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Southern hospitality first existed as a narrowly defined body of social practices among the antebellum planter classes, but it also exists as discourse, as a meaning-making story continually told and re-told about the South. This discourse has its own historicity divorced from historical origins and social practice. The 1964 exploitation film Two Thousand Maniacs is examined to illustrate how far this discourse has traveled from its origins and to reveal the inherent tension between the ethical ideals of hospitality and the discourse of southern hospitality. Gesturing toward an idealised image of the past, the discourse of southern hospitality has been one of the main tropes through which non-southerners have imagined their relationship with the region, and at the same time, it has been an important vehicle for self-definition among southerners. The film's ironic re-signification of southern hospitality suggests this discourse merely masks a legacy of thus-far unresolved regional conflicts and resentments.

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