The Dreaded Paper...

I am beginning to follow up on the outline of my final paper that I put together on Tuesday.  It is hard to put in to words exactly what my process has been for this Interim. I have watched several films, read the majority of a book on race relations in the South, and researched these films-- searching through page after page of google and Pascal articles looking for insights into the critical reception of theses movies within both racial communities. I have come to realize that my Interim has been much more about personal opinion and perspective on the quality of these films and their depiction of race relations than about the perspective of others. I have found a few gems, including interviews with several of the films' directors, and a number of good reviews from newspapers and magazines during the time of these films' release.  But as much as I can talk about the ins and outs of research, I think the coolest part of this Interim for me has been the gradual build up of comparison between all of these films. In a sense there is a pattern of plot, characterization, and even response to these films' audacious attempts to portray race relations in the American South-- let alone make a social commentary on the underachievement in civil rights progress at the time. I have enjoyed framing that together as the films have progressed.

Although I both applauded and criticized Black Like Me for its blunt depiction of John Howard Griffith's trip through the southern African-American's world in 1960, I find one of the film's major conflicts following me throughout my research. While I have enjoyed other films more and contemplated the commentaries and plot idiosyncrasies with greater interest, I find that Black Like Me represents a certain parallel to my work. Like John Howard Griffith, I feel like I am an outsider trying to understand a volatile and controversial world. The world I'm exploring is past, some 40 years and more, but at the same time it is very much alive in the world that I see. I have found myself overwhelmed with emotion about some of the injustice of the criticism raised over these films-- though not as much over the actual injustice of race relations (ironic, no?) Subjectivity and emotion has found its way into my attempts at objectivity in my writing, the same way that Griffith could not help but be enraged at what he saw from the perspective of a black man. Did he ever really get at what it felt like to be oppressed? Maybe. I am only viewing things from the other side of a TV screen in 2011, and I know that I am simply a tourist looking at Hollywood's attempt to piece together some of the wounds and scars and bandages of race relations, but it has affected me. There are so many layers to these films, from race to sexuality to justice to morality to politics. This paper is dreaded only in the sense that there is so much to say...

Thoughts on L.B.

I spent much of today outlining my end of term paper and presentation that will be due next week. I am excited about the presentation, as I think I have made an intriguing, if not entirely pertinent to my guiding question, revelation. When considering the protagonists, villains, and different characters of the films, a pattern emerged within several of them that I think will surprise people. Maybe. But I will leave the details for the actual presentation. I don't want to spoil it for my readers (Dr. Revels, Mom). 

I have felt a sense of satisfaction and yet found a challenge in contemplating the Liberation of L.B. Jones. I feel that I found a film that represents the confluence of many rivers-- that is, all the elements of race relations and the brutality of the era in which the film was made are depicted on screen. I was furthermore pleased when researching today; I found several articles, including a very insightful appraisal of the film's place in black cinema.

This film was made at a crossroads. Hollywood was transitioning out of a period of relatively mild civil rights films and into an era where Blaxploitation films such as Superfly and Shaft would define black cinema. L.B. Jones is classified as a Blaxploitation film, and as such, it is remarkable that Director William Wyler, considered during the mid-20th century to be, perhaps, one of the greatest American directors, would choose race as a topic for his last films. The response to this film was remarkable. More so than I realized yesterday, some critics hailed it as the most controversial and articulate film of its time; others wrote it off as an exploitative mess.  I found this very revelatory excerpt from British film magazine Sight and Sound. 

Sight and Sound Magazine:   "In some ways, the film’s most original aspect is its structure. Wyler sets up genre expectations of the liberal Hollywood movie that he then ruthlessly dismantles. Far from revealing a warm humanity under the gruff exterior, Lee J. Cobb’s lawyer becomes more deeply compromised and contemptible in his selective morality. Lee Majors’ young lawyer, seemingly a character likely to rectify wrongs, walks out of the situation with righteous but impotent anger. L.B. Jones refuses to run and his courage leads directly to his brutal murder. A black youth (Yaphet Kotto) who renounces violence midway through the film returns at the end to exact a vengeance more sadistic than the one originally planned.

In his last interview before his death, Wyler told his daughter Catherine that he had aimed the film at a white audience who he hoped would be embarrassed and enraged by what he depicted. Perhaps he succeeded too well. In the immortal phrase of Wyler’s former employer Sam Goldwyn, the public stayed away in droves. Its picture of a conflicted America might have struck too many raw nerves in a country still reeling over the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, a divisive war in Vietnam – and the departure from the White House of another LBJ.

The film seemed then to fall off the critical map, being displaced by black American filmmakers with their own visions of the black experience. To the best of my recollection, it has not been shown on terrestrial television here for over 20 years and has yet to be given a proper DVD release."

I think this gets at the heart of this film' significance as a movie lost in the shuffle. Edgy but non-commercial, it arrived at a time when it was too late for the Civil Rights Film to make an impact, and while it would have been one of the first Blaxploitation films, the film was not truly a Blaxploitation work: it sought to expose injustice and suggested uncompromising and even shocking responses without subtle undertones. Contrary to Sight and Sound's opinion, while I agree that Americans were occupied with Vietnam and transitioning out of such a volatile decade, I don't think the era hindered the film's success. I think it was the film's brutality and honesty. Many would still consider the content and violent retribution for equally violent prejudice as controversial. 

Lastly, I want to comment on the assessment of characters. This film is never wrapped in a bow. Courage is rewarded with brutal death. Those who make the right decision subsequently make bad decisions and, often, violent ones. The characters act as human beings: impulsively and with selfish motives. They don't act like players in a full circle drama; although, as the train pulls out of town in the final scene, I could not help but feel like resolution is achieved because of the jarring brutality and honesty. Courage is often not rewarded, though this film should be.

This and that...

             Before I get to my discussion of the Liberation of L.B. Jones, Dr. Revels posed a few questions that I think I should discuss regarding White Trash. It is a movie with more titles than viewers. The film is known as La Joven, The Young One, and White Trash. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1960, and it is filmed entirely in English without subtitles. The film is based on the story Travelin Man, by Peter Mathiesen. From what I can tell, this is an obscure art house film; however, everyone who has seen it, essentially, thinks it to be a fantastic film. It has a %100 rating on Rotten Tomatoes (with only 8 reviews). The South Carolina setting seems more convenient than anything. This film convinces the audience of the genuine hatred that the white men have for Traver, but there are no convincing accents and the setting seems less South Carolina and more California at some moments. Italian director Bunuel filmed and released the movie in Mexico, although it made its way to the United States. As best I can understand why this film did not make more of a public impact, I am convinced that the subject matter and the less than famous cast made it a non-commercial appeal. Sex and race were not mainstream in 1960. However, I think the film's economy of dialogue and the fact that Bunuel was a foreign director, one who made only two English language films, had as much to do with its obscurity as its controversial subject matter. Another Bunuel quote:

"One of the problems with The Young One was its anti-Manichean stance, which was an anomaly at the time, although today it's all the rage . . . Once upon a time, the movies reflected the prevailing morality very closely; there were the good guys and the bad guys, and there was no question of which was which. The Young One tried to turn the old stereotypes inside out; the black man in the movie was both good and bad, as was the white man."

