Nebraskans in the diner: No. Nah. Nope. Nuh-uh.
Stewie: Read any good books?
Nebraskans in the diner: No. Nah. Nope. Nuh-uh.
Stewie: Anything new with corn?
Nebraskans in the diner: Corn?! Are you kidding me?! Why...corn...corn...and...corn... Corn is always interesting!
Think about the US state of Nebraska. What's the first thing that comes to mind? Farms? Cornfields? Tractors? Buffets? Cornfields? Well, you're not alone here.
A lot of people think this way about Nebraska if they're completely unfamiliar with the state. Hollywood seems to think of Nebraskans living on farms without electricity or running water and driving tractors to work. Everybody here eats at buffets and listens to country music. Their idea of entertainment is Cow Tipping. Advertising offers seen in the rest of the country are void here. You will never see any kind of urban flavor such as Nebraska's largest city Omaha, a major metropolis of almost a million people, or state capital Lincoln. Overall, it seems as if the entire state is still stuck in The Wild West.
But then there's one stereotype that stands out from these other ones: corn. It seems as if Nebraska has cornfields everywhere you look. This is pretty Truth in Television, along with the other stereotypes mentioned above, but Hollywood tends to exaggerate this in media because they've never been to the Midwest.
Sub-Trope of National Stereotypes and Sister Trope to Down on the Farm. Compare Flyover Country and for a similar stereotype regarding the Midwest in general being flat. The cornfields can be considered an Eiffel Tower Effect to symbolize Nebraska. May overlap with Lost in the Maize if the cornfields are Played for Horror.
Examples
Film
- Cats Don't Dance: Darla Dimple has invited Danny Cat to her mansion, ostensibly to give him advice in the form of a song. "I've seen 'em come, I've seen 'em go / There's one thing that I know: / You'd better give the people what they want / Or you'll wind up back in Kokomo, Nebraska." Danny interrupts to correct her: "Uh, Indiana, Miss Dimple." Darla replies, "Whatever," because Nebraska is a Hollywood euphemism for a dumping ground of those who will never be famous, not even for 15 seconds, let alone minutes.
Literature
- While most of Stephen King's stories take place in Maine, in Night Shift, the characters are driving through rural Nebraska when they come across a small town, Gatlin, where the characters worship and sacrifice to corn, and are tormented by a gigantic beast, He Who Walks Between The Rows. As a result, this is also replicated in Children of the Corn (the adaptation and its many sequels).
- Mother Abagail in King's The Stand also lives in Nebraska, in the middle of a large cornfield which is all that remains of a much larger farm her family had owned for the past century. As such, she's associated with the corn as a symbol of fertility and nourishment, but it likewise serves as a source of horror, as characters (including Abagail herself) dream of the Dark Man watching them from somewhere among the cornstalks.
- Theres Some One Inside Your House:
- Makani moved from Hawaii to Nebraska and repeatedly notes in the book that there is nothing in Nebraska but a lot of corn.
- In the film adaptation, Zach's father owns the cornfields of their small Nebraskan town, and the corn is set on fire at the end in Makani's confrontation with the killer.
Live-Action TV
- Averted in The Big Bang Theory. Penny comes from Nebraska, but her family farm is to do with livestock, not corn. Played straight with her interest in the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers team and the fact that she was a member of the Corn Queen's court in high school.
Western Animation
- In the American Dad! episode "Surro-Gate", Stan kidnaps the neighbors Greg and Terry's baby and plots to take her to Nebraska where gay couples have no legal rights. When Stan crashes his car in the cornfields near the state's border (but not quite in Nebraska), he is rescued by a lesbian couple who live in a farmhouse with their two children. Said children have thick Nebraskan accents as well.
- Animaniacs: A short starring Runt and Rita has the two wind up in Nebraska, much to Rita's dismay but Runt's delight. The following song has Rita express all of the things she desires that aren't in Nebraska, while Runt continues going on and on about the corn.
Rita: [singing] Just to be fair, I wanna ask ya: What's so great about Nebraska?Runt: It's... da... [stops singing] Corn! Definitely da corn!
- In the Family Guy episode "Breaking Out is Hard to Do", Stewie recalls his trip to Nebraska where the guys he was talking with at a diner had not seen anything interesting lately, but they had a lot to talk about regarding corn.
- I Am Weasel: The short "I.R. Mommy" opens with I.R. Baboon prancing through a cornfield while singing a little ditty about Nebraska.
Baboon: There's no place like Nebraska
Except for Oklahoma! - In the South Park episode "Merry Christmas, Charlie Manson!", Cartman and his mother take the former's friends on a road trip to Nebraska to go visit Cartman's grandma for the holidays. Cartman's relatives are also there, all of whom share his mannerisms. All of Nebraska is notably surrounded by cornfields, so much so that the Colorado-Nebraska border is depicted as an abrupt change from snowy mountains to non-snowy growing cornfields with no transition whatsoever.
Real Life
- Truth in Television, though not exclusively limited to Nebraska. Iowa and Kansas, most of Illinois and Indiana, and western Ohio and southern Minnesota (collectively referred to as the Corn Belt) are other mass producers of cornography.
- Fans of the University of Lincoln's Cornhuskers (Huskers for short) often wear foam hats shaped like ears of corn, similar to the foam cheese hats worn by Green Bay Packers' fans.
- Heavily averted by Omaha.
