THE MYTEES OF THE AMERICAN DREAM: INTERRACIAL AND INTER-ETHNIC RELATIONSHlCPS IN HOLLYWOOD FILMS
Erica Gwen Fyvie
A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies in partial fi&bent of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts
Graduate Programme in Film and Video York University North York, Ontario
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Erica Gwen Fyvie a thesis submitted to the Fâculty of Graduate Studies of York University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts
Permission has been granted to the LIBRARY OF YORK UNlVERSiTY to lend or self copies of this thesis, to the NATIONAL LIBRARY OF CANADA to microfilm this thesis and to lend or seIl copies of the film, and to UNIVERSITY MICROFILMS to publish an abstract of this thesis. The author reserves other publication rights, and neither the thesis nor extensive extracts from it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's written permission. ABSTRACT:
This thesis studies interracial and inter-ethnic 'love7' relationships in HoUywood hs.The analysis argues that the representation of two pairings (black men/ white women and Jewish rnedgentile wornen) result in the white women being envisioned by the other men as the ferninine ideai which consequently excludes the black and Jewish women in the narratives on very specific and problernatic racial and ethnic gromds. The
"cacquisition"of the ferninine ideal is equated with a larger and all-encompassing desire for the Amencan Dream.
Myths about race, ethnicity, and sexuaiïty are identified to illustrate the pervasive and often insidious nature of the stereotyping that contributes to certain Hollywood products. These relationships serve as a site for examining the racist, anti-Sernitic, and sexist ideologies present in American culture.
Inchded in the introduction is a literature review included to establish and clac a
Iist of theoretical tems used throughout this thesis.
Chapter One examines the historicd connection between Jews and blacks and outlines the image of the Amencan Dream. The use of blackface is also explored in accordance with the two fïims analyzed: Birth of a Nion(1 9 15) and I;be Jazz Singer
(1927).
Chapter Two examines Gness Who's Corning to Dmner? (1967) and The
Hearrbreak Kid (1972) to determine how the changing social status of black and Jewish men in American society in the 1960s and 1970s alters their relationships with white v women. A focus of this chapter also includes an analysis of the role of black and Jewish women both in the films and in the Civil and Women's Rights Movements.
Chapter Three evaluates Spike Lee's Jzrngle Fever (1991) and two films by
Woody Allen to show that while more sophisticated characterizations are available in contemporq films, the same myths goveniing the ccpopular"definitions of race and ethnicity in the earliest narratives continue to surface.
The primary goal of this thesis is to raise awareness of the problematic and manipulative nature of certain Hollywood representations, specificdy those employed to keep white Americans at the height of power while simultaneously underrnining the presence and influence of those traditionaliy considered the orher. vi
ACKNOwLEDGmNTS:
1am indebted to several patient people for their support of this thesis- First and foremost are my advisor, Scott Forsyth, and my reader, Brenda LongfeUow, both of whom provided invaluable guidance fiom the proposai to the finished project. I feel incredibly fortunate to have benefitted fiom their wisdom and ongoing assistance.
1would also like to thank the following individuals for their personal and greatiy appreciated contributions to my work: Peter and Loretta Fyvie, Nicole Fyvie and Karin
Gerneùihardt, Theha Haas, Barbara Evans, Anthony Banks, Enta Berman, and maxine b ailey.
Very special thanks to Jen VanderBurgh and Brian Hot son for their incomparable
ûiendship .
Finaliy, 1 congratulate Jay LiUey for contùiuing to love me in the face of formathg trouble and for being the best fiiend a person could ever imagine- TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Title Page
Copyright Page
Certificate Page
Abstract
Acknowledgments
Table of Contents
Introduction Page 1
Chapter One Page 24
Chapter Two Page 54
Chapter Three Page 86
Conclusion Page 117
Works Consulted Filmography INTRODUCTION:
The dzflczilty in wnring thïs essay has been for me a persistent and troubling sense of the Iimifationsof my own knowledge. On a certain level, th& feareà Zuck of knowledge is linked tu a deficient 'masîery ' of the field - the feeling that the more one reads the more one discovers hmmuch one hm not read.. Whar cma white woman knmv about racial dzflerence or oppression when her social remgrmeis constitzited as denial or evaamtion of racial idemïty, when whiteness aspires fo signzfi fhat if is color-less, absence, no race at all?
Mary Am ~oane'
These are the same questions 1 have asked myself: the same issues I have wrestled with during each stage of rny research and writing. As a white woman, 1ask myself why am 1 drawn to the love relationships between black medwhite women and Jewish medgentile women in Hollywood fis? Conside~gthe substantid scope of thÏs topic, 1 am reminded ofien of the ccLmitationsof my own knowledge." Choosing these specific relationship groupings has allowed me to incorporate the issues of race, gender, and ethnicity within a more narrow Eame. The relationships are used as a tool to explore how the issues intersect, for instance, how the interplay between race, identity, and desire manifests itselfarnong the disparate narratives. The focus of study is on the cornparison between the men of the cccIassicminorïties" and what their relationships with white and gentile wornen illustrate about the desire for the Amencan Drearn.
However, it is important to avoid monoiithic thurkuig with this topic. It is an
'Mary Am Doane. Femme Fatales: Feminism Film Theory Psvchoanalysis. New York: Routledge, 1991, p. 246. inviting possibility to read race as one set definition and ethnicity as another, simply to
establish a set of clear binaries that wdl make a nice ''fit" with my andysis- Sociologists
have argued against this type of reasoning: 'To conceptualize ethnic studies exclusively as
the study of people of color is inconsistent with how sociologists dehe ethnicity...( thk]
promotes a kind ofwe-they attitude among white students and teachers. Many students
think that ethnic studies is the study of them, whereas Arnerican studies is the study of us
[original itaiics] .'"
A complex puzzle emerges Eorn the conclusions which have been constructed
through research into this area. The "color-less" status of white women in these films
assigns thern a cunous position in the narrative. In one respect, they are the chosen ones,
the syrnbols of beauty and prosperity to men considered the der."Acquiring" the white
woman is often the emblem for these black and Jewish male characters for achieving acculturation and/or assimilation into a higher appointment of Amencan Society. However, these women are still not in positions of power because they fùnction as other to the male.
Unfortunately, this complicated juxtaposition shows that the two meanings for white women do not result in more profound characterizations.
However, forrning such generalizations proves that when analyzing issues of inter- ethnic and interracial love, nothing is as simple as a black and white reading. The male and fernale characters in these films have a multitude of rneanings and the goal is to
%mes A- Banks. Teachinp Ethnic Studies. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1991. pp. 11-12. 3
deiineate those which shed the most light on the acquisition of the American Dream. The
Arnerican Dream itself is an ideological construction created and perpetuated by the studio
executives and writers who deftly acknowledged that the tone es following a
disadvantaged character attaïning success generated profitable gains. The same society
that dictates the hierarchy also preserves the notion that everyone is given the same
opportunity to attaïn the same dream. Jewish men, having essentially created the studio
system as we know it today, experienced both sides of this drearn. Their relationship with the Amencan dream was a cyclicd one: they conceived of the narratives which exploited the dream, in essence creating a vision that excluded their own culture. The tension between the power that these Jewish men wielded behind the scenes, in cornparison with the characterizations of Jewish men on screen, will be exptored Wher in Section One within the discussion about their relationships with gentile wornen.
Section One: The Birth of BlackTace?
The first section will examine two fbsthat have high stature on the list of influentid American films. D.W- Griffith's Birrh of a Ndon (1915) and the Alan
Crosland/Al Jolson production of The Jazz Singer (1 927) are both considered cinematic milestones. Griffith is credited in film history with perfecting a great rnany technological innovations including the use of parallel action, panning tracking shots, close-ups, fade- outs, high-angle shots, panoramic shots, and extensive use of the camera iris technique, to name just a few. 27Îe Jazz Singer is known as the fïrst c'talkie," the first film to inccrporate synchronized-sound dialogue sequences. Both films were arnong the fïrst to be considered "blockbusters" in their ability to have wide popular appeal and both were recognized as raising the art of film arnong their many cornmonplace contemporary &S. What is interesthg to note about the two narratives and their position in Amencan fih history is their shared desire for the white woman and the He that she entails. BIirh of a Nation is told as an c%ïstoricd drarna," putting the ccpurity"of white women at the centre of the nation. The namative depicts the desire for white wornen as a hunger so menacïng on the part of the black male that it drives a white woman to suicide and is the irnpetus for the white man to create the Ku Klux Klan. In me Jazz Singer, the love of perforrning and the love for the beautifil gentile woman is the cause for JalSe Rabinowitz (Jolson) to reject and abandon the religious world of his Jewish family for the Arnerican stage. The white woman carries a host of meanings in these two films, especially purity and prosperity.
The implementation of black5ace is another inauspicious similarity between the two films- Every main black character in Bi& of a Nion is played by a white actor in blackface while Jakie dons blackface to perform certain musical nurnbers in The Jazz
Singer. This masquerade of blackness has an ironic purpose in that both films are using the black mask as a tool for expression while black men have been historically silenced.
Although perception studies is not a major focus of this project, one must address the idea of spectatorship with the inclusion of myth analysis and the American Drearn. The actual meanings of myfh and hemsuggest that perception d be dBerent for everyone.
We collectively understand myrh as a fictitious story or unscientific account of an event.
One text that clarifies this issue of perception is Cinema and S~ectatorshi~by Judith 5
Mayne, which explains that ". .. spectators~p refers not just to the acts of watching and listening, and not just to identification with human figures projected on the screen, but rather to the various values with which film viewllig is invested ...the pleasures and dangers affiliated with watching and listening are channeled into powerfUl cultural and narrative rnyths of man and wornan, social class, private and public life."-' The "powerfùl cultural and narrative myths" absorbed in certain Hollywood representations are deciphered to gauge essentially how these representations affected Amencan culture- How did Griffith's
"brutal black buck" iduence Amencan bIack men? Was Jakie's rejection of Judaism a reflection of Arnerican cultiire at the tirne? These questions can never be given defhitive answers as perception is not a finite science, but they do elucidate issues surrounding the analysis of white wornen in these füms and their position in accordance with the "savage" black man and the Jewish man in blackface.
The concept of perception and spectatorship regarding these two contentious films is not simply to view the films in a contemporary context and disregard thern for their racist and anti-Semitic content. Merely dîsrnissing these works as outcornes of a bygone era prevents modem audiences fiom engaging in schohrly debate about the roots of such issues. Carlos E. Cortés examines this need for explicit discussion in his essay, 'Media and
Education in a Multicultural Society: A Historian' s Perspective (1 995):" 'The quicker that you set an example by examining a historically important piece of media - for instance
-'ludith Mayne, Cinema and Spectatorship. London: Routiedge 1993. p -31. 6
Birth of a Nation (19 1 5) or rite Jazr Singer (1927)- without either bashing it with.. .claims of contemporary moral superiorïty or excusing it merely as a product of its time, the more rapid students are drawn into this analytïcal enterprise? This first section explores how the roots of racism and antisemitism were planted in these eariy Hollywood bswhile the later sections evaluate how the more conternporary narratives address the same issues.
Section Two: Guess Who Doesn't Want Matzo Baiis for Dinner?
The second section is a study of the changing face of both black and Jewish men in
Amencan Society and how their dflerentiated social positions affect the representations of their love relationships with white, gentile women. Not surprisingly, there is a significant distance between how both the men and the women are characterized in films of this penod when compared to Birth of a Nation and BeJna Singer. However, a more egalit arian treatment is not necessarily advocated in these films b ecause sometimes w hat appears to be a more positive representation is actua1l.y a very ùisidious form of racism or anti-Semitism. The prîmary anaiysis for interracial relationships is directed upon Stanley
Kramerys Giess Who 's Comzng lu Dinner? (1967) .Various sociologïcaijoumds and texts are incorporated in order to contextualize where the black men fit into this penod of social and political unrest in Arnerican history. The characterization of Sidney Poitier's
"superblackman" in Giress W%o 's Comirzg to Dinner? is a wondemil site for examining
'Carlos E. Cortés, "Media and Education in a Multicultural Society: A Historianys Perspective," in Shared DEerences: Multicultural Media and Practical Pedagom. ed's Diane Carson & Lester D. Freidman. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995. p. 114. how HoUywood generaliy tried to incorporate civil rights into their f3.m by depicting
black male characters as nich upstanding moral hurnan beings that ail contentious issues of
race are conveniently minimized.
The characterization of Jewish men in this section deviates fiom how the black men are represented. Rather than being dramatized as incomptiile human beings,
Alexander Portnoy in Portnoy 's Cornplaint (1972) and Lenny Cantrow in The Hewtbreak
Kid(1972) are emotionally stunted grown men who will persecute those who keep them f7orn the gentile wornen they desire. These women are given the power to completely sever the men from the Jewish culture that they view as unbearably oppressive.
SocioIogical studies describe the 1960s and 1970s in Amerîca as a penod wher, Jewîsh men began to flourish in many aspects of society. This newfound status will be explored dongside theîr cinematic incarnations as an aid in the understanding of how such a escalation in socid status was handled by Hoilywood.
En direct conrelation with how men's social status changed during this penod, an area of concentration in this section is the treatrnent of black and Jewish women in these films. There is a strong parailel between how black men treated black women and how
Jewish men treated Jewish women in these films. There is an undercunent of either disregard or disrespect for these women, a commonality not merely explained as coincidental. Firstly, the gentile women are understood to be flaunting femininity. They are the pure, pristine, unattainable characters. These typically ferninine attributes are not distributed evenly between the white wornen in the films and the black/Jewish women- The gentile women are iafused with these qualities, thus sending the message that to be
desirable to the man, a woman must embrace these sarne passive characteristics. The black * and Jewish women are 'hder-feminized" in these films to present as stark a contrast as
possible to the desirable women- The female spectator, then, has the opportunity to
ident* with ody one of these groups and will alrnost inevitably gravitate towards the
group that is coveted by the men. This section also explores where racism and sexism
meet with an analysis of how black and Jewish wornen aligned with the Civil Rights
Movement and the Women's Rights Movement- Their strength in the face of oppression is
generally not addressed in the Hollywood narratives, where only the other men 's struggle
is considered worthy of treatment.
