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2006 Multiculturalism Must Come to a Truce: Hollywood and the Perpetual Browning of the Nation Belle Harrell

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THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

MULTICULTURALISM MUST COME TO A TRUCE: HOLLYWOOD AND

THE PERPETUAL BROWNING OF THE NATION

By

BELLE HARRELL

A Dissertation submitted to the Interdisciplinary Program in the Humanities in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2006

The members of the Committee approve the Dissertation of Belle Harrell defended on April 5, 2006.

Maxine D. Jones Professor Directing Dissertation

R. B. Bickley Outside Committee Member

Neil Jumonville Committee Member

Maricarmen Martínez Committee Member

Approved:

David F. Johnson, Director, Interdisciplinary Program in the Humanities

Joseph Travis, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences

The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members.

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This dissertation is dedicated to my sister and my best friend – Heidi Harrell. Janie is fortunate to have her as a mother.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to acknowledge those professors whose influence is reflected in this work: Dr. Bruce Bickley, Dr. V.J. Conner, Dr. Eugene Crook, Dr. Maxine D. Jones, Dr. Neil Jumonville, and Dr. Maricarmen Martínez. Not only have you made me a better student and a better teacher, but a better person.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ...... vi

MULITICULTURALISM IN REVIEW ...... 1

THE HUMAN STAIN IS MOST CERTAINLY HATRED: AN ANALYSIS OF THE HUMAN CONDITION……...... 18

LOVE, SEX, AND DR. KINSEY...... 42

SPANGLISH: A FILM THAT FAILS TO LIVE UP TO ITS NAME...... 63

COMING TOGETHER: NO NEED FOR CRASHES...... 83

REFERENCES ...... 106

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 118

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ABSTRACT

In 1991 Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. wrote The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society. In his work, Schlesinger attacks multiculturalism, asserting, “the cult of ethnicity has had bad consequences,” and that “its underlying philosophy is that America is not a nation of individuals at all but a nation of groups, that ethnicity is the defining experience for Americans, that ethnic ties are permanent and indelible, and that division into ethnic communities establishes the basic structure of American society and the basic meaning of American history” (20). Schlesinger believes that the nation has indeed become too tribal. American history has always been characterized by two enduring forces: the community versus individualism. Schlesinger, however, alleges that multiculturalism puts too much emphasis on the idea of community and forsakes American individualism; specifically, he feels that multiculturalism supports ethnic communities rather than a national community. A national community, according to Schlesinger, is one comprised of individuals devoted to the ideals of democracy. He argues, “For in the end, the cult of ethnicity defines the republic not as a polity of individuals but as a congeries of distinct and inviolable cultures” (122). “If the republic now turns away from Washington’s old goal of ‘one people,’ what is its future? – disintegration of the national community, apartheid, Balkanization, tribalization?” (Schlesinger 124) A year after Schlesinger’s book was published, on April 29, 1992, rioting erupted in Los Angeles when the police officers who beat Rodney King were acquitted. The L.A riots seemed to indicate that Schlesinger was right: Americans had become too tribal, always pitting one group against another. In this case, Hispanics, African Americans, and Korean Americans were fighting each other. Consequently, after the L.A riots, many historians and public intellectuals began exploring the concept of multiculturalism in the post-Rodney King era. The question needed to be asked, just as Schlesinger had done only a year before, was multiculturalism working? Rodney King demanded, “Please, can we get along here,” and many took his request seriously (Takaki 4). What had gone wrong? The 1960s counterculture is responsible for our modern day concept of multiculturalism, but had their efforts gone astray? The counterculture of

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the early 1960s, as opposed to the more radical and separatist counterculture of the later 1960s, emphasized peace, love, and sharing; they valued communal living, but they envisioned a community where everyone, despite their cultural differences, interacted together. Are Americans really celebrating diversity now and respecting one another on equal terms as the counterculture had originally hoped? Or has the United States become a nation characterized by exclusion and separatism? Historian Ronald Takaki wrote A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America after and in response to the L.A riots. Takaki addresses the anti-multiculturalism fever sweeping the nation at the time, popularized by Schlesinger, Allan Bloom, Pat Buchanan, E.D. Hirsch, and others. Takaki notes: “Such a backlash is defining our diversity as a ‘cultural war,’ a conflict between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ Reflecting a traditional Eurocentrism that remains culturally hegemonic, this resistance is what is really driving the ‘disuniting of America’ ” (427). Takaki then suggests: “Today, what we need to do is to stop denying our wholeness as members of humanity as well as one nation” (428). This dissertation, then, will examine the role of multiculturalism in the United States, while at the same time, re-examining the notion of an American melting pot. This work will not attack multiculturalism, but rather explore its state and nature in the nation today. Neoconservatives like Michael Novak, who has even composed a list entitled “Nine Perversions of Multiculturalism,” are simply wrong when they unfairly attack the doctrine (xvi). No doubt the country needed a healthy dose of multiculturalism in order to move its citizens beyond feelings of prejudice, racism, xenophobia, and homophobia. Thus, multiculturalism is a valuable concept that has indeed improved how Americans view and treat one another; it has taught the nation to celebrate diversity, not shy away from it. But many who have written on the subject in the last few years argue that Americans need to re-evaluate the topic, and this dissertation will address their concerns. Moreover, it will do so through the medium of film. Maricarmen Martínez notes, “There is a way for each individual American to interrogate the nation’s practices of inclusion and exclusion: Question representations” (vii). She adds, “Human identities are fixed by the way the

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nation tells its story – represents itself – in news media, textbooks, novels, music, art, and of course, in the movies” (vii). Recently, many films have been produced which can be labeled multicultural. They have been made in an attempt to help Americans deal with and digest diversity. But are they really celebrating diversity? And if they do celebrate diversity, what is their approach? Film indeed not only shapes but represents American culture, and the following work will explore representations of race, class, gender, and sexuality within Hollywood cinema. Is Hollywood continuing to divide Americans when it comes to race, class, gender, and sexuality, or are they finally attempting to unite the nation? It is especially important to study representations of minorities on the big screen at this juncture because as a New York Times article recently revealed, the number of ethnic and racial minorities in the United States is dramatically increasing. Robert Pear writes, “The nation as a whole is moving in the direction of its two most populous states, California and Texas, where members of racial and ethnic minorities account for more than half the population” (16). Pear adds, “Minorities accounted for about 40 percent of the population in each of five other states: Maryland, Mississippi, Georgia, New York and Arizona,” (16). Moreover, Cecilia Muñoz, vice- president of the National Council of La Raza, a Latino civil rights group, points out, “This great diversity and constant demographic change make us a dynamic country. They do not [should not] cause unrest or commotion. They are part of a process that’s intrinsically American” (16). The following chapters will define and review multiculturalism and then examine whether Hollywood cinema has embraced this “intrinsically American” process of growth and change.

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MULTICULTURALISM IN REVIEW

Arthur Schlesinger and Ronald Takaki, among many others who have written on the subject of multiculturalism, point to Herman Melville as one of the first Americans to pursue the topic. All one has to do is look at the multicultural crew depicted onboard the Pequod in Moby Dick to see that this is indeed the case. Melville’s work celebrates diversity, and this is especially illustrated through Ishmael’s relationship with Queequeg and the rest of the crew. After hearing rumors of cannibalism, Ishmael is at first scared and afraid of the foreign Queequeg. But after getting to know his new friend, Ishmael remarks, “yet see how elastic our stiff prejudices grow when love once comes to bend them” (Melville, 60). In fact, Melville’s entire novel is full of passages which are intended to shed light on prejudice and fear of the proverbial Other. Not only does Melville allude to racism, but religious persecution as well. Consider the following statements: “…a man can be honest in any sort of skin” (23); “…the man’s a human being just as I am; he has just as much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him” (26); “Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian” (26); “…but, the truth is, these savages have an innate sense of delicacy, say what you will; it is marvelous how essentially polite they are” (30); “I saw that under the mask of these half humorous inuendoes, this old seaman, as an insulated Quakerish Nantucketer, was full of his insular prejudices, and rather distrustful of all aliens, unless they hailed from Cape Cod or the Vineyard” (79); and finally, “My dear fellow being, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness” (456). Perhaps, however, the most important and enlightening passage of all can be found at the end of the novel: They were one man, not thirty. For as the one ship that held them all; though it was put together of all contrasting things – oak, and maple, and pine wood; iron, and pitch, and hemp – yet all these ran into each other in the one concrete hull, which shot on so, all the individualities of the crew,

1 this man’s valor, that man’s fear; guilt and guiltlessness, all varieties were welded into oneness… (606) This notion of oneness that Melville speaks of is commonly referred to as the American melting pot, made famous in Israel Zangwill’s 1908 play by the same name, The Melting-Pot, which tells the story of a young, Russian, Jewish composer who falls in love with a Russian, Christian girl. After the concept of multiculturalism began to flourish in post 1960s America, Zangwill’s play and the idea of an American melting pot became unpopular with many Americans; it was considered outdated because it glorified 100 percent Americanism, which for most of the nineteenth century meant being white, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant. However, Zangwill’s work suggests no such thing. Melville, writing in the mid-nineteenth century, and Zangwill, writing in the early twentieth century, both seem to endorse the same cosmopolitan postethnic perspective that David Hollinger, Richard Rodriguez, Debra Dickerson, and John McWhorter are currently writing about. Rather than condemning the idea of an American melting pot, what needs to be reconsidered is the concept of 100 percent Americanism. As mentioned earlier, throughout most of American history, 100 percent Americanism has been equated with being white, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant (WASP). Because of the attention devoted to multiculturalism since the revolutionary 1960s, however, society now recognizes African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Asian-Americans, Native-Americans, and other such hyphenates. But are these various ethnic groups viewed as fully American? Or are they still considered as the aforementioned proverbial Other? Schlesinger and others have noted that in some cases, multiculturalism has led to tribalism, feelings of separatism, and to the “disuniting of America.” In other words, more emphasis is placed on one’s race and ethnicity rather than their American citizenship. According to Schlesinger, the question needs to be asked: When an African-American man walks into the room, do we first see him as black rather than the fellow American citizen that he rightfully is? Thus, do American citizens now need to focus their efforts on uniting the nation? This is exactly the subject of David Hollinger’s 1995 book Postethnic America. In his

2 work, Hollinger asks: “Does the United States have an ethos of its own, or is the nation best seen as a container of cultures defined largely by ethno-racial communities?” (79) Hollinger proposes a vision of cosmopolitanism that could unite the country rather than continuing to fragment it. But Hollinger is careful to distinguish cosmopolitanism from universalism. “We can distinguish a universalist will to find common ground from a cosmopolitan will to engage human diversity,” notes Hollinger (84). He then adds, “cosmopolitanism is defined by an additional element not essential to universalism itself: recognition, acceptance, and eager exploration of diversity” (84). Thus, just like multiculturalists, cosmopolitanists celebrate diversity, while universalists, as their name implies, seek unity. Hollinger also distinguishes cosmopolitanism from pluralism. He supports cosmopolitanism rather than pluralism, noting, “cosmopolitanism can be casual about community building and community maintenance and tends to seek voluntary affiliations of wide compass,” while “pluralism promotes affiliations on the narrower grounds of shared history and is more quick to see reasons for drawing boundaries between communities” (85). According to Hollinger, unlike cosmopolitanism, pluralism still endorses a sense of tribalism. “Cosmopolitanism is more suspicious than is pluralism of the potential for conformist pressures within the communities celebrated by pluralists,” adds Hollinger, “while pluralism is more suspicious than is cosmopolitanism of the variousness and lack of apparent structure in the wider world celebrated by cosmopolitans” (86). Neil Jumonville notes in “Who Owns Pluralism?” “…pluralist values encourage decentralized groups, not individuals…” (1B). Cosmopolitanism, on the other hand, emphasizes individuality to a greater extent. John Higham has criticized the concept of cultural pluralism, pointing out that it has given way to “a new particularism, which encourages a heightened solidarity within any segment of the population that can define itself as somehow distinct” (Gleason 39). Higham and others argue that pluralism “has ceased to be a policy of intergroup relations” (Gleason 39). Philip Gleason adds, “Another way of illustrating the slipperiness of pluralism as a concept is to ask what kind of differences between groups constitute the grounds on which they may be said to be pluralized” (39). “As aspects of

3 ethnic culture have been eroded by assimilation,” notes Gleason, “the grounds of pluralism have become progressively more elusive” (39). Horace Kallen was the first to address the issue of cultural pluralism. In his 1915 essay entitled “Democracy Versus the Melting-Pot,” Kallen stressed that the U.S should celebrate diversity more. Kallen’s work was a reaction to Zangwill’s play and the concept of an American melting pot. Kallen was vehemently anti-assimilationist, and he “emphasized the integrity and autonomy of each descent-defined group;” but, as Hollinger notes, “Kallen’s pluralism was defined less sharply as a positive program than a negative reaction to conformist versions of the melting pot” (92). Kallen, like so many others, also appears to have misinterpreted the message of Zangwill’s play because nowhere in the script, as pointed out earlier, does Zangwill suggest assimilation. Zangwill never even mentions the word in his play. Justice William O. Douglas addressed this issue when defending Zangwill’s melting pot in DeFunis v. Odegeard (1974). Douglas proclaimed that the melting pot had not been “designed to homogenize people, making them uniform in consistency…It is a figure of speech that depicts the wide diversities tolerated by the First Amendment under one flag” (Whitfield 53). Ralph Ellison also noted, “the melting pot concept was never so simplistic or abstract as current arguments would have it” (Gleason 32). And Werner Sollors has written several essays as well in defense of the melting pot (Gleason 32). The importance of Kallen’s work, though, should not go unnoticed. His celebration of diversity is indeed noteworthy and was groundbreaking at the time. Those who supported Kallen include Jane Addams, Louis Brandeis, and John Dewey; although, Dewey did warn Kallen “against the danger of endorsing ‘segregation’ and of promoting a program whereby traditional cultural differences would be too rigidly ‘fastened upon’ people” (Hollinger 93). Although, perhaps Kallen’s most important supporter was Randolph Bourne, who acknowledged Kallen as the inspiration for his 1916 essay “Trans-National America.” Nevertheless, Hollinger is quick to point out the differences between Kallen and Bourne’s essays, noting that Bourne’s essay is more cosmopolitan in nature than is Kallen’s. Hollinger states:

4 Although Bourne saw himself as an ally of Kallen’s against the proponents of forced assimilation and Anglo-Saxon cultural arrogance, the drift of his argument was actually quite different from Kallen’s. While Kallen stressed the autonomy and persistence of the different cultures brought to America by distinctive immigrant groups, Bourne emphasized the dynamic mixing that would change the immigrants as well as the descendants of the Pilgrims and the Founding Fathers. (94) In the book Identity, Community, and Pluralism in American Life, published in 1997, the editors use the term cosmopolitan to describe Bourne’s work. They note, “Bourne offered as an antidote to this dreary world of sameness his own vision of cultural pluralism: a cosmopolitan America in which difference was not feared but highly valued and encouraged” (15). Hollinger explains that until now, there has been little need to distinguish between pluralism and cosmopolitanism. The ideas of Kallen and Bourne were used simultaneously throughout the twentieth century to fight nativism, intolerance, and racism. But now, Hollinger feels it is essential to define the difference between the two. Hollinger notes, “The United States Supreme Court’s rejection of the separate-but- equal standard in 1954 was an invitation not to difference-asserting pluralism but to engagement, if not intimacy, across the color line” (98). Thus, during the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, cultural pluralism was gradually overshadowed and eventually replaced by multiculturalism. According to Hollinger, though, multiculturalism places an even greater “…interest in maintaining the integrity of ethno-racial communities…” because multiculturalists tend to be skeptics of mainstream society and prefer the periphery, which “…presents itself as a source of potentially countervailing cultural power” (99). Consequently, in some instances, multiculturalism has created a strong sense of separatism. Hollinger also points out that cultural pluralism never had much of an impact on mainstream society; it was primarily a topic for discussion in academic circles only. Multiculturalism, on the other hand, has touched every facet of our lives today; Americans have been trained to be politically correct. But Hollinger claims that the success of multiculturalism has led, unfortunately, to tribalism, ethnocentrism and

5 identity politics. He feels, just as the title of his book indicates, that Americans need to move beyond multiculturalism and towards a cosmopolitan postethnic perspective. Hollinger’s postethnic perspective does not deny the benefits of group affiliation nor the importance of a strong sense of community, but rather “a postethnic perspective recognizes that most individuals live in many circles simultaneously and that the actual living of any individual life entails a shifting division of labor between the several we’s of which the individual is a part” (106). “A postethnic perspective recognizes the psychological value and political function of bounded groups of affiliation,” writes Hollinger, “but it resists rigidification of the ascribed distinctions between persons that universalists and cosmopolitanists have so long sought to diminish” (107). Hollinger further distinguishes multiculturalism from postethnicity, writing, “multiculturalism breeds an enthusiasm for specific, traditional cultures that can sometimes mask a provinciality from which individuals are eager to escape through new, out-group affiliations” (107). While postethnicity, points out Hollinger, “projects a more diverse basis for diversity than a multiplicity of ethnocentrisms can provide” (107). Hollinger’s postethnic perspective liberates individuals and allows them to choose their communities and group affiliations rather than be assigned to them. “A postethnic perspective,” notes Hollinger, “denies neither history nor biology – nor the need for affiliations – but it does deny that history and biology provide a set of clear orders for the affiliations we are to make” (119). In an article published in the Stanford Law Review in December of 2001, Madhavi Sunder addresses this very same issue. While examining “the law’s current approach to cultural conflicts,” Sunder defines the difference between “cultural survival” and “cultural dissent” (2 of 70). He notes: “Cultural survival” measures often end up impeding internal reform efforts to contest discriminatory or repressive cultural norms. The cultural survival approach reinforces old notions of imposed identity over new normative visions of identity as choice. A “cultural dissent” approach, in contrast, recognizes that cultures are changing, in some ways for the better. By acknowledging plurality within culture, this approach

6 facilitates a normative vision of identity in which individuals can choose among many ways of living within a culture. (2 of 70) In conclusion, Sunder writes: Current law is premised on an outmolded world view of culture that posits and normatively prefers pluralism across groups to pluralism within them. Neither legal doctrine nor legal theory adequately addresses the interests of individuals who seek both to retain cultural membership and to pursue freedom from discrimination and repression within their cultural communities. The failure of law to address these claims is significant. In the modern world, despite ever more options, individuals often choose to remain within their cultural groups. Yet they are increasingly refusing to take their cultures lying down. Rejecting old notions of imposed identity, more and more, individuals want reason, choice, and autonomy within their cultural communities. They want culture on their own terms. (27 of 70). In Liberty of Strangers, published in 2005, Desmond King, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of American Government at the University of Oxford and Professorial Fellow of Nuffield College, criticizes cosmopolitan postethnicity. King discusses the pitfalls of “one people nationalism,” or as he refers to it – “melting pot individualism” (10). Writing in defense of ethnic and racial affiliations, King asserts that “groups are now a necessary condition of American nationhood and constitute the basis for the sense of community necessary to its renewal” (10). King criticizes Hollinger’s work, noting, “The expectation that a process equivalent to a melting-pot will drive all Americans into a cosmopolitan postethnic identity in which the lingering commitments of race, ethnicity, or national background have vanished is fanciful” (170). King favors post- multiculturalism rather than postethnicity, and he defines post-multiculturalism as “the wide acknowledgement of group distinctions combined with a state struggling to ensure that government policies do not accentuate hierarchical divisions among groups based on race, ethnicity, and national background, a struggle which is rich in historical connotations and which can no longer presume a teleological narrative toward melting pot individualism” (167). He notes that “post-multiculturalism is not the same as

7 postethnic cosmopolitanism since postethnicity assumes the dissolution of the group ties which we have seen remain central to how Americans understand their fellow citizens, perceive their society, and above all perceive new arrivals” (171). However, King appears to misunderstand Hollinger’s definition of postethnicity. As noted earlier, Hollinger never denies the benefits of group affiliations; he simply believes “individuals should be allowed to affiliate or disaffiliate with their own communities of descent to an extent that they choose, while affiliating with whatever non-descent communities are available and appealing to them” (116). Thus, Hollinger’s postethnicity lies somewhere in the middle of the melting pot/multiculturalism debate. Supporting this theory, historian Lawrence Fuchs notes in his review of Postethnic America, “Hollinger calls such a vision ‘postethnic’ to distinguish himself from pluralists who advocate hard group boundaries on the one hand, and melting pot liberals on the other” (84). Therefore, to label Hollinger’s vision as “the triumph of individualism and the erosion of groups” is too simplistic (King 7). This fact is best illustrated in the writing of both Richard Rodriguez and Debra Dickerson. Although neither of them ever use Hollinger’s catch phrase in their work, they do indeed endorse postethnicity. Richard Rodriguez actually wrote his first autobiography 13 years before Hollinger’s Postethnic America. But Rodriguez’s life story, which he tells through the course of three books, proves Hollinger’s thesis to be correct. In his work, Rodriguez focuses on his own cross-culturalization and cross-cultural experiences. In a 2005 interview on NPR, Rodriquez states that “mixture is human” and “impurity is thrilling.” Brown, the title of Rodriguez’s latest autobiography, is not about the pigment of his skin, but, rather, about the future of the United States; “brown” refers to the mixing and impurity of America. Rodriguez proclaims in the preface of his book, “I write about race in America in hopes of undermining the notion of race in America” (xi). Rodriguez notes the browning of the nation and celebrates the fact. He asserts: I think brown marks a reunion of peoples, an end to ancient wanderings. Rival cultures and creeds conspire with Spring to create children of a beauty, perhaps of a harmony, previously unknown. Or long forgotten. (xiii)

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Rodriguez resents tribalism, identity politics, and the liberal desire to “organize diversity” (39). He points out that in bookstores his own books are usually placed in the Hispanic literature section – and then asks why. His work is an American story, one that speaks to everyone. Why should it simply be relegated to the Hispanic literature section, or even referred to as gay literature, as it is often mistakenly labeled because he himself is gay? Rodriguez perceives himself first and foremost as American, and he wants his work to be placed among the shelves of his American contemporaries, not segregated from them because of his ethnicity and sexual orientation. Rodriguez complains in Brown: The liberal-hearted who run the newspapers and the university English departments and organize the bookstores have turned literature into well- meaning sociology. Thus do I get invited by the editor at some magazine to review your gay translation of a Colombian who has written a magical- realist novel. Trust me, there has been little magical realism in my life since my first trip to Disneyland. (39). And while discussing a paper that he once presented in Tuscon, Rodriguez notes: My reading was scheduled for the six-thirty slot by the University of Arizona. A few hundred people showed up – old more than young; mostly brown [this time, referring to race]. I liked my “them,” in any case, for coming to listen, postponing their dinners. In the middle of one of my paragraphs, a young man stood to gather his papers, then retreated up the aisle, pushed open the door at the back of the auditorium. In the trapezoid of lobby-light thus revealed, I could see a crowd was forming for the eight o’clock reading – a lesbian poet. Then the door closed, resealed the present; I continued to read, but wondered to myself: Why couldn’t I get the lesbians for an hour? And the lesbian poet serenade my Mexican audience? (39) Throughout Brown, Rodriguez explains not only the reality, but the beauty of a brown America. Rodriguez explains his preference of the term Hispanic rather than Latino, noting, “To call oneself Hispanic is to admit a relationship to Latin America in

9 English” (110). He adds: “Soy Hispanic is a brown assertion” (110). Rodriguez also explains that we do not speak English in the United States, but American. In the NPR interview mentioned earlier, Rodriguez proclaims that “the languages of the world join on the American tongue.” “Even before our rebellion against England,” writes Rodriguez in Brown, “our tongue tasted of Indian – succotash, succotash, we love to say it; Mississippi, we love to spell” (111). Takaki also addresses this issue in A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America, pointing out that even the simple term okay originates from the Choctaw word oke, meaning “it is so” (12). In addition, Takaki notes that American cowboys not only learned many new skills needed to survive on the range from Mexican vaqueros, but also borrowed words and phrases from them, such as lasso from lazo and stampede from estampida. Rodriguez points out the irony of hearing people discuss how different the cultures of Mexican Americans, Native Americans, African Americans, and Asian Americans are, when they do so by speaking the very same language, which, as noted above, is not English but uniquely American. He points to our language as a symbol of browning, and Rodriguez feels impurity is beautiful – brown is beautiful. Addressing tribalism, Rodriguez states: “When Americans organize into subgroups, it should be with an eye to merging with the whole, not remaining separate” (128). After all, he adds: “What was the point of the Negro Civil Rights movement of the early twentieth century, if not integration” (128)? As he points out in Days of Obligation, “To be an American is to belong to black history” (170). “There is a discernible culture, a river, a thread, connecting Thomas Jefferson to Lucille Ball to Malcolm X to Sitting Bull” (172), writes Rodriguez. He contends that, “To argue for a common culture is not to propose an exclusionary culture or static culture” (170). Nevertheless, Rodriguez, like David Hollinger, does not deny the benefits of group affiliations. Rodriguez never renounces his Mexican heritage, although many have accused him of doing so. He, in fact, dedicates his first book in honor of his Mexican parents. But Rodriguez also identifies with other elements of society. In the NPR interview, Rodriguez tells Tony Cox that he does not have “a clear cut identity.” In Brown, he describes himself as a “queer Catholic Indian Spaniard at home in a temperate Chinese city in a fading blond state in a post-Protestant nation” (35). Rodriguez chooses

10 to move among many cultures or tribes, and he emphasizes his use of the word among rather than between because between should be used when referring to two persons, things, or ideas, while among is used for three or more. Writing in defense of community, Rodriguez notes: Americans are so individualistic, they do not realize their individualism is a communally derived value. The American I is deconstructed for me by Paolo, an architect who was raised in Bologna: “You Americans are not truly individualistic, you merely are lonely. In order to be individualistic, one must have a strong sense of oneself within a group.” (The “we” is a precondition for saying “I.”) Americans spend all their lives looking for a community: a chatroom, a church, a support group, a fetish magazine, a book club, a class action suit. (200) But Rodriguez then claims: …illusions become real when we think they are real and act accordingly. Because Americans thought themselves free of plural pronouns, they began to act as free agents, thus to recreate history. Individuals drifted away from tribe or color or ‘hood or hometown or card of explanation, where everyone knew who they were…Americans thus extended the American community by acting so individualistically, so anonymously. (200) Rodriguez also discusses the erosion of borders in Brown. Ethnic, religious, sexual and other such illusionary borders simply do not hold anymore. Keep in mind his own personal life: Rodriguez is a devout Catholic who is gay. His Catholicism does not stop him from embracing his homosexuality. Appropriately enough, Rodriguez ends Brown by quoting Whitman: “of every hue and caste am I,” which ultimately seems to be the real meaning behind an American melting pot (230). In fact, perhaps Zangwill’s play should have been named The Browning-Pot. The word “melting” scares many multiculturalists because it suggests absorption and assimilation, and many feel that minorities would be pressured to conform to the dominant culture – white American culture. Zangwill, however, had no such idea in mind when writing his play. Both Zangwill and Rodriguez envision a society based on

