Sandbox / Down on the Farm

Definitions

• Down on the Farm: Life on the farm
• Arcadia: An idealized pre-industrial rural setting
• Flyover Country: A midwestern or Great Plains setting

Description

Arcadia

Non-farm Examples

• Non Non Biyori is set entirely in a rural rice-growing community that is six hours by bullet train from Tokyo, has a school with a total of only five students, where no one locks up their houses, public buses come by once every couple of hours, and a view of the mountains to die for!
• In the DC Universe, pretty much any presentation of Superman (be it comics, movies, live-action TV, or in the DC Animated Universe) is bound to depict Clark Kent's (only rarely doomed) hometown of Smallville this way.
  • Late in the run of the 1980s Superboy series saw Smallville deal with the possibility of getting a shopping mall (Superboy's time-era by this point having just entered the 1970s), which prompted concerns it'd ruin the town's economy (with the locally-owned businesses, including the Kents' general store, unable to compete with the mall's chain stores). The mall also had shady connections involved in its approval. While the storyline was unfinished (the title being canceled), it did see Pa Kent decide to run for a city council seat.
• In Animaniacs, Rita and Runt hop a train for Chicago, and end up in Nebraska. Rita was hoping for the big city, but 'They ain't got/ What we got/ Corn.'
• Family Guy
  • If it's not in the Northeast or on the West Coast (or sometimes even if it is), the show will pretty much lambaste it without mercy. One example (a Cutaway Gag, typically for the show):
    Stewie: (sitting in a diner next to three men) Soooo...anyone seen any good movies lately?
    Nebraskans: No. Nah. Nope. Nuh-uh.
    Stewie: Read any good books?
    Nebraskans: No. Nah. Nope. Nuh-uh.
    Stewie: Anything new with corn?
    Nebraskans (excited): Corn?! Are you kidding me?! Oh yeah! Corn, corn, corn! Corn is great. Corn is always interesting!
  • Another example is when Peter claimed the Sticks Downey character from Happy Days was "the only Negro in the state of Wisconsin." This, despite Milwaukee (where Happy Days took place) being over 40 percent African-American. Then again, this is probably more a shot at the lack of diversity on Happy Days than a shot at Wisconsin itself because Happy Days wasn't actually filmed in Milwaukee.
• In the Lifetime movie 12 Men of Christmas, a New York City Mouse is transferred to Montana. Before she leaves, she only knows two things about it. 1) The only person who lives there is the guy who hangs up the sign. 2) It doesn't actually exist. "It's just a hole... Says "Montana"... That's it." reads more like The City Versus The Country -naturalironist
• Subverted all to heck (but charmingly!) in Lois & Clark. The hand-crocheted cover for the fax machine in the Kents' parlor says it all. "I was just thinking if you're expecting something then I'd better check the paper!" Of course, that was the nice Smallville, before the rural Gothic makeover.

Flyover Country

• The Final Plague has the Michaels family farm, which is located near Leigh, Iowa.
• Knights of the Dinner Table is set in Muncie, Indiana but largely averts this trope as it is portrayed as a typical mid-sized city: albeit one with more than its fair share of quirky inhabitants. However, every so often there are references to bizarre goings-on in the rural areas outside the city. These were more common when Bob was working for Harness & Hoe insurance. It is worth noting that strip creator Jolly Blackburn attended Ball State University in Muncie.
• Hoosiers shows a good portrayal of life in the Midwest, Hoosiers being people from Indiana, where the movie is set.
• The I Am Weasel episode "I.R. Mommy" opens on I.R. Baboon prancing through a cornfield while singing "There's no place like Nebraska/Except for Oklahoma!"
• James Jones was born and raised in Robinson, Illinois (population 6,000) and wrote famously about World War II (see From Here To Eternity and The Thin Red Line), but he also wrote Some Came Running, in which his hometown is not portrayed very positively.
• In The Princess Diaries, Mia's maternal grandparents and cousin Hank from Indiana stay with her. They're from a farm, talk like hicks, and for Domini's Pizza in a city famous for diverse restaurants (though Hank is very handsome and ends up becoming a model). Interestingly, while the book stereotypes Hoosiers as if the author had never met any, the author herself is from a bustling Indiana city.
• Deployed clumsily in Season 4 of 24 when six terrorists casually hijack a nuclear missile convoy in "the mountainous terrain" of eastern Iowa. Dialog indicates that the 24verse's Midwest lacks any and all of the communication technology, surveillance measures, and rapid response capabilities that Los Angeles-based CTU takes for granted.
  • Especially ironic as Cedar Rapids, Iowa is home to the company that basically created military radio, invented GPS, and provides a large portion of comm gear for commercial airlines the world over.
• Appears to be somewhat averted in the Amy Poehler comedy Parks and Recreation which takes place in a fictional Indiana town, though the characters all seem to act as quirky as the guys on The Office, the creators of which had a hand in this show as well, so don't know if that's a good or bad portrayal.
• The ABC comedy The Middle seems to take this concept and avert and subvert in one fell swoop, showcasing a family living in a suburban Indiana city where everyone, including themselves, is a tad off the mark.
• Lampooned repeatedly by The Onion, a satiric newspaper founded in Madison, WI. Examples of its self-referential mockery of the Midwest: "Rural Nebraskan Can't Handle Frantic Pace of Omaha." "Rural Illinois' Sexiest Moms." [with a picture of an overweight Soccer mom].