Sinéad Moynihan
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719082290
- eISBN:
- 9781781702727
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719082290.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
In her famous defence of Bill Clinton, Toni Morrison articulated succinctly the question with which all standard racial passing narratives wrestle: if blackness is not physically manifest, then what ...
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In her famous defence of Bill Clinton, Toni Morrison articulated succinctly the question with which all standard racial passing narratives wrestle: if blackness is not physically manifest, then what is it? A form of behaviour? A state of mind? A set of cultural affiliations? Conversely, if blackness is physically apparent but the behaviour/state of mind/cultural affiliations do not accompany this, is the subject still ‘black’? This chapter analyses Paul Beatty's The White Boy Shuffle (1996) and Philip Roth's The Human Stain (2000), neither of which fits easily within the ‘standard racial pass’ (black-to-white) and ‘reverse racial pass’ (white-to-black) schema that Phillip Brian Harper elucidates: the first, because it features an African American protagonist who passes to become black(er); the second, because it foregrounds black-for-Jewish passing. Both Gunnar Kaufman from The White Boy Shuffle and Coleman Silk from The Human Stain grapple with the weight of their genealogy and ancestors. Both rely on their bodies as a key site of self-definition through their commitment to their respective sports (basketball; boxing). Both are, moreover, committed writers.Less
In her famous defence of Bill Clinton, Toni Morrison articulated succinctly the question with which all standard racial passing narratives wrestle: if blackness is not physically manifest, then what is it? A form of behaviour? A state of mind? A set of cultural affiliations? Conversely, if blackness is physically apparent but the behaviour/state of mind/cultural affiliations do not accompany this, is the subject still ‘black’? This chapter analyses Paul Beatty's The White Boy Shuffle (1996) and Philip Roth's The Human Stain (2000), neither of which fits easily within the ‘standard racial pass’ (black-to-white) and ‘reverse racial pass’ (white-to-black) schema that Phillip Brian Harper elucidates: the first, because it features an African American protagonist who passes to become black(er); the second, because it foregrounds black-for-Jewish passing. Both Gunnar Kaufman from The White Boy Shuffle and Coleman Silk from The Human Stain grapple with the weight of their genealogy and ancestors. Both rely on their bodies as a key site of self-definition through their commitment to their respective sports (basketball; boxing). Both are, moreover, committed writers.
Crystal S. Anderson
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617037559
- eISBN:
- 9781621039327
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617037559.003.0005
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter uses Lee’s film The Big Boss (1971) to examine the theme of ethnic conflict and solidarity within and between ethnic groups in Paul Beatty’s novel, White Boy Shuffle and The Matrix film ...
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This chapter uses Lee’s film The Big Boss (1971) to examine the theme of ethnic conflict and solidarity within and between ethnic groups in Paul Beatty’s novel, White Boy Shuffle and The Matrix film trilogy. Just as The Big Boss explores inter- and intra-ethnic conflict, Beatty’s The White Boy Shuffle interrogates both ethnicity and national identity against the backdrop of the 1992 Los Angeles riots. While Beatty’s novel echoes the complex examination of dynamics between ethnic groups found in The Big Boss, The Matrix trilogy adds an element of gender cooperation to the consideration of interethnic conflict.Less
This chapter uses Lee’s film The Big Boss (1971) to examine the theme of ethnic conflict and solidarity within and between ethnic groups in Paul Beatty’s novel, White Boy Shuffle and The Matrix film trilogy. Just as The Big Boss explores inter- and intra-ethnic conflict, Beatty’s The White Boy Shuffle interrogates both ethnicity and national identity against the backdrop of the 1992 Los Angeles riots. While Beatty’s novel echoes the complex examination of dynamics between ethnic groups found in The Big Boss, The Matrix trilogy adds an element of gender cooperation to the consideration of interethnic conflict.
Cameron Leader-Picone
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781617039973
- eISBN:
- 9781626740280
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617039973.003.0010
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This chapter provides a reading of Paul Beatty’s The White Boy Shuffle and Aaron McGruder’s animated television series The Boondocks in order to explore the satirizing of leadership in the African ...
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This chapter provides a reading of Paul Beatty’s The White Boy Shuffle and Aaron McGruder’s animated television series The Boondocks in order to explore the satirizing of leadership in the African American community. This chapter posits that a lack of hero figures allows for the satirizing of Martin Luther King, Jr. These texts, and the lack of leadership they portray, highlight the gap between the desire for racial harmony and the complexity of the contemporary African American experience.Less
This chapter provides a reading of Paul Beatty’s The White Boy Shuffle and Aaron McGruder’s animated television series The Boondocks in order to explore the satirizing of leadership in the African American community. This chapter posits that a lack of hero figures allows for the satirizing of Martin Luther King, Jr. These texts, and the lack of leadership they portray, highlight the gap between the desire for racial harmony and the complexity of the contemporary African American experience.
Lynn Mie Itagaki
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780816699209
- eISBN:
- 9781452954257
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816699209.003.0003
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
While civility is traditionally defined as the civic virtues, community-building, and deliberative practices of good citizens, the novel The White Boy Shuffle exposes civil racism in the US public ...