How wonderful! A discussion, if not confirmation, of some of my insights. For Bunuel, this concept of plot diverging from the prevalent and accepted morality of an era (1960) makes this film a problem.  The complex issues of good and evil and the layers of character development with protagonist, antagonist, antihero, and villain simply may have made this movie ahead of its time. I am confident that there was no reaction to this film within the African-American community because few African-Americans saw this film in 1960. And fewer still may have seen it to date. Thank you Luis Bunuel for giving me something to work with.

And now for the Liberation of L.B. Jones. Like Black Like Me, I feel this is a film where the social commentary interferes with the plot. In order to relate a message, characters and storyline are clouded by intentions. I found this Variety Magazine review from 1970 to be humorous in its brevity:

"This story of a glossed-over Negro's murder by a Dixie policeman is, unfortunately, not much more than an interracial sexploitation film.

Story kicks off as Lee Majors and bride Barbara Hershey come to live with Majors' uncle Lee J. Cobb, while Yaphet Kotto comes home to murder bestial cop Arch Johnson. Roscoe Lee Browne is town's Negro funeral director, the title character who seeks a divorce (the liberation) from unfaithful wife Lola Falana. Her lover is Anthony Zerbe, Johnson's police buddy.

The well-structured plot [from the novel The Liberation of Lord Byron Jones by Jesse Hill Ford] finds lawyer Cobb trying to avoid an open-court revelation that a white married cop is a Negro woman's lover."

That is the entire review. After reading it again I should probably restate my initial assessment above. The plot is twisted and complicated and quite good, adapted well from Ford's novel, but the characters themselves never receive the up close and personal human exploration that we need. Lee Majors and Barbara Hershey might be the dullest characters of any film, using a few scenes and lines here and there to be the liberal conscience that Lee Majors character lacks. What you miss from this review is the interaction of all the characters. The most complex and revelatory characters from this film are Cobb, Kotto, and Browne. As the funeral director Browne is stuck between a rock and a hard place trying to divorce his unfaithful wife. As a black man, he has every right to divorce his wife; however, even Cobb does not take kindly to the notion of exposing a civil servant (the cheating police officer) as an interracial infidel. Browne ultimately takes a stand to the backwards police department and his wife's lover, a stand that he had always hoped someone might make in their small Tennessee town. And what happens? He is shot in the back and disembowled. The same police officer who partners with Browne's wife's lover is the crooked cop who beat a young 13-year-old boy (Kotto) many year ago. Kotto returns to town on the same train as Lee Majors and Barbara Hershey, and soon enough he has the crooked cop in his sights in an isolated hay field. But he cannot pull the trigger. It is a strong statement about the contrasting moralities of both races. Sterling Silliphant, one and the same from In the Heat of the Night, gives Kotto few lines of dialogue. The actor himself has a stoic and quiet anger that comes across from the opening scene, his own score of catchy R&B sounds his arrival in each scene. Ultimately Lee Majors failure to bring Browne's killers to justice forces Kotto to take action on his own, on behalf of the African-American community that will find no redemption in the law. Rather than shooting Browne's killer, the same officer who brutally beat him as a young boy, Kotto pushes him into the hay bailer and we watch his horrifiying death. Director William Wyler, "Funny Girl" and other mainstream films, presents perhaps the most graphic scene put in a film up to 1970.  

We leave The Liberation of L.B. Jones on a train. The same characters that arrived earlier in the week are on board again. We have two forms of justice. The quiet protest of Majors and Hershey to Cobb's active indifference to racial justice takes them away. The violent and vengeful response of Kotto brings him certain fugitive status.  Are they both right? Are they both wrong? 

The film itself was poorly reviewed and failed to make money. The KKK made anonymous complaints about the content. How do we know it was them? Ask the New York Times Review from 1970. African-Americans applauded the film's content. There are several clips on black film websites and reviews that praise the innovation and boldness of the picture. In the same sense, the review from the NY Times and TV Guide, as well as an article on William Wyler suggest that white audiences and critics were appauled by the film's blunt commentary. But more importantly, people were shocked that there was no white hero to tidy things up in the end. I very much look forward to comparing this to my other films. Until then...

White Trash/La Joven

I watched Luis Bunuel's White Trash this afternoon, and I thought it was a marvelous movie. It has an alternate title, "La Joven," which means "the young girl" in Italian.  The film is set on a beautiful coastal game preserve, and in the opening scene we are introduced to Traver, who we learn via flashback is a jazz clarinetist accused of raping a woman in the nearest mainland town.  Bruised from fleeing across the waters in a johnboat, Traver quickly learns that he is not alone on this island. Miller, the stoic and rugged game warden, is hunting rabbit in a nearby thicket. The camera then follows the brute back to his shanty lodge where we meet "la joven," a young nymphet named Evie. In a series of believable but coincidental events, we learn that Evie's grandfather and fellow warden, Pee Wee, has passed away the night before in the shanty next to Miller's. Pee Wee had been caring for his granddaughter. Before Miller can decide what to do with Evie, she emerges cleaned and groomed at dinner. The unkempt child is revealed as a beautiful young girl. Miller, isolated from humanity, is reluctantly smitten. He makes a thwarted advance on the girl, no more than 13 or 14.

When Miller goes in to town the next day, Traver emerges to steal food and supplies to repair his weary vessel. He and Evie form an immediate bond. She is intrigued by his skin color but disarmed by his gentle nature and generosity (he gives her $20 for a shotgun and gasoline). When Miller returns to find his shotgun and gasoline gone, a manhunt ensues. This is where the plot thickens. Miller believes he kills Traver, and the disgruntled fugitive, very much alive, returns to the lodge to take his revenge. But he does not... there is something about the hostility and hatred that Miller directs towards the unwelcomed guest that elicits pity in Traver. This begins a fascinating exchange in which Traver explains that Miller, a white trash alien, is no better than a black man. And after taking both of the warden's guns, Traver is the man in power. They eventually decide after a tortured existence of a daylong stand off that it serves everyone well for Traver to be on his way off the island. But a storm strikes in the night... in many ways. Miller is consumed by his desire and, as Traver sleeps in the next cabin, forces himself on Evie. Somehow in this storm a local minister and boat captain that Miller has sought out in town the day before manage to arrive on the island to collect Evie. When they arrive, the captain has news of a black rapist on the loose. Traver has anticipated this unwelcome revelation and flees before Miller realizes the accusation’s significance. Another manhunt ensues, while Miller warns Evie that she must not speak a word of her newfound womanhood.  But when pressed by the Reverend about her time on the island, she slips up and reveals Miller's sin. This is where the story adds a layer. Up until this point it is a story about relationships and power. Miller over Evie. Miller vs. Traver. Traver over Miller. But the Reverend's arrival adds an element of religion. It is no longer a race or power issue but a matter of good and evil. How do these men know the accusation of rape to be true? How can one man, a pedophile, pursue another man in the name of morality?

