Black Heroes in the United States: the Representation of African Americans in Contemporary American Culture

Università degli Studi di Padova Dipartimento di Studi Linguistici e Letterari Corso di Laurea Magistrale in Lingue Moderne per la Comunicazione e la Cooperazione Internazionale Classe LM-38 Tesi di Laurea Black Heroes in the United States: the Representation of African Americans in Contemporary American Culture Relatore Laureando Prof.ssa Anna Scacchi Enrico Pizzolato n° matr.1102543 / LMLCC Anno Accademico 2016 / 2017 - 1 - - 2 - Università degli Studi di Padova Dipartimento di Studi Linguistici e Letterari Corso di Laurea Magistrale in Lingue Moderne per la Comunicazione e la Cooperazione Internazionale Classe LM-38 Tesi di Laurea The Representation of Black Heroism in American Culture Relatore Laureando Prof.ssa Anna Scacchi Enrico Pizzolato n° matr.1102543 / LMLCC Anno Accademico 2016 / 2017 - 4 - Table of Contents: Preface Chapter One: The Western Victimization of African Americans during and after Slavery 1.1 – Visual Culture in Propaganda 1.2 - African Americans as Victims of the System of Slavery 1.3 - The Gift of Freedom 1.4 - The Influence of White Stereotypes on the Perception of Blacks 1.5 - Racial Discrimination in Criminal Justice 1.6 - Conclusion Chapter Two: Black Heroism in Modern American Cinema 2.1 – Representing Racial Agency Through Passive Characters 2.2 - Django Unchained: The Frontier Hero in Black Cinema 2.3 - Character Development in Django Unchained 2.4 - The White Savior Narrative in Hollywood's Cinema 2.5 - The Depiction of Black Agency in Hollywood's Cinema 2.6 - Conclusion Chapter Three: The Different Interpretations of Nat Turner's Rebellion in Popular Culture 3.1 – Modern Interpretations of Turner's Experience: William Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner 3.2 - The Styron Controversy: Black Intellectual Response to the Novel 3.3 - Sexual Longing for White Women in Styron's Confessions 3.4 - African American Works in Response to Styron's Narrative 3.5 - Kyle Baker's Nat Turner: the Absence of Written Text in a Portrayal of the Rebellion 3.6 - Conclusion Conclusions Bibliography and Sitography Summary - 5 - - 6 - Preface The present study analyzes how the representation of African Americans in the United States has changed from the years of slavery to the present. Initially perceived by vast parts of the white population as subhumans and economic goods, black people are nowadays considered equals the rest of the American population, and are granted the same rights of every other citizen of the US. However, the identification of African Americans as wild, uncultured, and reminiscent of animals is not a phenomenon belonging exclusively to the period of slavery, as it represents the basis of modern racial discrimination and intolerance. It is one of the objectives of this study to determine how racism still affects the contemporary popular culture of the US and to understand its effects on the modern representation of black identity. In order to provide a complete picture of the topic, each chapter of this research discusses the contemporary representation of blackness from different perspectives. The first chapter of the study provides a general overview of the African American experience in the United States from slavery to contemporary years. The chapter analyzes the different perceptions of the American white population towards the phenomenon of slavery in the past, and how both the supporters and the detractors of this institution introduced their own portrayals of blackness in popular culture, defining the identity of African Americans in a time when the media were controlled exclusively by white people. - 7 - Despite being initially created as depictions of the behavior of black people during slavery, these depictions of African Americans continue to influence the general perception of blackness in the US in the present days. The latter sections of the chapter show how racial stereotypes that were created during the years of slavery represent the base of contemporary racism and discrimination towards the African American community in many parts of the country. The topic of the second chapter is the representation of African Americans in contemporary cinema, specifically in the genre of black films. This part of the thesis focuses on determining how influent the racial stereotypes introduced in the previous chapter are in mainstream media, and how they are presented to audiences of all ethnicities. The plot of various movies is analyzed to establish how the African American experience is portrayed to popular culture, and whether films can successfully manage to contradict the credibility of racial tropes. The primary focus of the chapter is that of identifying black heroic characters in movies belonging to different genres and determining whether the personalities of these figures are created on the basis of popular tropes. The analysis also extends to the ways in which critics and the general public perceive these fictional characters, and highlights how media has become an important instrument to discuss the memory of slavery and the identity of African American slaves. The last chapter of the thesis explores the events of the Southampton insurrection of 1831 led by the slave rebel Nat Turner. Very few documents of historical value provide a description of the facts of the uprising, and, to this day, the identity of Turner remains shrouded in mistery, because an accurate portrayal of the man has become impossible to - 8 - recreate. As a consequence, the memory of Nat Turner has become the subject of various different interpretations enacted by both black and white personalities. Because of the lack of sources of historical information, many of these interpretations of the slave leader are bound to be influenced by their author's perspective towards the subject and perception of black identity. While some have portrayed Turner as a mythical hero and representative of black resistance against the oppression of slavery, others have described him as a more credible figure whose role as a rebel leader was determined by his influence over other black slaves. This part of the study examines the various portrayals of Nat Turner in media and their differences, to illustrate the various ways in which the slave experience is depicted in the present and how relevant racial tropes and archetypes still are in these depictions. The primary aim of this research is to determine how the modern representation of African Americans in the US is affected by the influence of racial stereotypes and tropes that have originated in the past. The thesis examines how relevant these tropes are today in mass media, and whether efforts are being made in mainstream culture to contrast their credibility and to provide a depiction of African American identity that is grounded in historical facts and memory. - 9 - - 10 - Chapter One: The Western Victimization of African Americans during and after Slavery - 11 - The social identity of blacks in the United States has been affected by stereotypes since the early years of colonization to the present. Members of the African American race were generally judged by whites on the basis of prejudices originated from the depiction of African culture as primitive and ignorant of any morals that defined Western society. Archetypes aimed at influencing the perception on blacks and establishing their position in Western society as servants that were denied the rights of whites because of their supposed unintelligent and lazy nature. By depicting the members of the black race as simpleminded, white Americans were able to legitimize slavery as a necessary means for educating them to the standards of civilization. However, the apparently noble function of stereotypes served only as an excuse for exploiting the labor of entire generations of blacks and influencing their social status in a negative way even after the abolition of slavery was enacted. I will begin this chapter by discussing the various ways in which stereotypes have been popularized prior and after the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865 and how they have affected American popular culture. I will also highlight how this biased representation of African Americans persists today in the form of discrimination and social inequalities. My main aim through the chapter will be highlighting how the emancipation process failed to identify blacks as equal to whites, and in explaining why black freedom does not provide African Americans with the same social status of whites. - 12 - 1.1 - Visual Culture in Propaganda Slavery became a legal institution in the United States from the early years of colonization, but was never a universal phenomenon to the entire territory of the country. Various states in the north of the country actively opposed it and the exploitation of black labor became mainly as a typical trait of southern plantations where land owners would force blacks to work to maximize production in the fields. Tensions between the states which were contrary to slavery and those which considered it a necessary part of their economies would culminate in the American Civil War in 1861, but the two sides engaged in a battle of propaganda much earlier. Both abolitionists and anti-abolitionists used visual culture and other media to promote their own depictions of the black slave in the effort of representing slavery as a good or bad aspect of American society. Southerners would for the most part be interested in strengthening the credibility of African American stereotypes in order to convince the population that freeing

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