RACE AND GENDER IN AMERICAN FILM

DANIEL BERNARDI, EDITOR

ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY

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Contents

FMS 270 Code of Academic IntegrityASU Film Letter to Students

1. Theories of Race and Representation 1

Categorizing the Other: Stereotypes and Stereotypingby Charles Ramírez Berg 3

2. Identity and the Birth of Cinema 21

The Voice of Whiteness: D. W. Griffith’s Biograph Films(1908–1913) by Daniel Bernardi 23Broken Blossoms: Artful Racism, Artful Rape by Julia Lesage 37

3. Anthropological Visions in Documentary Film 51

Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North: The Politics of Taxidermy and Romantic Ethnography by Fatimah Tobing Rony 53The Imperial Imaginary by Ella Shohat and Robert Stam 71

4. Hollywood’s Latin America in the 1930s 91

Dolores del Río, Uncomfortably Real: The Economics of Race in Hollywood’s Latin American Musicals by Joanne Hershfield 93The Demands of Authenticity: Addison Durland and Hollywood’s Latin Images during World War II by Brian O’Neil 104

5. Gender, Melodrama and Hollywood in the 1930s 121

Is the Gaze Male? by E. Ann Kaplan 123Angel, Venus, Jezebel: Race and the Female Star in Three Thirties Films by James Snead 133

6. Hollywood’s Jewish Question in the 1940s 139

“Democracy and Burnt Cork”: The End of Blackface,the Beginning of Civil Rights by Michael Rogin 141Midtown Jewish Masculinity in Body and Soulby Aaron Baker 163

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7. Miscegenation and Post-WII Hollywood 171

Imitation(s) of Life: The Black Woman’s Double Determinationas Troubling “Other” by Sandy Flitterman-Lewis 173“What’s the Matter with Sara Jane?”: Daughters and Mothers inDouglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life by Marina Heung 181

8. Masculinity, Whiteness and the 1950s Westerns 197

Imagery in Literature, Art, and Philosophy: The Indian inWhite Imagination and Ideology by Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr. 199The Margin As Center: The Multicultural Dynamics of John Ford’s Westerns by Charles Ramírez Berg 231

9. Interracial Buddies and Lovers in the 1960s 249

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner with Eldridge Cleaver and the Supreme Court, or reforming popular racial memory with Hepburn and Tracy by Susan Courtney 251Racism as a Project: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinnerby Hernán Vera and Andrew M. Gordon 273

10. Whitesploitation(?) in the 1970s 285

Genre Anxiety and Racial Representation in 1970s Cinemaby George Lipsitz 287The Rise and Fall of Blaxploitation by Ed Guerrero 300

11. Black Masculinity in the 1980s 325

Reconstructing Black Masculinity by bell hooks 327Post-Soul Comedy Goes to the Movies: Cinematic Adjustments and [Pop] Cultural Currency by Bambi Haggins 343

12. Gender Crisis in the 1990s 367

“Waiting to Exhale” or “Breath(ing) Again”: A Search for Identity, Empowerment, and Love in the 1990’sby Tina M. Harris and Patricia S. Hill 369“Chick Flicks” as Feminist Texts: The Appropriation of the Male Gaze in Thelma & Louise by Brenda Cooper 385

13. Latina Stars in the 1990s and Today 405

Framing Jennifer Lopez: Mobilizing Race from the Wide Shot to the Close-Up by Priscilla Peña Ovalle 407Jennifer’s Butt by Frances Negrón-Muntaner 423

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14. Arabs in Today’s Hollywood 431

Introduction to Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People by Jack G. Shaheen 433A Whole New (Disney) World Order: Aladdin, Atomic Power and the Muslim Middle East by Alan Nadel 459

15. Interracial Hollywood Today 471

“I’m Blackanese”: Buddy-Cop Films, Rush Hour, and Asian American and African American Cross-Racial Identification by LeiLani Nishime 473Romeo Must Die: Interracial Romance in Actionby Gina Marchetti 486

Index 497

Contents

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