Screening “The Other”: The Movies, Race and Ethnicity Gary Handman Director Media Resources Center Moffitt Library

1889 Thomas Edison invents a moving image medium 1619 A Dutch ship brings 20 African indentured servants to the English colony of Jamestown, Virginia. 1850s 25,000 Chinese immigrate to the US million immigrants arrive from Europe Native Americans Waaay BC 1865 End of Civil War

“What Is Cinema?” --Jacques Bazin

A wildly popular, 120-year old diversion and entertainment (and information) A wildly popular, 120-year old diversion and entertainment (and information) An increasingly complex artistic endeavor involving various “authors” and “actualizers” (screenwriters, directors, actors, technicians)An increasingly complex artistic endeavor involving various “authors” and “actualizers” (screenwriters, directors, actors, technicians) A highly exportable commodity: a global good with impact on global culture.A highly exportable commodity: a global good with impact on global culture. A unique form of “grammar” (a new way of describing/viewing/representing the world and/or of telling stories)A unique form of “grammar” (a new way of describing/viewing/representing the world and/or of telling stories) A cultural product that comprises various genres and styles: fiction to non-fiction and forms in-betweenA cultural product that comprises various genres and styles: fiction to non-fiction and forms in-between

…It’s ONLY A Movie! A. Hitchcock

…but a movie is NEVER only a movie! They reflect the culture that makes them Movies are a cultural construct Culture reflects and is shaped by the movies it makes

When reading movies as history or social indicator Use caution! Movies are vastly complex artistic, economic, and cultural enterprises -- Defining “authorship” is always problematic Studio politics and economic stakes need to be assessed Audience and critical reception needs to be considered

Every Film Is a Documentary” “ Every Film Is a Documentary” --Bill Nichols

Documentaries of Wish Fulfillment Documentaries of Social Representation

Documentaries of Wish Fulfillment: “THE MOVIES” Deal with imagined realitiesDeal with imagined realities Requires that the viewer suspend disbelief – that we engage with imagined worlds.Requires that the viewer suspend disbelief – that we engage with imagined worlds. Ultimate Goal: to entertainUltimate Goal: to entertain Document the image in front of the cameraDocument the image in front of the camera Document the cultural beliefs and assumptions, fantasies, fetishes of the times: serve as a kind or cultural “text” (rather than a straight historical record)Document the cultural beliefs and assumptions, fantasies, fetishes of the times: serve as a kind or cultural “text” (rather than a straight historical record)

Documentaries of Social Representation: DOCUMENTARIES Imaginative representation of historical or personal reality Lay claims to representing the “Truth” (unlike films of wish fulfillment) A “Discourse of Sobriety” (along with politics, history, economics) Use of evidence drawn from the “real” world Make arguments and claims about the world outside of the theater Goal: to have the viewer believe in what is being represented; to act on those beliefs in concrete ways

…But the Earliest Motion Pictures were neither… Actualities = movies of the real world (La Vie sur la Vif: Life being Lived) Short sketches and routines (often replicating earlier theatrical forms. Trick films (the earliest special effects) Newsreels and Travel Films: (increasingly pitched to audience taste for the sensational, exotic & culturally alien) The “Cinema of Attractions”: focus on spectacle rather than storyThe “Cinema of Attractions”: focus on spectacle rather than story Popular for the same reason world’s fairs and other exhibitions were popular.Popular for the same reason world’s fairs and other exhibitions were popular.

…But the Earliest Motion Pictures were neither… Congorilla (1930) What Happened on Twenty-Third Street (1901) Pan-American Exhibition, Buffalo, New York 1901

Birth of the Movies 1880s – early 1900s: Corresponds with Enormous Societal Changes: Political expansionism and colonialismPolitical expansionism and colonialism Industrial and technological revolutionsIndustrial and technological revolutions Demographic shifts – movement from rural to urbanDemographic shifts – movement from rural to urban Enormous increase in immigrationEnormous increase in immigration * : 12 million immigrants Growth of urban Middle ClassGrowth of urban Middle Class Increase in leisure timeIncrease in leisure time The movies reflect these cultural and societal changes…

New immigrants as movie subjects & characters… Immigrants as audiences: The movies as a cultural port of entry (The “Poor Man’s Theatre”)

Cohen’s Advertising Scheme Edwin S. Porter (1904) …And targets … One of earliest filmic examples of anti-semitic stereotyping. Porter spools off a whole series of “Cohen” films between 1904 and 1905

The movies adopt and intensify ongoing fantasies, fears, stereotypes, and cultural tropes re race & ethnicity. The evolution cinematic tropes: Metaphor / Metonymn re Race The movies make these fantasies and tropes a part of the mass culture/cultural consciousness in unprecedented ways. The Movies - A Radical New Art Form Often Built on Existing Social and Cultural Notions and Older Artistic Traditions

