Cinematic Identity: Anatomy of a Problem Film (Theory Out Of Bounds)

200 Pages·2007·2.5 MB·English

by  Cindy Patton

CINEMATIC IDENTITY
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CINEMATIC IDENTITY
ANATOMY OF A PROBLEM FILM
Cindy Patton
University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis
London
Edited by Sandra Buckley, Michael Hardt, and Brian Massumi
Volume 29
Earlier versions of sections of chapter 3 previously appeared as
“White Racism/Black Signs: Censorship and Images of Race Rela-
tions,” Journal of Communication Studies 45, no. 2 (1995): 65–77;
and an earlier version of portions of chapter 2 appeared as “To Die
For,” in Novel Gazing: Queer Readings in Fiction, ed. Eve Kosofsky
Sedgwick (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997), 330–52.
We gratefully acknowledge Blackwell Synergy, which owns the
Journal of Communication Studies, and Duke University Press for
granting permission for these materials to appear here.
Copyright 2007 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be repro-
duced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or
by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401 - 2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Patton, Cindy, 1956–
Cinematic identity : anatomy of a problem fi lm / Cindy Patton.
p. cm. — (Theory out of bounds ; 29)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-3411-8 (hc : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8166-3411-4 (hc : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-3412-5 (pb : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8166-3412-2 (pb : alk. paper)
1. Social problems in motion pictures. 2. Minorities in motion
pictures. 3. Motion pictures—United States. I. Title.
PN1995.9.S62P38 2007
791.43'65560973—dc22
2007030262
Printed in the United States of America on acid - free paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal - opportunity educator
and employer.
12 11 10 09 08 07 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
acknowledgments vii
1. American Celluloid: New Medium, New Citizen 1
Back to the Movies 1
Race and Sexuality: Some Analytic Caveats 12
Acting the Citizen 18
2. In the Hearts of Men 21
To Die For 25
Popularizing “the Problem”: Politics as Melodrama 31
Into the Closet 37
Alienating Queer 43
3. Censorship and the Problem Films 47
Censoring Race 47
Cinematic Prohibition 53
Race Mixing 56
From Image to Story 59
When a Kiss Is Not a Kiss 65
Censoring Pinky 67
“Prejudice” and Epithet 71
The Dominoes Fall 75
Sacrilege and Race versus Sexuality 79
4. Acting Up: The Performing American 81
Signs of Apartheid 81
Acting History/The Historicity of Acting 84
Sound, Class, and Narrative 90
Narrative Sublation: Recalling - Forgetting History 99
The Question of Acting 101
5. Two Conversations:
Black and White Americans on Film 107
Reading (in) “White Time”:
Black Performance and the Demand for Literacy 107
The Victim - Witness Story 112
Distinguishing Wrongs 115
An Ear for the Master’s Tropes 119
“White Time”/Black Place 126
A Final Word, a Feeling, a Hope 136
appendix. pinky: a synopsis 139
notes 143
references 173
filmography 179
index 182
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I owe many debts of gratitude for this very protracted project.
Indeed, I sometimes feel that the “story of Pinky” traces my peri-
patetic academic career. I became interested in the fi lm while I
was working on my doctorate at the University of Massachusetts–
Amherst in the late 1980s and would then have “read” the fi lm
psychoanalytically, as was the fashion of that day. This seemed
somehow wrong, especially because of the very strong reactions
the fi lm provoked when I had the opportunity to screen it at Prince-
ton, on invitation from Diana Fuss. The fi lm read yet differently
in Australia, where I worked on the project in the early 1990s
during my four months at the Australian National University’s
Humani ties Research Centre (thanks to John Ballard). That was
when Sandi Buckley and Brian Massumi became series editors of
Theory Out of Bounds and took an interest in the project. William
Murphy at the University of Minnesota Press eventually took the
book under contract; Richard Morrison later took over the project
and was extraordinarily patient in continuing to support it as he
moved up the ranks at that press. Dr. Calinda Lee assisted with
the research while she was a doctoral student at Emory University,
and she has published a fi ne essay on the reception of Pinky in
[ vii ]
the Black press at the time of the fi lm’s release. I owe the larg-
est debt to Marguerite Pigeon, who now serves as the academic
editor for my research unit at Simon Fraser University. Without
her keen editorial eye and persistence, I might not have fi nished
the project.
Finally, I want to note that my dog Alex departed in the fall of
2005. I do not know whether she had any lingering faith that this
stack of papers would turn into a book, but I do know that I miss
her and her ability to convince me from time to time that much of
what humans do is rather silly.
[ viii ] acknowledgments
1.
AMERICAN CELLULOID
New Medium, New Citizen
Back to the Movies
M
ost people can tell you, admiringly or derisively, what paint-
ings they like but they leave it to professional critics to make
judgments about artistic value. In relation to movies,1 how-
ever, no academic degree or special temperament is required:
America’s Academy Awards demonstrate nothing if not the supe-
riority of consumer preference over critical acclaim. Everyone has
an opinion about the movies.
The populist origins of American fi lm once made movies an
uncomfortable object for scholars from the traditional aesthetic
fi elds: only sociologists and advertisers seemed to recognize that
fi lm did more than placate the culturally destitute classes. In the
post–World War II period and accelerating through the 1970s,
as the university was transformed by the increasing numbers
of women, minority, and working - class scholars, fi lm developed
around itself an academic cottage industry.2 Rather than strik-
ing out to fi nd entirely new ways of studying movies, academic
researchers stretched existing areas of literary studies, history,
and, to a lesser extent, sociology to include it. Lodged in En glish
departments, communications programs, and eventually in sepa-
rate media and cultural studies programs, fi lm theory often
[ 1 ]