When Miller and the Boat Captain capture a wounded Traver, it takes Evie's bravery to save him from a certain lynching. Then, and this is perhaps the movie's greatest flaw and yet perhaps its most brilliant moment: In order to save himself from persecution at the hands of the law, Miller agrees to let Traver go to save himself from condemnation. The reverend chooses, what he feels, is the lesser of two evils. It isn't exactly a trade, but the way the exchange between the Reverend and Miller goes, this is what it boils down to. The reverend even leaves the possibility of marriage between the wayward warden and la joven. The boat captain, who has expressed his own hatred and contempt for blacks, will not let this fly. He chases down Traver as he makes for his boat and a brawl ensues. In the end, Traver wields a knife that could kill the Captain, but he lets him flee in shame. The final scene jumps from Evie and the Reverend escaping the island on the boat to Miller aiding Traver in pushing his boat off of the shore.  I know this is a lot to take in, but I am fascinated by the plot, the symbolism, and the implications for race relations. For the first time in any of our films, the rationalization of racism is confronted with a Christian criticism. A remarkable web of power exchanges between pedophile, black man, child, and spiritual leader mark a story layered in symbolism and sin.  In an interview about his very Southern film, Italian director Luis Bunuel remarked that he wanted to make a movie that showed the compromises of power-- Bunuel poses a question about the end of the film: does spiritual compromise and the implication of power as a human tool leave us thinking about race? He's right to ask. At the film's end I was not thinking about race, but about evil and goodness and sin and justice.  These are spiritual and philosophical issues, but most importantly, human issues. The audience becomes colorblind in the end without even realizing it-- we witness the motivations and emotions of each character as a human being-- not as a child or a black man or a minister. Very powerful. 

Race Relations in the Rural South

I did not get to watching White Trash today. I decided instead to spend a solid afternoon reading about the American South.  Black, White and Southern describes the chronology of race relations from the tail end of the Great Depression to the present. I doubt that I will get past the early 1970s.  In my reading today, I came across an excerpt about the transition African-Americans made from rural to urban areas in the American South. I thought this was particularly timely considering that White Trash is about a jazz singer from the North who winds up stranded on a coastal South Carolina island. His time on the island is extended based on circumstances, and I could not help but think (in anticipation as I have not seen the movie yet) about the reversal from reality to the screen. In the 1950s and 1960s, while the typical white Southerner was moving from rural and urban areas to the newly branded suburbia (sometimes in the North). African-Americans were moving from rural to primarily urban settings. As the Deep South reduced its agricultural output during the post-WWI economic upturn, increases in industry and service industries (and many menial labor jobs) brought African-Americans to urban areas.  This influx triggered the famous "White Flight" movement, in which white Southerners moved outside of cities to new suburbs. Essentially, the segregation that the Civil Rights Era fought to break down was occurring on a macroscopic and microscopic scale. Not surprisingly, the areas where both races coexisted with modest integration was in rural farming communities where tenant farmers and whites worked in adjacent fields. This was evident in To Kill a Mockingbird, where Tom Robinson and the villainous Ewell family live in close proximity. Black Like Me deals with a series of communities where blacks and whites coexist as co-workers and inhabitants of the same professional, urban, space; but by night, there is total segregation. As I read about the conscious efforts by both blacks and whites to maintain separate communities and living spaces during the 1940s, 1950s, and into the late 1960s, I could not help but pose a question for myself: Did the Civil Rights Era seek integration and equality? Or did it seek only equality? What I mean, and I am not trying to be confusing or controversial, is to ask whether separate but equal was what the Civil Rights Era really wanted? And I mean truly separate but equal. A world where blacks and whites have the same rights and neither race can oppress the other through legal or political means. Is this not, to an extent, the world of the American South today? As African and white Americans, and as Southerners, I continue to see a world of segregation. I am sorry to be so provocative and philosophical, and I hope these questions and opinions do not offend my readers. I promise I will watch White Trash tomorrow and get back to commentary.  Until then...

So far so goodish...

Dr. Revels asked that I give a kind of update blog on my experience and progress. I must admit that thus far my project has not gone exactly as I had hoped it would. I am a little disappointed in the lack of literature on these films. I have "dug deep" on the library's website, consulting databases and looking into archives for magazines and journals with the hopes that I might find some obscure articles, reviews, or criticisms of these films within the African-American community. But most of my success has come from turning page after page on Google. And the pages are endless.  For now I have focused on watching the films, reading what reviews I can, and making use of resources like a Sidney Poitier biography and a few essays written by prominent African-American film scholars and some other interesting, though likely less reliable, commentaries on these films.

As far as my enjoyment goes, I have found that after four films, I am constantly and even subconsciously comparing the depictions of race relations between the films. I am particularly struck by the endings of the first three films I viewed.  Sidney Poitier is placed in a position of acceptance and understanding in both of his films. In Defiant Ones, he cradles Joe Jackson and sings a gospel spiritual in an act of self-sacrifice and freedom from prejudice, while in Heat he boards a train with a tacit moment of understanding and acceptance between his character, Tibbs, and the white police chief.  These images of acceptance and understanding are powerful, and they move away from the mode of white heroism that we find in Mockingbird; furthermore, I am constantly challenged by this same issue from that film. Is Atticus Finch a sugarcoated advocate for civil rights, or he is a very realistic depiction of what a courageous white Southerner would face in 1932? I am still not sure.  I enjoy the way these films challenge me. I have found my reading on the realities of the American South in Black, White, and Southern to be a bit challenging. It is difficult to piece together statistics and descriptions of the transition from rural to urban living with a meaningful application to these films. The book is less about race relations, specifically, and more about the emergence of the Civil Rights era (which is certainly important for race relations).  Nonetheless, I think it is a resource that enhances my understanding and insights into these films in a way that I may not fully appreciate until I have viewed them all and reflected, comparing reality to film more precisely. I enjoy writing the blog. I know that my thoughts and "insights" are not particularly entertaining, but I do hope that what I write is something that can be read with ease and modest appreciation.

My two other texts, Framing the South and Hollywood's Image of the South have been modestly helpful. Each book contains excerpts on the films I have watched, but beyond these few pages, the breadth of information is more than my already general subject matter can handle. Tomorrow I will watch White Trash, a film about a jazz musician who finds himself on a rural, desolate, but nonetheless segregated island in the South Carolina low country. An Italian director made it in the 1950s. Until then...

