Visible and Invisible Whiteness

American White Supremacy through the Cinematic Lens

Alice Mikal Craven

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9783319767772
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

Visible and Invisible Whiteness examines the complicity between Classical Hollywood narratives or genres and representations of white supremacy in the cinema. Close readings of D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation by James Agee and James Baldwin explore these authors' perspectives on the American mythologies which ground Griffith's film. The intersectionality of Bordwell's theories on Classical Hollywood Narrative versus Art Cinema and Richard Dyer's seminal work on whiteness forms the theoretical base for the book. Featured films are those which have been undervalued or banned due to their hybrid natures with respect to Hollywood and Art Cinema techniques, such as Samuel Fuller's White Dog and Jean Renoir's The Southerner. The book offers comparative analyses of American studio-based directors as well as European and European émigrés directors. It appeals to scholars of Film Theory, African American and Whiteness Studies. It provides insight for readers concerned about the re-emergence of white supremacist tensions in contemporary America.

© The Author(s) 2018

Alice Mikal CravenVisible and Invisible Whitenesshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76777-2_1

Begin Abstract

1. Visible and Invisible Whiteness: An Introduction

Alice Mikal Craven^{1, 2}

(1)

Department of Comparative Literature, American University of Paris, Paris, France

(2)

Department of Film Studies, American University of Paris, Paris, France

End Abstract

American white supremacy has profoundly shaped the evolution of the classical Hollywood narrative, ensuring its place at the heart of American cinema’s critical apparatus as well as in Hollywood studios.¹ Visible and Invisible Whiteness: American White Supremacy through the Cinematic Lens offers perspectives on this shaping and also considers the fascination with supremacist themes on the part of émigré filmmakers or European filmmakers who have at times turned their attention to narratives rooted in American culture. The book reframes the debates on D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1915), arguably the most controversial white supremacist film ever made, through its focus on reviews of that film by James Agee and James Baldwin. In this way, the book sets up the poles of visible and invisible whiteness as roughly approximated by Agee’s and Baldwin’s respective approaches to the criticism of racially inflected films.² Close examination of the two writers and their assessments of Griffith’s film suggest that despite their ultimate perspectives, their appreciations of the film show more commonalities than differences.

Two theoretical dichotomies are juxtaposed throughout: (1) the dichotomy between classical Hollywood narrative and art cinema and (2) the work of film critics and filmmakers who rely, either consciously or unconsciously, on notions of visible and invisible whiteness, following Richard Dyer’s work on whiteness studies.³ The goal is to explore how these two sets of critical categories are affected by each other in terms of the supremacist assumptions of much of Hollywood cinema and the institutionalization of narrative and generic techniques used by filmmakers, critics, and theorists in distinguishing Hollywood cinema from art cinema in both form and ideological content.

The critical parameters of this book are determined by the perspectives of these two notable authors, Agee and Baldwin, and there is therefore an exclusive focus on American white supremacy with respect to African Americanism and whiteness. Both Baldwin and Agee are ultimately concerned with the controversy of whiteness as well as the questions stemming from America’s treatment of its slave and post-slavery populations as depicted in Griffth’s film. Though the privileging of whiteness is a trope that has been explored by many authors in relation to Native American, Asian, Latino, and other ethnic populations, this volume remains focused on representations of African Americans, in keeping with the major concerns treated by Baldwin and Agee in their analyses of Griffith’s Birth of a Nation.⁴

Recent developments in the study of the “transnational turn” in literary and cinema studies can be seen as pertinent to the chapters that follow, though the term “transnational” is rarely evoked. Notable studies in the transnational turn, such as Paul L. Jay’s seminal work highlight the importance of the transnational concept, which increasingly affects contemporary analyses of literary works crossing national boundaries. Austin Fisher and Iain Robert Smith’s formation of a scholarly interest group devoted to “transnational cinemas” prepares the groundwork for advancing transnational cinema studies and for defining more precisely what is meant by the “transnational” in relation to film studies.⁵

The wide range of films analyzed in Visible and Invisible Whiteness does not allow for in-depth engagement with the transnational turn in cinema, as the book’s ultimate goals are more deeply rooted in looking at the intersectional relationship between theories on narrative and genres explored by David Bordwell’s and Richard Dyer’s seminal work on whiteness in cinema. Tim Bergfelder nonetheless suggests that “the term [transnational] works best when it has a concrete case study at hand.”⁶ In keeping with that premise, Visible and Invisible Whiteness is arranged according to case studies rather than chronologically. Films that many readers might expect to see in a chronological treatment of American white supremacy, such as The Jazz Singer (1927) or To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), are notably absent.

