initiative is about more than imagery; it’s about fostering understanding and connection across cultural divides.”
Land O’Lakes has established the Modern Rural Collective initiative to address what it sees as stereotypical and outdated examples of rural life that are featured in film and TV. The MRC initiative has created a toolkit for producers that offers facts and figures and anecdotes about contemporary rural life. The MRC emphasizes that rural America is rarely seen in major movies and TV shows, and when it is, the depictions are often two-dimensional and outdated.
The toolkit avoids direct discussion of the cultural conflicts that have erupted in the MAGA era between red states that vote heavily Republican and blue states that favor Democrats. But it does emphasize that the MRC’s goal is to foster greater understanding between Americans who live in very different parts of the country. “When narratives are rooted in authentic rural experiences, they expand representation, break down stereotypes and offer audiences an entertaining — and richer — understanding of the country as a whole,” the toolkit states.
The 25-page reference guide presents statistics that challenge the perception among urbanites that small towns are dominated by white conservatives and people with minimal education. The MRC pitch asserts that nearly 25% of rural residents are people of color. It also details the high degree of technology and skill that is required to operate modern farming and agri-businesses.
Imagine partner Ron Howard brings a unique perspective to the effort given his personal background and his experience as a child actor who gained fame starring opposite comedian Andy Griffith in the wholesome 1960s CBS sitcom “The Andy Griffith Show.” It was set in the fictional North Carolina hamlet of Mayberry, which was a stand-in for Griffith’s real-life hometown of Mount Airy, N.C. More recently, Howard directed 2020’s “Hillbilly Elegy,” which was based on the 2016 memoir by JD Vance, who is now Vice President and a leader of the MAGA movement under President Donald Trump.
“I had an early impression of how welcoming, interesting, and layered rural life was, even in the 60s, when I was a kid visiting the small towns and farms where my parents grew up in Oklahoma and Kansas,” Howard said in a statement. “There has long been a tendency to oversimplify rural America, and I look forward to storytellers using the context and practical guidance in this new resource to portray these communities with the depth, energy and authenticity they deserve.”
The MRC toolkit cites the NBC/DirecTV drama series “Friday Night Lights” and HBO’s “Somebody Somewhere” as rare examples of shows that do a good job of showcasing the complexity of small-town life.
Imagine executive Amanda Farrand, Malenshek, Bridge Entertainment Labs’ Steven Olikara and UTA’s Nick Barnes will discuss the MRC initiative at the “Reimagining Rural America Through Storytelling” session set for Jan. 23 at the Sundance Film Festival.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source variety.com ’