11 love. In The Melting-Pot, Zangwill writes: “Fires of hate, not fires of love. That is what melts” (96). While in Brown, Rodriguez asserts “love conquers all” and “by brown I mean love” (203 & 225). Zangwill uses the melting pot as an analogy for the future of America, while Rodriguez declares, “America is fated to recognize itself as intersection – no, nothing so plain as intersection – as coil, pretzel, Gordian knot with a wagging tail” (192). Both similes serve the same purpose; they portray the browning of America. Moreover, Philip Gleason is quick to point out in Speaking of Diversity, “the melting process…differs considerably from the melting pot” (34). Within the melting pot, individuality is still maintained. This is the subject of Debra Dickerson’s work as well. Her latest book, published in 2004, is entitled The End of Blackness. Dickerson, just like Rodriguez in Brown, “writes about race in America in hopes of undermining the notion of race in America” (Rodriguez xi). Both Rodriguez and Dickerson are not afraid to wander away from the tribe, and neither feel that race should be used to “organize diversity” (Brown 39). Dickerson, just like Rodriguez, is very proud of her heritage; she also dedicates her first book to both of her African American parents. While Dickerson does not deny being black, she does not reject her brownness either (using Rodriguez’s definition of the word), which is why she not only dedicates the same book mentioned above to her black parents but to the United States Air Force as well, who, she claims, “aimed me high” and “let me go” (Dickerson served in the Air Force for several years). Dickerson’s brownness is best reflected in the last chapter of her first book, appropriately entitled An American Story. Dickerson remarks: But at Harvard Law School, it became clear to me that I had grafted my Southern Baptist work ethic and hardscrabble determination onto the opportunities for which my progenitors deprived themselves. On their backs, I had transformed myself into that which they could only dream of – a Harvard trained, world-traveled, neurotic attorney turned writer with a Gold Card who dated interracially but had the home training to be ambivalent about it, who would rather have eaten cornbread and collards than sushi, rather have listened to gospel than hip-hop, and comforted by the thought. But whose favorite food, next to fried chicken and mustard

12 greens, is Vietnamese. Who loves classical music and opera as well as the blues. I had become a fully realized America. I will no longer be denied. But then, I no longer expected to be. (278) Dickerson is certainly proud of her black heritage, but it does not define who she is, as the above paragraph indicates. In The End of Blackness, Dickerson urges black Americans to “live as autonomous individuals with voluntary group identification,” just as Hollinger does in Postethnic America (15). Robin D.G. Kelley, Professor of Anthropology and African American Studies at Columbia University, addresses the same issue when he writes about his mother in an essay entitled “Finding the Strength to Love and Dream.” “She wanted us to visualize a more expansive, fluid, ‘cosmopolitan’ definition of blackness, to teach us that we are not merely inheritors of a culture but its makers,” writes Kelley (B7). Furthermore, Dickerson reminds us, “Martin Luther King Jr. fought for inclusion in the dominant culture, not to have his culture made parallel (20). “Blacks must surrender themselves to America,” Dickerson claims in her work, because they are America; they should not allow themselves to reside on the periphery, nor should anyone place them there (25). She writes: “Every American is part Yankee, part backwoodsman and Indian, and part Negro. We are all mulattoes now. In fact, we always have been” (25). According to Dickerson, America is indeed a brown nation. But it should be carefully noted that Dickerson never suggests Americans deny race. Rather, she asks that they transcend racism, pointing her fingers, in The End of Blackness, to everyone. Dickerson demands that Americans not let race define and dictate who they are. She does not like using race to label others because human beings are complex individuals; they cannot simply be labeled as black, white, etc. For example, how should biracial individuals be catergorized? Dickerson is married to a white man and has two biracial children. How should they be labeled? Or, as Rodriguez asks in the NPR interview, what about Colin Powell, Tiger Woods, and Strom Thurmond’s biracial daughter? Barack Obama’s life and his politics also illustrate browning and support Dickerson’s thesis as well. Obama is a freshman Senator from Illinois, but has gained a lot of attention on Capitol Hill because he is able to move beyond party politics, and he

13 thinks beyond race as well. In an interview with Oprah, Obama asserts, “I’m rooted in the African American community but not limited to it.” Journalist Perry Bacon writes: Unlike Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, Obama is part of a new generation of black leaders who insist on being seen as more than representatives of their race. That’s in part because, as the biracial son of a white mother and an immigrant father from Kenya, he belongs to more than one. But it’s also because he has declined to assume the role. When President George W. Bush suggested last year that his proposed Social Security private-accounts plan would help African-American men, because on average they die earlier than members of other demographic groups and don’t collect much of their Social Security money, Senate Democrats approached Obama to speak on the issue. He was reluctant and attacked Bush on this point only after some prodding, arguing that the current system helps blacks more than Bush’s accounts would. Obama was more public in his criticism of Bush’s handling of Hurricane Katrina, but he declined to join other black leaders who said the debacle showed that Bush didn’t care about African Americans. Privately, the Congressional Black Caucus, a small group of 43 African-American members, complains that Obama hasn’t done enough to push its causes – like organizing to oppose Bush’s judicial nominees. Bacon adds: “Obama sees no need to be a black leader on all issues” (27). “I don’t know who the top white leader is,” points out Obama (qtd. in Bacon 27). But, just like Dickerson, Obama is proud of his black heritage and never denies it. Bacon observes, “Photos of Muhammad Ali and Martin Luther King, Jr. adorn his office walls, along with a painting of Thurgood Marshall…” (27). Dickerson and Obama’s viewpoints regarding race support those expressed by John McWhorter in Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America. In his work, McWhorter addresses three big issues: victimology, separatism, and anti-intellectualism. McWhorter feels that all three plague the black community, and that they keep black Americans from entering mainstream society. Moreover, mainstream society does not equal white society in today’s world. Hollinger, Rodriguez, Dickerson, Obama, and

14 McWhorter would all argue that mainstream society is now brown (again, using Rodriguez’s definition of the term). All of their work, as do their own lives, reflect this sentiment. They want those who still feel left out to become incorporated, not assimilated, into society. In the very last paragraph of Postethnic America, Hollinger ends his book by pointing out, “Being an American amid a multiplicity of affiliations need not be dangerously threatening to diversity. Nor need it be too shallow to constitute an important solidarity of its own” (163). Perhaps this notion of browning can best be illustrated through the music of Ray Charles. His music really serves as a metaphor for America. Often, it is a combination of the blues, love songs, country, jazz and gospel. Only a black man who spent his childhood in rural Greenville, Florida, but later traveled the world and settled in urban Los Angeles could sing and compose such diverse work. Consequently, it is no coincidence that several of his songs are considered American classics. Charles’s work is uniquely American because it reflects browning. His music does not fit neatly into one category, but reflects a combination of them all. And Americans are much the same. The melting pot has not homogenized us, but rather made us more brown. Even Huck Finn appreciates the beauty of browning. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain uses his very own version of the melting pot analogy, which preceded Zangwill’s. While Huck is grateful for the food Widow Douglas prepares and provides, he does suggest that it is a bit bland because it is cooked by itself, and that “…in a barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better” (10). Huck’s simple observation, then, can be a lesson for us all: the more we are willing to embrace diversity, the better we will be for it. In Brown, Rodriguez discusses both The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Moby-Dick. He writes: It is interesting to note the two American fictions of the nineteenth century that continue to romance us were about interracial relationships, exclusively male. I mean The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Moby- Dick – both dreams of escape from convention and family. At a time when America was preoccupied with land and settlement, with cultivating

15 the land, Twain and Melville wrote of water, of suspension, of being carried outward. The river cares nothing for its bank, the ocean cares nothing for the shore, each consorts with the sky. In the first, a white boy and a runaway slave abandon town and the constriction of the shore for the freedom of the river. In the latter, a crew of men from every corner of the world aboard a ship in search of a ghostly whale. In both stories there are only undomesticated men or boys. And the male pairings are odd, interracial, even homoerotic; violations of the town’s conventions. (135) As Huck and Ishmael learn from their relationships with Jim and Queequeg, through contact with others unlike ourselves, stereotypes will be erased, barriers will be broken down, and love, which exists on many levels, will emerge. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck notes, “…for what you want, above all things, on a raft, is for everybody to be satisfied, and feel right and kind towards the others,” and this is exactly what Americans should envision for the nation (137). Since cinema, like literature, not only shapes culture but also represents culture, the question should be asked, does Hollywood represent browning and postethnicity in their films? Early Hollywood cinema certainly did not; D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915) is the most infamous example. But gradually Hollywood has been attempting to take a more progressive approach when dealing with diversity. Recently, rather than dividing Americans by race, class, gender and sexuality, Hollywood has attempted to unite the nation, not relying on such formulas to judge one another. The following chapters will examine four films: The Human Stain (2003), Kinsey (2004), Spanglish (2004), and Crash (2005). Within them, representations of race, class, gender, and sexuality will be dissected and thoroughly studied from a postethnic viewpoint because, as the editors of Identity, Community, and Pluralism in American Life rightfully assert, factors such as race, class, gender, and sexual orientation “resemble ethnicity in that they provide people with a common sense of identity” despite the fact that “they are not based on the claim of possession of a distant common ancestry” (4). Thus, not only should the possibility of a postethnic nation be considered, but this same concept can be applied to race, class, gender, and sexuality. Therefore, the following chapters will critique each film from a cosmopolitan postethnic perspective because that indeed

16 appears to be the direction in which the nation is heading, or as this dissertation proposes, at least it should be. At the same time, this work will never compromise the fact that diversity should be celebrated, not simply tolerated.

17 THE HUMAN STAIN IS MOST CERTAINLY HATRED: AN ANALYSIS OF THE HUMAN CONDITION

In Charles Frazier’s 1997 national bestseller Cold Mountain, Inman, one of the characters in the novel, asserts, “You could become so lost in bitterness and anger that you could not find your way back” (397). Robert Benton’s 2003 film The Human Stain, based on Philip Roth’s book by the same name, tackles this very issue. In the film, Benton introduces several characters who have been confronted with undeserved misfortune. Coleman Silk (Anthony Hopkins), Faunia Farley (Nicole Kidman), Nathan Zuckerman (Gary Sinise), and Lester Farley (Ed Harris) do indeed all prove Toni Morrison’s claim in Beloved to be true: “Slave life; freed life – everyday was a test and a trial” (256). However, all of the characters in this film, with the exception of Les Farley, who will be discussed later, display the triumph of the human condition – the ability to endure pain, to survive, to forgive (whether ourselves or others) and, most importantly, to love in spite of it all. Wounds do in fact heal, no matter how painful the healing process may be; although, one can be left with some nasty scars. Not only is Faunia left with scars from Les’s horrible beatings, but from her suicide attempts as well. Nevertheless, her wounds do heal with time. A difficult aspect of the human condition is learning to pick up the pieces and move on, learning to endure pain and, at the same time, continuing to celebrate life. Coleman, Faunia, Nathan, and Les all prove themselves to be survivors, but surviving life and celebrating life are two very different notions. Coleman, Faunia, and Nathan are pressed into circumstances they did nothing to deserve, but they do not collapse under the weight of their burdens. Life is brutal and down right nasty at times, but as these characters prove, our challenge as humans is to overcome such obstacles with as much dignity as possible. One of the first scenes in the film depicts Coleman delivering a lecture on the Iliad, focusing on the wrath of Achilles. This lecture is significant because Achilles – just like Coleman, Faunia, and Nathan – eventually overcomes his wrath. In fact, they all

18 disprove Zeus’ horrible claim in the Iliad that “nothing is more miserable than man” (345). It is only after they overcome wrath, though, that they can truly transcend misery. In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Baby Suggs tells Sethe that she must learn to “lay down [her] sword” (244). She adds: “Lay all that mess down” (86). Baby Suggs encourages Sethe to “study war no more” (86). Or perhaps Astrid sums it up best in Janet Fitch’s White Oleander, “Despair wasn’t a guest, you didn’t play its favorite music, find it a comfortable chair” (264). Nevertheless, Sethe, as depicted in Beloved, has much in common with Faunia Farley. Faunia may have never endured slavery, but, like Sethe, she survives rape and the death of not only one, but two children. And like Sethe, Faunia must learn to forgive herself. Sethe reminds Paul D, “thin love ain’t love at all,” and she finally acts on her own words when she learns to love and forgive herself (164). Moreover, Faunia, like Sethe, must also learn the value of human companionship. In fact, all the characters ultimately learn to celebrate the triumph of the human condition when they bury their pain and reach out to one another. In Beloved, Sixo sums up the power of human relationships and human companionship best when he tells Paul D about his Thirty-mile woman. Sixo asserts: She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It’s good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind. (272) One of the many themes of The Human Stain appears to be the power of human connection and human relationships: the power of both giving and receiving love. In the same NPR interview with Richard Rodriguez, mentioned previously in chapter one, Rodriguez ends the interview by asserting, “Nobody has written the love story of America.” And in Brown, Rodriguez complains, “Historians with bow ties who win bronze medallions for their labors have long told the story of America as stories of hate…” (195). The Human Stain, though, focuses on both the power of love and the power of hate, contrasting the two. In fact, when watching the film, it is important to keep in mind Nathaniel Hawthorne’s comments on love and hate in The Scarlet Letter: “It is to the credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process, will even be

19 transformed to love, unless, the change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostility” (133). In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain explores the human condition on many different levels, but especially focuses on how humankind treats one another. Huck notes, “Human beings can be awful to one another” (245). Twain italicizes “can,” emphasizing the fact that cruelty is a choice that is made; one can also choose to be kind and loving, which is exactly what Huck learns to do throughout his adventures. A call for a more empathetic nation indeed appears to be the message of not only Twain’s work, but of The Human Stain as well. In another NPR interview, Philip Roth, the author of the book The Human Stain, discusses his work with Terry Gross, which was played again on NPR upon the release of the film in the fall of 2003. In the interview, Roth discusses the fact that writers “tend to be anti-ideological” (31 October 2003). Roth declares: “I think it’s hard for a serious novelist who knows what novel writing is about to be an ideologue, because writing fiction is founded in observation, and you can’t observe through the opaque presence of an ideology. The ideology observes for you.” Roth’s remarks certainly shed light on his work. Has an extreme commitment – an ideological, overzealous commitment – to multiculturalism clouded our better judgment in some instances, as it does in both the film and the book? Multiculturalism, which began in the 1960s as a movement based on peace, love, and understanding, has, over time, led to a hypersensitive state of political correctness in this country, which in turn has brought out a nasty “persecuting spirit” within Americans, a phrase Roth himself borrows from The Scarlet Letter (12). Roth calls 1998, the year in which his book and Benton’s film are set, “a great year for the persecuting spirit if ever there was one.” Roth then adds: That was the year in which the presidential impeachment took place and everything surrounding it. What interested me about the inquisition on the college campus that does in Coleman Silk was it seemed to me, the more I thought about it, an extension of the general mood of the inquisition that had sort of begun to run wild in the public life of the country. To be sure,

20 that also was what was going on during the McCarthy era, which I lived through as a college kid. In the novel and film, we see this persecuting spirit played out when Coleman is forced to resign because he refers to two students who have never attended his class as “spooks,” a term which was once considered a racist epithet; although, Coleman does not use the word in this manner. Nevertheless, Coleman later learns that both students are black, and he is then accused of racism, even though he had never laid eyes on either student and had no clue they were African American. As Faunia herself later points out in the film, he loses it all – his career, his wife, his life – “over a stupid, pissy, little word” that meant nothing (The Human Stain). Within his work, Roth criticizes the American tendency to quickly persecute, especially when it comes to issues of political correctness, and he certainly has reason to complain. Perhaps it is true, as Ernestine (Lizan Mitchell), Coleman’s sister, later tells Nathan in the film, “People are getting dumber, but more opinionated” (The Human Stain). Take into account that in January of 1999, David Howard was forced to resign when he used the word “niggardly” in a Washington, D.C. budget meeting, even though, as John McWhorter points out in Losing the Race, the word “has been used in English since the Middle Ages, when black people of any kind were unknown in England (vii). In addition, McWhorter notes that the word “…had been imported to the country by Scandanavian Viking invaders in the 800s, in whose tongue nig meant miser” (vii). David Howard’s forced resignation was unjust and unreasonable, especially when Howard, who worked for a black mayor at the time, was only striving as a civil servant to improve the lives of all Washington, D.C. citizens, regardless of race. In Losing the Race, McWhorter explains the reason why the Ivy League-educated mayor, Anthony Williams, accepted Howard’s resignation was only because he himself had been accused of being “not black enough,” especially in comparison to the previous mayor, Marion Barry (xii). McWhorter concludes: “Williams felt compelled to let Howard go in order to show his allegiance to the predominantly black constituency he had come to serve. Importantly, showing that allegiance meant firing a man for an innocent mistake” (xii). Thus, Howard’s forced resignation provided Williams with an opportunity to prove his own blackness and his commitment to the black citizens of Washington. The absurdity

21 of the Howard incident certainly appears to have been a case where political correctness as an ideology had overcome any sense of reason. Thus, when Roth writes about an innocent man who loses his job because he is accused of being a racist, the event is completely believable because the very same thing had happened to David Howard. But moving beyond a critique of political correctness, there are deeper issues to consider within this film, which the director of The Human Stain, Robert Benton, brings attention to when transferring Roth’s story to the big screen. “On its face, the film is about a social issue,” writes Betsy Pickle in the Knoxville News-Sentinel, “but it makes human connections that go beyond issues” (18). She adds: “Benton makes The Human Stain work without sentimentality” (18). In addition, movie critic David Elliot writes in the San Diego Union-Tribune, “[Benton] opened the story with the car crash, which is brilliant because it says this isn’t just about a victim of political correctness, but a deeper mystery ending in death” (7). Wesley Morris of the Boston Globe calls the story a human tragedy, and he is certainly justified in doing so because we see two people who finally learn not only to love one another, but more importantly, especially for the characters within this film, they learn to love themselves for who they are, only to do so, though, to be murdered in the end by Les Farley, a man full of nothing but hate and contempt for others. Most significantly, however, for the topic of this dissertation, is the fact that Coleman and Faunia are characters who learn to look beyond race and class. As The Human Stain proves, race and class are nothing more than mere social constructions that continue to divide humanity. We must learn to see people first and foremost as individuals rather than someone who is simply black or lower class. It is no accident that the setting of the film is Massachusetts. As Roth writes in the book, New England is “most identified, historically, with the American individualist’s resistance to the coercions of a censorious community – Hawthorne, Melville, and Thoreau come to mind…” (and, of course, Emerson) (310). Coleman Silk is indeed an American individualist fighting a coercive community. Massachusetts is also the home of the infamous Salem Witch Trials. And as Marion L. Starkey writes in the preface of The Devil in Massachusetts: A Modern Enquiry into the Salem Witch Trials, “…although this particular delusion [witchcraft], at least in the form of a large-scale public enterprise,

22 has vanished from the western world, the urge to hunt ‘witches’ has done nothing of the kind” (15). He adds, “It has been revived on a colossal scale by replacing the medieval idea of malefic witchcraft by pseudo-scientific concepts like race, nationality, and by substituting for theological dissension a whole complex of warring ideologies” (15). Starkey’s statement certainly proves to be the case in The Human Stain. As mentioned earlier, political correctness itself becomes an insidious ideology within this story because it fails to recognize individuality, nor does it embrace humanity. In a Time interview, Terrence Howard, who stars in both Crash and Hustle & Flow (2005), discusses the absurd nature of political correctness. He asserts: We’re all caught up under this umbrella of political correctness, which I truly believe is a front for bigotry because we don’t learn about each other. Until people start being truly honest – that’s when we’ll be able to bring an end to the problems we see associated with race in Hollywood and the rest of the world. (6) Coleman decides to pass as a white man because he only wants to fulfill a life of true individual American freedom and opportunity. In an interview with New York Times reporter Anne Thompson, director Robert Benton states that Roth was “using passing [shorthand for racial passing] as a metaphor for something deeper in this culture” (E1). And there is no doubt that this is the case. There has been much written by historians about passing, and it is also dealt with in several works of fiction, most of which were written during the Harlem Renaissance, including Nella Larsen’s Passing, Jessie Fauset’s Plum Bun, and Walter White’s Flight. A handful of films have even tackled the subject, including Pinky (1949), Lost Boundaries (1949), and both versions of Imitation of Life (1934) and (1959). But The Human Stain is not just another film about passing. Rather, it offers something new to twenty-first century viewers because, as John Leland notes in his New York Times interview with the director, Benton “wanted to show how much more complex questions of race and reinvention had become since mid- century” (E1). Benton, in the interview, states that he wants to show how “we have become a nation that invents itself generation by generation, cutting ties from the past” (qtd. in Leland E1). But he then adds, “And as much as we gain by this, there are also

23 consequences” (qtd. in Leland E1). Benton clearly sees an emerging postethnic cosmopolitan society that is coming to terms with itself; and he obviously, through the message of his film, does not feel that Americans should be confined by societal definitions such as race and class. But at the same time, to reinvent yourself and completely escape the past is a complex task, as the film proves. The tagline to the film even asks, “How far would you go to escape the past?” The film’s ultimate message, though, seems to be that in order to effectively deal with the present, you must first overcome or at least come to terms with your past, which is why the director uses flashbacks to tell his story. The past and the present constantly confront each other within this film; they indeed inform one another. Thus, although Coleman may attempt to escape his past by passing, he never does so. Passing is only a quick fix for Coleman’s dilemma. Passing as a subject matter has almost vanished since the 1960s. In the 60s, racial pride was emphasized – black is beautiful – and passing simply became “passé” (Dreisinger 1 of 5). “And these days,” as Baz Dreisinger points out in his online essay “Passing and the American Dream,” “we’re supposed to think race doesn’t matter” (1 of 5). “But as The Human Stain and a raft of recent writing makes clear, we’re just as fascinated by its slippery boundaries as ever,” adds Dreisinger (1 of 5). Dreisinger claims, though, that The Human Stain deals with race and the notion of passing with “new-millennium style,” which makes it more than just another sentimental socially conscious drama addressing racism, such as To Kill A Mockingbird (1962), The Color Purple (1985), or Driving Miss Daisy (1989) (2 of 5). One studio marketing executive observes, most “movies about race that have succeeded have been largely inspirational” (Thompson E1). In the Chicago-Sun Times, George Will writes: Fine movies from To Kill a Mockingbird through Driving Miss Daisy have addressed race in a manner less oblique – more black and white, as it were. But most such movies are, in a sense, intellectual and moral comfort food. They do not challenge the oddly soothing traditional template of racial thinking – the premise, which is increasingly a myth, that there are two and only two brightly delineated racial identities. (31)

24 Will adds: “Those movies matched their moments. The Human Stain, however, is for persons seeking a more nuanced take on America’s evolving experience with race” (31). This is especially true in how the film tackles passing. Journalist and author Brooke Kroeger, in her collection of case studies Passing: When People Can’t Be Who They Are, also approaches the topic in much the same way, claiming that “passing puts us in touch with the wondrous ability each person has to create and recreate the self” (2 of 5). Passing “upends all our tidy little methods of recognizing and categorizing human beings,” writes Kroeger, and “makes us wonder what exactly makes an identity authentic, or if and when authenticity matters,” which is why Dreisinger claims that passing “goes hand-in-hand with new-and-improved notions about race and identity” (2 of 5). Kroeger also states in a NPR interview with Tavis Smiley that “passers become ideal questioners of the status quo” (16 Oct. 2003). Both Benton’s film and Kroeger’s book “separate new-school passing stories from old-school ones” (2 of 5). Dreisinger notes: Back in the Jim Crow days, Nella Larsen or Douglas Sirk delivered punishment – usually death – to passers, whom we were meant to believe had overstepped “natural” boundaries. Sure, passers offered a revolutionary moment or two, a scene in which they radically questioned rigid racial lines. But in the end, melodramas like Showboat and Pinky upheld such categories. Passers were deemed to be essentially black, via the slavery-era “one-drop rule,” and the scene in which they owned up to this drop was their moment of undoing and the narrative’s climax. (3 of 5) However, writes Dreisinger, “the contemporary passer’s unmasking doesn’t produce this sort of tear-jerking drama” (3 of 5). Kroeger notes, “It usually provokes some surprise, no doubt some gossip, but then what ordinarily follows is a big “So what?” (3 of 5) As Dreisinger explains, “Savy postmodern minds – critical of race as a category and thus too sophisticated for its unyielding distinctions – empathize with and often champion passers” (3 of 5). “We don’t chastise them for committing the great sin of denying some true, essential self,” he adds; “what’s a ‘true self,’ anyway” (3 of 5)? Therefore, Coleman’s decision to pass as both white and Jewish does not reflect a hatred of his African American heritage, but, rather, reflects his desire to step outside

25 societal definitions of race – to pursue his individuality as Coleman Silk. Coleman deeply resents forced group affiliations. Consider his experience at Howard, a historically black university. Coleman decides to leave Howard after his father’s death because he feels separated from mainstream society. At Howard, Coleman feels categorized as a black man living in America rather than a black American. In the book, which elaborates on this issue more than the film does, Roth writes: At Howard he’d discovered that he wasn’t just a nigger to Washington D.C. – as if that shock weren’t strong enough, he discovered at Howard that he was a Negro as well. A Howard Negro at that. Overnight the raw I was part of a we with all of the we’s overbearing solidarity, and he didn’t want anything to do with it or with the next oppressive we that came along either. You finally leave home, the Ur of we, and you find another we? Another place that’s just like that, the substitute for that? (108) Coleman, once he leaves home for the first time and lives in Washington, realizes that society will always view him first and foremost as black rather than American. Roth states in the book: Then he went off to Washington and, in the first month, he was a nigger and nothing else and he was a Negro and nothing else. No. No. He saw the fate awaiting him, and he wasn’t having it. Grasped it intuitively and recoiled spontaneously. You can’t let the big they [white America] impose its bigotry on you any more than you can let the little they [black America] become a we and impose its ethics on you. Not the tyranny of the we and its we-talk and everything that the we wants to pile on your head. Never for him the tyranny of the we that is dying to suck you in, the coercive, inclusive, historical, inescapable moral we with its insidious E pluribus unum. (108) Rather, Coleman desires: “the raw I with all its agility. Self-discovery – that was the punch to the labonz. Singularity. The passionate struggle for singularity. The singular animal. The sliding relationship with everything. Not static but sliding” (108). Take into account Benton’s decision to include an Irving Berlin song within the film. When Coleman hears the song in the film, he tells Nathan: “That’s Irving Berlin. I

26 hear that and everything in me just sort of unclenches, and the wish not to die, never to die, becomes almost too great to bear” (qtd. in Leland 1). Commenting on the scene, John Leland writes in the New York Times: This connection to Berlin, which does not appear in the Philip Roth novel from which the film was adapted, reveals more than it lets on. Berlin’s life, like Silk’s, was a story of racial improvisation. The son of a Jewish cantor, Izzy Baline began his career singing minstrel and ragtime songs in a downtown Manhattan café known as Nigger Mike’s, and wrote his first hits for blackface performers like Al Jolson and Eddie Cantor. He was so adept at composing ethnic tunes like “Alexander’s Ragtime Band”…that rivals accused him of keeping a “little colored boy” in his basement to write them. (E1). Richard Rodriguez, who writes about the Jewish, blackface performer Al Jolson in Brown, notes: “The only way for a young Jewish man to sing from his heart on a stage, to be authentic to his private yearning, was to do so in blackface – a protective masquerade, also an emulation of the supposed freedom of black people” (71). Leland adds: Silk and Berlin [and also Jolson], then, are opposite versions of the same story. Berlin, a first-generation Russian immigrant who reinvented himself through black musical traditions, became a Jewish-American success story. Silk, an African-American who recreates himself totally as white and Jewish, is destroyed for abandoning his racial identity. In a cruel joke, he is undone by student charges of racism, which he allows to sink his career rather than revealing his secret. (E1). It is heartbreaking to see Coleman completely erase his past by denying even the mere existence of his family. But rather than blame Coleman, we should sympathize with the awful decision he makes, and it should, in turn, make us more aware of the artificial boundaries that we place amongst ourselves. As Ernestine tells Nathan in the film, “Nowadays it’s hard to imagine that anyone would do what Coleman felt he had to do” (The Human Stain). After all, Coleman decides to pass only because he wants to

27 prove as Walter White had explained earlier in the century: “We do not see color. We think it” (qtd. in Dreisinger 3 of 5). Rather than condemn Coleman’s actions, maybe we should consider why he makes the decision to pass in the first place. Nathan asks in the book: Was he merely being another American and, in the great frontier tradition, accepting the democratic invitation to throw your origins overboard if to do so contributes to the pursuit of happiness? Or was it more than that? Or was it less? How petty were his motives? How pathological? (334) Nathan remembers Coleman’s last words to his mother – “You’re no longer my mother and never were” – and then states: “Anybody who has the audacity to do that doesn’t just want to be white. He wants to be able to do that. It has to do with more than just being blissfully free” (335). And as Xan Brooks writes, “If we can never quite applaud Silk for his actions, we at least understand the reasons behind them” (44). Douglas Sirk’s 1959 Imitation of Life has already been alluded to, but movie critic Charles Taylor, who admires the film, highlights one scene, which can be related to Coleman’s dilemma. Taylor notes: In Imitation of Life a homeless, widowed black woman and her small daughter are taken in by a widowed white woman with a little girl of the same age. Years pass. The white woman, Lora (Lana Turner), has become a successful actress. The black woman, Annie (Juanita Moore), works as her maid. She would have been destitute without Lora’s beneficence and yet the movie shows us the divide that charity can’t cross. In one scene, Annie envisions the friends who’ll come to the funeral she has saved for and Lora says, “It never occurred to me you had many friends.” In the least reproving tone imaginable, this woman, who has worked for and lived with her white employer for years, says, “Why, Miss Lora, you never asked.” That invisibility isn’t lost on Annie’s daughter, the now grown Sarah Jane (Susan Kohner). Sarah Jane is light-skinned enough to pass for white, and that’s just what she does. She tells her mother that she doesn’t want the only boys she meets to be “busboys, cooks, chauffers.”