Case studies of individual films dealing with American white supremacy are highlighted in the chapters of this volume in order to follow some of the recent tenets of transnational cinema studies. Namely, as Robert Burgoyne suggests, privileging critical perspective over traditional methodologies inherited from the study of national cinemas is key. Studies within the fields of national cinemas are often dependent upon chronologies, and my focus on case studies is intended to capitalize on Burgoyne’s position.⁷ Given the necessary attention to the source materials used for each of the films under examination, transnational theory remains an essential prop in this respect for certain chapters.

A crucial premise for this book is the claim that cinema can function as a “transparent window” onto racial realities, as noted by Anna Everett . The racial reality upon which cinema gazes is nonetheless strange, often frightening, and, according to the dichotomous readings offered by Agee and Baldwin, subject to much interpretation. Cinema’s “received acceptance as transparency” on the part of many audience compounds spectator confusion when viewing racially inflected films. In other words, American white supremacy has shaped not only classical Hollywood narrative but also its spectators, critics, and other national cinema traditions as well. As Steve McQueen, British-born director of 12 Slaves (2012), pointed out in a recent review, “I could never make American movies—they like happy endings. I made Shame in America, but it’s not a Hollywood movie. I’m about challenging people. Like, properly challenging them and their assumptions. Audiences make their minds up about people they see on screen, just like they do in real life.”⁸ Audiences and their receptions are part and parcel of the dichotomies to be discussed here in addition to the more institutionalized language of film criticism and theory.

Filmmakers, spectators, and critics emerging from European traditions have long been fascinated by the evolution of classical Hollywood aesthetic traditions, which are indeed rich despite having been plagued by America’s long-standing and troublesome racial mythologies .⁹ This is true for filmmakers, such as Fritz Lang, Jean Renoir, and Douglas Sirk, as well as for filmmakers who are drawn to question supremacist myths and themes in America, such as R. W. Fassbinder and Rachid Bouchareb. Indeed, current trends in European cinemas concerned with visible whiteness, represented here in Chap. 9 on Bouchareb’s films , suggest that concepts such as the postracial imaginary, discussion of which is usually limited to the fields of American and African American studies, may be made relevant to European contexts.

As mentioned, the book is structured as a set of case studies on films that are directly or indirectly identified as hybrid productions with respect to David Bordwell’s critical categories. Though Bordwell’s article, “The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice,” is considered seminal and still relevant, the critical evolution of his categories and debates surrounding the lack of precision associated with the term “art cinema” are traced through the works of David Andrews, Steve Neale, Jeffrey Sconce, and others.¹⁰ It is crucial to note that while “classical Hollywood narrative” as a critical term remains fairly stable, “art cinema” as a critical term has always been somewhat nebulous due to the fact that it was historically defined in large part as a defense against the stability of the former category. A closer look at Thomas Elsaesser’s European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood reveals that the more recent trends in reexamination of Europe’s supposed “hostility to Hollywood” and the links of said hostility to the dichotomous relations around which this book is structured are crucial for understanding future directions in cinema studies.¹¹ The films chosen for analysis speak to particular tenets and pivot points of that debate.

The goal of analysis in each case study is to build an argument examining why and to what extent American white supremacy has been so instrumental in shaping Hollywood filmmaking from Birth onward and how this has in turn shaped criticism of films that touch on themes concerned with visible and invisible whiteness. By...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Visible and Invisible Whiteness: An Introduction
• 2. Looking at American White Supremacy “Through a Glass Darkly”: James Baldwin on Birth of a Nation
• 3. “A Monstrous Wrong”: James Agee and the Miraculous Birth of a Nation
• 4. “The Colored Angle”: Contending Visions of Imitation of Life
• 5. Having Forsaken Hollywood: Samuel Fuller’s “Art House” White Dog
• 6. Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s “Western,” Whity
• 7. Cream Rises to the Top: Jean Renoir’s The Southerner
• 8. Invisible Whiteness mise en abyme: J’irai cracher sur vos tombes
• 9. Rachid Bouchareb’s Two Men in Town and His American Trilogy: Cultural Transpositions
• 10. Conclusion: Cinema, Our Dark Mirror
• Back Matter