Black Like Me

I watched Black Like Me today. The film is based on the essays and memoirs of journalist John Howard Griffin, who in 1960 underwent a dramatic dermatological makeover in order to change his skin color from white to black. The middle-aged husband and father then spent 6 weeks moving through the Deep South pretending to be a black man, all the while writing about his experiences in articles for Ebony and other magazines. Ultimately the experience and articles would be turned into a book, which in 1964 was made into a film. The movie version of the memoirs received little critical success in 1964, and since that time has become an obscure but important marker of the 1960s race relations culture.  It is not surprising that the film was not received with great fanfare. James Whitmore (who plays Brooks in Shawshank Redemption) portrays Griffin with a straightforward but nonetheless inspired attempt to recreate the frustration and discussion that Griffin felt after countless episodes of prejudicial treatment.

The film itself lacks a plot. We move from one scene to the next. There are several exchanges between Whitmore and white motorists who give him rides from town to town. All but one motorist inquires about some form of black sexuality, and these are sequences, while perhaps exaggerated slightly for viewing-value, which Griffin describes candidly in his memoirs.  Much bigotry and fear directed at blacks up through the Civil Rights Era regarded their apparent overt and animalistic sexuality. Griffin becomes consumed with anger over the ignorance and indifference many whites, including those who will not offer to help when he is chased by young hooligans through the streets of Hattiesburg, MS, show towards a polite, well-spoken, educated black man. The movie reveals that blacks only have a negative attitude towards Griffin when he reveals his identity to a young civil rights activist and his father near the movie's end. But this film's significance is not about the lack of plot, nor the way in which the movie's makers ignored the temptation to dramatize the events of Griffin's memoirs for the sake of flow. The film isn't really about the countless ways in which whites mistreated a man they assumed to be black. This film is a bridge. While we can only judge the creative thought processes behind movies like Mockingbird and Defiant Ones, if we take this film as a mostly honest depiction of the experiences of a "black" man traveling through the American South, then we can view the potential for film's power.

In 1964 this film portrayed the realities of the Civil Rights Era in the South with candor and grit. This movie holds no punches. It is far more telling of the realities in the American South during the Civil Rights Era than any of the other film we have discussed this far and yet... you cannot purchase it for less than $40 on Amazon.com. It is obscure and hard to find on the Internet. It made no money when it was released and gained little attention from the American public. Perhaps, this is because the film is not very good. It is well acted in parts but views more as a documentary in others. There is no climax. There is no hero. There is no justice served. It is a bitter depiction of what was going on during that era. The story itself is remarkable, and the book Black Like Me garnered much attention for Griffin when it was published. Yet somehow the film was not even a flop. It was a never seen never heard of movie that only now gains recognition as ahead of its time. Perhaps again it is an all too familiar tale of white heroism. Griffin is a white man highlighting the plight of African-Americans. In reality and through his writing he is revered, but there is something about this film-- the visual image of a white man pretending to be a black man and wading through a limbo of racial identity, the psychology of the ordeal that we see in his very blue and tired eyes, that overshadows the events themselves. At the movie's end we are more concerned with Griffin's struggle to stay sane as he loses his identity, to make peace with his persecution, that we are consumed with the semblance of plot and character in this film and distracted from its ultimate accomplishment: presenting the purist depiction of racial relations in American cinema that was, perhaps, ever made. It's a shame we lose that in a mediocre film. I will leave with this excerpt from the Encyclopedia of American Film:

"Students might find Black Like Me very useful as a snapshot of a point in time, and explore how things have changed in the years since the setting of the movie. It could be used in many ways by students wishing to gain an understanding of the roots of the civil rights movement and of the many levels of discrimination faced by black citizens in the American South in the late 1950s. The film could be viewed on different levels, appealing to both a white and black audience and studied for the different gradations of racism. It could even be useful to consider subtle points, such as language. Are phrases such as “you people” actually code words for racism?"  


It was unintentional, but I could not help but notice the use of words "could" and "might". These are things this film could do, but it remains in obscurity.

Defiance

As I was reading a review of The Defiant Ones in The New York Times from 1958, I discovered a remarkable error on my part. In my post from yesterday, I made reference to the protagonists from the film, Colored and Joe.  Yet while I was reading the review, I came across the full names of both characters. Joe is really John Jackson, and Colored is Noah Cullen. It suddenly hit me that Joe's bigoted rants against Cullen had led me to the misguided assumption that he was calling him Colored. He uses more profane terms than that on several occasions, and also adopts the patronizing "boy."  But he is not, to my knowledge, using the term "Colored" at all. It is always Cullen. What a realization! I searched for a copy of the screenplay or script and also for any discussion of this puzzling mistake, and while I could not find anything of great significance, I did find a discussion board where a viewer shared that he had made the same mistake.  This circumstance says a great deal about my project. I left my realization to marinade for a while, and proceeded to read an article written about the film's producer and director, Stanley Kramer. Kramer is known for his socially conscious films such as Defiant Ones, as well as others like Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? and Judgment at Nuremburg.  The article asks whether or not we should reconsider Kramer's work as contrived and overly-idealistic as opposed to the general consensus that his films were bold and innovative. I have only seen Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, so I am not a Kramer expert by any means, but I do feel that after viewing The Defiant Ones that it is a film that works hard to relate a metaphorical message.  So-- is the film simply a vehicle for a socially conscious message? Or does it stand alone as a piece of art that is also ideological? I'm not sure. I turned to Framing the South for some insights on this film, and I was overwhelmed by the critical response to the portrayal of Joe Jackson. Apparently, actor Tony Curtis was made over to appear more rugged and less physically attractive in order to play the part of Jackson. According to Allison Graham, Jackson is a classic case of Hollywood depicting the poor white Southern male as a degenerate and, often, bigoted antihero. But I know the film I saw. It was a masterfully acted exchange in which the silent moments of struggle for freedom were often more powerful than the heated arguments between Cullen* and Jackson. If it is contrived and idealistic, I say good. In 1958, the world needed idealism. Without idealism and optimism and determination, I don't think a film like this could be appreciated today for its innovation at the time of its production.    

Why did I think his name was Colored? I keep coming back to this. Is it an indictment of my own prejudices, based on the acerbic and often spiteful attitude of Jackson towards Cullen? Did Kramer want to tempt the audience into thinking that Poitier's character would only be referred to as Colored, a nameless prisoner? I don't know if he did, but regardless of intent (if any at all) it's another reminder of how easy it is to fall in line with prejudice and stereotype without thinking. I respect the need for critical analysis of film, but if I'm missing out on the disingenuous qualities of this film that make it a contrived attempt at portraying the need for equality-- even at the risk of being a poor student for a day-- then so be it.  I must note that it is Martin Luther King Day, and in at least 3 celebrations in St. Louis and other cities, The Defiant Ones will be shown as part of a film festival. I think this says a great deal about the reception of this film in African-American communities.  I found it very fitting that as I was reading about the Civil Rights Era this morning, specifically that the US Civil Rights Commission swore in its first six members and commenced operations in early 1958, Sidney Poitier became the first African-American nominated for an Academy Award in a Leading Role for The Defiant Ones. I look forward to finding more out about this film. Until then...

