Film 165B Race on Screen

Summer Session 2, 2018 TuTh 1:00PM-4:30PM (210 mins) Soc Sci 2 075

Instructor: Rana Jarbou, [email protected] 415-638-7621 Office hr: TuTh 11:00AM-12:00, or by appointment, Comm 139 TA: Erick Msumanje [email protected] Office hr: by appointment

Course description: How is race produced, represented and performed on the screen? In what ways do film, TV and digital media perpetuate racist discourses? How may we develop critical media practices and theories that challenge racist hegemony without pretending to be “color blind” and a-politically multi-cultural? Ultimately, how do we animate our work with (racial, gender/sexual and cultural) differences that are productive, empowering, rather than pigeonholing and prejudicial?

These are questions we will tackle by studying international screen culture through the lens of critical race theory. Students are encouraged to relate class materials to their everyday experiences and strategies of negotiation. This class hopes to promote critical consciousness and critical praxis.

Academic integrity policy: https://www.ue.ucsc.edu/academic_misconduct

Required textbooks: • Course reader (available in Baytree Bookstore) • Daniel Bernardi ed. Classic Hollywood, classic whiteness (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001) (accessible online via library)

Course requirements: • Attendance & participation 15% (2 unexcused absences, including screenings, entail a final grade of “F”) • Daily Canvas posting 20% • Take home midterm 20% • Pop quizzes 15% • Final paper 30%

Explanations of assignments: • Weekly (Daily for Summer Sessions) Canvas postings -- DUE by 8 pm on the day prior to the lecture day, 250-300 words (starting on 08/01). The postings should reflect your thoughts on the screened film and clips in relation to the assigned readings. You may provide a mini-argument regarding race-related issues mediated in the audiovisual materials with reference to the readings. In addition, you may pose questions and/or highlight places in readings as well as films that you would like the class to address collectively. Your postings may be used in lectures. • Final paper – instructions to be provided

WEEK 1 07/31 Orientation

Screening: Edward Said – Framed: The Politics of Stereotypes in News https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QYrAqrpshw Stuart Hall – Race, Gender, Class in the Media https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWP_N_FoW-I White Fragility in the Workplace https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPDpcYEdiOg Chinese detergent commercial Ripping off of Italian commercial http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3614152/You- thought-Chinese-advert-racist-wait-Italian-advert-inspired-it.html

Orientalism and Romancing Race Screening: The World of Suzie Wong (dir. Richard Quine 1960, 129 min. DVD5573)

Reading: • Gary W. McDonogh, Cindy Hing-Yuk Wong, “Orientalism Abroad: Hong Kong Readings of the The World of Suzie Wong,” in Bernardi ed., Ch. 10 • Piya Chatterjee, “De/Colonizing the Exotic: Teaching Asian Women in a US Classroom,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, Vol. 21, No. ½ (2000): 87 – 110 (READER)

08/2 Lecture/Discussion

Screening: M. Butterfly (dir. David Cronenberg 1993, 101 min. DVD7410)

Reading: • Dorinne K. Kondo, “‘M. Butterfly’: Orientalism, Gender, and a Critique of Essentialist Identity,” Cultural Critique, No. 16 (Autumn, 1990), pp. 5-29 (READER) • David Henry Hwang and John Louis DiGaetani, “‘M. Butterfly’: An Interview with David Henry Hwang,” TDR 33.3 (Autumn, 1989): 141-153 (READER)

WEEK 2 Orientalism Continued, Voyeurism & Discovery 08/07 Screening: Lawrence of Arabia (dir. David Lean 1962, 222 min. DVD9619)

Reading: • Engage: Lawrence of Arabia or Smith of the Desert? (T.E. Lawrence Studies) http://www.telstudies.org/discussion/film_tv_radio/lofa_or_sid_2.shtml • Ella Shohat, “Gender in Hollywood’s Orient,” in Middle East Report, No. 162, Lebanon’s War (Jan-Feb., 1990): pp. 40-42 (PDF) • Steven C. Caton, “Ch.5: An Anti-Imperialist, Orientalist Epic,” in Lawrence of Arabia: A Film’s Anthropology (1999): pp. 172-199 (accessible via online library, downloadable PDF)

08/09 Lecture/Discussion

Screening: Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life (dir. Merian C. Cooper 1925, 71 min. DVD9726)

Reel Bad Arabs Screening: Reel Bad Arabs (dir. Sut Jhally 2006, 51 mins) https://ucsc.kanopy.com/video/reel-bad-arabs-how-hollywood-vilifies-people

Reading: • Jack G. Shaheen, “Reel Bad Arabs: Introduction,” (2001): pp. 1-37 (PDF) • Hamid Naficy, “Lured by the East: Ethnographic and Expedition Films about Nomadic Tribes – The Case of Grass (1925)” Virtual Voyages: Cinema and Travel (Jan., 2006): pp. 117-138 (PDF)

