Hollywood's representation of blacks has been consistently misleading, promoting an artificially constructed mythology in place of historical fact. But how, James Snead asks, did black skin on screen develop into a complex code for various types of white supremacist discourse? In these essays, completed shortly before his death in 1989, James Snead offers a thoughtful inquiry into the intricate modes of racial coding in Hollywood cinema from 1915 to 1985. Snead presents three major methods through which the racist ideology within film functions: mythification, in which black images are correlated in a larger sceme of semiotic valuation where the dominant I' needs the marginal other' in order to function effectively; marking, in which the colour black is repeatedly over-determined and redundantly marked, as if to force the viewer to register the image's difference from white; and omission - the repetition of black absence from positions of autonomy and importance. White Screens/Black Images offers an array of film texts, drawn from both classical Hollywood cinema and black independent film culture. Individual chapters analyze Birth of a Nation , King Kong , Shirley Temple in The Littlest Rebel and The Little Colonel , Mae West in I'm No Angel , Marlene Dietrich in Blonde Venus , Bette Davis in Jezebel , the racism of Disney's Song of the South , and Taxi Driver . Making skilful use of developments in both structuralist and post-structuralist film theory, Snead's work speaks not only to the centrality of race in Hollywood films, but to its centrality in the formation of modern American culture.
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...exciting contributions to the study of film in general and to issues of race and culture in particular.
–Yale Film News
–Yale Film News
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
In the mid-seventies, film studies witnessed an increased awareness of the place of blacks in the history of American films. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
black independent filmmakers, black independent films, black filmmakers, black cinema, white viewers Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
King Kong, Uncle Remus, Shirley Temple, New York, Bill Robinson, Song of the South, Mighty Joe Young, Uncle Billy, Jim Henry, Amiri Baraka, Old South, The Littlest Rebel, Carl Denham, Civil War, Mae West, Bette Davis, Brer Rabbit, Clair Bourne, Miss Julie, Son of Kong, Ann Darrow, Marlene Dietrich, New Orleans, Triumph of the Will, Uncle Sam New!
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
In the mid-seventies, film studies witnessed an increased awareness of the place of blacks in the history of American films. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
black independent filmmakers, black independent films, black filmmakers, black cinema, white viewers Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
King Kong, Uncle Remus, Shirley Temple, New York, Bill Robinson, Song of the South, Mighty Joe Young, Uncle Billy, Jim Henry, Amiri Baraka, Old South, The Littlest Rebel, Carl Denham, Civil War, Mae West, Bette Davis, Brer Rabbit, Clair Bourne, Miss Julie, Son of Kong, Ann Darrow, Marlene Dietrich, New Orleans, Triumph of the Will, Uncle Sam New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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This book cites 43
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- The Birth of a Nation: D. W. Griffith, director (Rutgers Films in Print) by Robert Lang on 10 pages
- Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings (Penguin Classics) by Joel Chandler Harris on 10 pages
- The Classic Tales of Brer Rabbit: From the Collected Stories of Joel Chandler Harris by David Borgenicht on page 83, page 87, and page 89
- King Kong by Christopher Golden on page 33, and page 35
- Uncle Remus: Oxford World Classics (Oxford Pocket Classics) by Rh Value Publishing on page 90, and page 96
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- Gender, Ethnicity, and Sexuality in Contemporary American Film (America in the 20th Century Series) by Jude Davies on 5 pages
- Representing Blackness: Issues in Film and Video (Rutgers Depth of Field Series) by Valerie Smith in Front Matter, and Back Matter
- Racist Traces and Other Writing: European Pedigrees/ African Contagions (Language, Discourse, Society) by James A. Snead in Front Matter (1), and Front Matter (2)
- Genre and Television: From Cop Shows to Cartoons in American Culture by Jason Mittell in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Genre and Television: From Cop Shows to Cartoons in American Culture by Jason Mittell in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
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