The Defiant Ones

The Defiant Ones is, for lack of a more descriptive term, a beautiful movie.  It moved me in a way that the previous two films have not. While one cannot help but be moved by the poignant exchanges between Atticus and Scout as well as the dramatic courtroom scene in Mockingbird, The Defiant Ones is a movie that confronts the soul.  As we follow the two jailbirds across the southern wilderness, the audience cannot help but feel that we are following a an allegory-- if not a hopeful one-- for the state of race relations in the American South during the late 1950s.

 The local sheriff tells us that the warden who chained Joe (Tony Curtis) and "Colored" (Poitier) together had a twisted sense of humor. The same warden tells the Sheriff not to worry about catching the escaped convicts-- they will likely kill each other first. Even in chains, Joe and Colored manage to swing their free hands at one another when they irritate each other to their respective breaking points. Colored will not stand to be referred to as n#$%##, or the less derogatory but equally patronizing "boy." Joe is simply volatile. He has fallen from a menial job parking cars to jail, and as a low-down redneck he feels looked down upon in a way that at first elicits contempt for his chain mate, but eventually leads to understanding. Their anger with one another is an invective also directed at the world, the world that has oppressed them both in different ways. Yet they possess a compassion for one another that is slowly revealed in subtle moments: Colored putting mud on Joe's infected wrist; Joe lifting Colored from a mud pit in the pouring rain. The film is a chase movie, but the tension and conflict is most riveting when the two protagonists share their frustrations about the world and with one another. As a viewer, we are less concerned with the two men being caught and more intent on following the gradual kinship that develops between the men. We are taken periodically to the scene of the pursuing police officers and deputized citizens, but they are not villains-- the villain in this story is the prejudice and anger that the two escaped convicts must overcome to survive. They are chained together; they must coexist and work together or meet their end. It is an amazing and before its time (1958) metaphor for the racial fury of the American South at that same time. Ultimately the two men make choices that we never expect but subconsciously hope for: self-sacrifice. After surviving one another, the rain, and a near lynching in a local village, the two men come upon a farm where a beautiful widow and her son live alone. Joe’s infected wrist has given him and fever, and he falls for the woman as she nurses him back to health though the night. After breaking their chains off, the two men go their separate ways so that Joe can stay with his newfound love interest. Colored heads off into the swamp with the widow's directions to guide him to train tracks. When she reveals to Joe that her directions are meant to sabotage Colored's chance of escape, he abandons the jezebel and her car to track down his chain mate and lead them both to freedom. Before he can leave, the woman's young son shoots Joe as he pushes his mother aside. When he finds Colored, he can barely run. They make it out of the swamp and reach the train.  It is the bullet wound that slows Joe as he stretches towards the outstretched hand of Colored on the train that will lead them to freedom. And when the grip breaks, the second self-sacrifice must be made. Colored jumps from the train and the two men roll into the field below.  The running is over, but the metaphorical chains have been broken. Colored holds Joe in his arms as they pant like dogs and lean back into the tall grass.  As the hounds and trackers approach, the two men smile. They no longer see each other as chain-mates or enemies or even as black and white-- there is almost a sense of freedom in their expressions. Freedom from anger-- freedom from prejudice. Colored sings loudly the same song that opens the film on the rainy night of their escape, a folk song about Bowling Green and sewing machines.

From the movie's first scene I was struck by the notion of equality in suffering. Both men are imprisoned in so many ways. But the truly beautiful thing about this movie is watching the two characters realize that they are not equal in their suffering but in their humanity, in the goodness that I believe we all, even criminals, possess somewhere inside of us. I doubt the makers of this film expected whites and blacks to find the same transition from hatred to tolerance to love that we see between Joe and Colored, but I think they would have been content with something between tolerance and love. More people should have pondered this film in 1958 besides the critics and film buffs; I am confident that there is a story to tell about the story being told in this picture. I now have one.

 I look forward to reading what the experts, and others, have to say about this picture. What does the title of this film mean? I'll ponder that myself. Until then...

This and that...

I must admit that I have been a bit on the lazy side today. Two movies and research in preparing for their viewings during the past week have given me a bit of sensory overload.  Tomorrow I will be watching The Defiant Ones, another Sidney Poitier classic, and a movie with a plot that is perhaps the most provocative of the "mainstream" films that I will be watching this January. At its core, The Defiant Ones is a chase movie. It's about 2 escaped convicts-- one white and one black-- who flee from a wrecked prison transport truck to trudge through the wilderness attached at the wrist.

I will wait to give more commentary on the film tomorrow, and the main point I want to address briefly today is an article I found from an Ivy League film professor beleaguering the portrayal of African-Americans in films like To Kill a Mockingbird and In the Heat of the Night. It's the same issue of passiveness that I considered yesterday and would be redundant to summarize. As I read the article, which approaches the same flaws in the film's portrayal of African-Americans as Roger Ebert, I was reminded that there is a character within the story of the Finch family whose quiet integrity and propriety is overshadowed by that of Atticus Finch himself. Calpurnia, the Finches' maid and cook, is a respectfully vocal disciplinarian of Scout and Jem as well as their protector during moments of sadness and danger. She is not unlike her employer in a very subtle way. Remembering my reading of Harper Lee's novel, I am reminded that Calpurnia is considered within the text and literary discussion as a crucial influence in the coming of age transition of the Finch children. I think her character in the film maintains the same attributes with less of a spotlight. So while it is valid to criticize the passive portrayal of African-Americans in these films, it is presumptuous to look past such a valuable character as Calpurnia (though she is a part of the white paternalist system, too).  

On to another topic.  I am anxious to see how Tony Curtis portrays a down and out criminal opposite of Poitier. I must not forget one of the central themes of Framing the South: that the portrayal of whites in the American South as degenerate rednecks is an all too common Hollywood stereotype during the middle of the 20th century. Considering Heat and Mockingbird, ultimately the villains in both pictures are lower class white males involved in drinking, promiscuous sex, etc. Not only do these films attempt to expose the complicated racial tensions for African-Americans in the American South, they maintain the portrayals of many Southern whites as lawless rednecks. If not oppressed, I feel it is only fair to consider these characters as an aspect of stereotyping and typecasting within Hollywood during the 1950s and 1960s that often transcended race. I look forward to seeing two superb actors depict a story that is quite literally a study in race relations. Until then...