WEEK 3 08/14 Lecture/Discussion

Screening: Aladdin clips This is not a Series/Homeland (prod. Laura Poitras 2015, 7-8 mins) https://fieldofvision.org/homeland-is-not-a-series Battle of Algiers (dir. Gillo Pontecorvo 1966, 122 mins) https://ucsc.kanopy.com/video/battle- algiers-0

Reading: • Laura Marks, “The Language of Terrorism,” Frameworks: The Journal of Cinema and Media, No. 38/39 (1992), pp. 64-73 (URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44111693) & TBD • Jack Shaheen, “Aladdin: Animated Racism” in Cinéaste, Vol. 20, No. 1 (1993): 49 (URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41687300?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents) • Mark Parker, “The Battle of Algiers,” Film Quarterly Vol. 60, No. 4 (Summer 2007): 62- 66 (URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/fq.2007.60.4.62?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents)

TAKE HOME MIDTERM EXAM (due Aug. 21)

08/16 Lecture/Discussion Race and gender on cross-cultural screen Screening: Flying down to Rio (dir. Thorton Freeland 1933, 80 min. DVD5554) Fist of Fury (dir. Lo Wei 1972 107 min., DVD3209)

Reading: • Joanne Hershfield, “Dolores del Rio, Uncomfortably Real: The Economics of Race in Hollywood’s Latin American Musicals,” in Bernardi ed. Ch. 7 • Mary Beltrán “Dolores Del Rio, the First “Latin Invasion,” and Hollywood’s Transition to Sound,” Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies Volume 30, Number 1 (Spring 2005): 55-85 (READER)

WEEK 4 08/21 Lecture/discussion (Double lecture on Flying Down to Rio and Fist of Fury)

Screening: Week-End in Havana (dir. Walter Lang, 1941, DVD3883) clip

Reading: • Sundiata K Cha-Jua, “Black Audiences, Blaxploitation and Kung Fu Films, and Challenges to White Celluloid Masculinity” (2008) (READER) • Yvonne Tasker, “Fists of Fury: Discourses of Race and Masculinity in the Martial Arts Cinema,” Asian cinemas: a reader and guide (READER)

Racial masquerade 08/23 Screening: First Yank into Tokyo (dir. Gordon Douglas 87 min. VT1826) Yellow Face (based on DHH’s play of the same title) (PART 1&2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Krlv9cyn9Hc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at8wAKlZEeg

Reading: • Karla Rae Fuller, “Creatures of Good and Evil: Caucasian Portrayals of the Chinese and Japanese during World War II,” in Bernardi ed. Ch. 13 • Taylor Michelle Wycoff, “Redefining ‘Yellow’: Questioning the Asian American Identity in David Henry Hwang’s Yellow Face,” in Praxis: The Journal for Theatre, Performance Studies, and Criticism, 2014/15 Issue (PDF) Optional: • Yiman Wang, “The Art of Screen Passing: Anna May Wong’s Yellow Yellowface Performance in the Art Deco Era” Camera Obscura (2005) 20(3(60)): 159-191 (PDF)

WEEK 5 08/28 Lecture/Discussion

Screening: Jedda (dir. Charles Chauvel 1955, Australia, 85 min. DVD8086)

Reading: • Nicholas Sammond, Chandra Mukerji, “What You Are … I Wouldn’t Eat”: Ethnicity, Whiteness, & Performing ‘the Jew’ in Hollywood’s Golden Age,” in Bernardi ed., Ch. 1 • Benjamin Miller, “The Mirror of Whiteness: Blackface in Charles Chauvel’s Jedda,” in JASAL (Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian) (2007)

Dubbing & Performing Race Screening: Illusions (dir. Julie Dash 1983, 34 min. DVD7168)

08/30 Lecture/Discussion

Screening: Music videos: “The Story of OJ” by Jay-Z – versus – “This is America” by Childish Gambino Clips: Black Panther (dir. Ryan Coogler) – versus – Get Out (dir. Jordan Peele) Twilight Los Angeles (based on Anna Deavere Smith’s 1992 play of the same title) (dir. Marc Levin 90 min.) VT8310

Reading: • S. V. Hartman and Farah Jasmine Griffin, “Are You as Colored as that Negro?: The Politics of Being Seen in Julie Dash’s Illusions,” Black American Literature Forum 25.2 (Summer 1991): 361-373 (READER) • Cherise Smith, “Other-Oriented” Performance: Anna Deavere Smith and Twilight: Los Angeles,” in Enacting Others (2011): pp. 135-188 (READER) • Judylyn S. Ryan, “Outing the Black Feminist Filmmaker in Julie Dash's Illusions,” in Signs 30.1 (Autumn 2004): 1319-1344 (READER) • Teresa Botelho, “The Dramatization of Cross-Identity Voicing and the Poetics of Ambiguity,” in Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies (HJEAS), Vol. 15, No. 1, (Spring, 2009), pp. 79-97 (PDF)

**Choose 1 film (Illusions/Twilight Los Angeles), 2 readings for journal posting

Wrap-up

SEP. 3, FINAL PAPER DUE AT 4PM