Section Three: Do Woody and Spike Love the Same Women?
The films in question for this section are Spike Lee's Jzrngle Fever (1 991) and two
Woody Allen films, Annie HalI (1977) and Hannah and Her Sisters (1 986). Although
these choices may strike the reader initidy as unbalanced, it is necessary to analyze two
films in accordance with Lee's one work because JingZe Fever is such a rich and
complicated text in tems of interracid love that there is not one film concerning inter-
ethnic love that can stand as its comparative equal. As well, for the Allen films there is an
advantage to choosing two films that have him playing the romantic lead as it is viable to
create one strong argument about the nature of love relationships in his stories.
The argument will be focused on the white women in both Jztnge Fever and
Allen's films and their interpretation as heIpIess characters who seek the male racial and 9 ethnic others to add an eIement of exoticism to their lives- However, these films integrate relationships where the individuals are not merely evocative as in earlier films which used black medwhite women and Jewish medgentile women for visual and syrnbolic impact-
Spike Lee and Woody Allen's work draw portraits of intricate relationships where Iove is actually an issue. The main question for this section is what part assimilation plays in these characterizations. With Lee's assertion of diversity, the role and meaning behind assimilation deviates fkom the onginal one explored at the beginning of this thesis. The characters relationships to the American Dream has changed; it is questioned whether these characters believe the myths that their predecessors believed. In correlation to these myths is the appraisal of how issues of revenue have altered Hollywood's treatment of interracial and inter-ethnic love and how cccontroversial"films can be translated into impressive financial retums for the major studios. This facet of the industry forces one to question what role the economy plays in the representations of Hollywood interracial and inter-ethnic pairings.
My perimeters for research of this topic are restricted to Hollywood narratives simply because of the questions that I am asking. When trying to determine influence and how the film representations of black and Jewish men and women affect andor reflect the
American clream, Hollywood is the logicd site. SecondIy, 1wish to address my choice for not including homosexual relationships within this analysis of interracial and inter-dhnic love. Aithough 1 know of several excellent films, including My Bemtifirl Lazmdreffe and
Looking for Langsfon that are devoted to telling stories of interracial and inter-ethnic love 10
in homosexual relationships, 1 made the decision to focus on heterosexual relationships as
a matter of tirne and space. With a topic that covers such unwieldy issues, there is a
definite need to set boundaries so that there is a possibility of achïeving depth with what
could otherwise become just a surface discussion-
1 am not proposing a history of the status of interracial and inter-ethnic
relationships in Amerka. Neither am 1 interested in presenting glïib 'snapshots' of
American history, such as the notion that a certain fdm caused racism or anti-Semitism.
What 1 am interested in is how these films reflect, negotiate and resolve these issues as
they existed in their respective eras. The signifïcance of these representations of
relationships on film is directly related to our understanding of the North American society
we Iive in- To understand these relationships will fùrther our knowledge of ideological
issues reIated especidy to class and gender. The foli0wir.g section is an addition to the introduction to include the more specific theoretical tems 1 am using throughout this thesis. The goal of the section is to expand this discussion of class, gender, race, and ethnicity. Introduction of Theoreticai Terms and Literature:
A work that searches to find meaning between interraciai and inter-ethnic
Hollywood relationships inevitably encompasses a wide and ofien disparate coilectio~of
terms and theories that must be incorporated in order to comprehend the roots of such
cinematic representations. Hence, this literature review will serve two major purposes within this thesis as a whole: one, to introduce a list of such terms that are repeatedly
employed to describe and define the issues at the core of these relationships, and iwo, to act as a reference guide for the reader to revisit throughout ttiis thesis as a grounding theoreticai fiamework. The theories introduced here are used continually throughout the work, ofien in very different contexts as dictated by the clifferent fis, and this review cm be a beacon, of sorts, to maneuver the reader through the various analyses. The focus of this work is on drfference, namely how many Hollywood representations (through the roles, characters, and performances), interpret and reflect dif/eerence back to its wide audience. Thus, an exphnation of the roots of merence and the collective (and generdized) North American understanding of the other is integral in order to formulate a position for gauging Hollywood's participation in the perpetuation of such beliefs. Two key questions to ask are: 'What is the dominant understanding of the other?' and 'What contributes to this creation of the oiher?' These questions provide the segue into the Est area of theoretical concentration, the stereotype, and the review wilI follow fiom there dong a path that shows how inextricably Iinked these issues reaily are.
The history of the tenn stereotype is partïcularly elucida~gwhen deterrnining its rneaning in modem Western society The term stereotpe was fïrst used in 1798 to
desmbe a process in printing which entailed creating a mold to reproduce images onto the
page.' The term garnered its contemporary meaning in 1922 when 'Walter Lippmann, a
famous Amencan editonaiist and political journalist, borrowed the term to represent the
typical picture that cornes to mind when thinlang about a particuIar social groupJhe]
theorized that these pictures heIp us to manage the complexïty of our environment by
simplifying the social world.'" Sander L. Gilman, in his book Difference and Patho1o.w
(1985), agrees with Lippmann's assessment: 'Everyone creates stereotypes. We cannot
fùnction in the world without them. They buffer us against our most urgent fears by
extending them, making it possible for us to act as though their source were beyond our
control. FoIlowing Gilman' s estimation, one could argue that by identifying stereotypes
in films, one could identifY his or her own fears. Quite often these fears are built on the
meaning of the orher and of difference. As a result, rather than "sirnpiîf+ng the social
world," as Lippmann originaIly suggested, stereotypes complicate meanings between
groups "because there is no real Iine between selfand the other, [and] an irnaginary he
must be dra~n.'~Thus, the other is often featured as an oversimplified cut-out character
'James Waller. Face to Face: The Changing State of Racisrn Across Arnerica. New York:lnsight, 1998. p.26.
3~anderL. Gilman. Dserence and Patholoe: Stereotwes of Sexualitv. Race. and Madness Ithaca: Cornell Universiv Press, 198 5. p. 16. of a person who is outlined with the characteristics aEorded their specific social group.
These characteristics are viewed repeatedly in different characters involved in different narratives and the repetition creates the possïbility of the spectator to interpret the type as
Steve Neale idenses this phenornenon in his work on stereotypes in Screen
Education. He feels that stereotypes present a large hindrance to deep analysis, especidy in regard to race and gender? Considering that stereotypes are widespread and largely utilized by the public, representations either conform or reject the popular stereotype which gives the often denigrating image a great deal of power- Once stereotypes become stmdardr for basing truths, the audience may not be aware of how their interpretation is rooted in the fear of dBerence. By keeping the other as a type, the other becomes manageable for the dominant society and fears are lessened: ccStereotypicalcharacters are evaluated negatively to the extent that they are not like 'real people,' to the extent that the characters do not appear as complex individuals living complex lives in a complex society.'" As it will be shown in the subsequent film analyses, Jews and blacks in cinema still suffer korn their stereotypical illustrations; a fate that keeps these social groups rooted in an ofken subtle position of subservience.
The rationalization behind a majonty of the Jewish and black stereotypes is based
'Steve Neale. 'The Same Old Story, Stereotypes and Ditference," in Screen Education. Aut~~nter19794980, pp. 33-37. 14 on the concept of purity. Terrns iike cYinning the raceyyare used to describe the fear and hostility behind interracial and inter-ethnic relationships, especially ifthey choose to procreate. How purity is translated to make meaning of race and ethniciîy is essential in the composition of stereotypes and general groupings. There is a powerful connection between the binaries of pollutiodhygiene, disorder/order, and othedwhite in North
American society. Mary Douglas writes in Puritv and Daner (1966) that 'Dirt offends against order. Eliminating it is not a negative movement, but a positive effort to organize the environment... Ritual of purity and irnpurity create unity in expenence."' Blacks and
Iews have hiçtorïcally been described as 'impure' beings in relation to whites. OAen this is portrayed in the disorderly conduct of both groups (e-g., the raucous and blatantly inappropriate activity of the black characters in the courtroom in Binh of a Nation).
Purity, race, and order all must be understood as atfecting the representation of the Other.
Richard Dyer addresses the issue of purity in White (1997): ''In the quest for purity, whites wîn either way: either they are a distinct, pure, superïor to dl others, or else they are the purest expression of the human race itself. What is interesting in either version is the emphasis on purity, and of the special purity of whiteness, for this is a theme central to what is implied and rnobilized by this group being called 'white. "''
The issue of purity emerges in each of the Hollywood narratives explored in later
'~ar~Douglas. hirity and Daneer. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966. p. 2.
'Richard Dyer. White. London: Routledge, 1997. p. 22. 15
chapters. Purity obtains specific rneaning when interpreting relationships of "mixed" racial
and ethnic groups, prirnarily because it affects the hierarchicai structure in the minds of
those who wish to keep white America at the pinnacle of power. This ideology surfaces in
the Ianguage used to identfi certain groups, for example, mulatto individuals are often
referred to as "half-breeds." Half of what? The implication is that they are not whoie
individuds because of their connection to two races, one of them being black and alI of the
connotative meanhg that blackness entails. Joel Kovel makes an interesting assertion
about the relationship between blackness, dirt, and purity in White Racism: A
Psvchohistory (1 970): "the central symbol of dirt throughout the world is feces.. .when
contrasted with the iight colour of the body of the Caucasian person, the dark colour of
faeces reuiforces, &orn the infâncy of the individual in the culture of the West, the
connotation of blachess with ba~lness."~Thus, the signiflcance attributed to purity and
consequentiy, the Western desire to purge and expunge dirt fiom the personal being is
proportional to the racial and ethnic cccleansingyythat occurs in different facets throughout
society,
Ideas about purity lead to the denotative and connotative constructions of race in
Western culture. Race and racism are both dïEcult to define because ofthe "irnaginary
line" that GiIman introduces; everyone has a different line which just5es how individuals interpret their own definition of what it means to be racist. Thus, racism is based on a set
'~oelKovel. White Racism: A Psvchohistory. London: Free Association, 1970, p. 87. 16 of arbitrary Lines. James Wailer provides a definition for race that specifZes the fiamework for how race should be understood in this work: "(1) an individual's negative prejudicial attitude or discriminatory behavior toward people of a given race or (2) institutional personnel, policies, practices, and structures (even if not motivated by prejudice) that subordinate people of a given race."1° One major dilemma with the current focus on race is that it concentrates on blackness and the black community in relation to white America.
This work will integrate theorists (narnely, Richard Dyer and Frantz Fanon), who analyze race fi-om the white perspective and conclude that the discussion of race is inherently racist based on the nature of what whites determine race relations to be- Whites are histoncally responsible for categorizing races in North Amencan society and this must be understood when examining the current state of race relations in America.
As Hollywood is generaily considered a white entity, the "popuiar" mass product produced by Amencans and reflected back to Americans is the white eye on a multicultural nation. This creates a series of problems when the narrative is based on a raciai issue: 'mat is now at stake, in the context of global media, is not sirnply the representational image itseE but what it connotes in the social world, its meaning and value in both the public imagination and, more crucially, in the social order."" Through the various images, and often stereotypes, perpetuated by the media, norms are established
LO~arnesWaller. Face to Face: The Changing State of Racism Across Arnerica. New York: Insight, 1998, p- 47.
"~arenRoss. Black and White Media Cambridge: Polity, 1996. p. xix. as to what race means which in tum affects the existing social order. The cycle continues while the sarne beliefs are regurgitated. This is one of the pivotal arguments for the importance of black and Jewish storytellers telhg black and Jewish stories rather than white storytellers shaïng their vision of what the black and Jewish cornmunities may be like.
This work will dissect images of blackness and whiteness, specifically, the whiteness component wiU be based on how Jewish characters do and do not conform to the whiteness mold. Jews have experienced a deviant relationship to whiteness which has been predicated on the purity issue and is the catalyst for several stereotypical characteristics. Through the image of the Jew, a spectator cm vie= how 'khite" is as much as a construction as other societal/cultural compositions- Daniel Bernardi discusses the history of the creation of "whiteness" in The Birth of Whiteness (1996):
.. . whiteness is a historical formation; European Americans are a heterogenous collective of people who often - but certainly not universally - pass as white. The implication here is that the term 'white, ' as with the tenn 'race, ' does not refer to a biological classification of people.. .butyrather, to a historically specifïc formation of meanings that characterize social, political, and individual experiences. Like 'race,' 'white' as a categoy of hurnan beings is determined by history. This clarification is important to emphasize because it specifies that there is no essential - divine, genetic, or cuItural - identity to European Americans (or any collective of people).12
12~anÏelBernardi. 'The Voice of Whiteness" in The Birth of Whiteness. ed. Daniel Bemardi, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1996. p. 105. 18
Therefore, although ccdominant"society encourages the thought of 'khiteness" and the meanings attriiuted to it as ccnahiral,'7it is as much as a construction as "blackness."
Despite Bernardi's assertion that these constructions have no basis to them,
'%Iackness" remains a powedd configuration of meanings rooted in the same fear of the other. Henry Giroux establishes blackness and whiteness as constructions that are taught in his essay 'Racial Politics and the Pedagogy of Whiteness" (1 997): "... 'whiteness' as a cultural practice promotes race-based hierarchies.. . 'whiteness' in this context becomes less a matter of creating a new form of identity politics than an attempt to rearticulate
'whiteness' as part of a broader project of cultural, social, and political citizenship."" The question of citizenship and the rights of the American public are intertwined with the matter of assimilation and the illusion of the Arnerican Dream. What keeps segregated groups from attaining the sarne drearn while maintainhg an idemother than the "white
American," are the "isms" that plague Our North Arnerican society. Blacks, Jews, and women suffer from the racisrn, antisernitism, and sexism that are consequential determining factors for the parameters that define their lives. The meanings of whiteness and blackness contribute to the barriers placed on groups by society as a whole; these baniers are used as a means to categorize, to label goodness and badness in a world where mortal beings search for control and identity. By establishg order/purity/goodness in one visuaily motivated camp of people while relegating disorderfïpurity/badness to another,
13~enryGiroux, 'Xacial Politics and the Pedagogy of Whiteness," in Whiteness: A Critical Reader, ed. Mike W. New York: New York University Press, 1997. p. 295. 19 it allows people to feel safe within the binaries.