To Kill A Mockingbird

When Gregory Peck died in 2003, actor Brock Peters (who played alongside Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird) said of the late actor: "Atticus Finch gave Gregory Peck and opportunity to play Gregory Peck." Peters and others speak highly of Peck as loyal friend and consummate professional, but I cannot help but wonder if Atticus Finch gave Gregory Peck the opportunity to be thought of more highly as Gregory Peck. Finch is a wonderful character, and while the story is narrated by his young daughter, Scout Finch, and ultimately thought of as the coming of age tale of Scout and her brother, Jem, the movie itself is a brilliant telling of two stories that ultimately intertwine to make a fabulous movie. And when they come together, it is revelatory on many levels.

As young Scout and her brother wile away their summer hours contemplating their mysterious neighbor Boo Radley’s whereabouts, Atticus is offered a controversial opportunity to defend a young black man (Brock Peters) who is accused of raping a young white woman and set to stand trial.  The movie focuses on Scout and Jem's adventures with an occasional lesson learned from Atticus as the summer fades into fall, and it is not until the following summer that the young black man, Tom Robinson, is set to stand trial. When the trial arrives, the moral fiber and quiet confidence exuded by Peck throughout the film's first half is put the test. The night before the trial Finch sits on the jailhouse steps in anticipation of lynch mob. When the hooligans arrive as expected, it is Scout, Jem, and friend Dill (who followed Atticus to the jail) that intervene naively in defense of their father and Tom.  Ultimately Scout's unassuming kindness towards the father of one of her schoolmates and the respect for Atticus thwart the bloodthirsty mob.

Film critic Roger Ebert poses an interesting question and answer when he asks: "Could a child turn away a lynch mob in that time, in that place? …Isn't it nice to think so.” In addition to this subtle criticism, Allison Graham and Professor of African-American Studies Isaac Saney bring into question the persistence of white paternalism in Mockingbird. Tom Robinson's trial, where the entire African-American community (including the adopted Scout, Jem, and Dill) look on silently from the balcony, is considered the heart of the film. Peck's righteous and convincing argument for the acquittal of Robinson, the meat of his performance and certainly the clincher for his Oscar, is a depiction of a white man, a moral and just protagonist, fighting to save a black man's life in 1932 Alabama. Robinson is dependent on Finch's lawyering, which ultimately fails to save his life and fully bring to light the false accusation and domestic violence of the Ewell family (Robinson's accusers).  As Ebert notes, the highlight of this scene is not the tragedy of Robinson's conviction and the loss of hope on the paralyzed and innocent man's face but the focus on the subtle but powerful respect shown for Finch by the black members of the audience as he leaves the courtroom in silent defeat. Similarly, when Finch goes to tell Mrs. Robinson that her husband has been killed in an attempt to escape not long after the trial, the focus is not on her grief and that of the group of family members gathered around their small rural farmhouse, but on the confrontation between Finch and Mr. Ewell over the emotional conviction of his family. This does not make Finch's courage and eloquence any less empowering to an audience member like myself, but it does suggest that in 1962, the realities of the American South served only as a backdrop for a film that is said to have, in some respects, ushered in the civil rights film.

 Yet for all the praise of Peck's performance and the way in which the triumph of good over evil is brought to light in a child's realization that to kill the man who has saved her brother's life (by killing the bloodthirsty Ewell) would be the same as killing the harmless mockingbird, I think to question the issue of white paternalism, while valid, is not thoroughly considered in the context of the film.  Here me out... we will never know the countless acts of courage performed by African-Americans during the years of Reconstruction and 20th century oppression under Jim Crowe. We will never know all the ways in which African-American communities endured under a system of economic, political, educational, and psychological oppression.  But I believe the portrayal of Atticus Finch as the only man willing to give an accused black rapist a fair representation in 1932 Alabama is a correct depiction. With the legal and economic constraints put on African-Americans in rural Alabama, who else but Atticus Finch could have come to the rescue (if not failed) of Robinson? When Isaac Saney and Roger Ebert criticize the portrayal of blacks as passive onlookers as unfair, I agree that blacks would not have been passive in the manner that they are portrayed. But in an Alabama court of law, who else but Atticus Finch could have, outside of another courageous white man, given Tom Robinson a chance at innocence? Food for thought. I must admit that it is hard for me to view Atticus Finch as a flawed character, though he may be from a historical if not literary standpoint.

I want to get back to the plot of the movie. As I alluded earlier, the movie concludes with hermitic neighbor Boo Radley saving Jem's life from the vengeful Robert E. Lee Ewell. I think the final scene in which Atticus, Sheriff Tate, and Scout decide to protect the innocence of a man who has killed an evil man, a man responsible for the false conviction and death of another man, is one of the most fascinating scenes of cinema that I have ever seen-- both dramatically and from a race relations stand point.  As Sheriff Tate says, "There's a black man dead for no reason, and now the man responsible for it is dead. Let the dead bury the dead this time." Is this justice? Does the moral Atticus Finch let human justice outweigh legal justice?  He does. Ultimately the film's realization for Scout is that the dreaded Boo Radley is a harmless mockingbird, a man who rightly defends a young boy from an evil man. This is where the two stories coming together, the story of justice and coming of age.  But if it is not inferred from the viewing, I will remind the audience and those of you who have seen the film that Tom Robinson was himself a mockingbird. He was a man who did nothing but fill the world with a quiet and undistinguished tune. Yet in that final scene, his legacy endures only as a passive victim. Yes, Boo Radley is a mockingbird. Yes, Atticus Finch is a beautiful good guy. But there are many birds and, even, many heroes. 

Where reality and film meet... maybe

As I was reading a section in Black, White, and Southern about the plight of the black southern sharecropper during the early part of the 20th century and into the Great Depression, I could not help but think about the relevance of this excerpt to a major section of the plot from In the Heat of the Night. When Detective Tibbs discovers that local cotton kingpin Eric Endicott stands to lose much of the menial, and mostly black, labor that grows and picks his crop if the recently deceased entrepreneur Colbert builds a factory that can employ many of the farmhands for better wages, the police officer suspects Endicott is somehow involved in the killing. As he and Gillespie drive through the cotton fields that lead to Endicott's mansion, a somber blues tune hums in the background as they pass row after row of black field hands. I could not help but think of not only the struggles of these workers as I read about the vicious circle of dependence and subsistence created by predominantly white land owners and growers in the Deep South, but also the parallels between reality and fiction that I was making. Just as Colbert offers the African-American community a new opportunity for modest prosperity in Heat, David R. Goldfield notes in B, W, and S that the New Deal that accompanied the Great Depression combined with the sudden need for factory and war supply workers during the late 1930s offered African-Americans, particularly in the American South, an opportunity to remove themselves from the grips of modern slavery. Through government assistance that provided funds for seed, fertilizer, and other basic tools of agricultural trade as well as the bold work of WPA director and former NAACP officer Harold Ickes, African-Americans were given small and gradual assistance in enduring the Depression. Similarly, workers were needed in munitions factories and other plants in order to help with the war effort as the 1940s arrived. One southern black leader noted "that the white man cannot lick Hitler with his right hand and keep the Negro down with his left." As optimistic and clever a realization as this was, for all the opportunities granted to blacks, many who were trained as engineers and skilled laborers during the war were without work afterwards. In the same sense, much of the TVA works maintained the prejudices of the early 20th century, and other public works programs gave pay raises to menial labor positions that had once been occupied by blacks that were soon appealing to southern whites. It is no surprise then, that as Heat is set in the mid-1960s, the death of Colbert and the uncertainty of the factory's future likely leaves blacks in Sparta, the same blacks given hope by the New Deal and WWII some 30 years earlier, feeling marginalized nonetheless.

