1. Screening “The Other”: The Movies, Race and Ethnicity Gary Handman Director Media Resources Center Moffitt Library ghandman@library.berkeley.edu

2. 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 1870-1900 12 million immigrants arrive from Europe Native Americans Waaay BC 1865 End of Civil War

3. “What Is Cinema?” --Jacques Bazin

4. A wildly popular, 125-year old entertaining diversion and information source: maybe more culturally ubiquitous and influential than print???? 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 and economy.A highly exportable commodity: a global good with impact on global culture and economy. 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

5. …It’s ONLY A Movie! A. Hitchcock

6. …A movie is NEVER only a movie! They reflect the culture that makes them The movies are cultural constructs Culture reflects and is shaped by the movies it makes

7. When reading movies as history or social indicator or cultural “text” 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 Movies generally aim to entertain NOT to inform or edify

8. The Movies Begin Actualities = movies of the real world (Lumieres: La Vie sur la Vif: Life being Lived) Short sketches and routines (often replicating earlier theatrical forms. Trick films (the earliest special effects) – e.g. Melies 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.

9. Early Motion Pictures Actuality and Spectacle Congorilla (1930) What Happened on Twenty-Third Street (1901) Pan-AmericanExhibition, Buffalo, New York 1901

10. Birth of the Movies 1880s – early 1900s: Corresponds with Enormous Societal Changes: Political expansionism and colonialism:Political expansionism and colonialism: Spanish-American War takes America into the world arenaSpanish-American War takes America into the world arena 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 *1870-1900: 12 million immigrants Growth of urban Middle ClassGrowth of urban Middle Class Increase in leisure timeIncrease in leisure time The movies use and reflect these cultural and societal changes…

11. New immigrants as movie subjects & characters… Immigrants as audiences: The movies as a cultural port of entry (The “Poor Man’s Theatre”) Edison New York City Ghetto Fish Market (1903) Actualities as social and cultural “evidence”

12. 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

13. The movies adopt and intensify ongoing fantasies, fears, stereotypes, and cultural tropes re race & ethnicity. The movies make these fantasies and tropes a part of the mass culture/cultural consciousness in unprecedented ways. As in other forms of pop culture: The images and associations on the screen often mean more than meets the eye: issues of class, gender, nation enter into the picture. The Movies - A Radical New Art Form Often Built on Existing Social and Cultural Notions and Older Artistic Traditions

14. 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)

15. 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 1995.9 N4 B6 2001) Michael Rogin suggests film is drained of its anti- abolitionist sentiments—drama is between established “happy” life of Old South/plantation and outsiders who threaten that way of life. Uncle Tom’s Cabin Edwin S. Porter (1903) Edwin S. Porter

16. 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

17. 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

18. 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.

19. The Cheat The Cheat Cecil B. DeMille (1915) Sessue Hayakawa

20. The Cheat The Cheat Cecil B. DeMille (1915) How is he (Tori) portrayed? How is she (Edith) portrayed? What narrative and/or psychological function does Edith’s branding serve? What emotions (and toward whom) is DeMille trying to rise? How does Tori’s social status enter into the Mix?

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

22. 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…

23. Animated Shorts: 1919-1940: Are We Amused Yet? Chinese Laundry Blues (1930?) Scrub Me Mama (1943)

24. Fairly early in the 30s, anti-Semitic images all but disappear in Hollywood (except for Disney) …Why? Other ethnic and racial groups don’t fare as well… 1933 – later altered in the 40s

25. The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932)

26. Stepin Fetchit [Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry] (1902 - 1985) 1930s: 1930s: The rise of identifiable stock character actors: Bill Robinson, Hattie McDaniel and others…

27. Gone with the Wind 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, 1972. p. 147) Scene 1: Mammy (Hattie McDaniel) Scene 2: Prissy (Butterfly McQueen)

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

29. 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)

30. 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

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

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

33. Cold War Paranoia: Aliens from Outer Space & Elsewhere

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

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

38. Broken Blossoms (or, The Yellow Man and the Girl) D.W. Griffith (1919) Richard Barthelmess Lillian Gish

39. "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)

40. (Biograph, 1905)

41. Edwin S. Porter