This work is not based on a random selection of two segregated groups. Jews and blacks have historicaiiy been aligned in both their segregation and in their desire to achieve the American Drearn. Sander L. Gilman traces the religious comection between the two groups: association between Jews with blackness is as old as Christian tradition... The association was an artifact of the Christian perception of the Jew which was simply incorporated into the rhetoric of race. But it was incorporated not rnerely as an intellectual abstraction but as the mode1 through which Jews were perceived and treated, and to which they thus responded as ifconfionted with the reflection of their own reality."" This suggests that the Christian power established Jews in a partitioned position much Iike the position of blacks, simply because both classifications of people did not conforrn to the Christian notion of the "ideal citizen." This Christian predisposition extends to the founding of American society; a society that supported slavery for generations and still grapples with racism and antisemitism.
Erik Hamburger Erikson postdates about the relationship between Jews and blacks in his book Childhood and Society (1950), which is based upon his interpretation of
Adolf Hïtier's Mein Karn~f(1 923). He writes that Hitler detennined a racial
l4Sander L. Gilman. Difference and Patholow. Ithaca: Corne11 University Press, 1985. p.3 1. 20 dichotomy of cosrnic dimension: the German [soldier] versus the Jew."'' The typology between the two is delineated by the following: 'The Jew is described as small, black, and hairy alI over; his back is bent, lis feet are fIat [my own itali~s]."'~The description of black is deliberate; it is included among the other animalistic qualities to invoke fear in the mind of the reader. Thus, the spectator's understanding of the Jew is, perhaps unconscious1y7forged with the understanding of '%lackness." These stereotypes are embedded in the nature of on-screen narration; the Bi* of a Nation courtroom scene cited previously is a very graphic image of positùig ccopposites"against each other.
Gilman's research into the fùsion of black and Jew has proven to be especially insightfid, particularly for his written contribution of why such a pairing was initidy formed. He writes: 'The two major exarnples for theones of race in the nineteenth century were the blacks and the Jews ...[Altenberg] l7 sees the young black female as the antithesis of the racial stcreotype of the Jew. The Jew is a male who acts like a fernde, one who belongs to the category of the 'hysteric'.. .The Jew belongs to a 'purey race, the sign of which is degenerative sexual selectivity.. .psychiatry saw al2 blacks, male and female, as
''Erik Hamburger Erikson. Childhood and Society. New York: W.W. Norton, 1950. p- 301.
17Peter Altenberg, an artist in the late nineteenth century, created a group of sketches of the young Ashanti wornen and girls who lived in Ghana as part of a native kingdom. especialiy prone to hysteria."18 This commentary suggests that due to sheer numbers in the
Western population, blacks and Jews were compared to each other because of the shared greater visibitity versus other rninority groups. The cornparison still applies a century later when analyzing their varied representations in films, despite how much both groups have achieved in Arnerican society.
Jews have been plagued by specific anti-Semitic acts for centunes. The following definition of antisemitism is based on materiai originally printed in The Enc~clo~aedia
Judaica: 'The term [antisemitism] was coined in 1879... by the Gennan agitator Wilhelm
Marr to designate the then-current anti-Jewish campaigns in Europe. Anti-SemitÏm soon came into general use as a term denoting all foms of hostility manifested toward the Jews throughout hi~tory."~~
An anthology incorporated for this project, Celebrating the Lives of Jewish
Women, is an instrumental text for appreciating the unique position that Jews face in
America. The following passage succinctly embodies the questions that, in one respect or another, all immigrants rnust fathom upon entering the new world:
Ln both choosing a Jewish identity and pursuing equality, one confronts a variety of options: between a Jewish identity lirnited to cultural amaiion or one more rooted in theology, faith, or politics, or between balancing one's own diEerence with others' clah for more radical kinds of Werence. At their
''Sander L. Gilman. Difference and Patholom. Ithaca: Comell Universiv Press, 1985. p. 1 19. lg~nti-Semitism,Israel Pocket Library. Jerusalem, Keter, 1974. p. 1. heart, these decisions force us to confront our often conflicted and ambivalent desires to idente as Jewish women in contemporary Arnerican society, a society struggling to corne to terms with cultural and religious pluralism. How can we be both equd and different? How should we value and express our Jewishness? Do we even have a choice? What is distinctive and worthy in the Jewish tradition that we wish to perpetuate?"
These are the questions that everyone should ask in melting-pot Amenca- The passage
suggests that although it wodd be convenient to analyze assimilation into America and
acquisition of the Dream as a universal desire, it is in actuality a very personal and interna1
struggle. Every person of every different ethnicity would jusw a different conclusion for
themselves. As tempting as it is to read the Jewish characters and the black characters as
ccassimilation-driven,'ythis reading does a disservice to the cornpie* of American
immigration and Amencan diversity.
The subsequent analyses of Hollywood narratives compound the aforementioned theones involved with race and ethnicity to display a format always promoted as ccentertauUnent."As spectators we should question the roots of such entertainment.
Contemporary audiences would probably be somewhat disturbed by a performance in blacwace while sirnultaneousIy supporting cinematic representations that are equaliy as problematic, albeit more subtle. The following project is an attempt to show how continuing to question as an audience may intens* enjoyment, despite the commonly held
'('Rachel N. Weber, 'The Politics of Coming Home: Gender and Jewish Identities in the 1990~~"in Celebratinrr the Lives of Jewish Women: Patterns in a Feminist Sampler. ed's- EUen Cole and Rachel Josefowitz Siegel. New York: Haworth, 1997. p. 177 23 belief that critical interpretation and entertainment are mutually exclusive aspects of the
cinema. By the end of this thesis, 1 will still understand what Mary AM Doane expressed,
"the feeling that the more one reads the more one discovers how much one has not read-"
And yet, my hope is that by delineating the parallels between these particular relationships, a greater understanding and sensiavity of the rnany ways the American Dream is manipdated to all audiences will be possible. CHAPTER ONE:
ïhere Ïs no more powe@Iposition fhan thaf of bezng 'jus1' hmne claim topaver is the ciaim to qeakfor the commonnaliy of hrnaniV- Racedpeople can 'f do th- they cmonly speak for their race. But non-racedpeople cm, for rhey do nof represent the interests of a race. The point of seeing the racing of whites Ïs to disIodge thedus fi-om the position of power, with al2 the inequities, oppression, privileges and sufferïngs in ifsfraiin, disZdghg thendus by undercufting azrfhoritywifh which theyhe speak and act in md on the world '
Richard Dyer begins his book, White, with this discussion of the "matter of whiteness," and his argument provides an inîriguing entry way into the topics of race and representation as they apply to interracial and inter-ethnic love relationships in Hoiiywood films. By analyzing the powerfùl position that whiteness bestows, one is able to comprehend the racial and ethnic hierarchy in our North American society &om a perspective rarely pondered. This is precisely Dyer's central idea, that a discussion of race consistently develops by examining the groups that are classified as racial or ethnic and never fiom the white perspective. Understanding this concept is a crucial facet of understanding the lure of assimilation and the desire to achieve the American Drearn,
By acknowledging what it means to be white, one is in a better position to see how individuals who are not white are constnicted as the other. Whites are not considered representatives of their race because they are not considered to be part of a race. In a chapter of his book, Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars (1992),Henry Louis
'~ichardDyer. White. London: Routledge, 1997,2. Gates quotes Mïkhail Bakhtin with reference to how language creates rneaning:
'S..language for the individual consciousness, lies on the borderline between oneself and
the other. The word in language is halfsomeone else's- It becornes 'one's own' when the
speaker populates it with his own intention, his own accent, when he appropriates the
word, adapting it to his own semantic and expressive intention.'" This suggests that
rneaning is constituted in a denotative and a connotative sense and that the dictionary may
provide the initial location for the utilization of the word. Hence, key terms will be defined
in this section to contribute a framework for understanding ccpopular"usages of these
words. The various defhÏtions of white in Webster's New WorId Dictionarv support not
only the notion of being fiee fiom racial classification, but also thepurity associated with this state of being: "1. having the color of pure snow or rnilk; of the color of radiated, transrnitted, or reflected light containhg all of the visible rays of the spectnim; opposite to black; 2. morally or spùitually pure; spotless; innocent 3. f?ee fiom evil intent." What is
one to surmise fiom reading this defition, knowing that whife is a descriptive terrn we use to cowa group of people? Firstly, ifit contains ail visible rays, is white considered colorless? Are whites in a position of power because they are able to maintain a colorless sense of anonymity? Secondly, and perhaps more disturbing, is the question of black. If black is the opposite of white, is black, then, attniuted with qualities on the other end of
'~ikhailBakhtin, as quoted in 'Wnting Race and the Dserence it Makes," in Loose - Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. p. 43. 26
the spectrurn: moraiiy or spiritual imprm, dirty, guilty,fufl of evil intent? Indeed, the
dehition of black suggests this: "1 - having dark-colored skin and hair, Negro; 2, soiled;
dkty; 3. evil; wicked; harmfùl; 4- disgracefùl; 5. fÙU of sorrow or suBering; sad; dismal;
gloomy; 6. disastrous; 7. s~llen.'~The basis of this thesis7argument shodd not be reduced
to a question of semantics, but it is worthy to address the fact that if meaning is created
through language then it is consequential to acknowledge these distinctions between black
and white. Similarly, children who have a more limited understanding of language are
largely considered to be non-racist beings; it is only through the acquisition of language
that they learn the standards and deviations ffom "noms."
However, it is not sufficient to Say that 'khiteness" encornpasses all colors and is
therefore not a color. For ifthis was tme, then the same argument could be made for
'%lackness," but '%lackness" is understood as a collecrion of meanings for the dominant
culture. Daniel Bernardi, in The Birth of Whiteness (1996), supports Dyer's claim "ihat
whiteness is hard to 'see,' but he does] not think this is because of the discourse's
representational or narrative properties (or lack thereof). On the contrary, whiteness is not
'everything and nothing,' as pyer] posits, but a very particular sornething: a
representational and narrative construction with identifiable properties and a specific
history? This "specific history" includes 'the representational - where whiteface
3Danie1Bemardi, 'The Voice of Whiteness - D.W. Griffith's Biograph Films (1908- 19 13)" in The Birth of Whiteness: Race and the Emergence of U.S. Cinema- ed. Daniel B ernardi. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1996. pp. 106- 107. becomes an enduring image - to the narrational - where stories of non-white se~tude,of colonial love, and of the divine centrality and Wtue of the white family/white wornan dominate countless films?
As the interest of this work is with both interracial md inter-ethnic relationships, the conflict between race and ethnicity must be treated as weU. Jews and blacks have shared a history together of assimilation and rejection- Although the reasons for their respective exclusions were histoncdy diverse, the outcomes were often surprisingly
As unassimilated and probably unassimilable minorities, Jews and Negroes stood together in the tacit register of excluded breeds and classes rnaintained by the Old Americans... Not the+ daerences but the fact that both seemed unassirailable was uppermost in Old Amencan awareness of Jews and Negroes. Excluded sociaily, both were conventionaiiy assumed to be included culturaUyy at least sufficiently so to protect the vdue consensus upon which the Arnencan Way was based ...But the primary source of Negro segregation was their social position, while for Jews it was the ancient culture they were associated with... one could use them to illustrate two ideal types in polar opposition, the purely social and the purely ideological minorities.'
The question of pueemerges in this contemplation of race and ethnicity. For
"social" and 'cideclogical" reasons, these two groups were considered too impure to be completely assimilated into American culture. In the melting pot tradition of Arnerican
'Ben Halpern. Jews and Blacks: The Classic Arnerican Minorities. New York: Herder& Herder, 1971, pp 69-75. 28 immigration and citizenry, it is perplexing that two distinct groups would suEer this sdar fate of exclusion. Although it is not stated outnght, the "Older America~~~~that Halpern refers to are assumed to be white and gentile, for who else would have the power to cast such crïticisrn and doubt on other groups of Americans? This question of purity is one that will be repeatedly deliberated, especially when analyzing the role that women play in the chosen films as representatives of and reproducers for their respective social groups.
Richard Dyer has also acknowledged this parallel between Jews and blacks. Jews have a very complicated relationship within the racial structure because, unlike blacks who are undisputably consid ered non-white, Jews have historicdy (and geograp hically) fden at Werent intersections of black and white. Dyer addresses Sander Gilrnan's work who
"'argues that Jews were perceived as black in the nineteenth century (and before) because certain features (notably the nose) were seen as being like Afiicans' and thereby Jews became seen, iiterally, as markedly dark and swarthy.'* He goes on to define the intncate geographical position that Jews had in relation to the perception of color: 'Tn Britain and
Germany they are fair, brown in France and in Turkey, swarthy in Pomigai and Spain, olive in Syria and Chaldea, tawny or copper-colored in Arabia and ~gypt."' This illustrates not only the alignment between Jews and blacks, but also the fact that the color of Jews was a source of much debate. In a recent Village Voice article entitled, "Jews Are Not
%ichard Dyer. White. London: Rouîledge, 1997, p. 42.
7Dyer, 54. White," Michael Lerner uses the close association between Jews and blacks to descnïe the
message Jews received regarding their position in European societies: 'You can move out
of the position of the 'most oppressed' ifyou become the public face of oppression to the
rest of s~ciety."~During the Holocaust the Jews did, indeed, become "the public face of
oppression to the reg of society," a position that has haunted Amencan blacks since the
slave trade.
As groups living perpetually on the periphery ofthe status quo, it is not dficdt to
imagine why issues of assimilation and desire for success continudy surface in narratives
employing Jews and blacks as the main characters. One could take for granted that
everyone shares the sarne understanding of the Amencm Dream, but referencing Robin
Wood's insights into this area contributes clarification of the rneaning necessary for this project. The following is an abbreviated version of his: "definition of what we mean by
Arnencan capitalist ideology - or, more speciflcdy, the values and assumptions so insistently embodied in and reinforced by the classicd Kolïywood cinerna.
1. Capitalism: the nght of ownership, private enterprise, personal initiative 2. The work ethic: the notion that 'honest toil' is in and of itself rnordy admirable 3. Marriage (legalized heterosexual monogamy) and fdy 4. Success and wealth 5. America as the land where everyone is or can be happy; hence where all problems are solvable withui the existing system.'"
'Michael Lemer, "Jews Are Not White," Village Voice, May 18, 1993. pp.33-4.