To segway into my next viewing, I began research today on reviews and reactions to the much-revered To Kill a Mockingbird, a film based on the classic novel of the same name by Harper Lee. Mockingbird tells the story of the young Scout Finch and her upbringing in a racially divided Southern town. It is, however, more than a coming of age story; Scout's father Atticus is a local attorney who agrees to defend a black man accused of rape. It is a story of justice and courage and the heroism of a white man fighting to save a black man. While I have located the reviews from the New York Times and Variety magazine, I have also found several interesting articles, including one on an African-American actress and her experience with the film as well as perspectives from black scholars on the movement to censor the novel's offensive language as well as the critical reaction to the notion of a "white race hero." Finch, considered to be one of the greatest heroes and good guys of any work of literature of film, nonetheless represents, for many African-Americans, the quintessential white hero saving the passive black.  I will explore this further after reading these articles in full and viewing the film. But I will leave you with this: in my readings about the black sharecropper in the American South I found a very intriguing excerpt about the “survival skills” employed by tenant farmers in the early part of the 20th Century. 

Black Sociologist Charles S. Johnson: "for those blacks still living in the country there is, it would appear, one unfailing rule of life. If they would get along with least difficulty, they should get for themselves a protecting white family. This lingering paternalism sealed black dependence."

           Is Atticus Finch a character, then, founded in or at least paralleling the realities of the 1930s, 40s, and even 50s? (The film itself is set in the 1930s) Is he a white protector? Or is he, as both a character in the novel and movie, a representation of Hollywood and literary tendency to portray certain whites as the saviors of oppressed blacks? Is this portrayal fair and just (like Atticus Finch himself)? I don't know what answer I will find, or if it will be the right one. Until then...

In the Heat of the Night

In the Heat of the Night is classified as a murder mystery, but it is truly a film that transcends genre. Many critics believe that it is a film that gave birth both to the civil rights film and the era of black-protagonist dramas, known as blaxploitation films, that became popular (Shaft, etc.) in the 1970s.  I believe, above all else, that Heat is a story about relationships-- specifically the one between the keen and graceful Detective Virgil Tibbs and the edgy outsider Police Chief Bill Gillespie.  The film is noted for its excellent cinematography and sound, which includes Ray Charles singing the movie's theme song, while critics agree that the film's finest qualities include the stellar performances from Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger as Tibbs and Gillespie, respectively. Steiger would win the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1968, and the film would controversially beat out The Graduate for Best Picture.  The movie itself is as suspenseful and gritty as I remember from my first viewing. Poitier's calm but intense presence relies on an economy of dialogue; when the man speaks, you listen to every punctuated syllable. Steiger's portrays a newly-hired police chief trying to solve a murder mystery inolving a visiting Chicagoan entrepreneur seeking to build a new factory in a Mississippi town divided by racial barriers that stretch from the resentful lower class whites who would compete with blacks for new jobs to the upper crust cotton growers and business men who hope to keep local blacks dependent on the cotton industry for meager subsistence wages.  Steiger is a volatile and subtly humorous hero. The plot itself requires careful attention to detail, and more than once both Gillespie and Tibbs "pin" the wrong man for the crime-- although the latter's error in judgment is clouded by personal motivations in trying to bring down a cotton kingpin. Gillespie is simply not the competent homicide detective that makes Tibbs' one of Philadelphia's finest police officers.  The plot leads to what many critics, both in the New York Times and Variety Magazine, feel is a disappointing ending. Tibbs discovers that a local hooligan murders the visiting businessman in order to finance his 16-year-old girlfriend's abortion. Undoubtedly the movie's finest scenes are the ones architected by director Norman Jewison and screenwriter Sterling Silliphant to explore the relationship between Gillespie and Tibbs and to present an honest portrayal of the Deep South and its racial tensions. No scene is more famous than the one in which Tibbs confronts cotton kingpin Eric Endicott about his possible involvement in the murder. When Endicott takes offense and slaps Tibbs across the face, the detective immediately slaps him back in retaliation as Gillespie and, notably, an older black servant look on. "What are you gonna do about it?" asks Endicott to Gillespie. "I don't know," responds the police Chief.  Ultimately, Gillespie backs Tibbs. While critics praised the honest and even aggressive depiction of this scene, black writer Thomas Dorsey and actor Vhing Rames provide insights into the reception of this scene and, implicitly, the movie itself in the African-American community. According to Dorsey, no one can understand the feeling of pride that a black person experienced when watching Poitier justly retaliate. In the same sentiment, Rhames notes in Poitier's biography that, at that moment (when he watched Tibbs slap Endicott) he knew what it meant to be a man, to do the right thing.  On a larger scale, critics note that while African-Americans comprised between 10 and 15% of the population in the 1960s, they accounted for nearly 30% of American moviegoers.  Poitier biographer Aram Goudsouzian notes that many in the movie industry attributed these statistics to the emergence of Poitier as star that rivaled Paul Newman at the box office.  Inferring further, many blacks felt empowered by Heat and Poitier.  But back to Tibbs and Gillespie: As the two men share drinks in the police chief's modest apartment near the film's ending, both share an honest moment of sadness and self-awareness. Both are unmarried and without children. Both are outsiders (Gillespie, as a new chief in an old town; Tibbs as an isolated black detective both in Philadelphia and in Mississippi). For Tibbs, in his sharp suit and with high intelligence and eloquence, he is not entirely at home in any community. He appears odd and out of place to the local African-American family with whom he stays while in Sparta. To whites, he is a black man living a white man's life.  Goodness, then, is the thread that Gillespie and Tibbs share outside of their isolation.  Tibbs is moral and just, seeking to put away a killer. Gillespie wants the same thing, and at certain moments in the film he makes a bold stand that preserves Tibbs' dignity and even his life. Ultimately Poitier's character appealed to all audiences because of his acting and the character's strength and commitment to doing the right thing, yet an article from the Comparative Studies department at Florida Atlantic University notes that his character is viewed by many as a flawed hero, one with which black moviegoers would applaud but could not associate on a personal level. This was a criticism prominent in many of his other movies, in which critics such as Pauline Kael note that Poitier conformed to the black man that suburban whites could coexist with. Critic Roger Ebert rejected this criticism of In the Heat of the Night, noting that Virgil Tibbs was a justly angry and fair symbol of the struggles going on in the summer of 1967 race riots that were happening right outside of the movie theatres where Heat captivated audiences. I look forward to reading and reflecting more about this film, and I will share these thoughts in the future. I am enjoying my readings on the race relations in the South, specifically during the 1940s at the present moment. Tomorrow I will begin research and preparations for To Kill A Mockingbird. Until then...

