Stephen Cushman
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469625331
- eISBN:
- 9781469625355
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469625331.003.0010
- Subject:
- History, American History: Civil War
Stephen Cushman extends Levin’s coverage with an examination of the Crater in recent fiction and film. Using Charles Frazier’s best-selling Cold Mountain (1997), Anthony Minghella’s cinematic version ...
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Stephen Cushman extends Levin’s coverage with an examination of the Crater in recent fiction and film. Using Charles Frazier’s best-selling Cold Mountain (1997), Anthony Minghella’s cinematic version of the novel (2003), Duane Schultz’s Glory Enough for All (1993), and Richard Slotkin’s The Crater (1980), Cushman, who is a poet and a historian, explores stylistic choices, differences between written and spoken language in the 19th century, the challenge and potential reward of mining historical sources to create fictional treatments, and the importance of audience. Cushman’s discussion of Slotkin’s handling of black characters and interweaving of historical, literary, and political sensibilities has implications far beyond the topic and texts of the essay.Less
Stephen Cushman extends Levin’s coverage with an examination of the Crater in recent fiction and film. Using Charles Frazier’s best-selling Cold Mountain (1997), Anthony Minghella’s cinematic version of the novel (2003), Duane Schultz’s Glory Enough for All (1993), and Richard Slotkin’s The Crater (1980), Cushman, who is a poet and a historian, explores stylistic choices, differences between written and spoken language in the 19th century, the challenge and potential reward of mining historical sources to create fictional treatments, and the importance of audience. Cushman’s discussion of Slotkin’s handling of black characters and interweaving of historical, literary, and political sensibilities has implications far beyond the topic and texts of the essay.
Sarah E. Turner
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479809769
- eISBN:
- 9781479893331
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479809769.003.0010
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This chapter analyzes the “new buddy movement” that pairs black female characters in supporting roles with white female leads in two Disney Channel shows, Shake It Up (2010–) and Good Luck Charlie ...
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This chapter analyzes the “new buddy movement” that pairs black female characters in supporting roles with white female leads in two Disney Channel shows, Shake It Up (2010–) and Good Luck Charlie (2010–). It suggests that Disney presents diversity in such a way that reifies the position and privilege of white culture and white cast members. Drawing on recent Pew Research Center reports that document income inequities along lines of race, the chapter suggests that viewers read these shows through a colorblind lens and see diversity without seeing (or understanding) difference. Keeping in mind the fact that television plays a central role in the articulation and construction of racialized identities in the United States, the chapter explores the impact of Disney's representational strategy on its children and tween viewing audience through Stuart Hall's theories of encoding and decoding.Less
This chapter analyzes the “new buddy movement” that pairs black female characters in supporting roles with white female leads in two Disney Channel shows, Shake It Up (2010–) and Good Luck Charlie (2010–). It suggests that Disney presents diversity in such a way that reifies the position and privilege of white culture and white cast members. Drawing on recent Pew Research Center reports that document income inequities along lines of race, the chapter suggests that viewers read these shows through a colorblind lens and see diversity without seeing (or understanding) difference. Keeping in mind the fact that television plays a central role in the articulation and construction of racialized identities in the United States, the chapter explores the impact of Disney's representational strategy on its children and tween viewing audience through Stuart Hall's theories of encoding and decoding.
Marvin McAllister
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807835081
- eISBN:
- 9781469602431
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807869062_mcallister.11
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This book concludes with Suzan-Lori Parks's playful appropriations of historical whiteness, which place her dramaturgy in the tradition of whiting up and provide more avenues for black bodies to ...
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This book concludes with Suzan-Lori Parks's playful appropriations of historical whiteness, which place her dramaturgy in the tradition of whiting up and provide more avenues for black bodies to complicate race onstage. In an explanatory and exploratory essay titled “An Equation for Black People Onstage,” Parks articulates a unique predicament for black characters and actors: “As African-Americans we have a history, a future, and a daily reality in which a confrontation with a White ruling class is a central feature. This reality makes life difficult.” In this brief assessment, the basic tension between America's racial hierarchies, African American performance, and stage Europeans is captured. Parks warns that insisting “Whitey' has to be present in Black drama because Whitey is an inextricable aspect of Black reality is like saying that every play has to have a murder in it.”Less
This book concludes with Suzan-Lori Parks's playful appropriations of historical whiteness, which place her dramaturgy in the tradition of whiting up and provide more avenues for black bodies to complicate race onstage. In an explanatory and exploratory essay titled “An Equation for Black People Onstage,” Parks articulates a unique predicament for black characters and actors: “As African-Americans we have a history, a future, and a daily reality in which a confrontation with a White ruling class is a central feature. This reality makes life difficult.” In this brief assessment, the basic tension between America's racial hierarchies, African American performance, and stage Europeans is captured. Parks warns that insisting “Whitey' has to be present in Black drama because Whitey is an inextricable aspect of Black reality is like saying that every play has to have a murder in it.”