Qobin Wood, 'Tdeology, Genre, and Auteur," in Film Theory and Criticism, ed's Gerald Most, Marshall Cohen, and Leo Braudy. New York: Odord University Press, 1992. pp. 476-77. This definition of the Amencan Dream is intertwined with the Amencan class system, a system that also requires elucidation when discussing assimilation. The division of society into ranks or castes is a feature for maintairing social units. These units are deterrninuig factors for the opportunities avadable to gentiles, Jews, blacks, and d other social classi.tications. Hence, the class system assumes a great deal of power:
[Class] is ail too often neglected and ignored by some academics, activists, and public intellectuals in favor of discussions and movement building around other fonns of difference. The result of this neglect of class has been to overlook the workings of capitalism as a system of domination and oppression. And to the extent that identity-based political movements and social theory have not been consciously critical of capitalism, they have reproduced and perpetuated capitalist structures of domination. l0
The Amencan Dream is almost a realistic myth for the other; she can see it and live alongside it but can rarely acquire it in the same capacity. The ownership for whites untii fairly recentiy in Arnerican history inclztded black men and women as slaves, it did not dlow blacks to own anything for themselves. As for the notion that Arnerica is the place for happiness, it would be difticult to state this without a heightened ironic tone. Ali of the white families mentioned in the films being analyzed for this work are of an upper-rniddle class status: the Stonernans and Camerons in Birth of a Natiorz, Mary in the Jaz,- Singer is
'OAnnaIee Newitz and Matthew Wray, "Wh& is mife Tmh?: Stereotypes and Economic Conditions of Poor Whites in the United States," in Whiteness: A Critical Reader. ed. Mike Hill. New York: New York University Press, 1997- p. 180. 3 1 fiom a higher class than Jakie, the Drayton's in Gziess Who 's Coming to Dirtnrr?, the
Corcoran's in île Heartbreak Kid, and the HaIl fadyin Annie HaZZCThe only white family in the films selected that is not upper-midde class is Angie Tucci's fdyin JzmgIe
Fever. They are an Italian family in an ali-Italian working class neighborhood in
Bensonhurst, a sub-division of Brooklyn. There are certain issues about class and race that
Spike Lee raises in accordance with this family that will be included later in the analysis of the film.
Is it a mere coincidence that all of the white gentile families are well-to-do? The wealth component is a significant contributor to the notion of the ideal- Robin Wood concludes that fiom his List of characteristics, "'emerge two ideal figures: the ideal male: the virile adventurer, the potent, untramrneled man of action [and] the ideai female: wXe and mother, perfect cornpanion, the endlessly dependent mainstay of hearth and home.""
The Jewish and black men in the films Zong to be considered 'ideai men' and believe the
'ideal women' can help them attain this statu.
The Jewish man has an interesting standing within this topic of the Amencan drearn and Hollywood. Unlike the black men who were impotent players in the Hollywood production machine with no power to control their own representation, the Jewish men wielded a great majority of the power in HoUywood. The list of Jewish men who had the power and insight to create the studio system is quite astounding as it includes: Hany 32
Cohn (the president of Columbia Pictures), WGam Fox (Fox Film Corporation), Car1
Laernrnle (Universal Pictures), Louis B. Mayer (Metro-GoldwynMayer), Jack and Harry
Warner (Wamer Brothers) and Adolph Zukor (Paramount Pictures). Why, then, were
Jewish men so often represented as characters desperately attempting to sever their roots?
Neal Gabler, in An Empire of Their Own (1988), begins his book with this very issue:
'The paradox is that the American film industry ... was founded and for more than thirty
years operated by Eastern European Jews who themselves seemed to be anything but the
quintessence of Amerka. The much-vaunted 'studio system,' which provided a prodigious
supply of films during the movies' heyday, was supe~sedby a second generation of Jews,
many of whom also regarded themselves as marginal men trying to punch into the
American mauistrearn.""
In many ways, these men were trying to display the cccomrnonalityof humanity,"
referred to in the opening passage by Dyer, through the very fisthey were creating.
Unfortunately, they were so successM in their creaîion of the celluloid American Dream that they perhaps did not realize the ramifications of excluding themselves until it was too
late. Perhaps the deliberate exclusion was created to ignore their ostracism fkom dominant
American society at the time. These men who exerted power great enough to create and end thousands of careers and export a vision of the Arnerican, capitalist, dominant ideology to the rest of the world, could not fùifill their dream ofbelonging by becoming
'%Jeal Gabler. An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood. New York: Doubleday, 1988. p. 1 33 rnembers of the elitist country clubs alongside their gentile fiends and colieagues. To add insult to injury, these clubs were usualiy in close proximity to the studios and the Jewish exclusion fkom them became an intangible symbol of the hierarchy in Hollywood. This historical bais for the founding of Hollywood is not only a shockingly sad statement on the rampant nature of anti-Semitism but also an illustration of the captivating quality of achieving ccali-Arnerïcan"status and all that it entails. With their dominance over the movie making process, it is confoundùig to analyze the Jewish presence on-screen, a character portrayal that was ofien reduced to type: the miserly Jew, the oppressive Jewish mother, the young Jew desperately attempting to sever the roots and break fiee fiorn Jewish tradition. What is one to conclude fi-om this perplexing relationship, from the tension between on and off-screen personas? Perhaps the Jewish self-hatred which becomes apparent in abundant Hollywood representations of the Jew stems fiom this very tension.
If the men with clout created and perpetuated an image of themselves that not only placed them in an unflattering light but forbade them fkom joùung the status quo, one must assume that there is an element of denial and sadly, hatred, that governed these cccreative'7 decisions.
Blacks did not have this control over their image in Hollywood and yet, similar character types were established: the Hustler, the Mammy, the Entertainer. Wîîh all of these types, the one that posed the greatest threat to white audiences was the stereotype of the young black man who pursued the white woman. W~thinthis discussion of race and ethnicity, the issue ofpzcrity is the undercurrent that must be brought to the surface and 34 explored- It is impossible to analyze the power of whiteness and the resuIting lure of assimiIation without acknowledging the protection of purity that interracial and inter- ethnic love relationships are historÎcdy thought to destroy. Just as the definitions for black and white proved to be particularly enlightening, so does the definition for puriîy
~omWebster's New World Dictionarv: "1. Eeedom £kom adulterating matter, 2. fieedorn fiom corrupting elements, 3. fieedom fiom mixture with white; color saturation."
Although the definition is referring to the color white and not necessarily to a group of
Caucasian people, one must never ignore the powerfid implications of language. It is a cultural understanding to refer to Caucasians as white people and to Afncan Arnericans as black people and so the denotative power of the terms white and black all reflect this understanding. Hence, from the definition ofpziri~,one may draw the concIusion that a
"mixture with white" will only result in an impure solution. This translates directly to the rniscegenation fear that inspires much of the narrative tension between black and white and Jewish and gentile couples in Hollywood films.
Miscegenation is often thought of as a menace to whiteness because whiteness is the dominant ccracey'in Our North Amencan society, as deterrnined by the European settlers who came in and comniitted genocide on the Native people. In several Arnerican
States the 'one-drop' definition was supported which advocated that one drop of black blood was sdcient enough to consider the person black.13 Of course, by the sarne token,
13ccThïsview was still upheId in 1983 by the Louisiana Bureau of Vital Records, which, in the case of a descendant of an eighteenth-centwy white planter and a black slave, one drop of white blood was apparently not enough to make a person white because of the issue of purîty. Black blood was seen as infiltrathg the white pool ofthe ccchosenyypeople which would only cause disintegration of power. Purity is especially integral when discussing the white woman7srole as reproducers of a race. The white wornen in the hs
1 will examine all share a certain set of characteristics: beauty, class, and an element of seeming innocence. These are the qualities that have historically been regarded as the key elements for reproduction. White women of a certain high social and moral stature will pass on these qualities to their children who will in turn become upstanding citizens able to keep the power dZFerential in check.
Understanding the historical context of the Birth of a Nation's release will cl* the interplay between race, white wornen, and purity. In her book, Black and White Media
(1996), Karen Ross describes the release and reception of the film:
The film was an outstanding success when fkst shown and was the first film to be 'honored7 by a White House screening. The film demonstrated how the South had been 'right' about black people and how the North was 'right7 about preserving the union. It argued that the reconstruction which f?eed black people also endangered the most precious asset of the South..As (white) wornen., .The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People tned to have the film banned.. .but Grinith rallied to its defense by publishing his...pamphlet entitied 'The Rise and Fail of Free Speech in America." The glorification of the Ku Klux Klan not only did untold hmto the drive for equality but enabled it to embark on a major recruitment drive
declared that anyone with at Ieast 1/32 of 'Negro blood' in them cannot be deerned white (Omi and Winant 1986: 57)." Richard Dyer. White. London: Routledge, 1997. p. 226. 36
and enjoy a certain amount of respectability and legituna~y.~'
The film was promoted not only as an entertaining evening but dso a politicai event. The fact that it was so publiciy supported by the co~nq'sPresident, Woodrow Wilson, and was accompanied by a pamphlet supporting the f%stamendment, gave the racist representations in the film a sense of historical validity. Thus, the fïIm could be viewed as a technological and educational wonder, rather than merely a creation of Hollywood.
A final concept to introduce before the exploration of Birfh of a Nmon and The
Jazz Singer is the use of blacldace. Blackface, or more specincally, the black makeup used by non-black performers in gross caricature of AfEcan Americans, is the tie that binds these two films. The black characters in Bil?h of a Nation and Jakie in performance in ne
Jmz Singer employ bIackEace as a means of adopting the face of the Other. An invaluable source for this blackface cornrnentary in reference to these two films is Michael Rogin's work, BlacHace. White Noise (1996), which addresses blacldace as a combination of power and identity issues. He describes blacwace as playing with racial boundaries and by
"crossing boundaries to parody those who crossed boundaries, minstrelsy participated in ... racial ineq~ality."~~The boundaries are, of course, the lines drawn between black and white, and havhg the face of one speak for the voice of another must be deemed as more than simply an entertahunent phenornena. During the kst decades of this century, a penod
14KarenRoss. Black and White Media. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996. pp. 11-1 2.
"Michael Rogin. Blackface. White Noise. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. p.36 of such immense unmigration in the United States, blackface became the most popular form of entertainment by providing an outlet for the silent masses. Gdïth used blackface to keep the black man silence4 however, whiie ïhe JiSinger used the black face to find the Jewish man's voice, As Rogin elaborates:
BlackEace.. . undergirds. .Birfh of a Nation, but.. - The Jazz Singer makes blaclcface its subject. [They] exploit hcanAmericans in opposite ways- me Bi~hof a Nation, climaxing the worst period of violence against blacks in southern history, lynches the black; ïhe Jazz Singer, ventdoquizing the black, sings through his mouth.. . Griffith used blacks not to restore plantation patriarchy but to give birth to a new nation.-Bi& of a Nation used b2acWwhite conflict to Amerîcanize them. The jazz singer dso escapes his Old World identiq through blackface. Moreover, miscegenation as weil as assimilation energizes both movies. White identification with (imaginary) black sexual desire, powerfiilly unconscious in Birrh of a Nmon7 cornes to the surface in the Jmz Singer. l6
The fear of miscegenation, a by-product of the need for this purity and assimilation, is also directly comected to the blacldace image. Rogin goes on to Say that:
"[The films] use black men for forbidden access to white women. The black desire for white women [in Birth]. .-justifies not only the political and social repression of blacks but also the mariage of Civil War enemies, North and South... [neJm Singer] anticipating the 1930 Motion Picture Production Code, under which 'miscegenation is forbidden,' facilitates the union not of black and white but of gentile and ~ew."'~Blackface is used in
Birtl~of a Nation to incite hatred for blacks primarily because of this desire for white 38
women. Whites in blacwace are given fiee reign to portray blacks as lusty, violent,
unscrupulously racist characterizations and still be able to call the 61m a definitive piece of
Arnerican history. The white woman in The Jazz Singer is attracted to his talent, a talent
that "shines through" the mask of blackness. Thus, blacwace is used as an instrument for
unituig the two white characters in love as a union between black and white would not
have been permitted. The mask of blackness is a mask that not only represents racist
beliefs in these two films but also contributes to the general attitudes toward race
considered acceptable by our society. Why would whiteface be used if a white face is
recognized as the locus of power in North American society?
It is this interpIay between race, identity, and desire that provides the fiarnework for the analysis of all of the films involved in this project because it is through the way these elements work together and inform each other that representations and often stereotypes are created. Black and Jewish men are understood as being a certain way in the public consciousness and their characterizations serve to either support or negate this public opinion. Race, identity, and desire are the root of the issues demarcated thus far as weli: whiteness, the conflict between race and ethnicity, the Arnerican Dream, the creation of the studio system, and the determining need for ccpunty"within the racial hierarchy.