Edwin S. Porter

Based on Harriett Beacher Stowe’s wildly popular serialized novel (1852) – written in response to 1850 Fugitive Slave Act (300K copies sold in first year) Porter’s 1903 version: One of earliest “full-length” films Tom = American film’s first named black character Filmed only 38 years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation Borrows many of its cinematic conventions from earlier theatrical productions (“Tom Shows” and Vaudeville) Uncle Tom’s Cabin Edwin S. Porter (1903)

Dozens of subsequent film versions Establishes many of stereotypes of African Americans that would persist over the next century: The “happy darky” (what Donald Bogle calls “The Coon”) The “tragic mulatto” as sex object The Mammy The pickanniny The Tom – mild, loyal, and subservient “Good Negro” See also: Donald Bogle’s Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies & Bucks (Moffitt & Main Libraries PN N4 B6 2001) Uncle Tom’s Cabin Edwin S. Porter (1903) Edwin S. Porter

Uncle Tom’s Cabin Edwin S. Porter (1903) Clip 1: Topsy Clip 2: Tom and Little Eva Clip 3: Auction of Augustine St. Clare’s Slaves

(Biograph, 1905)

Birth of a Nation D.W. Griffith (1915) Based on a play by the Rev. Thomas Dixon, Jr. The most popular and profitable early film -- first box office blockbuster: tops for 5 years Protested vigorously by the NAACP: first national political organizing by African Americans Riots in major cities Censored in some states (notably Ohio) – leads to Supreme Court ruling in 1916 holding that films can be legally censored (because of their vivid psychological effect on women, children and “lower classes”) Coincides with the revitalization of the KKK (Los Angeles premiere features actors on horseback and in hoods outside of the theater) DavidWarkGriffith

Birth of a Nation D.W. Griffith (1915) "It is like writing history with lightning, and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true." -- President Woodrow Wilson upon seeing the film "The real purpose of my film was to revolutionize Northern audiences that would transform every man into a Southern partisan for life." --Thomas Dixon, Jr.

Broken Blossoms (or, The Yellow Man and the Girl) D.W. Griffith (1915) Richard Barthelmess Lillian Gish

…Or: What’s a Nice Jewish Boy Like You Doing in a Face Like That!

Into the 30s… Studios are the in business of making profitable films, not questioning prevailing mainstream social and political views and assumptions. Some images fade, while others persist and solidify Some studios (e.g. Warners) toy with “social problems) – but race issues rarely…

Animated Shorts: : Are We Amused Yet? Chinese Laundry Blues (1930?) Scrub Me Mama (1943)

The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932)

Stepin Fetchit [Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry] ( )

Gone with the Wind (1939) Based on 1936 Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Margaret Mitchell Highest grossing film in history of Hollywood until that time First drafts include Klan as a virtuous organization “In our picture I think we have to be awfully careful that the Negroes come out decidedly on the right side of the ledger, which I do not think should be difficult)” -- Producer David O. Selznick (as quoted in Memo from David O. Selznick. Rudy Behlmer, ed. New York: Viking Press, p. 147) Scene 1: Mammy (Hattie McDaniel) Scene 2: Prissy (Butterfly McQueen)

Separate Cinemas: Movies Beyond the Cultural Mainstream Oscar Micheaux Independent Black Cinema (“Race Movies”) (1920s-50s) Yiddish Films (1930s-40s) Edgar G. Ulmer

World War II: The Expedients of Democracy Or Redefining & Refiguring “The Other” Know Your Enemy: Japan Frank Capra [for the US Army) (1945) The Negro Soldier Frank Capra [for the US Army) (1944)

Post-War America: The Image Begins to Shift: “Social Problem Films” Pinky Dir. Elia Kazan, 1949 Dir. Stanley Kramer, 1958 Dir. Mark Robson, 1949 Dir. Alfred L. Werker, 1949

Post-War America: The Image Begins to Shift: “Social Problem Films” Dir. Stanley Kramer, 1958

But … Old stereotypes die hard… Breakfast at Tiffany’s Dir. Blake Edwards, 1961

Cold War Paranoia: Aliens from Outer Space & Elsewhere

“…He’s a Mean Mutha…”: 1970s Blaxploitation

The 70s and 80s: Raging Against the Machine: The Politics of Generation, Identity, and Race

The Cheat Cecil B. DeMille (1915) Sessue Hayakawa

"Film is more than the twentieth-century art. It's another part of the Twentieth-Century mind. It's the world seen from inside. We've come to a certain point in the history of film. If a thing can be filmed, the film is implied in the thing itself. This is where we are. The Twentieth century is on film....You have to ask yourself if there's anything about us more important than the fact that we're constantly on film constantly watching ourselves." --Don Delillo (The Names)