28 Implicitly, she’s telling Annie that she wants something better than to be a maid like her. All Sarah Jane finds is a job dancing at a sleazy nightclub – but at least, she reasons, it’s her choice, not a destiny she never asked for. Imitation of Life is often snickered as one of those soapy, sappy ‘50s movies we’re supposed to have grown beyond. But Sirk’s film is the toughest, most irresolvable movie ever made about race in this country. It depicts an America where denying your racial identity is a dodge and acknowledging it is a trap. (1 of 3) Sarah Jane and Coleman are certainly dealing with similar circumstances to an extent; although Sarah Jane appears to be ashamed of being black and embarrassed by her heritage, while Coleman does not. Ernestine, who never stops loving or communicating with her brother over the years, despite his decision, tries to explain Coleman’s predicament to her older brother, Walter, who never again speaks to Coleman. Although she admits in the book, “I only half believe myself,” Ernestine states: Coleman couldn’t wait to go through civil rights to get to his human rights, and so he skipped a step. “See him historically,” I say to Walt. “You’re a history teacher – see him as a part of something larger.” (327) Thus, Coleman is never embarrassed by being black; he never despises the color of his skin. As his sister explains in the book, “…Coleman as a kid was not a hater. The breeziest, most optimistic child you ever wanted to see” (325). Coleman, then, decides to pass as both white and Jewish not because he is embarrassed by being black, but because he wants others to view him as a fellow American rather than a black man living in America. And because he is well aware that 1940s American society would never do so, he makes the only decision he thought he could, at the time, in order to live the life he had always dreamed of. As Bill Gallo suggests, perhaps “one man’s deceptions help to highlight our own flaws” (1 of 2). Philip Roth, who is Jewish, but has often been described as a self-hating Jew (just as Richard Rodriguez has been described as a self-hating Hispanic), discusses Saul Bellow as one of the most influential writers on his own career as a writer. Roth, in the NPR interview mentioned earlier in this chapter, states:

29 The opening line of Augie March is rather famous…the opening line of Bellow’s book is, “I am an American, Chicago born.” What’s interesting is that it doesn’t begin, “I’m an American Jew, Chicago born,” or, “I’m an American-born Jew in Chicago.” Bellow, in a single sentence, freed a whole generation of Jewish writers who came after him to write of the thing which was so powerful in their lives, which was their Americaness. Roth also explains in the interview that he considers himself “an American or a Jewish American,” but not “an American Jew.” Roth describes the diverse Newark, New Jersey, community where he grew up, which consisted of Newark Jews, Newark Italians, Newark Poles, etc., but he then explains that “once one left the neighborhood, one wasn’t a Newark Jew, one was an American.” One can see why Roth would create a character like Coleman Silk; both men view themselves as part of a cosmopolitan postethnic American community, and they want others to do the same. Once again, keep in mind what David Hollinger writes in Postethnic America: “Being an American amid a multiplicity of affiliations need not be dangerously threatening to diversity. Nor need it be too shallow to constitute an important solidarity of its own” (163). There is an important conversation that takes place in the book which addresses this issue, but is not included in the film. Ernestine discusses with Nathan, after Coleman’s death, her issues with Black History Month. She states: Youngsters were coming to me the year I retired, telling me that for Black History Month they would only read a biography of a black by a black. What difference, I would ask them, if it’s a black author or a white author? I’m impatient with Black History Month altogether. I liken having a Black History Month in February and concentrating study on that to milk that’s just about to go sour. You can still drink it, but it just doesn’t taste right. If you’re going to study and find out about Matthew Henson [the black explorer who discovered the North Pole before Peary or Cook], then it seems to me that you do Matthew Henson when you do other explorers. (329). This conversation, although refreshingly open and honest, never makes itself onto the big screen because it is too controversial for politically correct mainstream America.

30 Yet, what Ernestine says is so true. As long as we have a Black History Month, then we are still separating black America from white America. As Ernestine pleads in the book, why can we not study American History by including everyone as a part of the story rather than simply focusing on one particular group for one month of the year? While Black History Month may have begun as a positive step towards recognizing the many important roles blacks have played in our nation’s history, the concept of a Black History Month now seems antiquated and out of date. Actor Morgan Freeman, in an interview with Mike Wallace, claims that Black History Month is “ridiculous” (18 Dec. 2005). Freeman quips, “You are going to relegate it to a month?” Freeman sums it us best when he asserts, “Black History is American History.” Furthermore, in his essay “At the End of the Century: The ‘Culture Wars’ in the U.S,” Ronald Takaki notes that true multicultural scholarship should not “fragmentize American society by separately studying specific groups such as African Americans or Hispanics” (299). By doing so, he adds, “inter-group relationships become invisible, and the big picture is missing” (299). Moreover, race in and of itself does not necessarily unite a community; consider the brief period of time Coleman spends at Howard. At Howard, Coleman is viewed by his peers as just another poor black scholarship boy. Rather than acting as an institution that fosters a sense of black solidarity, Howard, in Coleman’s then working class eyes, consists of a student body that relegates authority, power, and respect to those with money. In the book, Coleman complains about his college classmates: What the hell was a “cotillion?” Where was Highland Beach? What were these kids talking about? He was among the lightest of the light-skinned in the freshmen class, lighter even than his tea-colored roommate, but he could have been the blackest, most benighted field hand for all they knew that he didn’t. (106). Thus, as The Human Stain proves, what should unite Americans are not concepts such as race, class, gender or sexuality, but, rather, our humanity – our human experiences; or as Roth writes in the novel and Benton brings to life in his film: “the human dimension of [our] experiences” (190). While writing this chapter, events are unfolding in New Orleans and the devastating impact of Hurricane Katrina is revealing more than ever that Americans are divided by race and class. On the news, there are

31 images of many black Americans on rooftops pleading for help because they were unable to leave as quickly as the city’s upper and middle class residents. At the same time, many poor white residents, just like Faunia herself, have also been left behind. The following question comes to mind, then, while writing this chapter and watching the horrible images of New Orleans on television: Would Coleman have made it as far as he does in his life (take into account that he eventually becomes Dean of Athena College) had he not passed as a white man? Coleman knows that the answer most certainly would be no. After all, his father, Clarence Silk (Harry J. Lennix), who is described in the film as “a man of great intellect,” is an optician, but he eventually loses his business and has to then work as a dining car waiter in order to take care of his family. Thus, Coleman does not want to be forced to live the same life as his father. White privilege exists, and because Coleman is able to take advantage of those privileges by passing as a white man, he is able to achieve the success that he does. But on his way up the ladder, Coleman does not forget about those left behind. After all, Coleman is the one who hires Herb Kebble (Ron Canada), the first African American faculty member at Athena. If Coleman hated being black and despised black Americans, he would have never hired Kebble. By hiring Kebble, Coleman is opening the doors for someone else who does not have access to the same white privileges he does. And Coleman may pass as a white man, but he does not think in a black/white mentality; Coleman indeed thinks in terms of “brown,” as explained by Rodriguez. Coleman only passes as a white man so he can freely pursue his “brown” agenda. Coleman has an amazing ability to identify with others; Coleman is empathetic, and because he is, he discovers love, yet once again, with Faunia Farley. Faunia herself is passing. Her family is wealthy, but in order to escape an abusive step-father, she runs away from it all in her early teens. As Coleman tells us in the book, she’s been “declassed” (28). He adds, “There’s a real democratization to her suffering” (28). When Coleman first meets Faunia, she is working three jobs, cleaning both the local post office and the dorms at Athena, while also working on a dairy farm. But Coleman sees more than just a maid and a dairy farmer – he sees a woman, a fellow human being, who, like himself, has lost it all. As David Elliot writes, “Silk walks across class lines to be with Faunia, goes where nobody expects” (7). And Roger Ebert notes, “Coleman and Faunia

32 have been cruelly devalued by life, and find in each other a spark of identification that can cross any barrier” (3). Discussing The Human Stain, Ebert writes: The story involves two different kinds of passing: crossing the race line and the class line. Which is more difficult? Consider that Coleman and Faunia must deal with each other despite their lack of common references, education, background, assumptions, manners of speech, tastes, and instincts. To cross the race line involves deep psychological anguish, as you betray yourself and your past, but in the routine of daily existence it is perhaps easier than crossing the class line. You can talk and think just the way you do now. It was different 50 or 100 years ago, but today most of us find it more difficult to deal in depth with someone of another class than with someone of another race. I am not forgetting that to cross from white to black would be much more difficult, because you’d take on the impact of racism (3). Consequently, this is why at one point in the film, Faunia even asks Coleman, “Is this all too trailer trash for you?” (The Human Stain). Coleman knows, though, as he attempts to explain to Nathan, “something…worthy of respect” is happening between them, and he is unwilling to give it up (The Human Stain). One scene in the film beautifully illustrates the bond that is forming between the two. Coleman takes Faunia to a symphony, an event very much outside her comfort zone, and during this scene, Faunia reaches out to touch Coleman on the back (without his realizing it), but hesitates and gently pulls her hand back. The camera rack focuses (changes focus from background to foreground) from her face to a close-up shot of her hand, emphasizing her dirty finger nails, symbolic of her lower class lifestyle. At this point in the film, both Coleman and Faunia are not yet totally willing to bridge the gap they feel exists between them and open their hearts to one another, but their desire for human connection, touch, and warmth is evident.

33 Faunia, who had always “gone looking for ways to leave the human race,” as Roth writes in the book, suddenly finds herself enjoying the benefits of human companionship and friendship, despite her attempts to resist it (239). When Faunia visits the hand-raised crow at the wildlife sanctuary and states to the working attendant that “Prince [the crow] is really a crow that doesn’t know how to be a crow,” she is, of course, referring to her own lack of what Roth describes as “humanish behavior” (239). And she later even admits in the book that she is “…a woman who doesn’t really know how to be a woman” (247). Faunia has removed herself from the human race and human experience for so long, trying to escape the sorrow and misery that often comes along with being human, that in the process she forgets the beauty of humanity. In fact, Roth’s mission, as well as Benton’s in the film, is to remind us of our humanity and to remind us that others are human too, for better and for worse. But his ultimate goal seems to be the very American notion, in true Emersonian fashion, that individuals can indeed improve themselves; human beings have the power to surpass their adversities, which is why Wesley Morris writes that The Human Stain “…is not so much about America as much as it’s an American movie, the rare Benton variety that seems to warm to its characters, to believe in them” (C9). The Human Stain, as well as many of Benton’s other films, including Bad Company (1972), Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), Places in the Heart (1984), Billy Bathgate (1991), and Nobody’s Fool (1994), all suggest “…a man who believes in people and has faith in the power of relationships to protect them against phenomena over which they have no control” (C9). Nevertheless, as much as the film is a work celebrating American individualism, it also encourages us as individuals not to forget about our commitment to an American sense of community. Here, Coleman’s decision to pass as a white man should be discussed again. It is easy to forgive Coleman, but as he himself realizes at the end of his life, he ultimately made the wrong decision. Coleman admits to Faunia at the end of the film, “I wanted to be free, but I became a prisoner instead” (The Human Stain). And as Ernestine explains to Nathan, Walt never forgives his brother for his decision because, …in Walt’s opinion, he was never fighting for anything other than himself. Silky Silk. That’s who he fought as, who he fought for, and that’s why Walt could never stand Coleman, even when Coleman was a

34 boy. In it for himself, Walt used to say. In it always for Coleman alone. All he ever wanted was out. (324) Taken to an extreme, then, rugged American individualism can become a downright selfish and egotistical character trait. Americans must never forget that a national sense of community is fundamental to democracy, as the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina reminded everyone. Moreover, it is important to acknowledge that our American community is comprised of a diverse group of people, and all members must be recognized. We are all indeed first and foremost Americans, and that should automatically unite us, despite our differences. Thus, the ultimate message of The Human Stain is human love. People must embrace humanity and the human experience. Nathan Zuckerman runs off into a cabin in the woods not to die, but to escape humanity. As he admits in both the book and film: I want to make clear that it wasn’t impotence that led me into a reclusive existence. To the contrary. I’d already been living and writing for some eighteen months in my two-room cabin up here in the Berkshires when, following a routine physical exam, I received a preliminary diagnosis of prostate cancer and, a month later, after the follow-up tests, went to Boston for the prostatectomy. My point is that by moving here I had altered deliberately my relationship to the sexual caterwaul, and not because the exhortations or, for that matter, my erections had been effectively weakened by time, but because I couldn’t meet the costs of its clamoring anymore, could no longer marshal the wit, the strength, the patience, the illusion, the irony, the ardor, the egoism, the resilience – or the toughness, or the shrewdness, or the falseness, the dissembling, the dual being, the erotic professionalism – to deal with its array of misleading and contradictory meanings. As a result, I was able to lessen a little my postoperative shock at the prospect of permanent impotence by remembering that all the surgery had done was to make me hold to a renunciation to which I had already voluntarily submitted. The operation did no more than to enforce with finality a decision I’d come to on my own, under the pressure of a lifelong experience of entanglements but in a

35 time of full, vigorous, and restless potency, when the venturesome masculine mania to repeat the act – repeat it and repeat it and repeat it – remained undeterred by physiological problems. (36) But after meeting Coleman and Faunia, Nathan realizes his own mistake – his own inability to cope with the human experience. Nathan had not only lost the ability to make love, but to feel and give love. Coleman and Faunia die at the end of the film, not because they are being punished as most passers were in earlier Hollywood cinema, but because their deaths emphasize the danger and seriousness of hate; hatred can be, unfortunately, just as powerful an emotion as love. Ernestine states in the book: …the danger with hatred is, once you start in on it, you get a hundred times more than you bargained for. Once you start, you can’t stop. I don’t know anything harder to control than hating. Easier to kick drinking than to master hate. And that is saying something. (328) Les’s hatred finally kills Coleman and Faunia; hatred is most certainly “the human stain.” In the Columbus Dispatch, Frank Gabrenya mistakenly writes that The Human Stain is named “for the shame of Coleman’s lie” (12E). This is, however, completely false. The Human Stain derives its name from the fact that Coleman had to lie about his race in the first place. Roth and Benton ask us in their work, among other things, to imagine a world without racism, contempt, stereotypes, and a desire to persecute others, all of which derive from hatred. Both Roth and Benton depict the embodiment of human hatred through the character of Les Farley. Les, as a character in the novel and film, does not evolve throughout the story, unlike Coleman, Faunia, and Nathan. Life has given Les, just like the others in the film, his fair share of pain and suffering. But unlike them, he is unable to overcome it all. Les is completely human; as Roth writes in the book, Les is “…a dairy farmer who had not meant to fail but did, a road crew employee who gave his all to the town no matter how lowly and degrading the task assigned him, a loyal American who’d served his country with not one tour but two, who’d gone back a second time to finish the goddamn job” (64). But as a soldier, Les had been trained to hate, to “fucking kill gooks,” as he states in the film, and it is this hatred that he is never able to overcome once he comes back home (The Human Stain).

36 When watching Les on screen, one is reminded of Inman from Charles Frazier’s novel Cold Mountain, mentioned earlier in this chapter, which was also made into a film the same year as The Human Stain (2003). Inman, as a soldier in the Civil War, has seen enough blood to last a lifetime, and he knows plenty about “days poisoned by lonesomeness and longing” (279). As Frazier so eloquently writes, Inman is “stunned by the metal face of the age” (4). Inman, though, unlike Les, has learned enough about suffering. Through his war experiences, Inman learns to appreciate the beauty and value of humanity, especially of human companionship, which is why he decides to leave the battlefield and return home to Ada (who is also played by Nicole Kidman in the film). By becoming a deserter, Inman, in turn, becomes the hero of the novel because like Achilles in the Iliad, but unlike Les in The Human Stain, Inman realizes there is more to life than war. Or to use a quote from Henry James’s The American, just as Christopher Newman, Inman “had come out of the war” with “an angry, bitter sense of the waste of precious things” (52). War, as Frazier explains in Cold Mountain, is brought on by “the human weakness of hatred,” and Inman simply wants no more to do with this (340). Again, to make a comparison with the Iliad (Homer’s epic is not only discussed in one of the first scenes in The Human Stain, but it comes up several times in Frazier’s novel as well), just as Achilles realizes the value of human contact and compassion in books 23 and 24 of the Iliad, so does Inman in Cold Mountain. In the Iliad, Achilles’ first attempts at human contact, compassion, and affection are witnessed through the funeral games. Achilles finally transcends wrath at the funeral games when he offers a prize to Agamemnon, his nemesis, the very same man who once took Briseis away from him. Achilles achieves the pinnacle of human compassion when he clasps Priam’s wrists (the King of the Trojans, Achilles’ enemy) and offers him Hector, his son’s body. Les, however, is never able to achieve such compassion. Both Achilles and Inman understand that life offers more than military glory or fame. War brings no humanity with it, and because of this, Inman escapes. His war experiences have taught him the value of human companionship. Thus, he leaves the death and destruction of war to find happiness with Ada. Inman could have given up on life a long time ago; he could have sat in the hopeless hospital bed and continued to

37 lament about his condition and the world he lived in, but instead he chooses to pursue another path. Inman realizes the only way to achieve true meaning in life is through relationships with others and by celebrating the profundity of the human experience itself. But Les Farley, unlike the other two literary soldiers, Achilles and Inman, never learns this valuable lesson. He never transcends wrath to find human happiness, and because he is unable to do so, he murders Coleman and Faunia. At the end of the novel, Nathan confronts Les and, after the confrontation, remarks: He’s telling me a war story, I thought. He knows he’s doing it. There’s a point that he’s going to make…He wants me to know that not many people have seen what he’s seen, been where he’s been, done what he’s done and, if required to do so, can do again. He’s murdered in Vietnam and he’s brought the murderer back with him to the Berkshires, back with him from the country of war, the country of horror, to this completely uncomprehending other place. (352) In the book, while looking at Les ice fishing, Nathan notices the auger he has been using: “The auger out on the ice. The candor of the auger. There could be no more solid embodiment of our hatred than the merciless steel look of that auger out in the middle of nowhere” (352). In this scene at the end of the film, when Nathan and Les confront each other, nothing within the scene itself suggests life; it is the dead of winter, quite literally, and we only see snow, a frozen pond, barren land, and cold, human contempt. But it is important to point out that the film then transitions to another scene through the use of a dissolve shot, where the viewer watches Nathan writing at his desk, which then dissolves into a final shot of Coleman and Faunia dancing together, embracing one another. This is significant because the viewer is now fully aware that Nathan will be writing a love story and not just another story of hate. (Remember that Richard Rodriguez asks, in the NPR interview, why “nobody has written the love story of America?”) Consequently, just as the dissolve transitions indicate, we hope the hatred which fuels the injustices committed within this film will also dissolve from American society. Kindness and love can indeed change the world. Coretta Scott King summed it up best when she declared “Hate is too great a burden” (qtd. in August et al 19).

38 Rodriguez proclaims that “love is not a stoppable force,” and The Human Stain certainly proves his statement to be true (5 Jan. 2005). In an article from Sight & Sound, Xan Brooks writes: “Robert Benton’s well-toned adaptation is faithful to the letter of Roth’s work, but a crucial ingredient is missing. There is no anger to the film at all” (44). But this is exactly the point of Benton’s film (and Roth’s novel as well); there does not have to be anger, hate, or contempt. If humankind could overcome such obstacles, however complex a task that might be, just imagine the possibilities. One of Monroe’s sermons from Cold Mountain can be related to the overall theme of The Human Stain. Frazier writes: …Monroe preached that they were misunderstanding the song if they fooled themselves into thinking all creation would someday love them. What it really required was for them to love all creation. That was altogether a more difficult thing and, to judge by the congregation’s reaction, somewhat shocking and distressful. (78-79). Monroe’s message is true; to “love all creation” is not always easy, but absolutely necessary in order to ensure “freedom and justice for all.” Especially when one considers that hatred (for example, take racism) is often passed on from generation to generation, from grandparents, to parents, and to children. It is essential, then, to put an end to the cycle; to love one another despite our differences. In summary, it is important to address some of the critics who unfairly bash the film and appear to have completely missed the message of the work. Many of the critics feel that Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman are miscast as Coleman Silk and Faunia Farley. Frank Gabrenya writes: It isn’t that Hopkins can’t play a black man, but that he never stops being Sir Anthony. Polished as he always is, his star baggage derails any illusion of the character. Likewise, Kidman exudes a glamour and spirit, even behind the trailer-trash mannerisms, that seem wrong for Faunia (12E). His comments, however, are unfair. Hopkins is not convincing as a black college professor because he is too “polished” for the role? In other words, a black college professor, a dean at that, would not be as “polished” as Hopkins plays the part?

39 Furthermore, Nicole Kidman may be beautiful, wealthy, and seem to have it all, and perhaps she does, but that does not make her immune to human pain and suffering, nor does it make her incapable of empathizing with others experiencing such pain. Mick LaSalle writes in the San Francisco Chronicle: “When the patrician-looking Kidman, playing a cleaning lady, rages about her white-trash life of tragedy and degradation, there’s no believing her, not for a second” (D5). Kidman has had an incredible life, but the critics are wrong when they label her as too glamorous and too “regally beautiful” to understand the agony and anguish that is often a part of the human condition (Thompson E1). The movie’s disappointing $1.1 million opening weekend box-office earnings are largely blamed on the casting of Hopkins and Kidman (Thompson E1), but Robert Benton, the director of the film, points out that what the critics are doing is “a kind of liberal racism” (qtd. in Leland E1). They are attempting to organize diversity into black, white, Hispanic, gay, lower class, upper class, etc., the very same notion that Richard Rodriguez condemns in Brown. The critics are upholding the same barriers and societal definitions that the film is attempting to break down. While defending Hopkins’s role as a black man in The Human Stain, Benton rightfully remarks, “No one complained that he wasn’t Spanish in Surviving Picasso (1996)” (qtd. in Leland E1). Thus, John Leland writes, “In today’s America, it seems, neither Silk nor Mr. Hopkins can transcend his race” (E1). It is unfortunate, considering the film’s message regarding race, that the only actor who really receives praise for his work is Wentworth Miller, who plays the young Coleman Silk during the film’s flashback scenes. Miller, who is actually biracial, receives praise for his acting, probably, because most Americans view him as a more convincing black man, which has nothing to do with his acting, but only the color of his skin. This is disturbing because watching the film from this point of view, it is easy to miss its cosmopolitan postethnic American message. The film urges its viewers to consider themselves as “brown,” just as Rodriguez does, but many miss the point. The discrepancy is especially ironic, considering the success of the book. The book has received rave reviews, even winning the prestigious “PEN/Faulkner Award.” Nobody appears to doubt that a white, Jewish man could write

40 about the life of a black man. But with the film, most critics challenge Hopkins’s ability to play a black man. The reason for the inconsistency is only because Hopkins’s race is made much more evident to those watching the film than Philip Roth’s race for those who read the book. When reading the book, one forgets that Roth is a white man, but American audiences are unable to overlook the fact that Anthony Hopkins is white while watching him onscreen. Hence, as the reaction to The Human Stain reveals, Americans have a long way to go concerning race relations. Baz Dreisinger states: “Academic jive about race as a ‘disproved’ concept is, well, jive; good old Race, rigid and old-hat, lives on in our hearts and minds. Slay something – blackness, whiteness, Latino-ness – in concept and you haven’t slain it in the flesh” (5 of 5). But that does not mean The Human Stain should not be commended for its efforts. Despite all the criticism Benton’s work has received, it is a noteworthy film that shows exactly how much humans can learn, give, and gain from one another, regardless of race and socioeconomic background. The film reveals much about the human condition. At the same time, it challenges the current ideology surrounding multiculturalism in the United States today and questions identity politics. “Your politics cannot be bigger than your humanity,” and this is certainly the message of The Human Stain (“Gretna’s Choice”). Even though the film may not yet appeal to mainstream America, its validity should not be brushed aside. Coleman Silk is the Dean of Athena College, and Athena is the Greek goddess of wisdom, truth, and knowledge, the very same virtues this movie attempts to identify in all humans. If humankind could only transcend wrath, overcome stereotypes, and be more willing to understand the lives of others, perhaps the ultimate level of human knowledge, wisdom, and truth could be obtained, and “the human stain” would forever be washed away. Coleman may be a distinguished college professor, but at the end of this story, Faunia, despite a lack of any formal education, is remembered for her intelligence as well, especially for her emotional intelligence, because she understands what it is to be human and learns not to shy away from the experience or judge others in the process.