Birth of a Nation:
To include this film as only one component of this thesis is a challenge considering the vast amount of research and writing that the film has generated and the difiiculty in creating origind and not completely recycled thought. Tt is interesthg to siR among the references as a filtering device because a great majority of the analyses hinges on the same two very important perceptions: that D.W. -th or, the 'Tather of Hollywood," created one of the greatest films of al1 tirne with this work and concurrently that this vision of
Arnerican history and the Civil War is also considered one of the rnost racist films ever made. How does one reconcile these two impressions? Is it enough to juste GrSith's work as a composition of its tirne, one that shamefidiy depicts a piece of racist Amencan history that many would rather forget?18 1s it possible to believe in this contemporary period of ''enlightenrnent" that an artistic work can be both brïliïant and Hled with racial hatred? Steve Neale establisbes a complex way of looking at the film in Screen Education:
.. . ne Birrh of a Nation has, quite rightlyybeen chaiacterized as a racist film. But there are a number of ways of discussing its racism--. [one] way of discussing its racism would be to examine its overall structure and, in particular, the neuraigic points within it-..The source of the film's racism would emerge as acute anxiety in the face of the possîbility of miscegenation, since miscegenation is charactenied simultaneously as a threat to the integrïty of the family and as a threat to the sign of its purïty - its white, virginal
18Woodrow Wilson's presidency was marked by a "resurgence of 'Southern ideals': black people were denied the bailot box; Jiin Crow laws were expanding; and between 1898 and 1908, race riots occurred in Wilmington (North Carolina), New York City, New Orleans, Atlanta, and Springfield (Illinois) ...fi-orn 1880-1920, three 'rnentalities' exist in southern thinking about people of color. The 'liberal' believed in the black's possibilities ...the 'conservative' presumed infenority but was willing to permit those people in their 'place.' The 'radical conservative' thought that the 'new Negro' was regressing into savagery. For this mentality, the paranoïa over interracial sex was a fear of the possible 'perverted' offspring." Janet Staiger. Intemretine Filins. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. pp -140-14 1. daughter. lg
At the very hart of Birth's narrative is this white fear of black sexuality. The black figures in the film (already estabfished as whites in blackface), are drawn as one-dimensional animds with no complexity to their characters beyond the basic "animai" needs of procreation, preferably wiîh the untouchable white women. There is no oppomuiity to view these black characters as anythùig other than the essence of evil because Mth's tight focus does not allow it. The Gus-chase scene is a pivotal example of this manipulation by using all of the aspects of filmmaking (namely narration, editing, and especially sound) to incite racial antagonism against the black. Gus is the savage black man who chases the very white and very pure Flora Cameron (aiso known in the film as the virginal 'Zittle Sistef7)through the woods with the premeditation of rape.tO
19SteveNede, 'The Sarne Old Story, Stereotypes and Difference." Screen Education. Autumn/Winter 1979-1980.pp. 33-37.
"(1) Flora Carneron leaves her farnily home with the bucket in search of water. (2) Flora approaches the Stream on this brilliantly sunny day. (3) A shot of Gus, hidirg behind some shrubbery, exposes his menacing eyes and set fiown. The music abruptly changes to an ominous and fightening piece composed of repetitively heavy notes. (4) The music retums to the joyful tune as we see Flora hding a stream and bending down to retrieve water. (5) Gus follows, unknown to Flora- (6)There is a close-up of a squirrel that nora plays with, an attempt to reassure the audience of her innocence. (7) Ben, or Little Colonel, Flora's doting brother, appears at the family home inquiring about Flora's whereabouts. When his mother explains that she went to fetch water alone in the woods, Ben runs &er her with the awareness that there is this 'Lanimal"on the loose. (8) Suddenly the music returns to Gus' anthem as we see bis eyes darting &om side to The entire sequence is composed of 105 shots. This dows Griffith to accomplish three important narrative event S. Firstly, he clearly establishes Hora 's punty and innocence with the extended opening. Her gay enjoyment of the walk and hding the simple pIeasure in nature sets the tone for what is to follow and forces the spectator to hate Gus even more. Who would set out to rape an innocent ccchÏld"unless they were the very epitorne of
side and his Pace quicken. The shots altemate between these two characters and the? respective musical accompanirnent for severai shots, each individual shot becoming shorter and shorter as the tension and horror build. (9) Gus startles an unsuspecting Hora fkom her peacefixl moment. She looks at him with trepidation as he explains in an intertitle that he wants to ccmany'yher, a euphemism that both Flora and the audience understand as "rape." (10) Flora flees and the real chase between the two of them begins. (1 1) Ben arrives at the scene and fiantically Iooks for Flora. (12) Gus chases Flora as she dodges obstacles in the woods in a desperate atternpt to break fiee. (13) Ben sees Flora's bucket Iying by the strearn and the fear in his eyes says that he is ahid he may be too late. He continues his fiantic search. (14) In a series of alternating cuts, we see FIora scramble to the top of a ciiffwhere Gus follows her. She threatens to jump ifhe does not back away fiom her. Gus does not take her threat seriously and gets just within her grasp at the top of the cm. (1 5) Ben, at the base of the cm, looks up at the top because he hem Flora cnlling for help . (16) Gus reaches out to grab her and she jurnps. In one of Griffith's most impressive shots, we see Flora's body fd down the side of the ciiffand land at the bottom. (17) Gus has a look of terror on his face as he realizes what has happened- He runs from the top of the clifhoping to avoid Ben. (18) The last arrangement of shots revolve around Ben holding the dying FIora in his arms. An intertitle States that the "gates of heaven will welcome her-" After a series of melodramatic rises and falls, Flora finally collapses in Ben's arms. (19) Ben carries F'lora home and lays her on the bed while the family becomes hysterical beside them. (20) The sequence ends with Ben's Iook of hatred and the knowledge that Gus will pay for the nightrnare he hflïcted upon his farnily. evil? The lighting on Flora is very bright to accentuate her blonde haïr and large, guileless
eyes. This is the same iighting that is used on Elsie Stoneman (Lillian Gish), the other
virginal white female in the film. Not ody does this lighting accentuate the positive nature
of whiteness but it also ce~esthe negativity of blackness.
The characterization of Gus (and the animalistic quality of black men) is the
second narrative event that GriEth summarizes in this sequence. Just as Flora is the bright
spot in this section, Gus aiways appears in darkened shadows even though the same
brilliant sunshine should be gleaming down equally on the two of thern as they share the
sarne space. The only white that one sees on Gus is in his eyes which contrasts the
darkness of his pupils. His eyes bulge out of his face as a sign, like a cat's retreating exs, that he is ready to pounce. The editing is very important in the creation of rneaning as
well: CCGrZEith'sfilms ernploy cinematic techniques... to tell the story of the inabzty of non- whites to fùuy assimilate into white culture and Society, and ultirnately provide a justification for their servitude, segregation, and punishrnent.'"' The slow Pace of Flora's afternoon is juxtaposed with the quickened shots of Gus who is ready for a swift attack.
The shots fiamïng Gus become shorter and shorter in length to create suspense until the two characters finally meet, at which point the altemating shots are equally as fast for the chase. It is bis deliberate attempt to administer not only bodily hmbut semal penetration on this innocent 'Yiower" that generates the honor. Gus' punishinent occurs when the Ku
'lDanie1 Bernardi, 'The Voice of Whiteness," in The Birth of Whiteness. ed. Daniel Bernardi. New Brunswick: Rutger's University Press, 1996. p. 1 12. Klux Klan lynch him for his actions. This "eye for an eye" treatment is understood by the
spectator as not ody revenge but necesityy much lïke a rabid animal is kilIed for the safety
of the cornmunity: justice has been served.
Daniel Bernardi establishes this treatment of race relations in Griffith's work as the
definitive good versus evil convention- The good (white) must arrest the bad (black)
before mass destruction occurs- Bernardi writes:
When the white farnily in Griffith's story is coded as white, the threat to its dismemberment comes f?om a savage and 1ustfi.d non-white mâle. Indeed, stories of the family almost always involve a racial component that casts non-white males as a threat to the divinity and superiority of white patnarchy. Gentile virtue and femùiinity as well as white male rnasculinity and dominance are at stake in what amounts to Mth's whife family discourse. The airn in such stories, of course, is to segregate the 'races' and bring the threatening non-white character under control in the hopes of maintaining the unity of family, the purity of the white woman, and the power and divinity of white patrkchy [original italic~].~
The combination of Griffith's interpretation of black versus white and his prominence as
the fhmaker of his thehad the potential to show such race relation narratives as
formulas. Therefore, it is possible that such formulas were understood over tirne as trztths.
The stereotypes of both blacks and whites utiiized in his work were repeated so often and
with such seeming accuracy that the audience may have decoded the representations as fact.
The third narrative fiuiction that is developed in the Gus-chase sequence is Ben's character as the ultùnate protector, the white man who will have the strength and knowledge to restore order to the chaos. This role is also part of the formula Bemardi establishes. Ben is pitted against Gus as the purveyor of goodness as opposed to Gusy personifkation of evil. ManthÏa Diawara examines the relationship between the two men f?om the black male spectator perspective and argues that this Gus-chase sequence involves the two basic elements of the classic Oedipal narrative: incestuous desire and patriarchal positioning. Diawara asserts that Ben (Little Colonel) brings resolution by:
persuading the other whites to fonn a Klan to terrorize and discipline the blacks who threaten to destroy the social and symbolic order of the South. Thus Gus's desire for Little Sister is a transgression: the narrative of miscegenation links isomorphicaily with the Oedipal nurative of incestuous desire, an assault on the syrnbolic order of the Father which merits the most serious punishment - lynching... 'Death of Little Sister' is organized to position the spectator who desires to see the 'punishment and discipline of Gus and the black race he symb~lizes.'~
Thus, Gus' attack on Flora (Little Sister) is seen as an attack of the Southern "social and symbolic order," just as she is seen as symbolic of Southern womanhood. The treatment of
Gus is indicative of Dyer's words that open this chapter: 'The claim to power is the clairn to speak for the cornrnonality of hurnanity. Raced people can't do that - they can only speak for their race."24 The lynching of Gus serves two very importânt purposes for narrative rneaning in Birth. If he is symbolic of the black attempt to infiltrate and cormpt
=~anthiaDiawara "Black Spectatorship: Problems of Identification and Resistance." - Screen, Autumn 1988, p.68.
24Ri~hardDyer. White. London: Routledge, 1997. p. 2. the purely white South then his violent death is surely symbolic of the white reaction to black neighbors. Let this lynching, in other words, be an exarnple for qonewho attempts to sully Southern womanhood- The consequent fear is that the white man did not sufficientiy protect his farnily which is lady an attack on his manhood.
The other integral purpose to his lynching involves the fear of and desire for black maIe sexuality. The inability of the white man to protect his family is clearly not the only cause of apprehension, rather it is the relationship between sexual prowess and the fear of black sexuality. Just as white wornen are often characterized as cold and untouchable sexual beings, black men have often been regarded as highly sexual beings with a lack of control over their heightened desire. This argument is explored in greater depth in Chapter
Two with the inclusion of Frantz Fanon's work. Griffith perpetuated this stereotype with his characteriztitions of Gus and Silas Lynch, the rnulatto character who later attempts to rape Elsie Stoneman. Griffith used the stereotype to his advantage by drawing the white male characters as those who have control over their sexual impulses in coinparison to the savagery practiced by the black male characters. The stereotypes that Griffith immortalized cm dlbe recognized today, ofken in less ccoffensive~~representations.
DonaId Bogle analyzes these stereotypes in his work Toms. Coons. Mullatoes. Mammies, and Bucks (1989):
...it was the pure black bucks that were Griffith's really great archetypa1 figures. Bucks are always big, baadddd niggers, oversexed and savage, violent and eenzied as they lust for white flesh. No greater sin hath any black man. Both Lynch, the mulatto, and Gus, the renegade, fd into this category. Arnong other hgs, these two characters reveaIed the tie between sex and racism in Amerka. Gnffith played on the myth of the Negro's hi&-powered sexuality, then articulated the great white fear that every black man longs for a white woman. Underlying the fear was the assumption that the white woman was the ultimate in female desirabihty, hersera syrnbol of white prïde, power, and beauty?
As is oflen the case with stereotypes, the larger issues do not surface because what we are reading are sirnply that, Wes. The men are drawn to these women for a host of reasons that the narrative does not explore: '7n uncove~gthe attraction of black to white,
-th Med to reveal the political implications. Traditionally, certain black males have been drawn to white women because these wornen are power symbols, an ideal of the oppressor... GrBith played hard on the bestiaIity of his black villainous bucks and used it to arouse hatred."26 For the black spectator, whose perspective interests Diawara, this representation leaves no access into a representation worth relating tu. The reception of
Birth of a Nation is usually a perplexing one for contemporary spectators because the argument surroundhg the film often tums into a question of censorship. Professors question whether the shodd be part of the screening schedule because of its content while both teachers and students ponder whether it can be viewed as a masterpiece considering the core of hatred involved in the story. These are just a few of the issues that the film has ignited over the years, but the main concern is if and how this film 'ccIassic'7
=~onaldBogle. Toms. Coons. Mullatoes. Mammies. and Bucks. New York: Continuum, 2989. p. 13. 47
informs relations as a textual influence between black men and white women represented
in subsequent Hollywood works.
The Jazz Singer:
There is an interesting anecdote that links Birth and The Jazz Singer together in
Gabler's book, An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollvwood.
Evetybodj 's Magazine was the fkst to prht the story, me Jazz Singer, denby Samson
Raphaelson. Apparently, Al Jolson (who was famously referred to as the "greatest
entertainer of the time"), read the story and felt that it would translate well into a star
vehicIe film for himself. He related to the tension between the older and younger Jewish
generations based on the need of the latter to assimilate into Arnerican society. Jolson
went hrst to D.W. GriEth to present the idea of a film. Griffith "refùsed on the grounds
that the story was too 'racial.' [Jolson then] brought it to the attention of several studios -
dl of which rejected the story on the same gro~nds."~'
Considering what we know about Birrh of a Nation, Griffith's clairn that me Jazz
Singer is too ccracial"is a powerfùl one. Perhaps he felt the need to disengage himeif fi-om
any project that would be deerned controversial. As for the mass rejection of the story by
most of the major studios, that can be based on only one thing: fear. As stated earlier,
these Jewish studio heads sadly felt the need to deny their heritage in order to continue
producing the ccail-Arnerican"films that were making them very rich. This story is a
*'Neal Gabler. An Empire of Their Own. New York: Doubleday, 1988. p. 140. window into their very existence, a yomg man who feels compelled to reject tradition in order to becorne a sirccess. The fact that it was so widely rejected does suggest that the powers that be viewed the story as a threat or possibly as an admission of guilt-
The £ibnwas eventuaily produced by the Wamer Brothers production Company and proved to be an historical milestone in Hollywood history because of its status as the first sound 'Wkie.y728Its success was undoubtably due largely to the brief moments of spoken dialogue and the Jolson performances of 'Toot, Toot, Tootsie, Goodbye" and
'My Mammy," because the plot alone is amazingly simple." Jolson's character, JalÜe, dreams of becorning a jazz singer and against his father's orders, performs in local saloons.
His father, the Cantor Rabinowitz, desperately wants Jakie to follow in his footsteps and
Iead a "meaningfùl" life in the synagogue. Unfortunately for the Cantor, Jakie realizes that perfonning is his true passion and he nuis away fiorn home to become a star. In the process he changes his narne to Jack Robin and fds in love with a gentile woman named
Mary. The Cantor cornpletely spurns his decision and tells his wife to forget that they have
"~hefirst film to include sound was Don hstarring John Banymore, but it was used for music and effects, not dialogue. The film premiered on August 6, 1926 as an example of the new 'Vitaphone" technology.