Susan Prothro Wright
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781604734164
- eISBN:
- 9781621036050
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781604734164.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
This chapter puts forward the hypothesis that Charles Chesnutt attempted to publish his novel Paul Marchand, F.M.C. in 1921, with the goal of countering D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation. ...
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This chapter puts forward the hypothesis that Charles Chesnutt attempted to publish his novel Paul Marchand, F.M.C. in 1921, with the goal of countering D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation. Substantiating this hypothesis not only helps to answer questions about Chesnutt’s decision to submit a novel for publication so long after the publication of his final ill-fated novel, The Colonel’s Dream but also reveals the novel’s potential as a feasible challenge to Birth’s depictions of both white and black characters. In relation to this, it is important to note that Chesnutt’s political and literary activities parallel African-American activism during the racially turbulent political climate from 1906 until 1921, the year Chesnutt submitted Paul Marchand for publication.Less
This chapter puts forward the hypothesis that Charles Chesnutt attempted to publish his novel Paul Marchand, F.M.C. in 1921, with the goal of countering D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation. Substantiating this hypothesis not only helps to answer questions about Chesnutt’s decision to submit a novel for publication so long after the publication of his final ill-fated novel, The Colonel’s Dream but also reveals the novel’s potential as a feasible challenge to Birth’s depictions of both white and black characters. In relation to this, it is important to note that Chesnutt’s political and literary activities parallel African-American activism during the racially turbulent political climate from 1906 until 1921, the year Chesnutt submitted Paul Marchand for publication.
Stephanie Li
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- December 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199398881
- eISBN:
- 9780199398904
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199398881.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature, African-American Literature
Chapter 4 challenges the recent critical consensus that has emerged around Baldwin’s second novel. While many scholars identify David, the text’s narrator, as a black character in whiteface, I ...
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Chapter 4 challenges the recent critical consensus that has emerged around Baldwin’s second novel. While many scholars identify David, the text’s narrator, as a black character in whiteface, I analyze Giovanni’s Room as a sophisticated study of whiteness. David invents blackness in a world notably devoid of black characters in order to reject his homosexual desires. I argue that Giovanni and Joey, David’s two male sexual partners, are not black but are made figuratively black by David to secure his fragile relationship to whiteness. Baldwin does not tease readers with a racial masquerade. Rather it is David who plays this game of identity construction, for reasons that reveal his racial and sexual insecurities, not those of his creator. Conflicted between opposing desires for home and sexual pleasure, David manufactures an Africanist presence that comes to define all that he most fears and rejects in himself.Less
Chapter 4 challenges the recent critical consensus that has emerged around Baldwin’s second novel. While many scholars identify David, the text’s narrator, as a black character in whiteface, I analyze Giovanni’s Room as a sophisticated study of whiteness. David invents blackness in a world notably devoid of black characters in order to reject his homosexual desires. I argue that Giovanni and Joey, David’s two male sexual partners, are not black but are made figuratively black by David to secure his fragile relationship to whiteness. Baldwin does not tease readers with a racial masquerade. Rather it is David who plays this game of identity construction, for reasons that reveal his racial and sexual insecurities, not those of his creator. Conflicted between opposing desires for home and sexual pleasure, David manufactures an Africanist presence that comes to define all that he most fears and rejects in himself.
Craig R. Prentiss
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814707951
- eISBN:
- 9780814708408
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814707951.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This introductory chapter states that the book depicts black playwrights actively grappling with the role of religion in forming black identity before World War II. Early twentieth-century black ...
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This introductory chapter states that the book depicts black playwrights actively grappling with the role of religion in forming black identity before World War II. Early twentieth-century black playwrights constituted a highly educated and activist class of individuals more likely to be touched by the hand of modern humanism than by baptism of the Holy Spirit. Though most viewed theater as a tool for challenging African American stereotypes, the book argues that a majority of these playwrights also saw the stage as a place from which to combat the idea that an emotional, superstitious, irrational, and blindly faithful form of religious life was endemic to black character. In a Christian social order where the concept of soul is perceived as differentiating human beings from all other living things, chattel slavery brought with it the claim that Africans lacked this essential element of personhood.Less
This introductory chapter states that the book depicts black playwrights actively grappling with the role of religion in forming black identity before World War II. Early twentieth-century black playwrights constituted a highly educated and activist class of individuals more likely to be touched by the hand of modern humanism than by baptism of the Holy Spirit. Though most viewed theater as a tool for challenging African American stereotypes, the book argues that a majority of these playwrights also saw the stage as a place from which to combat the idea that an emotional, superstitious, irrational, and blindly faithful form of religious life was endemic to black character. In a Christian social order where the concept of soul is perceived as differentiating human beings from all other living things, chattel slavery brought with it the claim that Africans lacked this essential element of personhood.
Eric Saylor
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252036781
- eISBN:
- 9780252093890
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252036781.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, Opera
This chapter examines how race intersects with questions of “realism” and fate in Frederick Delius's Koanga, which features black characters as its protagonists as well as examples of African ...