41 LOVE, SEX, AND DR. KINSEY

While Robert Benton focuses on issues of race and class in The Human Stain, Bill Condon, in his film Kinsey (2004), addresses one of today’s most controversial subjects – human sexuality. “Maintaining a non-judgmental attitude is harder than you think,” as Dr. Kinsey (Liam Neeson) warns us in the movie, and this has certainly proven to be the case when it comes to discussing sexuality in the United States, especially considering America’s reaction to Condon’s film. Regarding issues of race, class, and gender, Americans have indeed made progress; although, as this dissertation argues, there is definitely still room for improvement. But there is one subject which continues to make Americans extremely uncomfortable discussing, and that is sexuality. The reason that Americans have such a tough time discussing their sexuality is because, as Kinsey proves in his studies, human sexuality in and of itself is very diverse. Kinsey points out in the film, “diversity becomes life’s one irreducible fact,” and this is surely true of Americans and their sexuality. Most Americans are unwilling to accept the diverse nature of their own sexuality; many repress it and do not accept others who deviate from the norm, which in the United States is usually considered heterosexual, marital sex. The film was purposely released 10 days after the 2004 election, an election, as it turns out, not based on the war in Iraq or the economy, but one about moral issues – God, guns, and, the most debated topic of all, gays. The film was released after the election in order to prevent even more angry “moral values crusaders,” as Frank Rich refers to them in the New York Times, from voting against gay rights on Election Day in reaction to the film (2.1). But even after Bush won and Republicans were guaranteed another four years, many still felt threatened by the release of the film and united in protest. It is disheartening to compare America’s response to the film in 2004 with the reaction to Dr. Kinsey’s work when it was originally published in 1948. Kinsey was actually quite popular after the publication of his first book on human sexuality, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Although considered a controversial figure, he was still celebrated in American culture. In his article “The Plot Against Sex in America,” Frank Rich writes, “The book stormed the culture with such force that Kinsey was featured in

42 almost every major national magazine; a Time cover story likened his book’s success to Gone With the Wind. Even pop music paid homage, with the rubber-faced comic Martha Rye selling a half-million copies of ‘Ooh, Dr. Kinsey!’ and Cole Porter immortalizing the Kinsey report’s sizzling impact in a classical stanza in ‘Too Darn Hot’ ” (2.1). Christina Larson even notes, “At the 1948 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, delegates sported buttons proclaiming, ‘We Want Kinsey, the People’s Choice’ ” (4 of 7). But after the release of his second book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, Kinsey’s popularity declined. Nobody wanted to think about their mothers, sisters, or daughters having sex, a point that Mac (Laura Linney), Kinsey’s wife, makes in the film. Frank Rich notes: While Sexual Behavior in the Human Male was received with a certain amount of enthusiasm and relief by most Americans in 1948, the atmosphere had changed radically by the time Kinsey published his follow-up volume, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, just five years later. By 1953 Joe McCarthy was in full throttle, and, as James H. Jones writes in his judicious 1997 Kinsey biography, “ultra-conservative critics would accuse Kinsey of aiding communism by undermining sexual morality and the sanctity of the home.” Kinsey was an anti-Soviet, anti- New Deal conservative, but that didn’t matter in an America racked by fear. He lost the principal sponsor of his research, the Rockefeller Foundation, and soon found himself being hounded, in part for his sympathetic view of homosexuality, by the ambiguously gay homophobes J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson. (2.1) Rich adds at the end of his article, “Based on what we’ve seen in just the six weeks since Election Day [2004], the parallels between that war over sex and our own may have only just begun” (2.1). Dr. Kinsey had a difficult time obtaining funding for his own research, and so did Bill Condon, the director of the film, when he began looking for money to make a movie about the great scientist. He was eventually given a budget of $10 million, but that is considered limited in Hollywood. In 2004, society was still afraid to approach the subject, much as they were at mid-century, and the nation’s response to Condon’s work

43 indicates as much. While the film received three Golden Globe nominations, including Best Picture – Drama, it was not nominated for Best Picture by the more prestigious Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. However, the film did win the distinguished International Film Prize at the Directors Guild of Great Britain awards, beating Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby (2004) and Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator (2004), both of which dominated the American Academy Awards, an indication that maybe Europeans are more comfortable addressing sexuality than conservative, prudish, predominantly red state America. Kinsey himself described Europe as a “paradise of sexual freedom” (Gathorne-Hardy 235). Judith Reisman is Kinsey’s most notorious critic. Along with Laura Schlesinger, they began attacking the movie even before production started; both wanted to place ads in Variety magazine campaigning against the making of the movie. The ads, though, were deemed too obscene by the magazine and eventually declined (Larson 1 of 7). Reisman is known as “the founder of the modern anti-Kinsey movement,” and she has denounced the work of Dr. Kinsey for the past two decades, even publishing two books, Kinsey, Sex, and Fraud and Kinsey: Crimes and Consequences (Radosh 46). Reisman has also talked to people on Capitol Hill about opening a congressional investigation, arguing his findings are based on fraud and criminal wrong doing. However, Reisman also “endorses” a book titled The Pink Swastika, which, as Daniel Radosh writes in The New Yorker, “challenges the ‘myths’ that gays were victimized in Nazi Germany” (46). According to Reisman, quotes Radosh, “The Nazi Party and the Holocaust itself were largely the creation of the German homosexual movement” (46). Reisman warns, “Thanks to Alfred Kinsey, the American homosexual movement is poised to repeat those crimes” (Radosh 46). She adds, “Idealistic gay youth groups are being formed and staffed in classrooms nationwide by recruiters too similar to those who formed the original Hitler youth” (qtd. in Radosh 46). But as her comments indicate, Reisman is clearly homophobic. Among many other allegations, Reisman charges Kinsey with pedophilia: “Dr. Kinsey’s most egregious fraud is that he wasn’t a scientist. He was an ideologue who was most importantly a sex offender at best, and, beyond being a sex offender, he was certainly a child abuser and/or solicitor and guide in the perpetuation of that abuse” (qtd.

44 in Radosh 46). According to Radosh, Reisman “claims that Kinsey actively solicited pedophiles to molest children and report back to him” (Radosh 46). Reisman alleges, “there is absolutely no reason to believe that Kinsey himself was not involved in the sexual abuse of these children” (qtd. in Radosh 46). But Condon, in a Variety magazine interview, asserts that “since the study was first published, Kinsey has been accused of everything anyone could imagine” (qtd. in Kotler 35). He adds, “…20 years ago they landed on ‘pedophile’ and that’s the one charge they’ve stuck with because everything else has become more palatable” (qtd. in Kotler 35). There simply is no evidence, though, that Kinsey was ever a pedophile. As Daniel Radosh points out, “At the root of this accusation is an interview that Kinsey conducted with a sexual predator who kept detailed records of his activities with hundreds of women, men, and children” (46). In his New York Times article “Doctor Strangelove,” Caleb Crain discusses the same interview that Radosh mentions: The meeting took place in June 1944, when the pedophile, said to have been a man named Rex King [his actual name is unknown], was 63. Before and after the meeting, Kinsey wrote to King, coaxing him to send his detailed diaries of his sexual exploits, including those with children…Kinsey published much of King’s data in Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, where tables summarized King’s attempts to bring to orgasm boys between the ages of 2 months and 15 years, in some cases over a period as long as 24 hours. Kinsey attributed the data not to one source, but to many. But in 1995 John Bancroft, who was director of the Kinsey Institute until this spring, discovered that all the data came from King. In a forthcoming article, Dr. Bancroft suggests that Kinsey might have wanted to shield King from public attention. (1) Crain then adds, “The descriptions make for exceptionally difficult reading” (1). However, these descriptions are based on King’s interview and not Dr. Kinsey’s own personal experiments or experiences. Daniel Radosh emphasizes the fact that none of Kinsey’s four biographers have found any evidence that suggests otherwise (46). Condon, after extensive research, states that all the facts demonstrate Kinsey had “...no tolerance for anything but consensual sex” (Kinsey). In the film, when interviewing the

45 pedophile, who is given the fictional name Kenneth Braun, Kinsey (Liam Neeson) warns that when it comes to sex, “no one should be forced to do anything against their will; no one should be hurt [against their will]” (Kinsey). Wardell Pomeroy (Chris O’Donnell), Kinsey’s research assistant, walks out in disgust during the interview when Braun (William Sadler) begins boasting about his sexual exploits with children; although Paul Gebhard, also a research assistant, who is still alive, affirms that it was another one of Kinsey’s associates and not Pomeroy who disapproved, but admits that the rest of the scene is accurate (Crain 1). Condon’s film reiterates the fact that Kinsey was not a pedophile when Braun, at one point during the scene, asks Kinsey if he has “ever seen a boy orgasm,” to which Kinsey defiantly replies, “no” (Kinsey). But if Kinsey is not guilty of pedophilia, should he be blamed for even publishing such disturbing information? James H. Jones, who in 1997 published Alfred C. Kinsey: A Public/Private Life, says that Kinsey “erred in using the data,” while Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, author of Sex, the Measure of All Things: A Life of Alfred C. Kinsey in 1998, “calls it inevitable” (qtd. in Crain 1). Gathorne-Hardy explains: “In a sort of way he was ruthless, and one could almost go as far as to say immoral, at least not conventionally moral. If someone had sexual information that was germane, Kinsey would use it” (qtd. in Crain 1). Jones adds, “In his eagerness to learn everything he could about human sexuality, Kinsey was a vacuum cleaner, and he had absolutely no standards about censorship or passing moral judgment” (qtd. in Cooperman A03). “Science would have been better served had Kinsey not allowed his lust for data to obscure his judgment,” suggests Jones (510). He writes: “Betraying a huge moral blind spot, Kinsey took the records of Mr. X’s [as he refers to King in his book] criminal acts and transformed them into scientific data” (510). Jones highlights a quote from one of Kinsey’s critics, who points out, “Looking to sexual molesters for information on childhood sexuality is like drawing conclusions on the sexuality of adult females from the testimony of rapists” (qtd. in Jones 512). Jones alleges, In his eagerness to combat prudery and to celebrate Eros, he found it increasingly difficult to maintain moral boundaries. Until his death, he continued to hold that rape was wrong because it involved force or coercion, and he condemned petty offenders like flashers and Peeping

46 Toms as public nuisances. But as Kinsey moved deeper and deeper into his research, most sex offences, like most sexual taboos, struck him as arbitrary and harmful, the legacy of anxious Victorians who cared more about self-control than about satisfying needs. (512) Jones never charges Kinsey with any criminal wrongdoing, but he certainly questions his Machiavellian tactics. (513). Even Pomeroy, Kinsey’s ever faithful assistant, once admitted that Kinsey “would have done business with the devil himself if it would have furthered the research” (qtd. in Jones 513). Reisman, according to Caleb Crain, says Kinsey’s actions “should be regarded as a criminal matter” (1). “When you rape children, it’s still a crime,” notes Reisman (qtd. in Crain 1). “And if you solicit it and if you support it,” she adds, “it’s still a crime” (qtd. in Crain 1). Crain, who interviews Reisman, writes that she also “…alleges that Kinsey continued to correspond with King until 1954, and she points out that Kinsey also corresponded with Fritz von Balluseck, a German pedophile and former Nazi who was tried for murder” (1). But Kinsey was a scientist, not a social reformer; although, he began to act more like a crusader later in his career. Nevertheless, he was not interested in measuring right or wrong. Kinsey would not agree with or support either King or Balluseck’s actions, but as a scientist, he interviewed such subjects in order to obtain data for his reports. When asked whether Kinsey should have published King’s information, Bill Condon, the director of the film, hesitates: “I’m not sure. He was so intent on that one thing, on collecting data. It would seem like a betrayal of the whole project for him not to have used it in some way” (qtd. in Crain 1). But when asked whether it was right for Kinsey to lie about the source, Condon asserts, that “was a mistake” (qtd. in Crain 1). In many ways, Kinsey’s commitment to maintaining the privacy and anonymity of his sources has, as Crain notes, “hampered [his] defense” (1). Crain points out that “as a matter of policy, the institute will not – to the frustration of defenders and accusers alike – answer questions about King, Balluseck, or anyone else who may have confided in Kinsey” (1). But to those who still accuse Kinsey of pedophilia, the question should be asked, why have any of the victims not come forward? With the Catholic Church sexual abuse scandals, many adults have come forward and admitted the awful crimes

47 committed against them as children. But if Kinsey did rape as many children as Reisman and others have claimed, one should ask, where are the victims? Reisman hoped that the release of the film, along with two recent television documentaries and a novel just published by T. C. Boyle, would prompt some people to come forward and claim themselves as victims of Kinsey, but as to date, nobody has admitted to anything (Crain 1). Reisman appears to be just one of many who want to turn Kinsey into a monster, which is why Condon made the film in the first place; he wants to honor Dr. Kinsey’s legacy because the nation has failed to do so. Condon’s last film, Gods and Monsters (1998), is about the life of James Whale, the gay director of both Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Just like the monster in his films, Whale, as a homosexual man, felt isolated from society; he lived a lonely life and was misunderstood by most. In Gods and Monsters and Kinsey, Condon portrays the humanity of his subjects, both Whale and Kinsey. In Kinsey, Condon does not make an undefeated or over-glorified champion out of the scientist, but rather, he portrays him as perfectly human, a man who achieves great success, but who is not flawless either. Bill Ward writes: “…while sex is at the core of the story, it’s the humanity of the characters that resonate most in this engaging, engrossing saga. It’s not for the prudish, but it’s not just for the prurient, either” (19E). “Condon’s Kinsey,” observes David Denby, “is definitely a hero, but he’s also a neurotically driven man with a messianic streak, a sacrificial figure: wearing himself out in the pursuit of knowledge and experience, he died for our pleasure” (2 of 2). Denby adds: “Whatever else this movie does, it throws down the gauntlet in the culture wars. The tumult over Alfred C. Kinsey may be just beginning” (2 of 2). The film fairly depicts both the strengths and weaknesses of not only Kinsey as a man, but of his research as well. “I think if you’re unsympathetic to Kinsey, there’s plenty, lots in the movie that would support that point of view,” declares Condon (qtd. in Crain 1). Never in the film does Condon gloss over the darker side of Kinsey’s life. He admits to first being “terrified” to direct the film because “at the center was someone who was socially maladroit, a bully, a scientist who spent most of his time looking at bugs” (qtd. in Crain 1). “Then there’s the hero’s bisexuality, self-circumcision and encouragement of wife-swapping,” adds Condon (qtd. in Crain 1). Condon, however,

48 deals with all this material in a very objective manner; according to him, “the film allows you to make up your own mind about Kinsey” (Kinsey). Condon even addresses the concerns of Kinsey’s most famous critic, Lionel Trilling. David Denby notes: When the Kinsey book was published, Lionel Trilling wrote that Kinsey’s replacement of the old, prescriptive standard of “normal” with the new, descriptive notion of “natural” liberated a nation. But Trilling complained of reductivism: the statistical method removed sex from religion, morality, social life – everything that, in the past, had given it meaning. And the statistics wound up celebrating variety and frequency rather than quality. (2 of 2) Denby then adds: In the movie, Mac anxiously voices some of these concerns to her husband, whose curiosity is taking him farther and farther from the marital bed. Kinsey plunges into Chicago’s gay bars, collects pornography, conducts S & M experiments. On the road, he allows himself to be seduced by the ambitious Clyde Martin…Is it desire he feels, or is he acting on the scientist’s responsibility to experience everything – or both? Perhaps Condon doesn’t know, or can’t make up his mind. (2 of 2) Denby is correct when he asserts, “Bill Condon’s final judgment of Kinsey is split: he enjoys using Kinsey’s exploits to provoke, but, at the same time, he demonstrates that Kinsey undervalued social restraints and was oblivious to the messes he created around him (2 of 2). Condon admits that his favorite cut in the film is when the movie transitions from the scene where Kinsey and Clyde Martin (Peter Sarsgaard) kiss for the first time to a close-up shot of Mac’s face as Kinsey tells her about his affair with his young assistant. According to Condon, “…there’s the whole movie in that cut…there are not just two people involved in that kiss, but three” (Kinsey). Mac’s face reveals the emotional side of sex, but Kinsey failed to deal with such sensitivities in his research. Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, however, explains the rationale behind Kinsey’s research:

49 To the Greeks and Romans sex and love were separate (an attitude still partly preserved in the Middle East). Then two things happened: the Church, recognizing the power of sex, took it over and declared it evil. Second, the rise of Romantic Love exalted sex and finally joined it to love. Kinsey, in essence, was returning us to an earlier, now rarer view of sex – ‘demystifying it’… (344). Kinsey once even admitted to a close friend, “The whole army of religion is our central enemy” (qtd. in Gathorne-Hardy 31). He could never forget or forgive “the damage Christian morality and prudery had done to him” (Gathorne-Hardy 31). But Kinsey, never at any point in his life, lost the ability to love; he always loved his wife and children. Kinsey simply felt that not all sex needed to be sanctified by love, religion, or marriage. While Condon is not afraid to address many of the problems with Kinsey’s research – his inability to measure love and emotion – at the same time, neither is Condon afraid to question society’s inability to love, appreciate, and respect one another despite differences in sexual behavior and orientation. Christina Larson makes the point, “Though sympathetic to its subject, the film, directed by Bill Condon, is no naïve hagiography; in some respects, it actually affirms the Right’s view of Kinsey as a man who was far more than a mere observer of Americans’ sexual habits,” but she is quick to add, “…of course, it doesn’t condemn Kinsey because of it” (2 of 7). Condon does not shy away from tackling Kinsey’s flaws, but he does so without judging him either, which is the entire point of the film. It seems as if the only time Americans are willing to discuss sex is when passing judgment on others: both Hester Prynne’s predicament, although fictional, in The Scarlet Letter and Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky’s brief affair in 1998 serve as examples. Moreover, take into account the ongoing controversy over gay marriage, which appears to be more of a debate about the morality of gay sex than anything else. However that may be, Americans are fascinated by the topic of sex, hence the popularity of Playboy, “Sex and the City,” Paris Hilton’s infamous online video, and ABC’s hit show “Desperate Housewives.” Rightfully so, Bill Condon describes America’s relationship with sex as seemingly schizophrenic. Consequently, he proposes, within his film, a

50 society that encourages open ended discussions about sex; thus, the tagline of the film, “let’s talk about sex.” Perhaps more honest and frank discussions will lead to a better understanding of the diverse nature of human sexuality. Condon gives Kinsey credit for instigating the nation’s first conversations about sex, and Kinsey truly “democratized” the conversations by attempting to interview as diverse a pool of people as possible (Esther 15). Condon is careful to acknowledge, though, that there is much progress to be made. This is best portrayed in the film with the scene at the Chicago gay bar, where Kinsey and Clyde Martin interview a young man who was beaten, branded (literally), and disowned by his family because of his homosexuality. In the scene, Kinsey tells the young man, who is not ashamed but only wishes his family would accept him, that “homosexuality happens to be out of fashion in society now,” but then adds, “that doesn’t mean it won’t change some day” (Kinsey). Of course, the irony of the scene is that many Americans still consider homosexuality not only to be “out of fashion,” but they feel it is reprehensible and morally wrong, even more than a half century after Kinsey’s groundbreaking research. Condon addresses the timorous relationship Americans currently have with their own sexuality and the sexuality of others, just as Kinsey did in his own research in the 1940s and 1950s. Although the titles of Kinsey’s books do not reflect as much, this is a uniquely American dilemma. David Hollinger points out that both of Kinsey’s books – Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female – are mistakenly titled. Hollinger writes: The titles imply an inquiry species-wide in scope. The authors were indeed professional zoologists. But the “Kinsey Reports” were based on interviews with a highly particular zoological sample: men and women in mid-twentieth-century North America, overwhelmingly the cultural products of the United States. The deflation of the universalist pretensions of these studies began almost immediately upon publication of the first of the two volumes in 1948. It was the destiny of the Kinsey Reports to become artifacts in an animated and enduring discourse not about humankind but about a particular society and its culture. Librarians were

51 obliged to catalogue them in the science section; at home, however, individuals found good reasons to shelve these fascinating tomes next to David Riesman’s The Lonely Crowd, Gunnar Myrdal’s American Dilemma, and Henry Nash Smith’s Virgin Land. What started out as zoology ended up as American Studies. (“How Wide the Circle of the ‘We’?” 317) His work may have been inaccurately labeled, but Kinsey never forgot that his research concerned Americans, many of whom had been raised in the very same Victorian era environment that he was also a victim of. The film especially focuses on this fact by emphasizing Kinsey’s estranged relationship with his father. Unfortunately, though, the issues that Kinsey addresses at mid-century are still relevant. Condon, during the director commentary, points out that he was careful not to make the film a period piece; he did not want the film “dripping in period” because when a film comes off this way, it “puts a veil between the audience and the characters in the movie” (Kinsey). “These issues are still with us,” asserts Condon; they should not be relegated to the past because they are certainly pertinent today (Kinsey). Frank Rich declares, Condon’s film successfully “taps into anxieties that feel entirely contemporary” (2.1). Just as Billy Graham (who actually did not even bother to read either of Kinsey’s books) and other religious leaders attacked Kinsey’s research in the 1950s, the religious Right also attacked Condon’s film upon its release in 2004, including James Dobson and Robert Knight. Knight has referred to Kinsey as “the godfather of the homosexual activist movement, the campaign to mainstream pornography, and, even, the campaign to strike down abortion laws” (qtd. in Kotler 35). In addition, just as the New York Times refused to run ads for Kinsey’s book when it was first published, Channel 13 in New York City also declined to run a spot for Condon’s film. Frank Rich writes, “When they start pushing the panic button over ‘moral values’ at the bluest of TV channels, public broadcasting’s WNET, in the bluest of cities, New York, you know this country has entered a new cultural twilight zone” (2.1). In his aforementioned article “The Plot Against Sex In America” Rich comments on the reaction to Condon’s film: The film is just this month’s handy pretext for advancing the larger goal of pushing sex of all nonbiblical kinds back into the closet and undermining

52 any scientific findings, whether circa 1948 or 2004, that might challenge fundamentalist sexual orthodoxy as successfully as Darwin challenged Genesis. (Though that success, too, is in doubt. The Washington Post reports that this year some 40 states are dealing with challenges to the teaching of evolution in public schools.) (2.1) To support his argument, Rich asserts: Kinsey is an almost uncannily helpful guide to how these old cultural fault lines have re-emerged from their tomb, virtually unchanged. Among Kinsey’s on-screen antagonists is a university hygiene instructor who states with absolute certitude that abstinence is the only cure needed to stop syphilis. Sound familiar? In tune with the “moral value” crusaders, the Web site for the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has obscured and downplayed the important information that condoms are overwhelmingly effective in preventing sexually transmitted diseases. (A nonprofit organization supporting comprehensive sex education, Advocates for Youth, publicized this subterfuge and has been rewarded with three government audits of its finances in eight months.) (2.1) Rich then adds: Elsewhere in Kinsey, we watch desperate students pepper their professor with a series of uninformed questions: “Can too much sex cause cancer? Does suppressing sex lead to stuttering? Does too much masturbation cause premature ejaculation?” Though that sequence takes place in 1939, you can turn on CNN in December in 2004 and watch Genevieve Wood of the Family Research Council repeatedly refuse – five times, according to the transcript – to disown the idea that masturbation can cause pregnancy. (2.1) And finally, in summary, Rich notes: No matter what the censors may accomplish elsewhere, the pop culture revolution since Kinsey’s era is in little jeopardy: in a nation of “Desperate Housewives,” “Too Darn Hot” has become the national anthem. A movie like Kinsey will do just fine; the more protests, the more publicity and the

53 larger the box office. But if Hollywood will always survive, off-screen Americans are being damaged by the cultural war over sex that is being played out in real life. You see that when struggling kids are denied the same information about their sexuality that was kept from their antecedents in the pre-Kinsey era; you see that when pharmacists in more and more states enforce their own “moral values” by refusing to fill women’s contraceptive prescriptions and do so with the tacit or official approval of local officials; you see it when basic information that might prevent the spread of lethal diseases is suppressed by the government because it favors political pandering over scientific fact. (2.1) Kinsey taught “there are only three kinds of sexual abnormalities: abstinence, celibacy, and delayed marriage” (Gathorne-Hardy 124). Bill Condon focuses on the ridiculousness of abstinence-only education in an interview with the Gay & Lesbian Review. In the interview, Condon states: “Take the fact that out of the $5 billion earmarked for dealing with AIDS in Africa, $800 million is put aside for abstinence education, which is pointless. It won’t work, and Kinsey has proven it won’t work. And people die in the meantime” (qtd. in Esther 15). Condon adds, “There’s a condom study at the Kinsey Institute about the way condom use isn’t as effective as it has been and that’s because they’re discovering that a small but significant percentage of people don’t know how to use them” (qtd. in Esther 15). While nobody wants America’s youth to begin having sex before they are emotionally mature enough to handle all the consequences involved with sex, it is important that young adults are empowered with the necessary information to make the right decisions once they do become sexually active. This dissertation focuses on the human condition, and as Bill Condon asserts, sex itself is “an essential part of the human condition” (qtd. in Esther 15). It simply cannot be denied or repressed. Abstinence-only educators are only wasting their time. “Science says that abstinence-only programs don’t work,” asserts Frank Rich (2.1). He adds, “A recent Columbia University study found that teens who make ‘virginity pledges’ to delay sex until marriage still have premarital sex at a high rate (88 percent) rivaling those that don’t, but are less likely to use contraception once they do” (2.1). “It’s California,” boasts Rich, “a huge blue state that