"The combination of Jolson, Vitaphone, and synchronized dialogue made Be Jarz Singer an international success Eom the date of its premiere on October 6, 1927, eventually earning over 3 -5 dondollars. By the end of 1927, it was pIaying to huge crowds in cities al1 over the world, and Warner Bros. was already starting to recoup its massive investrnent in the Vitaphone system. More important, the film's success had convinced the other Hollywood studios that sound was here to stay in the fonn of ''talking'' pictures." David A Cook. A Histoxy of Narrative Film. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996. p. 246. 49 a son. An intertîtle states that "Gad made her a wornan but love made her a rnother," and so her hart is broken by her son's abandonment of the fdyand her husband's rejection.
The climax of the fXm occurs when the Cantor lays dying (presumably f?om a broken heart) and the mother begs Jakie to retum home to sing the 'Xol Nidre," the song of forgiveness sung on Yom Kippur. Jakie's Broadway debut happens to be the same night which is why he is (according to the intertitle) "besieged by the old life and the new, filial duty against his We's ambition, the past against the future." His girif7iend Mary sides with the Broadway producers who want hirn to stay and perform for his beloved audience, but in typical Hollywood happy-ending fashion, he is able to sing for his dying father on one night and postpone the Broadway show untîi the following evening. This proves to be a very tidy resolution to the con£iict of Me's tradition versus assimilation. His mother states, "Hehas it [Judaisrn] in his head, but it is not in his heart- He is of America." The resolution proves to be syrnbolic of the very relationship that Jewish studio heads had with their creations: "The answer is that the movie, swWy and painlessly, dissolves the problem dtogether. Within the bounds of theatrical realism this could never happen, but the rnovies, after all, are a world of possibility where anything can happen, and of all the themes in The Jazz Singer, this might have been the most important and the most telhg for the Hollywood Jews. The rnovies can redehe us ...can rnake us new ...can rnake us wh01e."~~ 50
The role of Mary is a significant one in Jakie's assimilation story. She is a symbol of the world he is drawn to, a gentile world of power and prestige. When she first hears him sing, she decides to take him under her wing and guide him through the complicated maze that is show business. In many respects she acts as the opposite role of his mother.
This antithetical relationship serves two purposes. One, it dows Mary to fùnction as a glarnorous and sophisticated representation of the American Drearn. Two, the contrast enables the spectator to view the mother as a stifling woman who lives solely for the two men in her We. This characterization of the Jewish mother as an overbearhg and suffocating presence in her child's life (usually a son), is prevalent in Hollywood films throughout the century- In later works like Portnoy 's Cornplaint (1972), Where 's Poppa?
(1WO), Next Stop, Greenwich mage (1W6), and Amie Hall (1 977), the domineering
Jewish mother is also placed unfavorably against the young, gentile love interest. Thus, the conflict between traditional Jewish duesand assimilation into the American status quo seems much Iess arduous when there reaIly is no contest for the Jewish male character, and consequently, for the audience. The stories are often told in such a manipulative manner that when the hero does eventually succumb to his gentile love interest, it becomes part of the happy ending.
The shiksa role in me Jazz Singer is given special notice in the fihprograrnme that was distnbuted at its debut screening. Although Mary is certainly not the fïrst shiha character to appear in a film, ne Jarr SNtger marks the &st tirne that the role is actually defined. The programme describes Mary as a ccnon-Jewess." The shiha character in films 51 f?om this penod was often the narrative catalyst for fdystrife and Die Jmz Singer is no exception: "Jack leaves home, changes his name, enters show business, and plans to many a shiksa- He becomes more than an acculturated Jew, he becornes completely assimilated.
Jack and Mary are not accepted back into the fady, rather the famdy must corne out to meet him. The film ends in Jack's world - the theatre. The younger generation has won.y331
Acculturation is understood as adopting the customs of the society in which one lives while retaining a sense of one's heritage. me Jazz Singer's message is that acculturation is virtually impossible- In order to have success you cannot waver between the two worlds, you must assume the popular one.
The very nature of the melting pot philosophy requires cultural repression in order for a society's mernbers to blend. The fundamental belief in the Jewish community îhat the attraction to a gentile person was equal to a rejection of the Jewish faith is what caused such a negative reactîon to these Jewish and gentile pairings. For many of the new immigrants, the move to America provided their kst contact with members outside of the
Jewish faitl~.~~This fact is often overlooked in the discussion of Jewishigentile romance because of the disparaging connotation that is usualIy attached to intermamage.
Consenrative Rabbi Robert Gordis is quoted as saying: "~ermaniagebecame] part of
"Patricia Erens. The Jew in Amencan Cinema Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984. p. 102.
32~their European birthplaces, Jews Lived predominantly in shtezls (smd Jewish communities) that were generdy isolated fiom other ethnicities for several generations. 52 the pnce that modern Jewry paid for fieedom and equality in an open Society" and that the eady Jewish immigrants performed the "spectacle of a family sittùig shiva and actually buyïng a cofito symboke the death of a child who married a non-~ew."~~
Understanding this pressure to marry 'kitlin the faith" allows the spectator to understand Mama Rabinowitz's anxiety mediated by representation in The Jazz Singer. In one scene, Marna depends on a fdyfiend who is literate to decipher a letter written to her £rom Jakie. In it he States that he is completely happy in the theatre world, has met a wondefil girl named Mary, and would very much appreciate it ifhis rnother could remember to address hirn by his new name now, Jack Robin, instead of MeRabinowitz.
Conside~gthis insulting stab at both his family and his Judaism, it is almost arnusing to contemporary audiences to witness his mother's reaction After asking her fiiend to read the part about the ccgirl"again, she asks him with a distressed expression, 'Do you think he's in love with a shiha?" Once she is reassured that this would be doubtfùl, she is able to fondly contemplate her son's news. The fact that in order to forge a new identity he has completely rejected the one she provided for hirn is not the cause of her consternation, but rather it is the possibility that he may be experiencing ''impure" love with a non-Jewess.
The theoretical concepts addressed in the preceding literature review introduce many of the issues that surface in respect to the representation of interracial and inter- ethnic relations in these two fis. The fusion of race, ethnicity, purity, blackness, and
33LesterFreidman. Hollywood's Image of the Jew. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1982. p. 155. 53 whiteness are all related to the visibility of such characters on screen and in society. Film, as a visual medium, bas the power to represent images that then become the standard.
Visibility is often thought of as being interchangeable with what is "apparent" or
"obvious." There is an interesting juxtaposition between the visible nature of the black and
Jewish male characters with the invisibility ofthe ideology that informs their position in
Amencan society. The foilowing chapter explores how this ideology changes with the changing status of Jews and blacks in Arnenca. CHAPTER TWO:
Tu hose who sfisfiilad, 'What do wornerz want? ' the cinema seems to provide no answer. For rhe cinema, in ifsa&mnent with the fantasies of the voyezcr, has histoncaZly arficulafed its stories fhraugh conflatzon of ifscenfral mis of seeingheen seen with the opposifion maleflemale... Cinematic images of women have been so consistenfly oppressive and repressive thaf the very idea of a feministfilrnmakingpracfice seems m impossibility. me simple gestwe of directing a cmera fowmd a woman hm become equivalent fo a terrorist acf.
Mary Ann Doane1
Sadly, the question of 'What do women want?' is rarely asked in the narratives centered around intemacial and inter-ethnic love relationships. Doane's analogy of flming a wornan and terrorism is not as far-fetched as it would initially appear. However, it is not only the white, gentile wornen on the receiving end of such buxied hatred but the black and
Jewish wornen who are both viewed as the enemy but of a different battIe. Their roles pardel the characteristics we associate with terrorism: they are threatened with the attempt to demoralize, intimidate, and subjugate. They are the characters who withhold the men f?om achieving assidative victory by keeping them korn the idealized 'ali-
American' women. This is the disturbing trend among these representations. The result is an insulting pattern for all wornen spectators to view: the white, gentile women are portrayed as the vacuous trophies while the black and Jewish women are drawn as the jealous and undesirable rnembers of a group already on the outskirts of society. Indeed,
'Mary Am Doane, 'Woman's Stake: Filming the Fernale Body" in Feminism and Film - Theow. ed. Constance Penley. New York: Routledge, 1988. p. 216. 55 no one seems tem3ly interested in aaswe~g'What do women want?"
The direction for this chapter, although still concerned with the role of the black man and the Jewish man in interracial and inter-ethnic relationships, needs to tum towards these wornen of the segregated groups to analyze their participation in tfie relationships that do not directly include them. For even though they are dehierately not the ccchosen'' ones for fheir men, both the black and the Jewish women play a very sigificant role in the assimilation process. Unfortunately, considering the scope of the period this chapter is interested in, roughly 1960-1975, certain points of interest wiil be negiected, due simply to the fact that other areas have been chosen for concentration. The central area that provides an entry into discussion of the various narrative analyses is the changing face of human rights during this period in the United States. It is because of the Civil Rights
Movernent and the Women's Rights Movement that interracial and inter-ethnic relationships portrayed in füms of this period carry a host of new meanings.
In his book, Blacks in Films (T975), Jim Pines calls the 1960s a "penod of maturity." This is due to the fact that many of the stereotypical two-dimensional roles afforded blacks in earlîer decades had altered enough to include black characters in more complex situations. Civil nghts began to signdïcantly shape American Life some twenty years pnor to this periodLand the goals of the Movement were well established by the
"'As many historians have observed, [the 1940~1civil rights activism presaged the better- remembered struggles of the 1960s. A. Philip Randolph's massive March on Washington movement against discrimination in the wartirne defense plants, begun in 1940, motivated President Franktin Roosevelt to issue an executive order outiawing 1960s. Pines writes that, '%the &es sees the accumulative solidification of the liberaiized black racial character-image in the American füm...the tendency throughout the decade is towards diversifïed characterizations, the presentation of black characters in a wide variety of social situations, but with less emphasis on dealing with moral issues through individualized conflicting stocktypes (such as the good Negro-type and the wicked white racialist-type) ."3 The general consensus among writers interested in this period of 'Wack films," is that the 1960s was the breakthrough period. No longer were black and white audiences alike forced to watch the Stephin Fetchit characterizations ifthey wanted to see a black character on the screen. Donald Bogie agrees that this time was Muential for black Arnericans in ways that both changed and refiected what was seen on the screen:
Politically, the 1960s may prove the most important decade in the twentîeth century for black Americans. An era of great change, the beginning of a transition period of which we have yet to see the end, it started with sit-ins, boycotts, and marches and ended with riots, demonstrations, and a series of horrïfying assassinations. In 1960, Negroes were quietly asking for their rights. By 1969, blacks were demanding them. The decade moved fiorn the traditional goals of cultural and academic assimilation to one of absolute separatism
discriminatory hiring pracbces by defense contractors and to establish the (ineffectual) Fair Employment Practices Cornmittee... and in 1943 the Congress of Racial Equality was founded.. .ln the long, hot summer of 1943, such militant disgust with unbending American racism took to the streets. Urban insurrections erupted in Harlem, Detroit, and twenty-five other U.S. cities." Eric Lott, 'The Whiteness of Film Noir," in Whiteness: A Critical Reader. New York: New York University Press, 1997. pp. 88-89.
3Jim Pines. Blacks in Films: A Survev of Racial Themes and Images in the American Film. London: Studio Vista, 1975. p. 89 and the evoiution of a black cultural aesthetic.' interestingly, the films concerned with interracial relationships were still dnven by the idea of ccculturaland academic assimilation." Perhaps, because the other films were beginning to revolve around traditiondy ail-black casts, the tension was no longer simply between blacks and whites but between blacks living in the same communities. Interracial relationships, however, were stiil a part of the 'khite world," and stiil sornething that the white fdyin the narratives had to reckon witb
Although both Pines' and Bogle's assessments of the penod for blacks are undoubtably true, it must be disthguished that it is true for black males. The representation of black women is something entirely separate. Although both black men and black women fought in the Civil Rights Movement, black women had to fight the extra fight in the Women's Movement as well. Surprisingiy, the role of black women in the Women's Movernent is something that has not received a great deai of attention until recently.' What many white women involved in the equal rights movement did not undersand was that equal rights meant different things to both black and white women.
From the beginnhg, even the key players in the Women's Movement did not fathom or respect enough the contribution of black wornen. An essay entitled, "Unknown Women
aonald Bogle. Toms. Coons. Muiattoes. Mammies. and Bucks. New York: Continuum, 1989,p. 195.
'Certain black female feminists Iike beIl hooks and Lola Young have written in the past two decades about the cornplicated role that black wornen played during the 1960-1970 fight for equd rights. and Unlcnowing Research: Consequences of Color and Class in Femulist Psychology," considers directly this notion of how black women have hist~~~dlybeen rejected by the
Women's Movement due to a series of social injustices:
The negative sentiments that were felt toward ecanAmencan women at the time had much to do with the prevailing social order, which deemed Black women to be 'rnorally impure.' What is most important to recognize is that White and Black women did not share a common agenda nor perspective on the political and social situation.. .The political agenda set by White women seeking entrée and acceptance in the workplace was not viewed as a universal need for all women. Indeed, this was considered of Little concern for AErican American women who had always worked; Black women never had to make a choice between work and family.6
Without denigrating the Women's Movement, perhaps in this context it would have been considered lzic& to be able to make the choice between work and family. Black women, most of whom were descendants of the slave trade in the United States, knew the meaning of excruciatingly hard work and could not hda place for themselves in this battte for equality. In the Women's Rights Movement the oppressive source was the man who prevented the women fiom obtaining a Ise other than that of housewife. For black women, the oppressive source had always predominantly been white people, the same white women who black women were now supposed to align themselves with- Black women
6VanessaBing & Parnela Trotman Reid, ''Unknown Women and Unknowing Research: Consequences of Color and Class in FeMnist Psychology" in Knowled~e.Difference. and Power. ed. Nancy Goldberger, Ji Tarule, Blythe Clinchy, and Mary Belenky. New York: Basic Books, 1996. p. 183. were also often blamed for the black male position in society7 This wiIi be explored
deeper within the film analyses where the same issue resurfaces.