The Official Start

                  Today is the first official day of blogging for myself and all the other independent research projects being conducted at Wofford this Interim.  It is fitting then that I began my first official day of research in preparation for my first viewing and analysis of In the Heat of the Night, a crime drama about a passing-through-town detective (Sidney Poitier) from Philadelphia who winds up waiting for a train in a small Mississippi town in the early morning, only to be accused of a brutal murder committed across town—for no other reason than the color of his skin. Detective Tibbs (Poitier) is subsequently obliged to stay in Mississippi and help the town's new police chief solve the crime-- if only he can stand the heat of the night and other troubles. I look forward to sharing my analysis of the film as well as the reviews that I have found from Variety and TV Guide, both written in 1967.  I have yet to read either review, as I do not wish to unfairly bias my viewing of the film. I will admit, however, that this will be the second time that I have seen the movie. What can I say? It's a classic. In addition to the aforementioned reviews, I have also stumbled upon an article from a comparative studies program at a Florida university that dissects the significance of the interaction between Detective Tibbs (an African-American detective) and the police chief (a white man) as a metaphor for the evolving relationship between blacks and whites as the Civil Rights Era progressed (Okay, so I read a few lines of that one!).  That’s just the kind of insight I’m looking for.

Before I talk about the other readings started today, I want to say a word about finishing Ed Sikov's Film: An Introduction. Beyond the fabula, I was most impressed by Sikov’s section on the transition from screenwriting to film production. Considering that several of the movies I will view, including Heat, were adapted from novels into screenplays into films, I think it is important to consider the transitions from these respective mediums into the finished product of a movie. How do these films differ from the novels? Were they constructed and refined to appeal to a mainstream audience? Do portrayals of race receive a tougher look in novels as compared to on the screen?  Sikov's overview of film analysis will be an invaluable tool for my research.  In addition to researching Heat, I also finished the introduction to Framing the South, which provided some thought provoking insights into the complicated layers of racial hierarchy that challenged Hollywood during the Civil Rights Era and-- to an extent-- still present issues today. I was especially challenged by this excerpt from author Allison Graham:

"By accepting responsibility for racism and (simultaneously) denying it, popular reconfigurations of the civil rights era imagine the twentieth-century South as an arena of white-- not black-- heroism. More importantly, they offer the spectacle of racial redemption, for with the expulsion of the lawless redneck from southern society, the moral purity of whiteness itself is affirmed."

The significance of this excerpt is twofold with regards to my project. Most apparent is the connection between the juxtaposition of blacks and whites (and heroism) and the differing portrayals of each as heroes and villains in films. Specifically within Heat, I will look at the characterization of Tibbs and Police Chief Gillespie, both protagonists, and the way they are portrayed as heroes and yet outcasts within the small southern town. Furthermore, I will look at the reaction within the mainstream media and African-American society to the portrayal of Tibbs as a complex hero/outcast.  The second aspect of this excerpt that intrigues me is the complexity of race within race. I myself have been rather single-minded in thinking about this project's focus on the portrayals of African-Americans within film, when in fact the whole point of this study is to look at race relations.  This excerpt and much of Graham's introduction reminded me that Hollywood, for much of the middle 20^th century, branded Southern whites as comedic hillbillies and outlaws in a manner perceived by many Southerners as derogatory. Considering this reminder, I will make sure to be fair to both sides of race relations-- not simply black and white, but black and black and white and white.  

There is only so much that I can do as we all grease our wheels after a nice long vacation, so the daunting task of beginning David R. Goldfield's Black, White, and Southern was never quite undertaken today.  But it is essential that I begin to look not only at the stories behind the movies and their making but also the stories behind the stories. That is, the reality of the American South and its landscape during the Civil Rights Era.  Until then...

Fabulas?*

It struck me today as I was reading my aforementioned pre-requisite introduction to film that I have not fully explained the purpose of this study; I was drawn to this project because I love films. While I want to look at the critical reaction and cultural responses to great and obscure pictures-- within a specific era and regarding a historical theme-- to be completely honest, you choose to do an Interim on film because you love to watch movies. The cinema captivates me, and yet I claim no expertise. Reading Ed Sikov's Film: An Introduction has provided a cursory glance at the highlights of film making, from camera angles to plot developments to screenwriting-- but the essence of what I hope to achieve in this endeavor was fittingly revealed to me while reading an explication of the differences between plot and story as I nearly nodded off this late afternoon.

 The school of film known as Russian Formalism (which bears no significance in this project other than the forthcoming analysis) distinguishes between the plot and the story with terminology referred to as syuzhet and fabula. In all schools of study, it is generally agreed amongst film scholars that the plot refers to the specific ordering of the narrative elements within the film, while the story is not only the plot that is revealed to the audience through the director's camera angles and the screenwriter's dialogue but also the total sum of interpretation. As the Russian Formalists describe the fabula, or story, it is the narrative that each of us constructs as we are exposed to the plot-- not simply the associations we make with the plot's events and interactions, but the "stories we tell ourselves based on the stories we are being told." The stories we tell based on the stories we are being told.  It was not until I read this line that I could express fully the captivation that I feel with film as an audience member.  Films can be beautiful and rapturous and lead total escape, but the vital satisfaction that I find in films is my own ability to interpret and to tell stories based on what I have seen and heard. We all do this-- personalize a movie's plot and story to take something away that makes us feel, if not good, more whole and human. My revelation on fabula furthermore connected the personal enjoyment that I hope to experience in watching these films with the cultural and historical understanding that I will research in watching and reading about these films and the Civil Rights Era: to explore the fabula of those who viewed these films as ordinary people, critics, and members of differing cultural and racial groups. What stories do these people tell about the stories revealed in the plot of each film? Do African-Americans resent the mainstream portrayals of Sidney Poitier in films produced by white Americans? Will popular critics like Roger Ebert delve into the politics of making films about race relations? How does the fabula reveal itself? I look forward to finding these answers and hope that they will be a part of my, perhaps our, story.  Until next time...