54 refuses to accept federal funding for abstinence-only curriculums, that had a 40 percent falloff in teenage pregnancy over the past decade, second only to Alaska” (2.1). Yet Kinsey did much more than simply attempt to bring sexuality out of the American closet. Americans like to think in categories and boxes – homosexual and heterosexual – but Kinsey felt that “all sexuality exists on a sliding scale” (Kotler 35). Condon, in the aforementioned Variety magazine interview, suggests that “there’s something very constraining about the labels gay and straight, as there is with any label used in identity politics” (qtd. in Kotler 35). Gore Vidal, who was also a part of the Variety interview, affirms Kinsey’s abandonment of the labels homosexual and heterosexual when he states: “They’re not nouns, they’re adjectives, they describe actions. I’ve never met any person who does either one of these things 24 hours a day” (35). Steven Kotler writes, “While certain segments of the American political spectrum have embraced – at least from a vote-gathering perspective – gay culture, they remain terrified by the spectrum in the middle” (35). Bill Condon then notes: “The idea of bisexuality, that everyone is somewhere along that sliding scale, is incredibly threatening today. Even politicians, who can hide behind the idea of a gay identity, don’t know what to do with the idea that everyone is something in the middle” (35). Condon sums it up best when he states in the interview, “We all think of ourselves as progressive, as having moved forward. But, in actuality, that desire to be part of the group is still with everybody. All liberation is liberation of an individual nature. And it’s no easier now than it’s ever been” (35). “A great tension,” adds Condon, “still remains between the truth of our sexual preferences and our desire to fit in” (35). Elaborating on this issue in another interview, Condon states: “Kinsey was a proponent of individuality as the key to sexual freedom. I think the idea of people defining themselves by certain sexual acts he would have thought was really wrong-headed” (qtd. in Esther 15). Perhaps this liberal view of human sexuality is best depicted in Herman Melville’s Typee. Discussing Melville and his portrayals of human sexuality within the novel, John Bryant notes: Melville’s depictions of the lure of Toby, the beauty of Fayaway, the embraces of brother Kory-Kory, and the handsome ambivalence of Marnoo reveal a young man excited by sexuality in all its expressive

55 modes. Because his subsequent writings, even in the late years, were deeply sensual, some assume Melville was in fact homosexual. But the known facts of Melville’s life discount this assumption; indeed, the very nature of his creativity discourages the easy labeling of homosexual or heterosexual. He is best called “pansexual.” (Bryant xx) Fortunately, this view of human sexuality is finally beginning to appear in some of today’s movies. Take, for instance, Brokeback Mountain (2005), starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, both of whom play modern day cowboys who fall in love with one another. Ledger, however, in a Time magazine article highlighting the film, refuses to label the men as gay. Discussing the two characters, Ledger states: I don’t think Ennis del Mar [Heath Ledger] could be labeled as gay. Without Jack Twist [Jake Gyllenhaal], I don’t think that he would ever have come out. I think the whole point was that it was two souls that fell in love with each other. (qtd. in Luscombe 70) Ledger questions “conventional notions of gay and straight” (70). He remarks, “I don’t think it’s that black-and-white, and I think because we label it so harshly, there’s just a lot of confused people running around thinking, Oh, f____, which side am I on?” (qtd. in Luscombe 70). A recent article by Ritch C. Savin-Williams, published in the Gay & Lesbian Review, supports Ledger’s point of view. In the article, Savin-Williams, a professor at Cornell, discusses his latest book, The New Gay Teenager. Williams’s article, titled “The New Gay Teen: Shunning Labels,” explains how many teenagers, those with same-sex partners, are now refusing to identify themselves as gay. Savin- Williams writes, “They might use ‘the gay word’ as a shorthand method for describing their attractions, but implicit in this usage is a rejection of gay as an identity, much less as the defining characteristic of their sense of self” (1 of 5). He adds, “They object to the gay label because they don’t want their sexuality to define them” (2 of 5). Savin- Williams emphasizes that today’s teenagers are not rejecting the gay label due to feelings of embarrassment or shame, either. “Young people,” he declares, “with same-sex attractions are now freer than ever to be themselves, comfortable with their sexuality, because they live in a youth culture that is increasingly nonchalant about diverse sexualities” (2 of 5). Savin-Williams explains their rationale:

56 …young people fully embrace their same-sex orientation, but they philosophically oppose the relegation of their sexuality to an identity box. The mere creation of sexual categories reifies a label as an “it,” a trait with stereotypical depictions that do not fit their experience. Labels are considered overly reductionist and unable to capture the full extent of their sexuality. Identity terms box them in, constrain their options, and oversimplify a complex aspect of the self. Their strongest preference is not to call their sexuality anything at all, not to compartmentalize their sexual desire, and not to link desire immediately with politics. Sex is about pleasure and happiness. (3 of 5) “Their desire,” he sums up, “is to witness the elimination of sexuality per se as the defining characteristic of the person” (5 of 5). This dissertation has thus far argued for a postethnic America, one where concepts such as ethnicity and race are no longer relied upon to define individual beings. On the same hand, it also argues for a postsexual-orientation nation. Richard Rodriguez, as pointed out in the first chapter, resents the fact that his books are often referred to as gay literature because society labels him gay. He asserts in Brown that he is also Hispanic, Catholic, and Californian; Rodriguez does not want his sexuality to define him. Just as Kinsey did, Rodriguez values diversity and individuality. Condon calls Kinsey “quintessentially American” because he embodied the essence of American individuality. Kinsey was an individualist if there ever was one; perhaps, at times, to an extreme. Sometimes Kinsey’s commitment to his own individual desires and needs hurt others around him, including family members, fellow research assistants, and most of all his wife. Kinsey, though, adored his wife. All the research indicates they had a marriage that was indeed based on love and respect, and the last scene of Condon’s film verifies this. However, Kinsey was not only dedicated to his wife and his family, but he also felt a strong commitment to his fellow American community, which makes it easier to forgive his sometimes overbearing individuality. He truly wanted to investigate and shed light on a subject which few Americans were willing to discuss – their sexuality. As a scientist, Kinsey, according to a recent PBS documentary, fought to “banish myth with

57 fact.” He not only wanted to inform Americans about sex and their bodies, but to enlighten them on protection and contraception methods in order to prevent the outbreak of venereal diseases, which had dramatically increased in the 1930s (Larson 3 of 7). On the same hand, Kinsey, whose father was a minister, often resembled a social reformer or preacher rather than a scientist. Gathorne-Hardy notes in his biography that all sermons have “standard ingredients,” which include the following: “chastisement of the old order, denunciation of hypocrisy, and a promise of a new city, a new day to come, a promise of felicity” (31). He then adds: “This is a more or less exact description of at least one aspect of Kinsey’s extraordinary volumes on sexual behavior. The record of his life’s two great works can be regarded as an enormous sexual sermon” (31). Glenway Wescott once claimed, “With all his scientific conscientiousness and pride and faith in science, he has the temperament of a reformer rather than a scientist; fierily against hypocrisy and repressive law of every sort, censorship, etc. (qtd. in Gathorne-Hardy 324). While Kinsey may have resented Puritan prudery, he certainly inherited the Puritan sense of mission. Kinsey not only wanted to “banish myth with fact,” as noted earlier, but also “prejudice with tolerance” (PBS). Kinsey took on a “missionary zeal” when it came to his research and to improving the sexual lives of Americans (PBS). His studies were concerned not only with “satisfaction of body,” but also “improvement of soul.” (PBS). In an interview with Condon, John Esther suggests: In many ways Kinsey seemed to be a product of his times – namely, the end of Modernism, in that he was approaching knowledge and collecting data through a Cartesian viewpoint and yet came to what you could simplify and say were “anti-Cartesian” conclusions. He wanted to figure sexuality out, but his conclusions were infinite. Do you think Kinsey was conscious that declaring anything “the truth” was, to put it in Nietzsche’s words, an “arrogant and mendacious minute of world history?” (15) Condon, in response, adds: Yes, you are so right. It’s really a moment in American history. It crossed all kinds of disciplines – that we could somehow just sit down and measure everything. It’s one of my favorite lines in the movie where he says, “In 20 years we’ll have answered all the basic questions.” That was

58 the thought. America having sort of helped the good guys win the war, it was like “we’re going to end all the problems now.” There is something amusing about it. I think it’s what made him an interesting scientist to make a movie about. That he had an element, that sort of confidence, arrogance maybe, of his time. (15) Kinsey’s research was surely a product of post-WWII American exceptionalism. Despite his efforts, Kinsey certainly did not “answer all the basic questions.” But he did indeed get the conversation going, and he started asking the right questions. Kinsey, while at times a bit arrogant about his own research, was also ever the American pragmatist, who felt “inquiry better than dogma” (PBS). But Kinsey, unfortunately, has been remembered in a less favorable light. Christina Larson avows, “…when there’s sex, there’s fire – and for 50 years, Kinsey has been burned at the stake” (6 of 7). Gathorne- Hardy writes, “It seems the religious Right in America attributes all the liberal development of the last fifty-odd years, which it so hates, to Kinsey and thinks that if it can destroy Kinsey everything it hates will vanish” (223). Condon’s film, therefore, should be praised for its attempt to shed new light on Kinsey’s legacy. Not only did Kinsey’s research lead to the sexual revolution of the 1960s, as did Playboy and the pill, but even more importantly than that, his recognition and value of human diversity is what he should really be embraced for. He was a man who was ahead of his time. Kinsey observed, “There is no American pattern of sexual behavior, but scores of patterns” (Larson 6 of 7). Condon likes to highlight a quote from Kinsey, one that he includes in his own film, which he came across during his research. When asked whether there should be a Hollywood film made about him, Kinsey tells a reporter in the movie, “I couldn’t think of anything more pointless.” Kinsey, however, could not be more wrong. His research reveals the diverse nature of human sexual behavior, and Condon’s film, released in 2004, reminds Americans that they should celebrate such diversity, not repress, refute, or reprehend it. Condon’s film illustrates a point that many Americans today are failing to comprehend: tolerance in and of itself becomes “a moral” and should be considered “a value.” Even Kinsey himself never realized this. According to Gathorne-Hardy: “It never seemed to have occurred to Kinsey, for instance, in taking his apparently non-

59 moral stance, that tolerance itself was a moral position. To Kinsey…‘moral’ always meant condemnation and prohibition” (142). Once, a man sent Kinsey a letter asking why, “if preachers and teachers said love was so beautiful, could any expression of it be wrong?” (Gathorne-Hardy 138). Of course, Kinsey felt it was not wrong, and he attempted to prove so through his research. As noted earlier, Condon describes Kinsey as “quintessentially American;” although many would argue that he is downright un-American and that his work threatens traditional American, Judeo-Christian values. But critics should be reminded that Kinsey has also been described as a man who was “always fiercely democratic and hated snobbery, nor was he remotely racist” (Gathorne-Hardy 57). It is Kinsey’s very democratic notion of tolerance and love that should stand as a model for all to emulate, which is why Condon chooses to end his film with a scene where Kinsey discusses love, even though the concept itself never factored into his research. Kinsey knew that love, however impossible to measure, does matter. Kinsey was at times overly ambitious, selfish, and may have let his dedication to sex research cloud his better judgment at times, all of which Condon portrays in his film. This chapter, though, focuses on the positive impact Kinsey has had on American society. Kinsey did not think in terms of black and white, upper-class or lower-class (in fact, he even refused to use the word “class” because of the snobbery associated with the term), and he certainly did not think of people as either strictly homosexual or heterosexual. Kinsey would surely resent the identity politics that plague American society today. He embraced all humanity, which is why he interviewed people so well and was able to extract so many private and intimate details. Kinsey, determined that “no one else should have to suffer as he had suffered,” listened to their stories with both sympathy and compassion (Gathorne-Hardy 24). In his biography, Gathorne-Hardy notes, “…Paul Gebhard and Wardell Pomeroy, not insensitive men, had to some degree become accustomed – indeed often bored – by what they heard. But Kinsey would still return with tears in his eyes at some account – from man or woman – of agonizing sexual frustration or sexual cruelty” (141). A black pastor from Kansas, who Kinsey had interviewed in 1943, once wrote to him, “I like your wisdom and your quiet acceptance of so many things” (Gathorne- Hardy 208).

60 This is the Kinsey that should be remembered and celebrated. His work is not only a scientific endeavor to investigate the diverse nature of human sexuality, but more important, for the purpose of this dissertation, his studies stress the need for a more understanding, tolerant, and empathetic American nation, and Condon’s film reminds its audience of this fact. Gathorne-Hardy rightfully asserts: “The liberal revolution of the last half of the twentieth century has been a result of deep forces acting upon and moving in our culture, affecting everything, but perhaps especially sexual behavior. All one can say is that it is hard to think of any individual who had more influence than Kinsey here” (446). There is certainly no doubt that Americans have made progress since Kinsey’s work was first published. To begin, there have been major reforms to American sex laws. Kinsey was “appalled” by the “cruelties of American sex law in action” (Gathorne- Hardy 166). In the United States, sexual acts which Kinsey “regarded as perfectly normal were criminalized” (PBS). Kinsey was especially dismayed “as the laws operated on the lower levels” (Gathorne-Hardy 166). [Since Kinsey refused to use the word “class,” he substituted the term “level” instead.] However, the reordered sentencing of Matthew Limon last fall points to the improvement of some American sex laws. Time reports that Matthew Limon, now 23, was convicted in 2000 of having oral sex with a 14 year old boy (August et al. 27). According to an ACLU report, the sex was consensual; Matthew had turned 18 only a week before the incident happened, and the boy was almost 15. Limon has been diagnosed between “borderline intellectual functioning” and “mild mental retardation” (ACLU). In fact, both boys were students at the same residential school for developmentally disabled youth in Miami County, Kansas. Nevertheless, Limon was sentenced to 17 years in prison. The Kansas Supreme Court has now, according to Time, “unanimously struck down a state law setting harsher punishments for underage homosexual sex than for underage heterosexual sex” (August et al. 27). Time adds, “The court ordered equal sentencing, saying ‘moral disapproval’ did not justify the treatment of Limon, who would have received a maximum of 15 months in jail if he had had sex with an underage female” (August et al. 27). Needless to say, progress is being made.

61 Many Americans are now “coming out of the closet.” In the November 7, 2005 edition of Time, Rebecca Winters Keegan notes, “When Houston Comets forward Sheryl Swoopes became the most prominent team-sport athlete to declare her homosexuality, the strongest reaction was the lack of one” (133). Keegan adds: “Swoopes, who has been dating a former coach for seven years, didn’t lose her Nike sneaker deal or her role as the sweetheart of the league, which has a strong lesbian base” (an important fact to acknowledge) (133). Hence, people feel more comfortable than ever before in American society about proclaiming their homosexuality; although, again, their homosexuality should not label or define them. Dr. Kinsey laid the groundwork for such acceptance and toleration. There is one scene at the end of Condon’s film that best portrays the gratitude all Americans should feel towards Dr. Kinsey. The character played by Lynn Redgrave tells Kinsey about her desire and love for another woman, which she once had to repress, but then adds at the end of her story, “things have gotten much better” (Kinsey). When Kinsey asks, “What happened?,” she replies, “Why, you did, of course” (Kinsey). There has been advancement, but it is important for Americans to continue Kinsey’s legacy. There is certainly still room for progress when it comes to respecting gay rights. For example, while Sheryl Swoopes may feel comfortable proclaiming her homosexuality, how many male athletes would feel the same way? Moreover, while American sex laws have improved, the battle over gay marriage is still being fought. Thus, Kinsey’s mid-century message, brought to life in Condon’s film in 2004, is one that more people should take to heart; it certainly seems relevant today. Lynn Gorchov, who has extensively researched Kinsey’s impact upon 1950s American society, notes, regarding the short term, “it is clear that Kinsey lost the debate over homosexuality in this country” (qtd. in Gathorne-Hardy 448). However, Gathorne-Hardy is quick to point out, “Lost the debate perhaps; but temporarily, and not the war” (448). Therefore, it is not time to give up. The battle must rage on. Americans owe it to Kinsey to do so.

62 SPANGLISH: A FILM THAT FAILS TO LIVE UP TO ITS NAME

While Kinsey successfully deals with diversity and human sexuality, Spanglish (2004), written and directed by James L. Brooks, attempts to address concerns regarding race and class but ultimately fails to do so. Film critic Craig D. Lindsey of the Raleigh, North Carolina News and Observer best sums up the problem with the film. He writes: “…you can’t help feeling Spanglish was built on a foundation of white, liberal guilt. Here’s a movie where a heroic and glamorous Latina figure brings perspective into the lives of a wealthy, self-absorbed, white family – and they end up thanking her for it. There’s nothing wrong with making a movie with strong Latino[a] protagonists [indeed, there should be more made], but Spanglish comes off as Brooks’disjointed apology to working-class folk for being wealthy and successful” (7). Movie critic Charles Taylor even notes: “Want to know why Bush won? Watch James L. Brooks’ smug message drama, which tries to skewer clueless liberal do-gooders but only succeeds in impaling itself” (1 of 3). Spanglish, rather than uniting the nation, divides Americans according to issues of race, class, and gender. However, this chapter is not meant to attack Brooks or his politics; rather, it will examine his work in relation to multiculturalism. The term “spanglish” itself suggests merging, blending, and browning, but the film does not even consider entertaining the concept. While many would label the movie a multicultural one by simply looking at the title alone, all one has to do is watch the film just once to realize that it is anything but. Rather than bringing communities together, this film keeps them apart. Professor Ilan Stavans’s 2003 book Spanglish: The Making of A New American Language describes spanglish, the language, as a “tool of empowerment, a way of accepting and coming from two cultures…but American nonetheless” (qtd. in Paternostro 1 of 5). He adds, “For me, it’s the shaping of a new identity that is just astonishing” (qtd. in Paternostro 3 of 5). This certainly, though, is not the message of Brooks’s film. In Brown, Richard Rodriguez claims: “Our age looks for exclusion. And there is a certain gumption missing from our age as a result, and from the literature [and movies]

63 of our age” (13). Rodriguez’s assertion can surely be applied to Brooks’s film. Spanglish suggests that Americans from diverse backgrounds cannot live together in harmony – that the nation cannot unite in human solidarity. Perhaps, however, the point will become more clear by examining the portrayal of the film’s lead characters. To begin, there is the character of Flor (Paz Vega), who immigrates illegally to the U.S. with her young daughter Cristina (Shelbie Bruce). Herein lies one of the first problems with the film; Spanglish perpetuates the stereotype that all Latinos/Hispanics are illegal aliens, as has been pointed out by Maricarmen Martínez (14 Nov. 2005). Latinos were in the Southwest many years before Anglos ever arrived, and most who live there today are not illegal aliens; the United States is very much their home and place of birth. But this film continues to characterize all Latinos as foreigners living in a strange land. Flor, though, once living in Los Angeles, albeit illegally according to the film, is not only afraid to assimilate, as well she should considering the way white America is depicted in the movie, but she also resists integration. The terms assimilation and integration should be carefully distinguished from one another. While assimilation suggests absorption into a culture, integration, on the other hand, implies combination The weakness of assimilation is best illustrated through the ridiculous comment made by the young woman in John’s kitchen at the restaurant. She tells John: “I agree with everything you just said. I admire you for your feelings. I hope to adopt them as my own” (Spanglish). In this scene, Brooks is purposely laughing at, what he views as, the absurd notion of an American melting pot; but, unfortunately, he fails to differentiate between assimilation and integration. As established in chapter one, Zangwill’s melting pot is based on the concept of integration rather than assimilation. To integrate is “to bring or come into equal membership of a community” (Oxford American Dictionary). According to Brooks’s film, however, integration is an unattainable end. There are certainly class issues to contend with, and the fact that Flor begins to learn the English language should not be overlooked, but this seems to be more out of necessity rather than a true interest or desire to explore American culture. Other than that, she places herself on the periphery; she remains an outsider who looks in and eventually decides she does not like what she sees.

64 Ronald Takaki, however, is careful to point out in his book, in a section titled “The Internal Borders of Exclusion,” “integration” for Mexican immigrants has not always “mean[t] equality” (A Different Mirror 326). He writes: Even on the large cattle ranches of Texas where Mexicans and Anglos lived together and formed loyalties and sometimes even friendships, integration did not mean equality. J. Frank Dobie, for example, described one of the workers on his family’s ranch. This “old, faithful Mexican” had been employed on the ranch for over twenty years and he was “almost the best friend” Dobie had. “Many a time ‘out in the pasture’ I have put my lips to the same water jug that he had drunk from,” he remembered fondly. But Dobie added: “At the same time neither he nor I would think of his eating at the dining table with me.” (326) Takaki adds, “Included as laborers, Mexicans found themselves excluded socially, kept at a distance from Anglo society” (326). So perhaps it is naïve to propose integration as a solution, but it certainly is the first step. And, of course, it is a two way street; everyone, including the culture of the majority, has to be willing to reach out. It is only after Americans establish contact with one another, those outside their prescribed circles of affiliation, that they can begin to break down some of these barriers. Flor, though, never seems comfortable establishing relationships with others outside her Latino community. Flor’s quandary is much like Tommo’s in Melville’s Typee, briefly alluded to in the last chapter. Regarding the novel, John Bryant writes: …Tommo’s condition helps us clarify the hard dilemmas of multiculturalism in our own time. He desires an assimilation with the Polynesian Other but fears the loss of his own native culture, just as any ethnic minority might wonder whether America is the open cosmopolitan identity it professes to be or just another threatening ethnicity to resist. (x) In addition, when discussing the significance of the Typee tattoos in the novel, Bryant observes: “He [Tommo] now realizes the deeper meaning of tattoo: it marks him as theirs; it means permanent assimilation; it means a farewell to Western life completely, and no turning back” (xxi).

65 This insight can certainly be applied to Flor’s dilemma and her concerns for her daughter as well. For instance, Flor does not want Cristina to attend Bernie’s (Sarah Steele) private school, despite the fact that they are offering her a $20,000 scholarship, because, much like the tattoo for Tommo, it would signify “permanent assimilation” (Bryant xxi). Take into account, as mentioned earlier, that integration should be the goal, not assimilation. What Brooks fails to deal with in the film is the idea that perhaps Cristina could bring a taste of her own heritage into the predominantly white, upper-class institution. Maybe Cristina is exactly what the school needs. If Americans truly want to celebrate diversity, then this merger – Cristina’s choice to attend Bernie’s school – would not only be acceptable, but it is exactly what a nation devoted to multiculturalism would desire: the idea that children, despite their diverse backgrounds, have the opportunity to engage with one another, to learn to get along with each other, and by doing so, learn to appreciate and value each other’s histories. This is probably why the school offered Cristina the scholarship in the first place; not only do they owe Deborah (Téa Leoni) a favor, but more than likely they are attempting to increase the number of minority students who attend the institution. Cristina may be becoming more Americanized, and attending Bernie’s school outside the barrio may expedite the process, but “becoming a proud American” does not have to mean “feeling ashamed of being Mexican” (Takaki 328). Debra Dickerson writes in The End of Blackness: In trying to convince black kids to consider applying to Ivy League and challenging colleges, one is routinely met, especially from their parents, with a disgusted pause, followed by a variant of this conversation-stopper: “I don’t want her to lose her identity.” Her identity as what – a graduate of a mediocre school? Why must blacks, to remain black, avoid contact with whites and the societal goodies that follow them wherever they go? This is know-nothingness, petulance, and self-elimination; who does one hurt in ceding Harvard to the haves? Who does one help? Why did James Meredith risk his life to integrate Ole Miss, if enrolling his granddaughter there now means harming her in some way? (18) Thus, Dickerson would certainly question Flor’s decision.

66 In a stinging review, Charles Taylor writes: The pain of parental sacrifice has long been the staple of weepers like Imitation of Life and Stella Dallas. In Spanglish, it’s the child who has to sacrifice the mother’s pride. The movie gives Flor an out. The story is told to us in voice-over, as Cristina’s Princeton application essay, so we’re spared the possibility that Flor’s decision cost her daughter anything. And lest we miss the message, Cristina even tells Princeton that she doesn’t need the school’s acceptance in order to accept herself. (There’s a sure winner of an approach to take with the Ivy League.) In any sensible terms, a mother who impedes her child’s education as Flor does is a lousy mother. (3 of 3) Furthermore, it is ironic that the film, which is fixed on the idea that both Flor and Cristina should not integrate but, instead, preserve their Mexican heritage at all costs, even giving up a $20,000 scholarship, sheds so little light on Mexican culture. What do we learn about Flor and Cristina’s immigrant experience in the U.S or what their past life in Mexico was like, beyond the fact that they were abandoned by Cristina’s father? Movie critic Jay Stone has complained, “Spanglish is about one of many things, but its take on the Immigrant Experience is the least palatable” (D3). Frank Gabrenya of the Columbus Dispatch adds: “With a population that is 48 percent Latino, the Los Angeles area must teem with moving stories about Mexican immigrants trying to assimilate into a culture driven by money, glamour, and power. An hour or two eavesdropping at the bar of a country club should unearth stories more insightful than the one that fills Spanglish” (1F). “As a Mexican woman,” notes Lilia O’Hara in the San Diego Union-Tribune, “I didn’t feel represented at all” (F-2). She adds, “Spanglish is a well-intentioned picture that winds up moving us in the end because it deals with human emotions, but it is a ruse because its attempt to show a clash of cultures falls flat” (F-2). She writes: I was surprised when I saw that the lead wound up being Spaniard Paz Vega. My surprise grew when I viewed her on screen; she’s absolutely beautiful. And the problem isn’t her beauty; neither is it her acting. But the truth is that a woman like that, with or without legal documents to

67 work in the United States, would never wind up as a maid. So, on the one hand, the film perpetuates the stereotype of the Mexican maid and, on the other, presents a character that is outside the realm of possibility. (F-2) Moreover, Joe Williams of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch contends: “It’s pertinent to note that Vega, who is from Spain, does not resemble in looks or demeanor many of the mestizo women who migrate from Mexico to thankless labor in Los Angeles. Granted, the Latino community is more ethnically diverse than most Middle Americans realize. But when a movie alludes to issues of race and assimilation, it’s reasonable to scrutinize the underlying message that only a fair-skinned Hispanic is eligible for the Cinderella role” (E1). Confirming the unrealistic nature of the film, Lilia O’Hara also writes: An example of just how far removed from reality this movie is comes when the woman and her daughter are seen arriving in the desert with a set of luggage with floral prints and little wheels. They get out of a pickup truck in the desert (I doubt the little wheels would last more than 10 minutes before falling apart) and, in the next scene, they’re walking in Los Angeles without a speck of dirt or dust on their bags. Dear God, what a lack of respect for the immigrants that actually make that journey! And that’s not even taking into account the mistaken impressions the film will create when it’s shown in Latin America. (F-2) O’Hara then complains, and rightfully so: “Another detail that seemed incongruous is that in an interview with the Union-Tribune, director Brooks spoke of the care taken with Adam Sandler’s character, who is a chef. A real chef de cuisine taught him how to make dishes, even sandwiches. I expected the same care in his treatment of the Mexican characters. But it didn’t happen” (F-2). John Clasky (Adam Sandler) is modeled after Thomas Keller, a Napa Valley restaurant owner who was dubbed America’s best chef by Time magazine in 2001. Keller worked extensively with Sandler and trained him for the role. Norma Meyer reports, “Sandler supposedly didn’t know how to boil water when Keller began schooling him in culinary arts – teaching him to proficiently handle knives, season entrees, and expertly arrange prepared edibles on a plate” (1 of 3). It is puzzling, though, that in a

68 film attempting to deal with issues of diversity, especially one that spends so much time focusing on food preparation, none of the food featured in the film appears to be ethnic. In his movie, Brooks could have used food as a metaphor for multiculturalism and how it should work in the nation; director Gurinder Chadha’s does this brilliantly in What’s Cooking (2000). Many people like to experience other cultures through food; it is often one of the first and most comfortable places to start from, but Brooks fails to deal with the issue. There is, however, one aspect of the film Brooks appears to get right after spending lots of time researching Hispanic émigré women and their kids and, at the same time, working with Latina magazine founder Christy Haubegger. Lilia O’Hara, after bashing the movie, acknowledges, “The film does manage to explore the difficult role that many Mexican children are relegated to: that of being translators for their parents, even in delicate or adult matters” (F-2). She also adds, “It is true that many Mexican women sacrifice their own happiness or personal growth for their children” (F-2). “Nonetheless,” she points out, “all these are issues that are touched upon but never developed in Spanglish” (F-2). Thus, Spanglish, as it is inappropriately titled, barely even gives a glimpse into the Mexican immigrant experience. Rather than focusing on Flor and Cristina’s journey, the film spends the majority of its 131 minutes exploring the daily life of the Claskys, highlighting their ups and downs. Flor and Cristina simply act as visitors to this deranged and unstable white upper-class world, and are eventually not welcome to enter it. Their stay with the Claskys is all too brief, but who can blame them considering the way this family operates, or at least the way they are depicted within the film. It is as if the movie is pitting white America against Latina/o America, and it does so through the portrayal of Flor (Paz Vega) and Deborah (Téa Leoni). In the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, William Arnold writes: The culture clash that ensues is largely between the two mothers: the Anglo mom gloms onto and tries to pass her shallow values to the well- behaved, self-assured Cristina; the henpecked chef and his wounded kids are attracted to the more centered immigrant values of Flor.