The other main contentious issue concerning black women during the Wornen's
Rights Movement is how they were perceived by other wornen. Black women were
considered anomalies during a time when women were arguing against the image of the
female as the "weaker" sex. Not only were black women nof weak, they were often the
source of strength in the hoüsehold as care givers and financial supporters. 'The fact that
Mcan American women were able to perforrn men's work and survive in the absence of men who held power in society contradicted the existing sexist order. Thus, &can
herican women were ... rnasculinized and subhumanized because of their cornpetencies
(or perceived lack thereof)."' Interestingly, the same image that the Women's Movement was working to erase, the weak and merely ''fèminine" passive participant, was the sarne image that was used against the black woman. By deeming her "masculine" for surviving in Amencan society despite the cost, the Women's Movement completely underminded its
7Ofien this assertion is a factor in the 'Black Matriarchy Theory,' which was credited with being the cause of most of the problems in the black cornmuNties. In their research, Bing and Reid found that this theory demonstrated "how Afncan American women were instrumentd in the oppression of ficanAmencan men and responsible for their continued absence £rom the home. Scant attention was given to the impact of economicy political, and social injustices that permeated the day-to-day existence of Afr-ican Amencans, and how these factors, rather than the Black female, contributed to the development of problems evidenced in the Afncan Amencan comrnuni~."Bing & Trotman, 183.
'Bing & Trotman Reid, 184 own argument and çtniggie for equality.
A combination of these factors led black women to collect their resources and
begin a fight of their own, a new chapter of the Wornen's Movement that included ail of
their specific concerns. Black feminists knew that such a group was mandatory for
conf?onting the issues that were spec5c to black women's needs. Under the umbrella of
"black ferninisrn," many collective groups began ernerging across the country to ernpower
the combination of being both black and female. One group devoted to such thinking was
the Cornbahee River Collective, "a Boston-based Afncan Arnerican fernînist collective
begun in 1974. [They] wrote, 'We believe that sexual politics under patIiarchy is as
pervasive in Black women's lives as are the politics of class and race. We also find it
dficult to separate race £tom class fkom sex oppression because in our iives they are most
often experienced sirnultaneously.""
What role do Jewish women serve in the Wornen's Movement? To determine that, it is integral to establish what the role of the Jewish woman is within the Jewish cornmunity. Similar to black women, Jewish women have always worked. Their lives in the shtetl demanded a certain work ethic that would carry over to their Amencan immigration:
Men went to yeshiva- While Jewish women rnay have played a far more si@cant roIe in the shterl than gentile women in the world outside - often running the business, mihg the home, and controlling the purse for both - they sat behind the mechifia
%kg & Trotman Reid, 19 1. (room divider) in shland could hardly dmetz and '&ah al1 day with the cooking and kids waiting. Never mind that it may look to us that Jewish women had thek share of sway, in their eyes they were shut out of what really maîtered. How did they bear it, these women who were taught to be worldwise and clever (ifnot book smart) and expected to be strong, aggressive managers? How did they swallow the incongmity?l0
This complexity in their position, not only in greater American society but in the smaller
Jewish communities, creates an intriguing image of the Jewish woman in American fi.
How did they reconcile having power in one sector of their lives while being forced to remain dent in several others? The Women's Movement raised a lot of these questions for
Jewish women and forced the Jewish population to reexamine the women's position. What rnay have occurred for generations of Eastern European Jewish women was no longer deemed appropriate or desirable for this new generation of Jewish-Americans during the
1950s7 60s, and 70s- In Engendering; Judaism, Rachel Adler writes:
The ferninist critique of society and culture initiated in the 1960s and 2970s posed profound challenges to Judaism. Before this time, in no form of Judaism did women have equal access to communal participation, leadership, or religious education. Liberal Judaism influenced by Enlightenrnent universalism made women invisible by regarde them as 'honorary men,' but did not, in fact, give them the religious opporhrnities aEorded men."
This was an exciting time for Jewish women because attention was given to them, not only
'Marcia Pally. 'Kaddish: For the Fading Image of Jews in Fïh," in Film Comment. JMeb 2984, Volume 20, Number 1. p. 49
"Rachel Adler. Engenderïng Judaism: An Inclusive Theologv and Ethics. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1998. p. xviï. 62 as the care givers and supporters of Jewish men, but as individuals who were able to contribute a tremendous amount to American society and the changîng face of Judaism.
Before this evaluation of their capacity as both wornen and Jews, their position was concretized over severd generations: 'They were to repopdate the Jewish people, maintain a wmand inviting Jewish domestic environment, and be the volunteer Iabor force for communal projects and institutions. Early feminist Judaism, then, was depicted by its opponents not only as unferninine and unnaturd but as selfish, syncretistic, and t hreatenhg to Jewish survival.""
This negative oppositionai portrayal of feminism in the Jewish community parallels the dification that black women suffered in their own comrnunities. Instead of viewing femuiism as a route to empower women, black and Jewish femiriists were attacked for not providing the support that the men in their respective vicinities needed in order to assirnilate into American society. Since the women's hopes and needs were always considered secondary, it came as no surprise that they were expected to buoy the men up and bury their own desires. This rnanifests itself in the common sociological assertion that the 'crnatriarchal" nature of black culture is the cause for the inability for most blacks to
"rise abovey'the low end of the socid hierarchy as weil as the Jewish women often being blarned for raising 'Nama's boys" who cannot assimilate into the dominant culture.
The undercurrent of both of these degations is that it is the women's fault for 63 attempting to take away the power from the men in their communities, in effect, de- masculinking them. This is not to ahgn the two groups of women in a perfectly pardel struggie; obviously, various socioeconomic differences abound between black and Jewish women which directly affects their fight for liberation. However, the similar nature of being both repressed and responsible for the men's status, or lack thereoc in American culture is significant. Equal rights for them was two-fold.
However, the argument becomes more complicated when we analyze black and
Jewish men- BIack men were forced to succumb to castration at the hands of white men.
This act would serve to keep the power differential in order, the black man's 'lieightened" sexuality was the greatest threat for obtainïng white women in the eyes of the white men.
As for Jewish men, a sign of their religious beiiefs and what set them apart f?om their gentile '%rothers" was circumcision. Now circumcision is performed on many male babies as a hygienic rneasure, but traditionally Jews were circumcised as a religious rite of passage. Circumcision is the act of cutting off aii or part of the foreskin which is the fold of skin that covers the end of the penis. Thus, there is a daerence in the penis between the
Jewish men and the men of all other denominations This fact has been integrated into various stories and films involving Jewish culture, most notably in Europa, Europa
(Agnieszka Holland, 199 1) in which a German-Jewish boy hides his Jewish identity in a
Nazi military school where he performs many desperate attempts of lengthening his circumcised foreskïn. He knows that this is the only thing that sets him apart from the
Aryan boys who have become his Eends and it is what prevents him fiom becoming 64
intimate with his Aryan &&end for fear of being 'Yound out." Frantz Fanon, in his work
BIack Skin, WFzite Mmikr is influenced by Sartre's Anti-Semite ami Jov with his critique of
this topic:
The penis, the symbol of manhood, is annihilated, which is to say that it is denied. The merence between the two attitudes is apparent. nie Jew is attacked in his religious identity, in his history, in his race... when one sterilizes the Jew, one cuts off the source; every time a Jew is persecuted, it is the whole race that is persecuted in his person. But it is in his corporeafity that the Negro is attacked. It is as a concrete personality that he is lynched... The Jewish menace is replaced by the fear of the sexual potency of the Negro.''
Again, the ''purity" concem is raised with the idea that 'one sterilizes the Jew." Although this is a reference to the hygienic nature of circumcision, one should not ignore the issue
of pu* Iurking beneath the statement.
Finally, according to Freud, women also have a divergent relationship with the phallus. As women, according to Freud, they are bom already at a disadvantage because they are "lacking" this object of worship, the same object that black men fear will be mutilated and Jewish men know is different fkom the other men in society. He States in his famous paper, "Some Character Types Met With in Psychoanalysis Work (1915)" that:
"As we lem f?om psychoanalytic work, women regard themselves as wronged fiom infancy, as undeservedly cut short and set back; and the embitterment of so many daughters against their mothers denves, in the last andysis, fiom the reproach against her
"~rantzFanon. 'Vision, the Body, and the Cinema," in Femme Fatales: Femiriisrn Film Theory. Psvchoanalvsis. ed. Mary AM Doane. New York Routledge, 1991. p.224. 65 of having brought thern into the world as wornen instead of men? The 'tndeservedly cut shortyyinadvertently refers to the phailus and the fact that women are, according to his theory, bom already castrated.
As Laura Mulvey explains in her groundbreaking essay, Visual Pleasrtre and
Nmative Cinema: 'Woman then stands in patriarchal culture as the signifier for the male other, bound by a symbolic order in which man can live out his phantasies and obsessions through linguistic command by imposing them on the silent image of woman still tied to her place as bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning."" She goes on to elucidate that
'Wtirnately7 the meaning of wornan is sexual clifference, the absence of the penis as visually ascertainable, the material evidence on which is based the castration complex essential for the organization of the Symbolic order and the Law of the Father."16 This argument of woman "as the signifier for the male othef' becomes more intricately involved when the male other is the other in society. The white, gentile women are the blank canvas for the black and Jewish man's ccphantasies," but the black and Jewish women play the role of the double negative in North American society: the other 3 other.
Chapter two focuses on the perceived void of black men, Jewish men, and women
"Sigrnund Freud. ccSomeCharacter Types Met With in Psychoanalysis Work (1 9 15)" in - Collected Papers of Sigmund Freud ed. Joan Riviere. New York: Basic Books, 1959. Vol. IV p. 323.
ISLaura Mulvey. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," in The Sexual Subiect: A Screen Reader in Sexuali9. London: Routledge, 1992. p. 23. 66 as they are represented in Hoilywood narratives between 1960-1975 As described earlier, the need for assimilation changes arnong these groups with the influence of the Women's
Movement and the Civil Rights Movement, and as usual, Hollywood proves to be somewhat slow in catching up to the changing times. Holiywood's treatment of interracial and inter-ethnic love during this period is the typicd response to cccontroversial"topics: the films gloss over the issues of any reai contention and in the process disparage the audience members conscious of these issues of race, ethnicity, and womanhood. The main analysis for int erraciai relationships will focus on Guess Who 's Comzng to DÏnner ? and the approach to inter-ethnic relationships will centre around liCte Hearfbreak Kid with the adjunct inclusion of Portnoy Li Cornplaint.
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?:
Gitess Who 's Coming to DÏnrzer? is commonly considered to be a part of the
Hollywood canon. It is on the American Film Institute7sroster for the one-hundred best
Arnerican films ever made, it was the second highest grossing film of 196817, the year of its release, and it received Academy Awards for Wfiam Rose, the author of the original screenplay, and Best Actress for Katharine Hepburn. This may seem somewhat surpnsing considering the controversial nature of its plot: a young and wealthy white woman
(Katharine Houghton) brings home a successfil black doctor (Sidney Poitier) to meet her parents (Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy) with the news that they are getting
"The highest grossing film of the year was Mike Nïchols' The Graduate. 67 married the followïng week. In the heat of the Civil Rights Movement, a Hollywood feature film tackling the thorny issue of interracial romance must have been interpreted as a risky financial and creative move.
However, Hollywood has a well-deserved reputation of rejecting contentious concems that contribute to the larger social issues as a way of including controversy in
"popular" films without ever acidrssrig it. Tracy and Hepbuni play Matt and Chnstina
Drayton, a liberal couple who adore their ody daughter and because of this are forced to question what they previously thought of as their completely open-minded belief system.
The tension created by this news of the upcoming nuptials seerns almost ludicrous considering Poitier's character, John Prentice, who is quite possibly the most civilly upstanding male character in the history of Hollywood. In fact, in several reviews and critiques of the film Poitier is ironicaily referred to as the superblackman. Hîs character profile suggests that this title is not as absurd as it mzy seem. Among the accomplishrnents that we lem about his character throughout the course of the film are that he graduated magna curn laude f?om Johns Hopkins, he worked as a professor at Yale Medicd School, he wrote two books on medicine, he serviced the London School of Tropical Medicine, and he worked for the World Health Organization. He is sophisticated, handsome, well- mannered, and displays both a wonderfùl sense of humour and a caring disposition. This ovenvhelming melange of positive attributes makes it difficult for the audience to understand why he says to Mrs. Drayton: "... I feu in love with your daughter and as incredible as it may seem she fell in love with me." 68
In contrast, Joey Drayton (Houghton), is drawn as a simple and vacuous young
woman whose most redeemuig qualïty appears to be her hierd-minded nature. She is so
enormously wrapped in her tme love for hirn that the film has her flouncing fiom one
room to the next dismisshg everyone's concern with a shake of her head and a giggle.
This is the same woman who Dr. John Prentice is supposed to be equdy enamoured oc a
woman who remarkably loves him despite the fact that he is black. This portrayal of
intemacial love is problematic on several levels. Firstly, Joey's character is no different
fiom the barren characterizations af5orded the women in the %=ch movies" so popular
during this time period. This is supposed to be Hollywood's opportunity to broadcast its
liieral attitude towards race relations to a wide audience but Houghton's role prevents the
spectator fiom taking herself, their relationship, and even the issue seriously. Secondly,
Dr. John Prentice's role is also derogatory but for different reasons. Kis characterization
begs the question, 'Why is he the one being judged?We are presented with a male
specimen who is very nearly close to perfection and the entire source of tension in the
screenpiay is the white father reconciling himselfto accept this black man for a son-in-law.
