The Depression South and "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"

Charles Taylor, film essayist and current film critic for salon.com, writes about the depiction of the Depression South of the 1930's in the Coen brothers' O Brother, Where Art Thou?. He admits having mixed feeling for the performance of the actors, as well as the film itself, but overall tries to understand the film as a depiction of the 1930's, and the characters you might find then in the south. As Taylor writes about th movie,

The Coens don't want just to call up the Depression South, they want to bask in it a little.

Perhaps he was right, Taylor makes sure in his essay to mention the influence of the abundant amounts of American art which seem to come from the same era, and this certainly reflect the kind of art he was writing about.