69 The humor – which is more hit-and-miss than usual for Brooks – stems from a fish-out-of-water sensibility that asks us to see our mainstream American culture from what Brooks obviously feels is a simpler, more honest and morally superior point of view. (27) While discussing Flor, Arnold also declares: “…she’s so perfect that her contest with Anglo L.A. is rigged from the start. This woman could be named Miss Universe and Mother of the Year in between modeling gigs for Victoria’s Secret and playing the Virgin Mary in a Mel Gibson sequel” (27). Contrasting her with Deborah, he states: “And in the other corner, Leoni is a monster from hell – a grotesque caricature of a selfish, superficial, sexless, unfaithful, emasculating, vain, anorexic, child-swallowing, L.A. woman. It’s not much of a contest for our affections” (27). Eleanor Ringel Gillespie of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution writes: “As the impossibly perfect Latina, Flor comes awfully close to an updated version of the Noble Savage [an overused Hollywood stereotype of Native Americans]. Conversely, Deborah is an amalgam of all that’s wrong with rich, self-absorbed American females with too much time on their hands…” (3H). Consequently, Spanglish is not only disturbing because of the way it tackles cross-culturalization, or rather lack thereof, but it is extremely offensive in the manner it portrays women. Deborah and Flor can easily fall into the spider and nurturing woman roles often relegated to women in movies, made famous in the Hollywood film noirs of the post-WW II era. In her essay “Women in Film Noir,” Janey Place notes that for the spider woman, “independence is her goal,” while the nurturing woman is a “redeemer” who “…offers the possibility of integration for the alienated, lost man into the stable world of secure values, roles and identities…she gives love, understanding…asks for very little in return…and is generally visually passive and static” (92 & 93). Both of these roles, which were forced upon women in Hollywood films of the 1940s, are a reflection, as film historian John Belton writes, of “the changing status of American women during the war and postwar period,” which “challenged male dominance” (240). In Spanglish, Deborah (white) is characterized as a spider woman, while Flor (Latina) is the ever faithful nurturing woman; both roles are equally offensive. Maureen

70 Dowd first brought attention to the issue just after the release of the film. In a New York Times article titled “Men Just Want Mommy,” she observes: In all those great Tracy/Hepburn movies more than a half-century ago, it was the snap and crackle of a romance between equals that was so exciting. Moviemakers these days seem far more interested in the soothing aura of romances between unequals. In James Brooks’s Spanglish, Adam Sandler, as a Los Angeles chef, falls for his hot Mexican maid. The maid, who cleans up after Mr. Sandler without being able to speak English, is presented as the ideal woman. The wife, played by Téa Leoni, is repellant: a jangly, yakking, overachieving, overexercised, unfaithful, shallow she-monster who has just lost her job with a commercial design firm. Picture Faye Dunaway in Network if she’d had to stay home, or Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction without the charm. The same attraction of unequals animated Richard Curtis’s Love Actually, a 2003 holiday hit. The witty and sophisticated British prime minister, played by Hugh Grant, falls for the chubby girl who wheels the tea and scones into his office. A businessman married to the substantial Emma Thompson falls for his sultry secretary. A writer falls for his maid, who speaks only Portuguese. (A35) There have been several Hollywood films released recently which depict independent, strong-willed, white working women as absolute demons who must be punished in some way for their self-reliance, and if not portrayed as evil, they are at least characterized as distracted, unconcerned, and too busy with work to be bothered by their husbands; take into account the 2004 version of The Stepford Wives or even Susan Sarandon’s character in Shall We Dance (2004). It should also be pointed out that Jennifer Lopez (Latina) is given the nurturing role in this film, playing opposite Sarandon. Such portrayals of working women are perpetuating some harmful stereotypes. Commenting on the alarming trend, Maureen Down suggests, “Art is imitating life, turning women who seek equality into selfish narcissists and objects of rejection,

71 rather than affection” (A35). John Schwartz of the New York Times even admits, “Men would rather marry their secretaries than their bosses, and evolution may be to blame” (qtd. in Dowd A35). Dowd cites further evidence: A new study by psychology researchers at the University of Michigan, using college undergraduates, suggests that men going for long-term relationships would rather marry women in subordinate jobs than women who are supervisors. As Dr. Stephanie Brown, the lead author of the study, summed it up for reporters, “Powerful women are at a disadvantage in the marriage market because men may prefer to marry less-accomplished women.” Men think that women with important jobs are more likely to cheat on them. “The hypothesis,” Dr. Brown said, “is that there are evolutionary pressures on males to take steps to minimize the risk of raising offspring that are not their own.” Women, by contrast, did not show a marked difference in their attraction to men who might work above or below them. And men did not show a preference when it came to one-night stands. A second study, which was by researchers at four British universities and reported last week, suggested that smart men with demanding jobs would rather have old-fashioned wives, like their mums, than equals. The study found that a high I.Q. hampers a woman’s chance to get married, while it is a plus for men. The prospect for marriage increased by 35 percent for guys each 16-point increase in I.Q.; for women, there is a 40 percent drop for each 16-point rise. (A35) Dowd concludes her article by asking: “So was the feminist movement some sort of cruel hoax? The more women achieve, the less desirable they are?” (A35) She adds, “Women want to be in a relationship with guys they can seriously talk to – unfortunately, a lot of those guys want to be in relationships with women they don’t have to talk to” (A35). In Spanglish, the first actual romantic scene between Flor and John occurs after Flor confronts him about giving Cristina $650 for the sea glass she collected. It is

72 important to remember, however, that Flor ends up apologizing by the end of the conversation. When Flor accuses John of interfering, he, in turn, calls her a hypocrite because he believes she also interfered by altering Bernie’s clothes. Flor then quickly admits that he is right, even claiming she is “really embarrassed,” and, thus, gives in, responding: “There’s no difference. I interfered” (Spanglish). John, who acknowledges that he is “dazed,” states: “It is just pretty wild to say something to somebody and have the other person just concede the point” (Spanglish). It is obvious that John is attracted by Flor’s swift submission; while he gazes at her, the camera slowly zooms in on his face in order to capture his surprise and wonderment, and when the camera is filming Flor, the viewer literally looks up to her, as does John, from a low angle shot. Brooks even admits, during the director commentary, that this is the first scene where he “allowed romance to be played” between the two; the soft, sentimental music in the background sets the mood. John’s interest in his new live-in maid is indeed sparked once Flor relinquishes, something Deborah would have never done. Thus, sadly enough, the antagonism between men and women that Dowd refers to in her article is played out in Spanglish because Deborah appears even more awful when compared to her husband, John Clasky (Adam Sandler), who is loving, caring, and seemingly perfect; although, his syrupy sweet personality is much too over-the-top. Critic Jay Stone complains that Sandler’s character “doesn’t seem quite real,” describing him as “dewy-eyed,” complete with “pained apologies” and “undercooked sentimentality” (2 of 2). Discussing the film and Sandler’s character in an ABC interview, Joel Siegel remarks: “We grew up watching TV moms and movie moms move mountains. Here it’s dad who cares. Adam Sandler” (2 of 3). In response, Brooks states: “Yeah, it was one of the main reasons I wanted to do the movie. I wanted to write this guy. I thought nobody was talking about this guy and he exists throughout all of our society. In every city, there’s this guy and he’s somebody who’s glad he has kids, who does his job, who comes home and has his priorities right” (2 of 3). Brooks’s attempt to reject traditional notions of masculinity and to foster a new sense of fatherhood is certainly praiseworthy, but why must he do so at the mother’s, in this case Deborah’s, expense?

73 Film critic Joanna Connors asserts, “Astonishingly for such a smart writer, Brooks pins the blame on one person: Deborah Clasky (Téa Leoni)…” (36). “Deborah is possessed by the competitive, consumerist demons of upper-middle-class America,” adds Connors, “and they have turned her into a monster who humiliates her children, neglects her husband, betrays those she loves and exercises herself to the point of exhaustion” (36). “Leoni, an agile comedian, does her best to make Deborah human, but her writer- director is working against her” (36). Deborah is viewed as especially shallow when contrasted with John and Flor: “First Brooks gives her a husband (Adam Sandler) so kind, forgiving and self-effacing even his mother-in-law (the hilarious Cloris Leachman, in the film’s best performance) warns Deborah she won’t find another man as good as he is. Then Brooks offers up Deborah’s opposite, Flor, who is not only a great mother but also – as Deborah notices immediately – absolutely gorgeous” (Connors 36). Yet Téa Leoni’s performance as Deborah should be applauded, even as much as one may disdain the character she plays. Craig Lindsey shrewdly observes: What makes watching Leoni play this chick all the more fascinating is how she tries to find some smidgen of humanity while playing such a wretched, poorly developed character. You end up rooting for Leoni the actress more than for her character. Watching her try to make this atrocious creation resemble a flawed, pitiable person is almost like watching Leoni and the movie’s writer/director, James L. Brooks, battle for the character’s soul. Leoni does her best to make the woman seem real (or, at least, funny), but Brooks keeps making her as irrational and two- dimensional as he possibly can. (7) The manner in which Brooks characterizes and stereotypes Deborah is one of the biggest disappointments of the film. Nevertheless, perhaps where Brooks fails most miserably is when dealing with issues of class. There are a few aspects of the movie which are completely unrealistic. Daniel Neman of the Richmond Times Dispatch writes, “What stands out most about the movie Spanglish is this fact: In Los Angeles, a housekeeper just starting out can expect to pull down nearly $34,000.00 a year” (D1). But even more shocking, Flor decides to give

74 it all up. In his review of the film, Charles Taylor asks, “how exactly is she going to provide for herself and her daughter” (3 of 3). Taylor notes: “…the character set up as the film’s moral compass tells her daughter that affluence and success are the province of corrupt white people with no sense of family or hard work or decency – and accepting favors from them is the first step on the road to becoming as bad as they are….” (3 of 3). He also asks, “Doesn’t Brooks realize that there are plenty of working-class people – Latino, black, white, Asian, Arabic – who’d risk their kids becoming different people from themselves if it meant that those kids would get to live a more secure, less backbreaking life than they have?” (3 of 3) Taylor insists: “The heartbreak of raising kids (or being someone’s child) is that the success you wish for them often, if they achieve it, takes them beyond you. That’s one of the sacrifices good parents make. It doesn’t follow, however, that children who are more successful than their parents inevitably become bad people and leave the values they’ve been raised with behind” (3 of 3). Taylor’s comments follow the thesis of Richard Rodriguez’s second book, Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Mexican Father. In his book, Rodriguez writes: “The best metaphor for America remains the dreadful metaphor – the Melting Pot. Fall into the Melting Pot, ease into the Melting Pot, or jump into the Melting Pot – it makes no difference – you will find yourself a stranger to your parents, a stranger to your own memory of yourself” (161). At the same time, Rodriguez is careful to add that he has never forgotten his heritage or his Mexican immigrant parents and what they stand for. Rodriguez asserts: “Ask me what it was like to have grown up a Mexican kid in Sacramento and I will think of my father’s smile, its sweetness, its introspection, its weight of sobriety. Mexico was most powerfully my father’s smile, and not, as you might otherwise imagine, not language, not pigment” (220). Spanglish lacks such insight. Again, Taylor points out: “None of this seems to have occurred to Brooks. Spanglish pretends to take aim at liberal good intentions, but the movie is just as blinkered as what it’s supposed to be exposing” (1-2 of 3). To illustrate his point, Taylor discusses Deborah: “The villain of the piece is Téa Leoni’s Deborah….Brooks uses the Deborah character to show that he’s aware of how people in his economic class condescend to minorities, how they believe that their money and

75 goodwill can overcome any differences, solve any problem” (2 of 3). “But,” adds Taylor, “the movie is lost in its own fantasy world” (2 of 3). He explains: When the screwball comedies of the ‘30s satirized the rich, they never pretended that the opulent lifestyle was familiar to the audience. But Brooks doesn’t seem to have any notion that what he’s showing us of Deborah and John’s lifestyle – the two cars, the maid, the private school, the parent who can just stay home if she loses her job – will be unfamiliar to anyone in the audience, at least to anyone who is white. In Spanglish, all the affluent people we see are white, and being Latino means you belong to the little folk who haven’t lost touch with their roots. Plucky spitfire Flor doesn’t need the money from her white employers, or the advantages they give her daughter. She’s…the people! (2 of 3) In sum, screwball comedies deal with class issues without relying on pity and sympathy, Spanglish, on the other hand, does not; Spanglish romanticizes the lower class lifestyle without realistically addressing class issues. Taylor contrasts Deborah with the fast-talking dames of the 1930s screwball comedies: “If Deborah were allowed the stylization given to screwball comedy characters, she might simply be presented as one of those rich dizzy dames incapable of seeing beyond her own nose, like Alice Brady in My Man Godfrey (1936), convinced she’s helping the Depression poor by taking part in a scavenger hunt for charity” (2 of 3). But unfortunately in Spanglish, Brooks “pretty much guarantees we’ll see Deborah as an evil bitch”…“by pretending that he’s getting inside the character while never trying to evince any empathy for her”…(Taylor 2 of 3). Throughout this dissertation, there has been a lot of time spent discussing the significance of empathy in all of the films examined thus far. But this is one of the biggest weaknesses of Spanglish: it lacks empathy. The headline of Eleanor Ringel Gillespie’s aforementioned Atlanta Journal-Constitution review of the movie is careful to highlight this flaw: “Of classes and cultures: Human condition is played for laughs” (3H). Spanglish presents us with characters who cannot relate to each other on screen, while at the same time, the audience is unable to identify with them either.

76 One character, however, stands out from the rest. Many critics have praised Cloris Leachman’s performance as Evelyn Norwich, Deborah’s mother. The part was originally played by Anne Bancroft, but she got sick during filming and had to give up the role. Bancroft later died in June 2005 after the film was released in December 2004. Leachman, who replaced Bancroft, plays the part beautifully, but her character is remembered most because, as humans, the audience can relate to her. John and Flor are faultless and completely impeccable, not traits that most people can connect with, and Deborah is too wicked and vicious to even attempt to identify with; but Evelyn is different. She has certainly made her share of mistakes in the past; Deborah describes her as an “alcoholic and wildly promiscuous woman” (Spanglish). But her mistakes make her human. Evelyn is reassuring because, despite a lifetime of blunders, she, in the end, redeems herself. She sums it up best when she tells her granddaughter, “You think your life is embarrassing and then somebody finds encouragement in it” (Spanglish). At one point in the film, after she stumbles while walking up the stairs with a glass of port in hand, Evelyn tells Flor: “Thanks for never judging me. I love you” (Spanglish). She then adds: “I love everybody. That’s what’s killing me” (Spanglish). But Evelyn sells herself short; her love of life has not killed her. In fact, it has given her a deep sense of understanding and an amazing ability to empathize with others. Her past provides scope and purpose that the other characters lack. In one conversation, she tells Deborah, “right now, the lessons of my life are coming in handy for you” (Spanglish). Loving life and living it to its fullest can be exasperating, as Evelyn well knows; but at the same time, she has gained an incredible amount of knowledge about the human condition while doing so. Evelyn is the only character who accomplishes anything noteworthy in the film: she manages to create meaning out of her mess. Brooks could have certainly used some of Evelyn’s insight and clarity when dealing with other issues in the film because Spanglish, although concerning itself with issues of race, class, and gender, offers no real solutions to any of the problems it presents its audience with. Barbara Vancheri writes in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “Yes, life is untidy, but this conclusion leaves moviegoers hanging on after spending two hours with people they’ve come to know and, sometimes, not like” (27). In addition, Craig Lindsey complains that Spanglish “manages to avoid weaving into something

77 coherent…loose ends not only stay loose but become as frayed as sneaker laces (7). For example, Ronald Takaki is right when he notes that for Mexican immigrants, “What bound the people together was not only ethnicity but also class” (A Different Mirror 335). The film accurately acknowledges this. But while The Human Stain tackles issues of class, attempting to break down barriers that have been placed between the haves and have nots, Spanglish fails to do so. The film, at the end, keeps such barriers firmly in place. In Spanglish, Brooks does not recognize his characters as, first and foremost, fellow human beings; rather, he labels them as rich, poor, American, Mexican immigrant, etc. Moreover, according to the message of the film, these groups share nothing in common. The characters are unable to connect with each other’s human experiences; they recognize only ethnicity and class. Brooks, in an interview with Terry Lawson, claims his movie is “…about parenting, and how hard that is these days” (qtd. in Lawson 1 of 3). Brooks contends that his film focuses on Jon and Flor’s friendship and their roles as parents, both struggling to do the very best for their kids. But if that is his intent, the connection, as depicted in the film, is a weak one. Whenever John and Flor have discussions concerning their children, their conversations appear forced and unnatural, even after Flor learns to speak English. Neither one of them feels comfortable around the other, and the audience is left to wonder why. Their friendship, and the film as a whole, lacks intimacy. Brooks has claimed, during the director commentary, that John and Flor “crossed barriers,” although this aspect of their relationship is never portrayed in the film (Spanglish). Perhaps the two connected with one another on a certain level, but they certainly did not “cross barriers.” While their commitment to their children should be praised, John is doing a disservice to his family by trapping himself in an unhappy marriage; his decision may be commendable to some, but it is unrealistic. No two human beings could withstand such a troubled relationship. It should be pointed out that during his research, Brooks consulted a marriage counselor to find out if John and Deborah’s marriage had a chance of surviving, and according to Brooks, the counselor reported they had a good shot of staying together (Meyer 1 of 3). Even if the counselor is right, and their marriage does have a chance of surviving, it surely will never be a union which

78 embodies a celebration of love. They stay together to keep the kids, the house, and the cars, but not because they love or even particularly like one another. While discussing John and Deborah, Barbara Vancheri of the Pittsburgh Post- Gazette remarks in her review, “how these two ever got together is a mystery” (27). The only thing either one of them appear to have in common is race and socio-economic status. In Brown, Richard Rodriguez appropriately asks: “The way we are constructed constructs love? Limits Love? The making of love?” (207) He then retorts: “No. That is heresy” (207). When John’s restaurant is awarded four stars, the food critic asserts in his review that John’s cooking “inspires one’s own abandonment of caution” (Spanglish). The critic adds, John “takes chances with his combinations” and his dishes are “constantly yet casually daring” (Spanglish). Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for his romantic entanglements. Consequently, rather than seeing an eventual merging of cultures, as depicted in both The Human Stain and Crash, which will be discussed in the next chapter, Spanglish only portrays cultural clashes. There is no doubt that any time two different cultures come together, strife and struggle are bound to ensue. But the problem with Spanglish is that it does not attempt to work through any of the conflicts that develop. Roger Ebert claims, “the movie is all about solutions…,” but then admits that “the problems are more like test questions…at the end, I felt there hadn’t been much at risk…” (qtd. in Day 1 of 2). David Elliot complains, “…if this ‘issues’ comedy is Brooks’ idea of depth, he should swim in the kiddie end…” (2 of 2). In Spanglish, the two families simply walk away from one another at the end of the story, having solved none of their cultural conflicts. When Flor and her cousin first meet the Claskys and attempt to “step across the cultural divide,” they are abruptly impeded from doing so when Flor’s cousin, Monica (Cecilia Suárez), runs into the sliding glass door, not realizing it is closed. The film is surely playing with the notion of the proverbial glass ceiling. At the end of the film, Flor and Cristina purposely exit through the sliding glass door, which now bears a decal of the Clasky’s seemingly perfect white American family, complete with two kids and a dog. When Flor and Cristina leave, they permanently shut the Claskys out of their life forever. The two families seemed to have learned nothing from one another.

79 Brooks, however, should be given credit for some aspects of his work. To begin, his successful Hollywood career should be highlighted. Brooks is the man responsible for television shows like “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Rhoda,” “Taxi,” and “The Simpsons.” He also directed Terms of Endearment (1983), Broadcast News (1987), and As Good As It Gets (1997), and he has produced many films as well, including Say Anything (1989), Big (1988), and Jerry Maguire (1996). Hence, Brooks has proven himself in Hollywood, which is why he was given an estimated $80 million budget to make Spanglish. In addition, Brooks, from the interviews he has given concerning Spanglish, appears to have had his heart in the right place when writing and making the movie. Wesley Morris, summing up the significance of the film, observes, “…Brooks wonders how an immigrant and her American daughter can maintain dual identities without the identities dueling” (B5). And in an interview with Charlie Rose, Brooks comments about his work: “…I wanted a different perspective on a kind of Los Angeles life that I’m familiar with. So I got it by trying to do a Hispanic point of view on that life” (4 of 27). But as Robert Denerstein points out in the Rocky Mountain News, “…there’s something a bit hollow in the way Brooks plays the champion of Mexican ethnicity” (16D). In Spanglish, Brooks is so intent on telling a story about ethnicity and class, that in the process, he forgets to tell a human story. Richard Rodriguez asserts in Brown that “love conquers all,” but in this film, it is never even given a chance (203). Spanglish lacks not only love but passion. The movie is more about pity than passion. An article published in Time explains the difference between the two: “Pity sees suffering and wants to ease the pain; passion sees injustice and wants to settle the score. Pity implores the powerful to pay attention; passion warns them about what will happen if they don’t” (Gibbs 45). People have to be passionate about multiculturalism in order to make it work for the nation. Multiculturalism, if it wants to succeed, cannot be based on feelings of pity, victimology, or separatism. In Spanglish, Brooks only asks us to pity Flor, the poor, Mexican immigrant, single mom. The film never once provides any real solutions to her predicament. Nor does it ask its audience to step up to the plate and take action

80 themselves; after all, it is time for Americans to address some of the inequalities that Brooks presents us with. Bono (of U2) recently explained to Time journalist Josh Tyrangiel: You know what my least favorite John Lennon song is? Imagine. At the root of it is some rigorous thinking about the way things could be, but people have stolen the idea and made it an anthem for wishful thinking. I’m against wishful thinking. I hate it (50) In Spanglish, Flor gives up her job, which paid $34,000 a year, while Cristina still manages to make it to the Ivy League, and John and Deborah will somehow just work things out: this is indeed wishful thinking. Brooks is also unrealistic in how he handles Flor and Cristina’s relationship. The conflict between the two is resolved at the end of the movie, which, in reality, would not happen so easily, especially considering the fact that Cristina is pursuing a higher education. Nobody can deny the power of an education: education is indeed freedom; but sometimes, while pursuing a degree, you find yourself drifting far from where you began. Richard Rodriguez admits in Hunger of Memory how education has divided his own family. While apologizing for a published article he had written about his family, he once wrote in a letter to his mother: I am sorry that my article bothered you…I had not meant to hurt…I think, however, that education has divided the family…That is something which happens in most families, though, it is rarely discussed…I had meant to praise what I have lost…I continue to love you both very much. (205) Spanglish fails to deal with such human complexity. Nonetheless, as noted earlier, Brooks certainly raises some valid questions in his work, and, when writing the script, he had the best of intentions in mind; Spanglish could have very well been a great film if only it would have allowed itself to envision a postethnic American nation, keeping in mind that factors such as class and gender also serve as bases for group identity, just as ethnicity does. Unfortunately, it never does so, and one is left, at the end of this movie, with characters who do not unite in human solidarity. Debra Dickerson encourages Americans to “walk away from labels” (NPR 3 Jan. 2005). Moreover, she is not naïve; Dickerson reminds us that “there has to be courage in this march” (NPR 5 Jan. 2005). Yet, Flor, John, and Deborah lack not only the courage to do so, but the initiative

81 as well. During the last few minutes of the movie, in a voice-over, the viewer finds out, as mentioned earlier, Cristina has made it: she is applying to Princeton, and, chances are, she will get in. They are even offering her scholarships. But this fact should not appease the viewer because all is not well in the United States; according to this film, Americans are, in fact, not united but divided.

