i wasn't sure if he was supposed to be a well developed character, but he's always bothered me. he comes off so cold and rude. anyone else?
shareActually I think Spud was quite a good guy. He was just going through what a lot of 40-something men do: a midlife crisis where you tend to be unmotivated and down in the dumps half the time. And besides, he made up for neglecting his wife at the end when he joined her at the funeral and opened a new beauty shop location for her.
shareI think he was depressed, actually. And by the end he was starting to come through it. I've been there and the way he acts in the first half of the movie reminds me of how I feel in those times.
shareI came to this board to see if anyone else had an opinion about him lol truvvy mentions that he changed their carport into a salon so that she could support him. So I'm guessing that he lost his job and is ground down because he's not the breadwinner anymore.
shareOne of the themes of the film is about the divide between the new and old South. This film is set in a time when modernity was really starting to kick in, so the values of the South were changing, and this film shows quite poignantly how ill-equipped the men were to deal with those changes.
We see the divide between Jackson's family and Shelby's family, where the women are very much equal to the men, and both Shelby and M'Lynn work and have strong careers, where as the women in Jackson's family are kind of second class citizens who are expected to adhere to a very traditional role within the family.
One of the reasons M'Lynn doesn't really like Jackson or his family is because she has raised Shelby to be a strong, modern, independent woman who can support herself and won't need to rely on a man to survive - but Jackson represents the old South, and M'Lynn doesn't want Shelby to give in to that.
In the South men are men and women are supposed to be glad. So the man is the breadwinner and the woman keeps the home fires burning. Spud is an example of how modernity was undermining that relationship, and how emasculated it made him feel.
The working class men like Spud were becoming increasingly irrelevant in the modern age, and his wife had to support him and the family. For a guy like Spud that would be devastating.
However, when Shelby dies he realises how lucky he truly is to have Truvy, and how hard she works for him and their family and how neglectful he's been, but being a good ol' Southern boy, he finds it hard to express his emotions and to tell his wife how he truly feels about her. So he goes to the funeral with her and builds her a new salon - in a sense Shelby's death shakes him out of his depression and gives him a purpose in life - to help his wife to expand her business.