In Referring to Indiana
I begin this post with a cautionary note; my knowledge of pop-culture is not exhaustive, and so I don’t claim to cover every possible instance where my home state is mentioned. (I haven’t seen Stranger Things, for example, although I understand it’s set in Indiana). There are whole cultural swathes I’m unfamiliar with, such as The X-Files, The Matrix and following movies, Supernatural, Doctor Who after the first series of Matt Smith, Battlestar Galactica, Friends, and so on. That said, something I noticed when I recently watched the opening of season 6 of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. caught my attention, and I thought I’d write about it.
With a few exceptions, I have observed that when Indiana comes up in pop-culture, it tends to appear in one or two ways: 1) unexplored backstory or 2) setting of horrific disaster. Allow me to explain.
Unexplored Backstory
Did you know that Captain Kathryn Janeway of the Starship Voyager was born in Bloomington, Indiana? It’s a blink-and-you-miss-it reference in a season seven episode of Voyager. There’s another episode with a flashback to an ancestor of hers that lived in another town in Indiana, but that’s about it.
Similarly, in M*A*S*H, Major Frank Burns (you know him, you love him) is mentioned as hailing from Fort Wayne, Indiana. We don’t hear nearly as many reflections from him about his hometown as we do from Hawkeye about Crabapple Cove, Maine (or Vermont, depending), and for all purposes he could’ve come from Illinois or Ohio. Like Janeway, Indiana could’ve been swapped out for any basic Midwestern state and it wouldn’t have mattered.
Setting of Horrific Disaster
I first noticed this in the opening book of Harry Turtledove’s Timeline-191 series, How Few Remain, when the Union Army uses Jeffersonville, Indiana (my hometown, incidentally) as a base to attack Louisville, Kentucky, which has gone over to the other side. Here a point-of-view character notes that the weather in Jeffersonville is unbearably hot and humid, which, okay, fair enough. As How Few Remain is set around the late 1800s, the equivalent of trench warfare develops and the Union forces never do get much into Louisville as I recall. The series goes on from there for multiple books, and doesn’t get much happier.
But in case you’re thinking a war isn’t that bad, well, Turtledove doesn’t stop there. In another alt-history series, this one involving alien lizards invading during World War II (what?), a certain plot point involves President Earl Warren (!) electing to allow the alien lizards to nuke Indianapolis (!) so that the U.S. can continue developing their space program. I don’t recall or can’t find if there was a particular reason why they picked Indianapolis. Shame, too; Indy’s a great city, with a wonderful children’s museum, a canal, a convention center, the works. Destruction by alien lizards: what a way to go.
Moving on from Turtledove, there’s the aforementioned Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode, in which some sort of anomaly destroys a natural history museum in Muncie. And of course there’s Stranger Things, which I haven’t seen but in which I’m given to understand the main characters face all manner of eldritch and otherworldly abominations. (There’s also a Kate Bush song).
Exceptions
There are, of course, some Indiana references that don’t fit the two above categories. The two most famous I can think of are Parks and Recreation and Indiana Jones in the eponymous movies. While Pawnee is fictional, it is set in Indiana, and although it’s been a minute since I went through Parks and Rec, as I recall there’s numerous references to various Hoosier things throughout the show (yes, we’re called Hoosiers. I don’t know why.) And, of course, there’s Indiana Jones, who according to Last Crusade was named after the family dog (Indiana). Let’s face it, no offense to the other 49 states in our great union, but would a movie called New Hampshire Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark have quite the same ring to it?
Somehow, I don’t think so.
Closing Time
Seriously, no one knows why we’re called Hoosiers. There’s all sorts of theories. It’s an abbreviation of “Who’s here?” It’s what some guy yelled on walking into a fight scene and seeing an ear on the ground (whose ear?). It’s another guy way back when called Hoosier, and he employed some people in the area known as Hoosier’s men, thus, Hoosier’s. It’s a really old Anglo-Saxon dialectal word hoozer meaning hill-dweller. The true origins are probably lost in the mists of time. In any event, sure, you have your Utahns, your Alaskans, your Mainers, and your Floridians, but for whatever reason known only to God, we and we alone aren’t Indianans; we’re Hoosiers.
The funniest thing about all this is that I haven’t even seen the Hoosiers movie with Gene Hackman. Maybe he explains it in there. I’ll watch it sometime and report back.
Until next time,
Michael