82 COMING TOGETHER: NO NEED FOR CRASHES

Richard Rorty best explains how division and disunity in the United States can be overcome. In Contingency, irony, and solidarity, Rorty challenges Americans to “extend our sense of ‘we’ to people whom we have previously thought of as ‘they’ ” (192). Rorty then explains human solidarity as “…the ability to think of people wildly different from ourselves as included in the range of ‘us’ ” (192). In addition and in response to Rorty, David Hollinger points out, “The circle of the ‘we’ embraces diversity; it is not a uniformitarian construct, predicating equality on sameness” (“How Wide the Circle of the We” 328). Rorty also states: Solidarity is not discovered by reflection but created. It is created by increasing our sensitivity to the particular details of the pain and humiliation of the other, unfamiliar sorts of people. Such increased sensitivity makes it more difficult to marginalize people different from ourselves by thinking, “They do not feel it as we would,” or “There must always be suffering, so why not let them suffer?” (xvi) Rorty then adds: Fiction like that of Dickens, Olive Schreiner, or Richard Wright gives us the details about kinds of suffering being endured by people to whom we had previously not attended. Fiction like that of Choderlos de Laclos, Henry James, or Nabokov gives us the details about what sorts of cruelty we ourselves are capable of, and thereby lets us redescribe ourselves. That is why the novel, the movie, and the TV program have, gradually but steadily, replaced the sermon and the treatise as the principal vehicles of moral change and progress. (xvi) Director/writer/producer Paul Haggis’s 2005 film Crash is exactly this: a “vehicle of moral change and progress.” Crash brilliantly illustrates Rorty’s vision of human solidarity. Rorty notes: The view I am offering says that there is such a thing as moral progress, and that this progress is indeed in the direction of greater

83 human solidarity. But that solidarity is not thought of as recognition of a core self, the human essence, in all human beings. Rather, it is thought of as the ability to see more and more traditional differences (of tribe, religion, race, customs, and the like) as unimportant when compared with similarities with respect to pain and humiliation…” (192) The headline to Stanley Crouch’s Chicago Sun-Times review of Haggis’s film reads: “The point of Crash is not about how different we are but that we are responsible to and for each other” (38). John Snodgrass praises the film, writing: “When done correctly, films can do more than entertain. They can evoke emotion, cause debate and even challenge the trends and culture of a nation” (1 of 2). “Crash is this type of film,” argues Snodgrass (1 of 2). “It is powerful, provocative, poignant and poetic. It will be one of the best films of 2005 and will be one of the most important films made about American society in post-9/11 America” (Snodgrass 1 of 2). “This is a movie about a nation,” asserts Snodgrass, “which less than four years ago went through an unspeakable act, yet still refuses to allow itself to be ‘the melting pot’ it says it is” (2 of 2). He adds, “Though this film does show that this country has come a long way…there is still a long way to go before fear and ignorance will stop dictating what we do as a culture” (2 of 2). Michael Dwyer contends, “There hasn’t been such a provocative picture on the theme of failed melting pots since Spike Lee’s New York-set Do the Right Thing (1989)” (7). Critics Amy Longsdorf and Daniel Griffin have made the very same comparison (Longsdorf E10; Griffin 1 of 1). Both films are indeed about human solidarity. In Do the Right Thing, Mister Senor Love Daddy (Samuel L. Jackson) even asks, “Are we gonna live together…Together, are we gonna live?” David Denby writes in The New Yorker, “Haggis’ complex take on each furious encounter makes previous movie treatments of prejudice seem like easy and self-congratulatory liberalizing” (“Angry People” 2 of 3). “Apart from a few brave scenes in Spike Lee’s work,” observes Denby, “Crash is the first movie I know of to acknowledge not only that the intolerant are also human but, further, that something like white fear of black street crime, or black fear of white cops, isn’t always irrational” (“Angry People” 2 of 3).

84 However, Denby, comparing Haggis and Lee’s work, adds, “Crash could have turned into an exploding nebula, the superheated pieces flying off into dramatic irrelevance (as they do in many of Lee’s movies), but Haggis has imposed a tight formal organization on his narrative” (2 of 3). While discussing Spike Lee, John McWhorter remarks in Losing the Race, “Lee is brilliant (one of my three favorite directors), but victimology suffuses much of his work, with whites usually treated from a wary and dismissive us-vs.-them perspective” (35). Do the Right Thing does not overly burden itself with “the cult of victimology” (McWhorter 1); like Crash, Lee’s film holds everyone accountable for their own actions. Yet, to prove his point, McWhorter discusses a scene from Lee’s 1996 movie Get on the Bus. On their way to the Million Man March, Lee is careful to include on the bus black men with vastly different views. For example, two of the men are gay, one is Republican, and one man’s girlfriend is upset with him because no women have been invited to the march (McWhorter 35). McWhorter, however, claims that “Lee is ultimately constrained by the victimologist box” (35). He explains, “One small-time entrepreneur boards and airs his view that black people simply need to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps – in other words, he does not subscribe to Victimologist thinking” (35). “When I first saw the film,” observes McWhorter, “after he had said about four lines I was waiting to see how long it was going to take for Lee to bodily hurl this man off the bus, and that is just what happens” (35). McWhorter asserts: “Talk about stereotypes: Lee makes sure to make this ‘Shelbysteele’ as repulsive a character as possible. He is only attending the march because it will be a captive crowd to sell his wares to; he is played by a plain, rather squat actor, contrasting with the good-looking ones playing the principal roles; he expresses his views in a grandstanding, mocking manner that would make any message offensive; and unlike most ‘black conservatives,’ he lacks compassion for the minority of blacks who are truly suffering” (35). McWhorter then points out that “he is shown grinning maniacally as he is thrown from the bus – which shows that anyone who has such beliefs must be a self-hating lunatic” (35). But the beauty of Crash is that it does not perpetuate victimology or chastise anti- victimologists, as do most films concerning race. Thandie Newton, who plays the character of Christine Thayer in Crash, states in an interview with Oprah that “one of the

85 worst things about racism is that you feel like a victim” (6 Oct. 2005). Haggis, however, does not waste his time attempting to point fingers and caste blame on others. According to Crash, Americans must first look within themselves and discover who they really are. After doing so, they can then discover each other’s humanity. In his essay “How Wide the Circle of the We,” David Hollinger notes, “The less one’s raw humanity is said to count for anything, the more important become one’s affiliations” (323). Hollinger criticizes such behavior, and Crash highlights this flaw in American society. The point of the film is to focus on its characters and their “raw humanity” rather than their prescribed groups of affiliation. Haggis literally brings us closer to the characters in the film by including many close-up shots of their faces; the tight frames better reveal their emotions, thus, their humanity. During the director commentary, Haggis admits that he had to resort to such shots due to financial constraints (Crash). Crash was shot outside the traditional Hollywood studio and distribution system; it was not picked up by Lionsgate, an independent distributor, until it debuted at the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival (“Crash a surprise winner”). Given only a $6.5 million budget, Haggis did not have the money to include within his film extravagant background settings or numerous props. Haggis was even forced to use his own house for a few scenes. Often, the background in his shots only fills a small part of the screen. But the close-ups do not take away from his work. They actually create a level of intimacy that most films lack. Kent Wolgamott notes: “Crash is an ultra-low- budget production…So it doesn’t have expansive locations and all the prettiness of more lavishly funded movies. But that gritty sensibility which moves from Westwood to a chop shop to the barrio and back informs rather than detracts from the film” (4). Roger Moore writes that the message of the film is a simple one: “We need to know each other better than this” (1 of 2). Trevor Kirkendall adds: “At the film’s conclusion, we are not supposed to leave the theater thinking one race is superior to the other, but instead we are left to think about how judgmental people in society truly are. We assume too many things about an individual because of the clothes they wear or the tattoos on their person and form our own opinions before we even get to know them” (1-2 of 2). “In the end,” observes Robert Hawkins, “the refreshing conclusion that I came to

86 is that we’re all a lot more complicated than we give each other credit for and maybe we ought to try harder to understand and respect that complexity…” (2 of 3). Moreover, while Crash, like Spanglish, is a film which focuses on issues of race and class, it is not as “saturated with white liberal guilt,” as is Brooks’s sappy melodrama, even though film critic and Columbia University professor Andrew Sarris accuses it of such (Sarris 25). Sarris writes in the New York Observer, “…Crash left me feeling more depressed than exhilarated” (25). He then adds, “I found Mr. Haggis’ moralistic tales too facile for my taste” (25). But Crash evokes passion rather than pity. As suggested in the last chapter: “Pity sees suffering and wants to ease the pain; passion sees injustice and wants to settle the score. Pity implores the powerful to pay attention; passion warns them about what will happen if they don’t” (Gibbs 45). This is why Haggis claims that when Officer Tommy Hanson (Ryan Phillippe) shoots Peter Waters (Larenz Tate), “the whole movie is in that shot” (Crash). Hanson’s actions serve as a warning of what can happen – what one is capable of – if internal fears and prejudices are not brought to the surface and dealt with. Aforementioned movie critic John Snodgrass declares: What makes this film powerful is that it does not just show racism happening, but it attempts to show why it is happening. For many of the characters fear is the root of their problems. Haggis’ characters are afraid of others as well as themselves, meaning they are not only ignorant of one another but often ignorant of themselves. (1 of 2) Crash forces its characters to confront one another; they are no longer allowed to remain at a distance. In summary, Snodgrass writes: “This movie is destined to trigger debate and conversation. It pulls no punches. It does not pander to an audience. Racism is a part of our culture and Crash asks its audience, ‘What is it going to do about it?’ ” (2 of 2) Consequently, while Sarris may have found the film depressing, Paul Haggis, also during the directory commentary, asserts that his film is based on hope and is a call for change. In fact, he includes the snow at the end of the movie because it really did snow in Los Angeles once in the 1970s, and as Haggis points out, “if it can snow in L.A., anything is possible…maybe there is actually hope for us” (Crash). Christopher Lechner

87 adds, “Although Crash may seem devoid of hope, it is ultimately a celebration of the tragic human condition” (2 of 2). Moreover, critics like Sarris are also wrong when they attempt to label the film as just more liberal propaganda coming out of Hollywood. Roger Ebert, who picked Crash as the best film of 2005, writes: “It did not occur to many of its viewers that Crash was a “liberal” or for that matter a “conservative” film, as indeed it is neither: It is a series of stories in which people behave as they might and do and will, and we are invited to learn from the results” (B1). Soren Andersen adds: “…but the picture is not a polemic. It views the racial stress fractures interlaced across the face of America with empathy toward all of its characters and malice toward none” (E1). Patrick Beach sums it up best when he writes, Crash is “a movie about people” and “not a screed about differences” (37). Thus, Crash is not about politics but, more importantly, about humanity, about human behavior and the consequences of one’s actions. The white liberal Los Angeles district attorney, Rick Cabot (Brendan Fraser), is much too concerned with politics and issues of political correctness. He will go to great lengths in order to not offend the black community; he will even lie and cover up the truth (or get others to do it for him). His commitment to identity politics is ridiculous. The tragedy of this is not only that a white man gets framed for a black man’s murder, while the real perpetrator is still out roaming the streets, but a chance for love is lost as well. It is obvious that there is an attraction (maybe something more) between Rick and Karen; the way they look at each other before Rick gets on the elevator at the end of the movie gives it all away. But, more than likely, Rick is well aware that a majority of Los Angeles voters would prefer that he stay with his white wife, even though they have a horrible marriage, rather than begin an interracial relationship with his black assistant, which would, sadly enough, offend many in both the black and white communities. Indeed, this film is about something much more important than politics; it is about love and empathy. Consider the motive behind the work: Haggis wrote the screenplay because his own car was once stolen. He explains: “I have lived and worked in Los Angeles for over twenty-five years now, and like everyone else living in an urban environment for that length of time, I thought I was relatively aware of problems involving race and class.

88 Then one night, while coming out of a video store in my neighborhood, I was car-jacked at gunpoint” (qtd. in Sarris 25). “That event,” admits Haggis, “a collision of two worlds that normally don’t intersect, forced me out of complacency” (qtd. in Sarris 25). He adds: “I began considering the lives of my attackers. I became acutely aware of my own urban isolation. After 9/11, the subject seemed, to me, to become even more urgent, and I felt compelled to start writing what would eventually become Crash” (qtd. in Sarris 25). Thus, Crash is an attempt to unite Americans from different backgrounds, and it does so by sharing human stories. The film portrays the struggles that all humans deal with, despite race or socio-economic status. The movie asks Americans to reach out and to better understand one another. Roger Ebert makes an important point. Scott Foundas, a critic for L.A. Weekly, accuses the film of “sanctioning the very stereotypes it ostensibly debunks” (qtd. in Ebert B1). However, as Ebert notes: “Crash shows the interlinked lives of Los Angelinos who belong to many different groups, who all suffer from prejudice, and who all practice it. The movie…doesn’t assign simplistic ‘good’ and ‘evil’ labels but shows that the same person can be sometimes a victim, sometimes a victimizer” (B1). Ebert then retorts, “To say it ‘sanctions’ their behavior is simply wrong-headed” (B1). Discussing the scene between Jean Cabot (Sandra Bullock) and Daniel (Michael Peña), the locksmith, Foundas writes, “…when Sandra Bullock’s pampered Brentwood housewife accuses a Mexican-American locksmith of copying her keys for illicit purposes, Haggis doesn’t condemn her reprehensible behavior so much as he sympathizes with it” (qtd. in Ebert B1). In response to Foundas, Ebert notes: “This is a misreading of the film, but look at it more closely: Bullock is ‘pampered’ and a ‘housewife,’ yet Haggis ‘sympathizes’ with her behavior. Does he? No; I would say he empathizes with it, which is another thing altogether” (B1). “She has just been carjacked at gunpoint,” points out Ebert, “and is hysterical” (B1). Ebert asks: “If Foundas were carjacked at gunpoint, would he rise to the occasion with measured detachment and sardonic wit? I wouldn’t. Who will cast the first stone? And notice that the Mexican-American locksmith (Michael Peña) remains so invisible to Foundas that the actor is not named and Foundas has not noticed that the scene also empathizes with him” (B1).

89 Ebert also addresses the most disturbing scene in the film, once again, in response to Foundas: “Consider now Foundas describing the black TV director who stands by fearfully as a cop assaults his wife. Terrence Howard, Foundas says, plays the ‘creepy embodiment of emasculated African-American yuppiedom’ ” (B1). Ebert asks, “Say what?” (B1). “As a black man in Los Angeles,” he points out, “Howard’s character is fully aware that when two white cops stop you for the wrong reason and one starts feeling up your wife, it is prudent to reflect that both of the cops are armed and, if you resist, in court you will hear that you pulled a gun, were carrying cocaine, threatened them, and are lying about the sexual assault” (B1). “Notice also, please, that the TV director’s wife (Thandie Newton) makes the same charge of emasculated yuppiedom against her husband that Foundas does – and her husband answers it,” asserts Ebert (B1). “Their argument may cut closer to some of the complex and paradoxical realities of race in America than any other this year” (B1). Why does Foundas not even bother to acknowledge Mexican-American actor Michael Peña? His statement – “emasculated African-American yuppiedom” – certainly deserves scrutiny. White yuppie men are usually not accused of being emasculated. Therefore, Foundas’s behavior is the reason Crash deserves praise and should be carefully studied. Foundas is not a bigot, but there is some unconscious racism that leaks through in his writing, and this is exactly the point of Haggis’s film: Crash is supposed to uncover the unconscious racism that many Americans still deal with. Liz Williams declares, “…racism remains ingrained in American society, though it no longer manifests itself in as obviously violent or prohibitive ways as it did in the past” (1 of 2). Commenting on the film and its subject matter, Sandra Bullock states, “we’re not safe from ourselves…we’re not safe from our prejudices or others prejudices,” and Don Cheadle rightfully asserts that the film is “about the things that you don’t say” (Crash). He adds, it is about the things “below the surface that are always trying to bubble up” (Crash). In an interview with Anne Thompson, director Paul Haggis remarks: “All we want as good liberals is to feel good about ourselves. When that is challenged, people get upset. Racism and intolerance today are not the same as they were 50 years ago. Now we know we can’t say these things. We bury the stuff in deep pockets that we say don’t

90 exist. But it comes out under extreme pressure. That’s why I put these characters under pressure and imagined where they went from there” (2 of 2). Haggis, while discussing his film during a NPR interview, also adds: It’s about the fact that we all embody great contradictions, and each of these characters embody those contradictions, and you never know which way a character is going to turn. Matt Dillon says something in the movie. He says, “You think you know who you are…you have no idea,” and that’s really what the film is about. We all are very comfortable knowing who we are, until we’re tested, and then we find out. (18 April 2005) Crash realistically depicts the sometimes volatile nature of the human condition. In a joint study, psychologists at Harvard, the University of Virginia, and the University of Washington are currently researching hidden biases and unconscious racism. According to the website tolerance.org: “Research has demonstrated that biases thought to be absent or extinguished remain as ‘mental residue’ in most of us. Studies show people can be consciously committed to egalitarianism, and deliberately work to behave without prejudice, yet still possess hidden negative prejudices or stereotypes.” In addition: “A growing number of studies show a link between hidden biases and actual behavior. In other words, hidden biases can reveal themselves in action, especially when a person’s efforts to control behavior consciously flags under stress, distraction, relaxation or competition” (tolerance.org). The latter paragraph certainly explains Officer Hanson’s fatal mistake at the end of the film. In fact, researchers note: “In the case of police, bias may affect split-second, life-or-death decisions. Shootings of black men incorrectly thought to be holding guns – an immigrant in New York, a cop in Rhode Island – brought this issue into the public debate” (tolerance.org). After viewing the film in May, when her show’s regular season had ended, Oprah invited the cast members of Crash to appear on her show when taping began again in the fall because she felt the message of the movie was an important one for all Americans. Oprah, like the others quoted above, asserts that Crash is about “what people think but don’t say” (6 Oct. 2005). On the show, Oprah acknowledges that she often judges people with tattoos, just as Jean Cabot (Sandra Bullock) does in the film. Bullock is married to

91 Jesse James, host of Discovery Channel’s reality show “Monster Garage.” James’s body is covered with tattoos, and Oprah candidly admits to Bullock that she would have made preconceived judgments about him. In June of 2005, only a month after she first watched the film, Oprah claimed that when she was not allowed inside the ritzy Parisian department store Hermès, she felt she had been confronted with her very own “Crash moment.” Journalist Susan Pizarro- Eckert explains: “The exact details are sketchy and the two sides told different stories. According to Oprah – who didn’t have her hair done – she was refused entry because, as she was told, the store had been ‘having a problem with North Africans lately’…According to Hermès, the security guard turned her away because the store was in the process of being closed to prepare for a special event” (1 of 1). After referring to the incident as her “Crash moment,” many accused Oprah of “behaving like a diva, a spoiled celebrity” (1 of 1). Pizarro-Eckert writes: “Oprah attempted to clarify the situation, noting that shoppers were in the store when she and her entourage attempted to gain entry. ‘My friends and I were standing inside the doorway, and there was much discussion amongst the staff as to whether or not to let me in – that was what was embarrassing…they took my name, they had a discussion about it, and then they came back and said, ‘no’ ” (1 of 1) Pizarro-Eckert adds: “She was particularly bothered, she said, when Hermès apologized to her in private only to turn around and release a statement that implied she was ‘…some diva trying to get in when the store was closed’” (1 of 1). “I know the difference between a store being closed and a store being closed to me…Everybody who has ever been snubbed because you were not chic enough or thin enough or the right class or the right color or whatever – I don’t know what it was – you know that it is very humiliating,” asserts Oprah (qtd. in Pizarro-Eckert 1 of 1). The head of Hermes eventually apologized to Oprah, even doing so on the debut episode of her 20th season. He admitted, “I would like to say we’re really sorry…You did meet up with one very, very rigid staff person” (qtd. in Pizarro-Eckert 1 of 1). He also acknowledged that Hermès now requires sensitivity training for all employees. Later, during the fall of 2005, a series of riots erupted between Parisian gang members (many with North African backgrounds) and the French police. Thus, it

92 appears as if Oprah was right. There was racial tension in France; although, class and religious differences factored into this rebellion as well. At the time, as noted earlier, many accused Oprah of acting like a diva and simply brushed her charge aside, but her point is valid, especially when she is not afraid to admit that even she is guilty of stereotyping others and jumping to conclusions. In the film, many are puzzled during the scene mentioned earlier, when Officer Hanson shoots Peter Waters. But Haggis makes this decision in the script because he wants to prove that intolerance is in everyone, however deep one may have buried it. Officer Hanson is the character who a majority of audience members would like to claim to identify with the most; he is, up until the point he pulls the trigger, the only character in the film who has said nothing racist or offensive. But, as Haggis states about Phillippe’s character: “Intolerance isn’t in the heart of the person you think it is; it’s in us and Ryan had to represent us. He was the guy we liked all the way through” (qtd. in Vancheri 48). As Michael Janusonis points out, today, even “behind the trendy facades…distrust of anyone who’s different is rampant” (4). The most powerful point of Crash, though, is that it holds all of its characters accountable for their own behavior. As film critic Clayton Smales points out, “…the best part about Crash was the way each character came to a resolution – either positive or negative – about what kind of person they’ve allowed themselves to become” (33). Smales’s astute comment is best explained through the characters that rapper Chris “Ludacris” Bridges and Sandra Bullock play. Both these characters illustrate how “…fear and rage can simmer, boil over, and lead to hard-earned glimpses of compassion and enlightenment” (Dudek 10). The smirk across Anthony’s (Ludacris) face at the very end of the film best sums up the meaning of the movie because there is humanity in that smirk. Anthony, when first introduced in the film, is full of anger. He complains that the waitress at the restaurant purposely ignores him and his buddy because they are black, even though, the viewer is told, she is also black. At the same time, while he accuses the black waitress of stereotyping him and his black friend, he then begins to stereotype black women by accusing them of always thinking in stereotypes, asking Peter, “When was the last time you met one who didn’t think she knew everything about your lazy ass?” (Crash)

93 After his tirade on black women, he continues to lament his victimhood, describing what it is like for a black man living in, what he would refer to as, white America, all the while, continuing to ignore the predicament of black women. Anthony, throughout a majority of the film, views himself only as a victim. Even more detrimental, he is “celebrating victimhood rather than addressing it” (McWhorter 223). For instance, Anthony never considers that stealing cars from others is wrong because, as he explains, he does not steal from black people, only white. Anthony feels his actions are justified since, according to him, white people have never done anything but oppress him. While watching Anthony onscreen, a passage from Debra Dickerson’s The End of Blackness comes to mind. Dickerson notes: “Harry Houdini once famously struggled for hours picking a jail cell lock, only to lean against it in exhaustion and have the door swing open. It had never been locked at all. All that confined him was his own head. That’s blackness” (138). But things begin to change when Anthony attempts to carjack a SUV, and to his surprise, finds a black man, Cameron Thayer (Terrence Howard), driving it. Anthony begins to question his actions when he finds himself pointing a gun at a fellow black man, especially when Anthony discovers, after witnessing the confrontation between Cameron and the police, that despite his posh upper class lifestyle, Cameron, just like Anthony himself, is struggling with his own issues. Cameron may be a rich black man, but life is not easy for him either. And if rich black men are struggling to survive, albeit not literally, then chances are that white people, those who Anthony has stolen from in the past, are probably dealing with their own conflicts as well. Anthony, for the first time, begins to realize, just as Cameron asserts, that he is an “embarrassment;” and not only an embarrassment to himself and the black community, but an embarrassment to humanity. By the end of the film, Anthony learns a valuable lesson: to forgive. In the same interview with Mike Wallace mentioned previously in chapter two, actor Morgan Freeman, while discussing issues of race in America, notes that it is important “to forgive but never forget” (18 Dec. 2005). And Crash brings Freeman’s words to life. At the beginning of the movie, Anthony is embittered with feelings of anger, hate, and

94 resentment; he has lost contact with all humanity. Keep in mind that Anthony runs over a “China man,” as he refers to him even though the man is actually Korean, and then throws his body on the curbside of the hospital for the emergency room staff to find. Thus, when Anthony releases the Korean slaves onto the streets of L.A., offering them their freedom when he could have sold them for $500 each, a huge leap of growth has taken place in this young man. By giving the Korean slaves a chance at freedom, Anthony, in turn, frees himself. Anthony, who once only thought of himself and his own survival, is finally able to think of others and what their life must be like. After all, when he first looks in the back of the van, as Paul Haggis points out during the director commentary, it had to hit home: The Koreans sitting there were being sold into slavery just as Anthony’s ancestors had. Even though they are not black, Anthony is able to understand and empathize with their situation; at this moment, he relates to the Koreans as fellow human beings. When he looks straight into the camera and gives the audience that smirk of self-satisfaction as he gets into the van at the very end of the film, one knows why: He realizes he has, for the first time in his life, done the right thing, just as Spike Lee first asked the nation to do in 1989 in his own film. Anthony has also learned to forgive. What white Americans did to black Americans in the past was awful; Americans should continue to remember and reflect upon the injustices so that they never happen again. But it is indeed time to move forward, and Anthony’s smirk, which is not meant to be condescending or malevolent, indicates as much. He is ready to bury the hate. There is love in that smirk; thus, there is hope. Jean Cabot (Sandra Bullock), like Anthony, must also bury her rage and learn to love. Jean is not a racist, despite what some of her comments might suggest, because she does not only resent black people or Latinos, rather, Jean is angry at the entire world. As she explains to her friend Carol, she is angry with her husband, Maria (Yomi Perry), the police, the two men who stole her car, and even her dry cleaners and gardener. She tells Carol: “I wake up angry all the time, and I don’t know why” (qtd. in Hawkins 1 of 3). Racism is fueled by hate and anger, and so, many of her comments are racist, but Jean, like Anthony, has to first contend with the larger issue at stake: She must learn to embrace humanity. Once she does so, the racist epithets she often utters will become

95 unthinkable. Jean and Anthony are foil characters; despite the huge contrast in their backgrounds and socio-economic status, the two have much in common. And like Anthony, the audience also, by the end of the film, watches Jean evolve into a more loving person. When she reaches out to hug Maria, her maid, she is finally ready to not only give love but to receive it. This leads to the significance of the invisible, yet impenetrable, cloak, which Daniel gives to his young daughter, Lara (Ashlyn Sanchez). The scene is in many ways the most important in the film because the cloak becomes a metaphor for love. Love is ultimately what will put an end to racism and the violent acts perpetuated by bigotry and hatred. As a society, in order to understand and relate to one another, there must be a general, mutual feeling of love. For example, consider the three men in the film who get in heated arguments with one another: Farhad (Shaun Toub), Daniel (Michael Peña), and the gun store owner (Jack McGee), who is not given a name in the film. Farhad not only has a confrontation with the gun store owner, but he also unfairly accuses Daniel of trying to cheat him. It is true; Farhad, who is Persian and speaks with a heavy accent, is different from the other two men. Take into account, though, what they have in common: All three are working class men who spend each day trying to make ends meet so that they can take care of their families. Farhad and the gun store owner both operate their own small businesses, while Daniel and Farhad each have daughters they love dearly. It is not until Farhad thinks that he has shot Lara, Daniel’s daughter, that he is able to relate to Daniel’s predicament. As soon as he thinks he has shot the little girl, he realizes the gravity of his mistake; at this point, he imagines, as a father, what Daniel must be going through. During the scenes when Daniel and Farhad confront one another, they are unable to communicate with each other. Farhad, who cannot speak English fluently, is not able to understand Daniel when he tries to explain that the door is broken, not the lock. But had Farhad been more patient, more understanding, and yes, more loving, the confrontation – the attempted murder – at the end of the film would have never happened. Farhad has so much love for his wife and daughter, but he is unwilling to extend those feelings beyond his own home and into his L.A. community. If he could only offer such love to his neighbors and fellow working class Los Angelinos, and if they, in return,

96 could offer such compassion for him, then the misunderstanding and miscommunication that permeates the film could be resolved. For instance, the language/accent barrier can often be a frustrating experience to work through. Ria (Jennifer Esposito) mocks Kim Lee’s (Alexis Rhee) accent after they crash into one another, and when Kim Lee hysterically runs into the hospital, the nurse asks her if she can speak English, to which Kim Lee replies, “I am speaking English, you stupid cow!” (Crash). But these barriers can be overcome; it only requires patience and a willingness to relate to each other despite such obstacles. In Crash, music from several different languages is played throughout the entire film, yet the viewer is never confused by the language barrier; the audience understands the message the music is conveying whether they speak the language or not. In addition, South African film director Gavin Hood made an excellent point when accepting his Oscar for Best Foreign Film at the “78th Annual Academy Awards Ceremony.” During his acceptance speech, while discussing the significance of his film Tsotsi (2005) and the importance of foreign films in general, Hood declared, “Our stories are the same as your stories” (5 Mar. 2006). Why, then, can the three men portrayed in Crash not relate to one another despite the language barrier? Farhad, Daniel, and the white gun store owner come from very different cultures; nevertheless, in Crash, Haggis brilliantly, yet subtly, points out what they all have in common – their work, their daughters, but, most importantly, their humanity – and this is what the viewer should remember at the end of the movie. Haggis’s film is about human connection, or the unfortunate lack thereof. In the movie, also pointed out during the director commentary, Haggis uses match cuts to transition from scene to scene, and by doing so, quite literally connects the characters to one another. A match cut is defined as a cut between two separate scenes that are linked by a similar motif (action or object). For example, when Dorri (Bahar Soomekh) storms out of the gun shop door, Haggis quickly transitions to the next scene, where the viewer immediately sees Anthony and Peter exiting the door of the restaurant. There are many other examples, including the match cut where the camera moves from Ria (Jennifer Esposito) slamming her boyfriend’s bedroom door shut to the shot of Jack Ryan (Matt Dillon) waking up in bed after being disturbed from his sleep. Such transitions are what earned the film an Oscar for best editing.