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This chapter examines how race intersects with questions of “realism” and fate in Frederick Delius's Koanga, which features black characters as its protagonists as well as examples of African American folk music. Based on an episode from George Washington Cable's novel The Grandissimes, Koanga is a nineteenth-century story of love, jealousy, and betrayal centered on Koanga, an enslaved West African prince and voudon priest, and Palmyra, a quadroon maidservant. This chapter first provides a background on Koanga's genesis and textual variations before discussing its seeming contradiction: the dramatic portrayal of Koanga and Palmyra as a reflection of period beliefs about the Otherness of blacks; and its treatment of the exoticism of “blackness,” both physical and musical, as an attractive quality integral to achieving its dramatic and musical aims. It argues that Koanga revives many familiar tropes of racial exoticism and manifests troubling new resonances concerning questions of destiny and free will.Less
This chapter examines how race intersects with questions of “realism” and fate in Frederick Delius's Koanga, which features black characters as its protagonists as well as examples of African American folk music. Based on an episode from George Washington Cable's novel The Grandissimes, Koanga is a nineteenth-century story of love, jealousy, and betrayal centered on Koanga, an enslaved West African prince and voudon priest, and Palmyra, a quadroon maidservant. This chapter first provides a background on Koanga's genesis and textual variations before discussing its seeming contradiction: the dramatic portrayal of Koanga and Palmyra as a reflection of period beliefs about the Otherness of blacks; and its treatment of the exoticism of “blackness,” both physical and musical, as an attractive quality integral to achieving its dramatic and musical aims. It argues that Koanga revives many familiar tropes of racial exoticism and manifests troubling new resonances concerning questions of destiny and free will.
Michael T. Gilmore
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226294131
- eISBN:
- 9780226294155
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226294155.003.0014
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
This chapter reviews the literary works of Mark Twain, another refugee from the former Confederacy who settled for a time in Hartford, Connecticut. Twain both accepted and loathed this state of ...
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This chapter reviews the literary works of Mark Twain, another refugee from the former Confederacy who settled for a time in Hartford, Connecticut. Twain both accepted and loathed this state of affairs as a condition of his renown, and he turned it into a central theme of his fictions. The best of them—Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894)—dwell obsessively on the risk of verbal indiscretion and the fear of being found out. These novels contain some of the most famous black characters in American literature—Jim, Roxy, and Tom Driscoll—and the two books are widely studied for their insight into the problem of race after Reconstruction.Less
This chapter reviews the literary works of Mark Twain, another refugee from the former Confederacy who settled for a time in Hartford, Connecticut. Twain both accepted and loathed this state of affairs as a condition of his renown, and he turned it into a central theme of his fictions. The best of them—Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894)—dwell obsessively on the risk of verbal indiscretion and the fear of being found out. These novels contain some of the most famous black characters in American literature—Jim, Roxy, and Tom Driscoll—and the two books are widely studied for their insight into the problem of race after Reconstruction.
Timothy Havens
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814737200
- eISBN:
- 9780814759448
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814737200.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This book explores the globalization of African American television and the way in which foreign markets, programming strategies, and viewer preferences have influenced portrayals of African ...
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This book explores the globalization of African American television and the way in which foreign markets, programming strategies, and viewer preferences have influenced portrayals of African Americans on the small screen. Television executives have been notoriously slow to recognize the potential popularity of black characters and themes, both at home and abroad. As American television brokers increasingly seek revenues abroad, their assumptions about saleability and audience perceptions directly influence the global circulation of these programs, as well as their content. This book aims to reclaim the history of African American television circulation in an effort to correct and counteract this predominant industry lore. Based on interviews with television executives and programmers from around the world, as well as producers in the United States, the book traces the shift from an era when national television networks often blocked African American television from traveling abroad to the transnational, post-network era of today. While globalization has helped to expand diversity in African American television, particularly in regard to genre, it has also resulted in restrictions, such as in the limited portrayal of African American women in favor of attracting young male demographics across racial and national boundaries. The book underscores the importance of examining boardroom politics as part of racial discourse in the late modern era, when transnational cultural industries like television are the primary sources for dominant representations of blackness.Less
This book explores the globalization of African American television and the way in which foreign markets, programming strategies, and viewer preferences have influenced portrayals of African Americans on the small screen. Television executives have been notoriously slow to recognize the potential popularity of black characters and themes, both at home and abroad. As American television brokers increasingly seek revenues abroad, their assumptions about saleability and audience perceptions directly influence the global circulation of these programs, as well as their content. This book aims to reclaim the history of African American television circulation in an effort to correct and counteract this predominant industry lore. Based on interviews with television executives and programmers from around the world, as well as producers in the United States, the book traces the shift from an era when national television networks often blocked African American television from traveling abroad to the transnational, post-network era of today. While globalization has helped to expand diversity in African American television, particularly in regard to genre, it has also resulted in restrictions, such as in the limited portrayal of African American women in favor of attracting young male demographics across racial and national boundaries. The book underscores the importance of examining boardroom politics as part of racial discourse in the late modern era, when transnational cultural industries like television are the primary sources for dominant representations of blackness.