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While civility is traditionally defined as the civic virtues, community-building, and deliberative practices of good citizens, the novel The White Boy Shuffle exposes civil racism in the US public educational system through its equating civility with meritocracy: those deemed meritorious are those with the most civic virtue.Less
While civility is traditionally defined as the civic virtues, community-building, and deliberative practices of good citizens, the novel The White Boy Shuffle exposes civil racism in the US public educational system through its equating civility with meritocracy: those deemed meritorious are those with the most civic virtue.
Crystal S. Anderson
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617037559
- eISBN:
- 9781621039327
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617037559.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This book explores the cultural and political exchanges between African Americans, Asian Americans, and Asians over the last four decades. To do so, it examines such cultural productions as novels ...
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This book explores the cultural and political exchanges between African Americans, Asian Americans, and Asians over the last four decades. To do so, it examines such cultural productions as novels (Frank Chin’s Gunga Din Highway [1999], Ishmael Reed’s Japanese By Spring [1992], and Paul Beatty’s The White Boy Shuffle [1996]); films (Rush Hour 2 [2001], Unleashed [2005], and The Matrix trilogy [1999–2003]); and Japanese animation (Samurai Champloo [2004]), all of which feature cross-cultural conversations. In exploring the ways in which writers and artists use this transferal, the author traces and tests the limits of how Afro-Asian cultural production interrogates conceptions of race, ethnic identity, politics, and transnational exchange. Ultimately, the book reads contemporary black/Asian cultural fusions through the recurrent themes established by the films of Bruce Lee, which were among the first—and certainly most popular—works to use this exchange explicitly. As a result of such films as Enter the Dragon (1973), The Chinese Connection (1972), and The Big Boss (1971), Lee emerges as both a cross-cultural hero and global cultural icon who resonates with the experiences of African American, Asian American, and Asian youth in the 1970s. His films and iconic imagery prefigure themes that reflect cross-cultural negotiations with global culture in post-1990 Afro-Asian cultural production.Less
This book explores the cultural and political exchanges between African Americans, Asian Americans, and Asians over the last four decades. To do so, it examines such cultural productions as novels (Frank Chin’s Gunga Din Highway [1999], Ishmael Reed’s Japanese By Spring [1992], and Paul Beatty’s The White Boy Shuffle [1996]); films (Rush Hour 2 [2001], Unleashed [2005], and The Matrix trilogy [1999–2003]); and Japanese animation (Samurai Champloo [2004]), all of which feature cross-cultural conversations. In exploring the ways in which writers and artists use this transferal, the author traces and tests the limits of how Afro-Asian cultural production interrogates conceptions of race, ethnic identity, politics, and transnational exchange. Ultimately, the book reads contemporary black/Asian cultural fusions through the recurrent themes established by the films of Bruce Lee, which were among the first—and certainly most popular—works to use this exchange explicitly. As a result of such films as Enter the Dragon (1973), The Chinese Connection (1972), and The Big Boss (1971), Lee emerges as both a cross-cultural hero and global cultural icon who resonates with the experiences of African American, Asian American, and Asian youth in the 1970s. His films and iconic imagery prefigure themes that reflect cross-cultural negotiations with global culture in post-1990 Afro-Asian cultural production.
Erica R. Edwards
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816675456
- eISBN:
- 9781452947488
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816675456.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
This chapter presents how curiosity, manifested in particular through parody, weds the conceptual work of contesting charisma to the playful questioning embedded in the formal workings of African ...
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This chapter presents how curiosity, manifested in particular through parody, weds the conceptual work of contesting charisma to the playful questioning embedded in the formal workings of African American humor. At the turn of the twenty-first century, American popular culture witnessed an explosion of millennial refashionings of spectacular black political leadership, even as postmodern black fiction and film contested the scenario of charismatic black political leadership as the primal and primary mode of political belonging and performance in the post-civil rights black cultural repertoire. The chapter examines Paul Beatty’s novel The White Boy Shuffle and the film Barbershop as revisionist counterstories, whose characters embrace an intuitive way of seeing that grapples with those “phantom subjects” of civil rights protest. These subjects are both the leaders they lack and the players in the drama of black political history that the leadership spectacle necessarily pushes out of sight.Less
This chapter presents how curiosity, manifested in particular through parody, weds the conceptual work of contesting charisma to the playful questioning embedded in the formal workings of African American humor. At the turn of the twenty-first century, American popular culture witnessed an explosion of millennial refashionings of spectacular black political leadership, even as postmodern black fiction and film contested the scenario of charismatic black political leadership as the primal and primary mode of political belonging and performance in the post-civil rights black cultural repertoire. The chapter examines Paul Beatty’s novel The White Boy Shuffle and the film Barbershop as revisionist counterstories, whose characters embrace an intuitive way of seeing that grapples with those “phantom subjects” of civil rights protest. These subjects are both the leaders they lack and the players in the drama of black political history that the leadership spectacle necessarily pushes out of sight.