97 Haggis also includes many scenes throughout his film where the viewer finally see the characters not only hug, but desperately hold onto one another, illustrating the importance of human connection. Detective Graham Waters (Don Cheadle) claims: “In L.A., nobody touches, always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much that we crash into each other in order to feel something” (qtd. in Hawkins 1 of 3). But the characters in Crash eventually learn to reach out and to love rather than to crash. The hug between Jean Cabot and Maria has already been discussed, but the most significant embrace of all is between Sgt. Jack Ryan (Matt Dillon) and Christine Thayer (Thandie Newton). Ryan loves his father very much, but that simply is not enough. He must, like Farhad, learn to extend that love. Ryan does not recognize Christine as a fellow human being until he sees her in the wrecked car, her life in grave danger, just as his father’s is. The film does not excuse what Ryan did to Christine, but it points out why it happened. If Ryan could have only made the human connection earlier, the sexual assault would have never taken place. Detective Waters’s girlfriend, Ria, asks him an important question: “Why do you keep everybody at a certain distance?” (Crash) This is a question that all Americans should ask themselves. Distancing ourselves from one another and putting up barriers that simply do not exist is a dangerous thing to do. Crash points out what can happen when one does so. This film insists that Americans unite in human solidarity and create a greater sense of national community, and as Maricarmen Martínez notes, “community is not about the unity of the ‘commons,’ but the unity of the different” (4 Dec. 2005). The central message of Crash is, as cast member Brendan Fraser states in an NPR interview with Neal Conan, how “…we relate to each other as human beings, no matter what our ethnic background, status, or class” (18 April 2005). It would be naïve to think that this is going to be an easy task to accomplish, which is why the film ends with yet another “crash,” this time literally, when two cars collide into one another. One of the drivers is Shaniqua Johnson (Lorreta Devine), who, although introduced earlier in the film, has yet to make, unlike the other characters, the human connection. When her car is rear-ended, she immediately jumps out and begins yelling at the other driver, who is Asian American, “What the hell is wrong with you people,” and then adds, “Don’t talk to me unless you speak American” (Crash).

98 Richard Rodriguez boldly writes, “As much as I celebrate the browning of America…I do not propose an easy optimism;” Rodriguez never denies the “combustible dangers of brown” (Brown xiii). “Crash shows the challenges of multiculturalism, the cultural negotiations and obstacles (crashes) brought about by diversity,” observes Martínez (4 Dec. 2005). But if Americans simply allow themselves to walk in someone else’s shoes for a while – to empathize with each other as fellow human beings – they could better relate to and understand one another. Crash provides its audience with this opportunity, if only for 122 minutes; although the film challenges everyone to continue the journey long after its running time is over. Martínez points out: “Crash does not have a linear perspective. It is difficult to chronicle the diversity of a city using a linear narrative; if this is done some characters will dominate the frame. Crash is multi-focal because it is multi-foci (points of view)” (4 Dec. 2005). Thus, by sharing multiple points of view, Crash encourages everyone, as pointed out by Sandra Bullock in the interview with Oprah, to “love each others histories,” after which Oprah herself then adds, “and stories” (6 Oct. 2005). It is vital that all Americans learn to love one another’s histories and stories because their histories and stories are ours as well. In A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America, Ronald Takaki asks: …how do we see our prospects for “working out” America’s racial crisis? Do we see it as through a glass darkly? Do the televised images of racial hatred and violence that riveted us in 1992 during the days of rage in Los Angeles [the very same city that Crash is set in] frame a future of divisive race relations – what Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., has fearfully denounced as the “disuniting of America”? Or will Americans of diverse races and ethnicities be able to connect themselves to a larger narrative? Whatever happens, we can be certain that much of our society’s future will be influenced by which “mirror” we choose to see ourselves. America does not belong to one race or one group…and Americans have been constantly redefining their national identity from the moment of first contact on the Virginia shore. (17)

99 It is refreshing to finally see films being made which challenge Americans to rethink their national identity, and to finally answer correctly Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur’s now famous question, “What is an American?” In addition, The Human Stain, Kinsey, and Crash exemplify “…the sense of community that is at the heart of a successful democracy” (Klein 21). Americans are a diverse group, but the films that have been coming out of Hollywood in the past two years, especially those released in 2005, focus on stories of human solidarity and unite Americans rather than divide them according to race, class, gender, and sexuality. The films that were recognized at the Oscars in 2006 were not expensive blockbusters loaded with special effects, but, rather, they were movies which explored the human condition. In a Time article titled “Less Cash, More Crash,” Richard Corliss reports: For Oscar this year, cheap is chic. Four of the five films nominated for Best Picture cost under $15 million to make, less than a fifth of the average Hollywood budget. Of them, the very cheapest was Crash, which cost $6.5 million and earned six Oscar nods, including three for writer- director-producer Paul Haggis. Yet the film’s domestic box-office total ($56 million) was higher than that of any of its laurelled rivals when the nominations came out...” (15) In The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe, Russell Jacoby writes, “A new intellectual generation…is hardly visible in mainstream film…” (13). Jacoby wrote his book in 1987, and his assertion was correct then, but now, even Jacoby should be impressed with some, although certainly not all, of the films coming out of Hollywood. Jacoby states in the introduction to the 2000 edition of his book that “The Last Intellectuals was less a lament than a call for intellectuals to reclaim the vernacular and reassert themselves in public life” (xx). Hollywood certainly seems to have received the wake-up call. Amy Longsdorf asserts: “In 2005, Hollywood finally noticed that there is a great, big world out there. Smart, sophisticated and socially conscious pictures made a comeback, proving that movies can jump-start conversations and raise awareness without being preachy and parched” (D1). Critic Scott Feinberg adds, “Movies [those released in

100 2005] did what movies do better than any other medium: opened people’s eyes to social problems and subtly encouraged people to reevaluate themselves and the world around them.” Moreover, it is vital that films do so because as Dr. Ray Winbush, Director of Urban Affairs at Morgan State University asserts, “We have to learn to be better than we have been in our past” (Oprah 6 Oct. 2005). He claims Americans have to “unlearn some of the things society has taught us” (Oprah 6 Oct. 2005). It should also be noted that the latest films tackling issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality are doing so through love and empathy, not pity and sentimentality. Roger Ebert writes that “…a great movie can work like philosophy, poetry or a sermon,” and recent films have certainly done so (B1). For example, Transamerica, a movie about a pre-operative male to female transsexual who finds out she has a 17 year old son, is, according to its star Felicity Huffman, “a movie that heals and brings understanding” (Golden Globes 16 Jan. 2006). It is certainly noteworthy that the African-American Film Critics Association selected Huffman, who is white, as the year’s best actress. While some criticized the organization for not picking an African American actress, the AAFCA replied, “Although our organization pays special attention to work by artists of African descent, in the end, merit carries the day and Ms. Huffman is undeniably amazing in this role” (“Association names Howard best actor”). The AAFCA is committed to highlighting films and actors which “reflect a bridge towards tolerance,” and Huffman does just this in her role (“Association names Howard best actor”). Regarding Huffman and the AAFCA’s decision, Roger Ebert shrewdly points out the “…connection between such an award and the message of Crash” (B1). The AAFCA is looking beyond race, just as Haggis suggests in Crash. In her Golden Globe speech, in which she won best actress in a drama, Huffman asserts, “Our job as people is to become who we are” (16 Jan. 2005). Society’s standards and their stereotypes concerning race, class, gender, and sexuality certainly should not dictate and define individuals. Duncan Tucker, the writer/director of Transamerica, does not stereotype Bree (Felicity Huffman) in his film. Jeff Strickler writes: “As good as Huffman is, perhaps the most impressive thing about Transamerica is its attitude. It could have turned Bree into a campy stereotype. Instead, it turns her into a person” (8F). Carol Cling adds, “Throughout, Transamerica strives to move Bree’s character from the

101 ranks of campy, freak-show flamboyance and acknowledge her humanity” (28J). First and foremost, it is important to focus on our stories and experiences as fellow human beings, which is why it makes perfect sense for the AAFCA to recognize Huffman’s role in Transamerica. Movie critic Katherine Monk asserts, Transamerica “urges us to see the higher, mental ground and acknowledge individual humanity – regardless of its physical manifestation” (C2). Michael Kleinschrodt suggests, “At the end of the day, Transamerica is not a movie about a transsexual; it’s a movie about a family in crisis. The family is different from what we’re used to seeing on screen, but that doesn’t make their experiences or their feelings any less universal” (5). In addition, Kevin Thomas writes in the Los Angeles Times that “What Bree discovers in her journey with Toby [her son] is not only to be courageous but also that becoming a responsive, caring human being is as important as completing her gender transition” (E4). More importantly, Transamerica does not shy away from or gloss over the complexities of such human relationships. Frank Gabrenya adds: “Most road movies resolve the principals’ crises with tidy understandings, but Transamerica ends on an unfinished, if hopeful, note. It reminds everyone that all relationships, like Bree’s transformation, are works in progress” (7B). Another noteworthy film released in 2005 is Guess Who, a loosely based and updated version of 1967’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. But Guess Who, unlike its predecessor, focuses less on issues of race. In fact, the director, Kevin Rodney Sullivan, has said that he wanted his story to move beyond race. His film is a story about love; and not just one about love between Simon (Ashton Kutcher), who is white, and Theresa (Zoë Saldaña), who is black. Rather, Percy Jones (Bernie Mac), Theresa’s father, must learn to love and respect Simon, despite the fact that he is white and not the man he would like his daughter to end up with. The only way these characters conquer love, though, is by overcoming stereotypes. Sullivan purposely attempts to defy all stereotypes in his film in order to prove his point. For example, Percy accuses Dante (Robert Curtis-Brown), the party planner, of being gay, but he is not; he is a metrosexual with a beautiful wife. Sullivan also contrasts the backgrounds of Theresa and Simon, and by doing so, overthrows the common stereotypes concerning race and class: Theresa, who is black, is from an upper middle

102 class family, while Simon, the white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant male, is from a working class, single parent home; his mom is a realtor, sells mini-blinds, and teaches dance on the side. And finally, the audience discovers that Percy loves NASCAR, stereotyped by most as a white sport. NASCAR, as Sullivan notes during the director commentary, agreed to let him use their name in his movie because they also want to redefine their image; they want to be viewed as more than just a white, working-man’s sport. Paul Haggis plays around with this idea in Crash as well: Peter Waters tells Anthony that he loves hockey, also stereotyped as a white sport. Sullivan also presents his audience with very strong, independent women; the women in this movie love the men in their lives, but they are self-reliant and their romantic relationships with men do not define who they are. At one point, Theresa tells Simon, “I need you to do things with me, not for me” (Guess Who). In the movie, Simon is also seen in the kitchen helping Theresa with the dishes. Their relationship is based not only on love, but equality and partnership. Moreover, the viewer does not just get Percy and Simon’s male perspective in this film, but also Marilyn (Judith Scott) and Theresa’s point of view, as well as that of Marilyn’s sister, Darlene (Paula Newsome), and the scene where the women are drinking margaritas together especially illustrates this point. Here, the older and wiser women tell Theresa that she must not back down; she must learn to stand her ground with Simon. When Darlene’s husband, Marcus (Richard Lawson), comes outside and tells the women to settle down and asserts, “this is my house,” they laugh as soon as he walks back in. They are all well aware that any successful relationship is not based on such feelings of dominancy, as are the men in the film, even though they would never admit it. Before Marcus walks back inside, he politely pours Theresa another glass of margarita, a gesture of both respect and admiration. Sullivan’s film brings the nation together, and it is important to remember that it does so through love. The only way Americans will ever learn to respect, empathize, and love one another is by overcoming simple-minded stereotypes. The setting of Guess Who is especially relevant. The original Guess Who’s Coming to Diner was set in San Francisco, a famously liberal U.S. city; however, Sullivan chose to set his story on the east coast, in Cranford, New Jersey, a suburb filled with traditional, more conservative,

103 family values. Sullivan shifts his message towards mainstream America, and not just to those who are liberal at heart. Love is not a red or blue state issue; rather, it is a vital force of the human condition. As Argentinean musician Gustavo Santaolalla stated during his 2006 Academy Awards acceptance speech for best original score in Brokeback Mountain (2005), “love is what makes us similar” (5 Mar. 2006). This dissertation cannot conclude without further discussing the 78th Annual Academy Awards. The day after the ceremony, MSNBC News noted, “Crash pulled off one of the biggest upsets in Academy Awards history, winning best picture Sunday over the front-runner Brokeback Mountain” (“Crash a surprise winner”). Honoring a film like Crash, though, is certainly the right thing to do, especially taking into account Hurricane Katrina and its devastating impact on the United States in 2005, the very same year Crash was released. Hurricane Katrina revealed the reality of a divided American nation, but a film like Crash illustrates how Americans can bring an end to such detrimental divisions. At the same time, Crash’s surprising Oscar win, as well as its box office success, more than any event this past year, indicates the progressive browning of the nation. While Crash is not a blockbuster hit by any stretch of the means, it did earn over $55 million at the box office, an impressive figure since it only cost $6.5 million to make. Thus, just as the numbers cited above indicate, Americans are interested in the controversial film, and they have become engaged with its subject matter. Thanks to Oprah, the phrase “Crash moment” has become a part of the nation’s vocabulary. While Brokeback Mountain may not have won the coveted title of best picture at the Academy Awards, the film’s success should not be overlooked because it also alludes to the nation’s browning. Brokeback has indeed made breakthrough. Many Americans, since the film’s release in December 2005, have come to embrace a western about two cowboys who fall in love (please note they are not labeled as gay). The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards and won three, and it also received seven Golden Globe nominations and won four of them, including best picture and best director. But even more significant, Brokeback’s box office success has also stunned the nation. The sheer popularity of the movie affirms that the United States is in the process of browning. According to the latest statistic, Brokeback has earned over $75 million, especially relevant since the director was only given a $14 million budget to work with

104 (imdb.com 6 Mar. 2006). Time also notes that it was “the best reviewed movie of the year” and adds that “Middle America has accepted it with surprising equanimity” (Corliss and Shickel 70). Hence, Crash and Brokeback each deserve the recognition they have received, if only for the impact of their message alone. Both films call for peace and tolerance, and they portray an “authentic concern for human behavior” (Corliss and Shickel 70). Crash, like The Human Stain, tackles issues regarding race and class, while Transamerica, as well as Guess Who, addresses gender, and Brokeback Mountain, like Kinsey, centers on sexuality. All six films, in turn, celebrate the diversity of America. Individuals truly are more complex and diverse than they give each other credit for, and the films discussed in this dissertation focus on this aspect of the human condition. But despite such diversity, Americans all share the same complexities, joys, and sorrows, which are also very much a part of the human condition. Multiculturalism, then, must come to a truce. Not only should diversity be celebrated, but at the same time, the United States must live up to its name and become a multicultural nation which allows for human solidarity. By doing so, multiculturalism can continue to move forward and thrive without the fear of disuniting the nation. Americans can unite in order to take on complex issues and situations involving race, class, gender, and sexuality. Multiculturalism need not be replaced; rather, it should acknowledge postethnicity and browning, and, in turn, celebrate not only diversity, but, even more importantly, human solidarity.

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Takaki, Ronald. A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1993.

Takaki, Ronald. “At the End of the Century: The ‘Culture Wars’ in the U.S.” Ed. Ronald Takaki. From Different Shores: Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity in America. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1987. 296-299.

Taylor, Charles. Rev. of Spanglish, dir. James L. Brooks. Salon.com 17. Dec. 2004.

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The Human Stain. Dir. Robert Benton. Perf. Anthony Hopkins, Nicole Kidman, Ed Harris, Gary Sinise, and Wentworth Miller. 2003. Videocassette. Miramax, 2004.

The Stepford Wives. Dir. Frank Oz. Perf. Nicole Kidman, Matthew Broderick, Bette Midler, Glenn Close, Christopher Walken, and Faith Hill. DVD. Paramount, 2004.

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Thompson, Anne. “Assessing A Film That Lost Momentum.” Rev. of The Human Stain, dir. Robert Benton. New York Times 4 Nov. 2003, late ed.: E1. Lexis-Nexis Academic. Florida State University Libraries, Tallahassee, FL. 9 Sept. 2005 . ---. Rev. of Crash, dir. Paul Haggis. The Hollywood Reporter.com 16 Sept. 2005. Lexis-Nexis Academic. Florida State University Libraries, Tallahassee, FL. 10 Jan. 2006 .

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117 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Belle Harrell

Education

Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida (May 2003-present) • Ph.D., Interdisciplinary Program in the Humanities • Areas of Interest: American Studies & multicultural film • Dissertation: “Multiculturalism Must Come to a Truce: Hollywood and the Perpetual Browning of the Nation”

Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida (August 2001-May 2003) • Master of Arts in Humanities • Interdisciplinary Program in the Humanities

University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia (August 1994-May 1998) • Bachelor of Science in Education, emphasis in history • Graduated Cum Laude

Oxford University, Oxford, England (June 1997-August 1997) • Studied abroad through the University of Georgia

Bainbridge College, Bainbridge, Georgia (March 1995-May 1996) • Studied under Dr. Barbara Frieling, Professor of Humanities • Humanities Award • Later traveled with Dr. Frieling to Greece to further studies under the Marsicano Scholarship during the summer of 2000

Teaching and Research Experience

Florida State University Instructor and Research Assistant

Teaching – HUM 3321: Multicultural Film and Twentieth Century Culture

I have also taught the Honors section of this course.

118 This course examines how Hollywood cinema deals with issues regarding race, class, gender, and sexuality. Students benefit from this course by learning a matrix of movie history, movie genres, and approaches to multiculturalism by which to judge the movies and cultural experiences of life. The movies provide a window on middle and late 20th century culture, which serves as a comparison and contrast for culture in the 21st century. This course is meant to raise the conscious level for all students of film and culture to acknowledge film as a mirror of our culture as well as affecting our culture. We shaped our movies by who we were, and in turn they have shaped us to be who we have become. By watching movies with a better understanding of their biases and prejudices we may confront the stereotypes in our culture. The learners’ responsibilities include an open- minded approach to new ideas about race, class, gender, and sexuality.

Teaching – HUM 6939-02: For the past two summer semesters I have worked with incoming graduate students, focusing on how to enhance their classroom teaching with technology, especially through the use of Blackboard. One of my teaching goals is to improve the instructional design of the online and hybrid courses offered by IPH.

Teaching – HUM 6939-01: Worked with new graduate students who will be teaching the multicultural film course in the fall.

Research – Assisted in the development of the online web course for HUM 3321 under the guidance and supervision of Dr. Maricarmen Martínez and Dr. Eugene Crook during the summer of 2002.

Bainbridge College Adjunct Professor Hist 2111: United States History I • This course is a survey of U.S. History to the post-Civil War period. Major themes, philosophies, ideas, concepts, issues and movements which influenced the conduct of domestic or foreign affairs during those times are addressed. Significant social, economic, religious, military and ideological trends and patterns also receive analysis.

I have been asked to teach HUMN 2002: Humanities II this summer at Bainbridge.

Valwood School, Valdosta, Georgia (August 1998-May 2000) Middle School History Teacher

Worked with middle and high school students inside and outside of the classroom. • Teaching – Taught sixth grade World History, seventh grade U.S History, and eighth grade geography to split sections. Projects ranged from oral reports to art projects to creative writing assignments.

West Hall Middle School, Gainesville, Georgia (March 1998-June 1998) Student Teacher Taught Social Studies to middle school students.

119 • Teaching – Worked with four different sections of eighth grade students focusing on Georgia History • Education – Studied under four eighth grade teachers to gain insight into the philosophy and practical elements regarding the middle school classroom

Academic Awards

• Graduate Student Leadership Nominee, Florida State University (April 2004) University-wide recognized award

• Outstanding Teaching Assistant Nominee, Florida State University (April 2003) University-wide recognized award

• Marsicano Scholarship, Bainbridge College (June 2000)

• Humanities Award, Bainbridge College (May 1996)

Leadership

• PIE Associate, Florida State University (May 2003-present) Program for Instructional Excellence: Providing university-wide support to graduate teaching assistants

While working with graduate students and administration (actually acting as a liaison between the two), as the PIE Associate and lead TA for the Humanities Program, I keep the lines of communication open between both parties, focusing on graduate student support and also suggestions for the overall improvement of our program. Duties include peer mentoring, survey analysis, as well as assisting with both the fall and spring teaching conferences.

• GPC Subcommittee Review of Humanities, Florida State University (January- March 2005) Graduate Student Representative

Served as the graduate student representative when the Humanities doctoral program was reviewed by the GPC Subcommittee during spring semester 2005, concurrently with the Quality Enhancement Review

Conference Presentations

• I have been selected to present a paper at the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association Convention in Tucson, Arizona in October.

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“Multiculturalism Must Come to a Truce: No Need for Crashes:” This paper explores Paul Haggis’s 2005 film Crash and proves how Haggis’s work illustrates the fact that multiculturalism should not only acknowledge diversity, but even more importantly, it should celebrate human solidarity.

• Interdisciplines Academic Conference (April 7-8, 2006) “Inter-disciplining the Body” Florida State University “Sex, Love, and Dr. Kinsey”

• 2006 Spring Teaching Conference (January 20, 2006) Florida State University The Program for Instructional Excellence “Communicating With Your Students Online and In Class”

This workshop covered the fundamentals of interpersonal communication, ways to engage students in the classroom through questioning techniques, and tips for efficient and effective online communication.

• 2006 Spring Teaching Conference (January 20, 2006) Florida State University The Program for Instructional Excellence “Creating Active Learning Environments”

Research tells us that students learn more when they are actively involved in their learning environment. In this session, I discussed several ways to deliver lessons that actively engage students, techniques for increasing student participation in the learning process, and how to plan some learning activities for a course that are appropriate for the students’ desired learning outcomes.

• 2005 Fall Teaching Conference (August 24-25, 2005) Florida State University The Program for Instructional Excellence “Hybrid Courses”

The Humanities Program has instituted a hybrid course for one of their popular enrollment courses. In this session, I discussed how the course has been designed, the training developed for graduate students who help teach it, and the role that hybrid courses play both here at FSU and at other institutions.

121 • 2005 Spring Teaching Conference (January 21, 2005) Florida State University The Program for Instructional Excellence “Creating Active Learning Environments”

• 2004 Fall Teaching Conference Florida State University The Program for Instructional Excellence “Hybrid Courses”

• 2004 Spring Teaching Conference Florida State University The Program for Instructional Excellence “Creating Active Learning Environments”

Conferences Attended

• 31st Annual Film and Literature Conference: Documenting Trauma, Documenting Terror (February 2-5, 2006) Florida State University

• 29th Annual Film and Literature Conference: The Persistence of Form: Culture, History, and the Aesthetic (January 29- February 1, 2004) Florida State University

• 2003 Fall Teaching Conference Florida State University The Program for Instructional Excellence

• 2002 Fall Teaching Conference Florida State University The Program for Instructional Excellence

Professional Development

Preparing Future Faculty: PFF is a national program that helps graduate students from all disciplines prepare for academic careers in higher education through faculty mentoring, seminars, departmental programs, and observations.

• Visited Valdosta State University twice and met with faculty members at VSU. April 1, 2005 & February 10, 2006

122 • Visited Tallahassee Community College and met with faculty members at TCC. October 2003

Memberships and Organizations

• Interdisciplinary Teaching Society, Florida State University

• Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association

References

• Dr. R. Bruce Bickley, Jr. Griffith T. Pugh Professor of English Department of English Florida State University Tallahassee, FL. 32306-1580 850-644-3243 [email protected]

• Dr. Eugene Crook Department of English and Interdisciplinary Program in the Humanities 431 Williams Florida State University Tallahassee, Florida 32306 850-644-6047 [email protected]

• Dr. Maxine D. Jones Director of the Graduate Program for the Department of History 421B Bellamy Florida State University Tallahassee, Florida 32306 850-644-5588 [email protected]

• Dr. David F. Johnson Executive Director, International Society of Anglo-Saxonists Director, Interdisciplinary Program in the Humanities Florida State University 205 Dodd Hall Tallahassee, Florida 32306-1560 850-644-0314 [email protected]

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• Dr. Neil Jumonville Department Chair FSU Department of History William Warren Rogers Professor Florida State University 401B Bellamy Tallahassee, Florida 32306 850-644-9524 [email protected]

• Dr. Maricarmen Martínez Assistant Director/Director of Graduate Studies Interdisciplinary Program in the Humanities Florida State University 205M Dodd Hall Tallahassee, Florida 32306-1560 850-645-1401 [email protected]

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