It is an affront to black men specifïcally because it sends the message that perfection is necessary to even enter the white man's home. For Dr. Prentice to be fortunate enough to present his case to the white family, his credentials must be as pristine as they are. Alvin
Poussaint, a black psychiatnst, discusses this issue of the ccover-endowment"of the black man's presence in Amencan films:
In seekïng acceptance of whites many blacks expend a great deal of intemal energy trying to prove that they are 'all-right.' Sometirnes they must even show that they are special and highly supenor Negroes. Black youth resent this type of psychological pressure fiorn whites. Sidney Poitier in his current movies plays this role of the all-pefiect, noble Negro- These roles have inspired many humorous remarks among Negro people. For instance, in his new movie about an interracial romance, Giless Who 's Coming tu Dinner? black youth have quipped, '1s it a bird? 1s it a plane? No! It's Superspade! "'"
This ccover-endowment"ofbIack men in the movies is a format for Hollywood employed to overcornpensate for their actual impotency on the screen. Here is a couple who are madly in love, engaged to be rnarried, and liberally minded &ring the sexual revolution and the audience sees them kissing only once. This lack of any physical intimacy between John and Joey did not go unnoticed by critics at the time of its release either: "ActuaUy he kissed Katharine Houghton a great deal, and passionately too, ...but all of that footage was left on the cutting room floor before the film was released for public viewing. And ail of the still photographs that show these 'romantic interludes' are kept in three press books on the third floor of the New York office of Columbia Pictures and are marked with bold red Xs and the word HOLD ."[original capital^]'^ In an intimate mother- daughter exchange in the rniddle of the film, Mrs. Drayton coyly wonders about her daughter's sexual experience to which Joey replies, 'Do you mean have we been to bed together? ...We haven't. He wouldn't-" This issue of their sexual relationship mer
"~dwardMapp. Blacks in Amencan Films: Todav and Yesterday. Metuchen: Scarecrow Press, 1972. p.162- reinforces Dr. Prentice's asexuality in the f3m. As the complete opposite of the black character embodied by Gus in Birih of a Ndon, Dr. Prentice7scool extenor acts as a dehierate attempt to contribute to his 'korthiness" of a white woman. He is able to restrain the hyper-sexual drive so often afEorded to black male characters in the rnovies and be the one to keep the younger and less mature Joey in he. Jkn Pines sees Poitier's role as symbolic of more than sexual impotence on-screen: '?: suppose one shouldn't expect too much more than pure fantasy in such situations, but this is racial plasticity hardened beyond belief The sheer idiocy of a Guess Who 's Camirzg fo Dinner? does, however, prove one very important thing: the fundamental impotence of the black's presence in the Hollywood meat-grinder. This depressing state of flairs even the most
'stable' black start in Amencan cinema's history is quite obviously unable to
Sidney Poitier's "stable" role in Hollywood has received a great deal of analysis by the £ilm comrnunity. Accordhg to Donald Bogle, Poiiier's presence in HoUywood proved to be more than sirnply the successfù1 black actor. Bogle writes:
Merhis Oscar," Poitier was made even 'nicer' by Hollywood scenarists, and it appeared as if he were going dong with the program. In The Slender Thread (1 965) with Anne Bancroft he became the black savior of the crazed white woman...in A Pafch of Blue the seeing-eye dog for a poor bhd girl; in Lhel at Diablo (1 966) a conventional cowboy; in To Sir, with Love (1967) a schoolteacher oddly representative of the system that
"Si. Pines. Blacks in Films: A Survev of Racial Themes and Images in the American Film. London: Studio 2975. p. 112.
''Poitier won the Best Actor Academy Award for Mies of the Field (1963). He was the first black male to win an Oscar. the old Poitier of The BlackbaardJungle had rebelied against. Most of the Poitier features of the 1960s were solid entertainment vehicles- They pleased audiences but failed to satisfL them completely because the social significance and political implications... were lacking, and a surprisingly mannered ideai black man, so far above the masses who loved him, was emerging.P
Bogle's assessment that Poitier was becoming ccnicer"in Hollywood, corresponds to his
image of a Tom, the black character who is at the service and mercy of the white family.
The roles that Bogle outhes fiom Poitier's career suggest that these are the easily ccdigestible7'stereotypes for white audiences. With no huit of sexuaiity, the Tom is able to be an integral part of the white community, altniistically focusing completely on the white
character in need. Poitier's role in Gzress Wzo 's Corni~~gto Dimer? solidified his "ideal" presence by Hollywood standards. However, it seems too simplistic to merely dismiss his contribution to cinema as a subservient black man. Unlike other of his contemporary black performers, Sidney Poitier made his career as an actor. Sammy Davis, Jr. was a singer, actor, and dancer, Lena Home was a singer who acted, whereas Poitier, fiom the beginning was an actor. Despite the opinion of his work, Poitier paved the way for rnany by distinguishing his career as an actor rather than a perfomer. He proved that the black presence on screen did not have to be a dancing or singing one to be a success. As a result, Poitier was able to achieve certain critical success that eluded his conternporarîes."
E~o~aldBogle. Toms. Coons. Mulattoes. Mammies. and Bucks: An Intemretive Historv of Blacks in Amencan Films. New York: Viking, 1973. p. 21 7.
"The American Film Institute awarded Poitier their Iifetime achievement award in 1992. He is the £irablack actor to receive this prestigïous award. The role of Matilda (Tillie) Banks, played by Isabel Sanford, the fiercely loyal
black maid to the Drayton famiIy, is an important one to analyze in context of the position
of black women in American Society as outlined at the beginning of this chapter. She
scrutinizes Dr. Prentice as ifshe knows that there is no red possïbility that a bîack man could be this perfect. Her role is Menin a supposedly comic fashion but Ïnstead what
emerges is a black woman who feeîs that she must protect the white family f?om what she sees as a wolf in sheep's clothllig. In one particuldy ilIuminating scene, she storms in on
Dr. Prentice while he is changing to share her opinions of his presence in the Drayton home:
Tillie: '1 got something to Say to you, boy. Just exactly what you mgto pull here? Dr. Prentice: I'm not trying to pull anything. I was loohg to hdme a de. Tillie: Ain? that just likely? You wanna answer me something? What kind of doctor you supposed to be anyhow? Dr. Prentice: Would you beiieve horse? Tillje: Oh! You rnake with witticisms and all, huh? Well let me tell you something. You rnay think you foolin' Miss Joey and ber foks but you ain't foolin7me for a minute. You think 1 don't see what you are? You one of those smooth talking smart-assed niggers, just out for al1 he cm get, with your black power and all that other trouble-making nonsense and you listen here. 1 brought up that child fiom a baby in a cradle and ain't nobody gonna hann her none while I'm here and as long as you are anywhere around this house I'm right here watchin'. You read me, boy? You raise any trouble in here, you just likely to fïnd out what 'black power' reaily rneans! '
Edward Mapp sees Tillie's role as part of a disturbing trend ui Arnerican movies, that of the "old 'Mammy' stereotype." He calls Tillie "the epitome of raciai self-contempt. She cannot imagine that any bIack man could be worthy of the weU-bred white girl for whorn she lab~rs.''~~
This image of the black woman as ccmti-blacK'contri'butes to Poitier's impotence on the screen. The film acknowIedges that there is an understanding between blacks
(hence the ccpoor"English spoken between the two) that is different than the '%ighef' communication occunhg with a white character present. This only serves to strengthen the power of the white characters; the black characters pitted against each other is a white fantasy perpetuated in this film. This same issue surfaces in a recent film, John Singleton's
Boyz N the Hood (1991), in which the black father tries to explain to his son that the white man builds and manages so many Liquor stores in the black commuaities as a tool to keep thern oppressed. Stanley Krarner's direction uses Tillie's character as what appears to be comic relief but in actuality is simply another level of racism.
The black men of thk period play the enigmatic role of appearing to be more cornplex than earlier works while simultaneously incorporating many of the same biases projected on them by the white community. Sidney Poitier's Dr. Prentice, on the surface, does not seem to need his white fiancée in order to assimilate into the American Drearn because he already has achieved the American Drearn. However, his characterization is really a thinly veiled racist representation because his dream is incomplete without the approval of the white family. The characters and the audience know that we must hear
Matt Drayton's solïioquy before the couple may continue with their plans. The black
2JEdwardMap p. B lacks in American Films: Today and Yesterdav. Metuchen: S carecrow Press, 1972. p. 158. father, Mr. Prentice, must also sit there, rapt with attention, waiting for the ha1 countenance. Obviously this is not as racist as D. W. GrifTith's Birfh of a Nati*onbut the insidious nature of its message could prove to be even more harmfùl. Birrh of a Nation is understood as a racist part of American film history and any showing of the film causes controversy even today. Guess Who 's Coming to Dinner? is considered a classic and this very distinction dows the film to be viewed without the same questioning that accompanies Birth of a Nation. This reaction to Guess Who 's Coming to Dinner? and other films of the penod may inevitably contribute more to racist ideology in the United
States than ever thought possible.
The Heartbreak Kid (1972):
neHeurtbreak Kid is based on Neil Simon's adaption of the short story "A
Change of Plan" by Bruce Jay Friedman. The story should have been titled "A Change of
Religion" as Lenny, the male protagonist piayed by Charles Grodin, rejects all things Jewish in favour of the gentile iifestyle. The plot is simple enough: Lenny marries the Jewish Lila after ody knowing her for a few weeks, they honeymoon in Florida where he meets the gentile Kelly, and he spends the remainder of the &n pursuing her and rejecting his wife.
Lenny's character is a throwback to Jakie Robins in The Jazz Singer, both men believing that the WASP woman is their fantasy of upward class mobiiity and their solution to attaining mesuccess and happiness. These men view their Jewish culture and upbringing as unbearably oppressive while giving the gentile women power to completely alienate them f?om these traditions. This view may have been a reflection of the changing face of the Jewish comrnunity during this period, especially for Jewish men- The popularity of intennaniage was increasing at this time in the United States and part of the reason was due to the fact that
Jewish men were experïencing a new role in American society? These Jewish men are the first generation of American Jews to experience far dif5erent educational, employrnent, and social opportunities than their parents which is sipifkant for the fact that in the films of the period they make a point of rejecting Jewish women in favour of the "moreAmencan" idealized gentiles.
Due to their short courtship, Lenny does not know his bride, LiIa (played by Jeanne
Berlin who is ironically director Elaine May's daughter) very weIl. On their road trip f?om
New York City to Flonda, he leanis ail of the idiosyncratic behavior that paints LiIa in an ugly light. For example, she speaks incessantly rmd loudly even when they are making love and she constantly asks for his approvd. In one particularly offensive scene, the two characters sit across fkom each other in a restaurant while Lenny watches Lila stuff food
%~atriciaErens explains that ''Until the 1960s, intermarriage was not of serious concem in the Arnerican-Jewish cornmunity; for the fkst six decades, fewer than ten percent of Jews married outside the religion. In contrat, between 1966 and 1972, 3 1.7 percent marrïed out and the number is still rising." She contextualizes these statistics with the folfowing information: "Mer the war and folIowing the fidl howledge of the Holocaust, American aftitudes reflected a change of heart ...As discrimination lessened, Jews moved into professions previously cIosed to them. a 2964 study] Jews accounted for the Iargest nurnbers enrolled in college, graduate, and postgraduate work." Thus, not only did Jewish men have greater access to gentile women, but Jewish men were eamhg a high-status reputation making them more desirable to non-Jewish women. (Patricia Erens. The Jew in Amencan Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2984- pp. 5-6. 76
into her mouth. Lenny embarrassingly tries to tell her that she has some on her face but of
course the humour lies in the fact that she is unaware of proper duiing etiquette. Lenny, in
comparison, appears to be the syrnbol of restra.int as the audience sympathizes with his
mounting fnistration over the state of his new marriage-
The negative portrayal of Lila was acknowledged by the critics at the tirne of the
film's release: 'The parts themselves are cramped little molds, which the actors are unable
to enlarge. The worst of these is the bride, a cruel compendium of every unpleasant trait
that has ever been associated with Jewish girls - particularly fkom New York. As seen by
Simon and May ...Lila is noisy, vulgar, demanding, insanely possessive, impossibly
overbearing and grimiy cornrnitted to pre-marital Wginity. In short, a Jewish princess of
unmistakably lower rniddle-class o~igin~.'~*~Lila's characterization is created to be the
greatest source of comic relief. Indeed, when Lenny does desert LiIa for Kelly, it is
siipposed to be one of the funniest moments in the film. Mer using every excuse possible
for not spending time with her in order to cultivate a relationship with Kelly, he explains
that he wants a divorce over their first honeymoon rneal together. Of course, Lila becomes
hysterical and a source of hrther embarrassment for Lenny in the restaurant. Lila, as the
undesirable Other woman in the film, is representative of the complicated position that
some Jewish women may feel in Arnerica:
26~obertF. Moss. 'cBlumeand ïïze Heurtbreak Kid - What Kind of Jews are They?," in - nie New York Times. September 9, 1973. p. 15. For Jewish wornen in this society, the issues of body image are fùrther complicated because the physical characteristics of Jewish women are in direct conflict with the non-Jewish images of beauty in the dominant culture (straight blond hnir. smd noses, and tb figures) Consequently, a fair number of Jewish women in North America have problems related to body image, focused on their dislike of specific parts of their bodies that seem to them to be 'too-Jewish' (eg fiizzy haïr, a big nose, or wide hips), because they have intemalized the values of the dominant culture, including its antisemiti~m.'~ neHearbreak Kid presents the confikt directly in the film: idedgentile versus undesirable/Jewish. The fïhexploits the classic stereotype of Jewish wornen while simdtaneously presenting the Jewish man's status as improving.
Thus, the most rnanipulative tactic of the writing and direction of The Heuribreak
Kid is not only Lila's characterization, but more importantly, how her character is juxtaposed with both Lenny and Keliy. Lenny is undoubtably an emotionally stunted and thoroughly immature grown man who appears as the hero precisely because we are positioned to appreciate his disgust for Lila. In a review fiom The New York Times, the writer Robert Moss clearly delineates how Lila and Lenny are deliberately presented as two sides of the "'Jewish character:"
Lenny Cantrow, the miserable bridegroom, is intended to be likeable and so, since Simon and May are obviously unable to hdmuch to praise in Jewish culture, he is rendered less Semitic than Lia. His looks are not dekitely Jewish, as hers are, and of the characteristics associated with Jewish men, he has only a few -
27Nora Gold, "Canadian Jewish Women and Their Experiences of Anti-Sernitisrn and Sexism," in Cefebratim the Lives of Jewish Women: Patterns in a Feminist Sampler. ed's. Rachel J. Siegel & Ellen Cole. New York: Haworth, 1997. p.286. chiefly aggressiveness (though only in its romantic-sexual manifestation) and a tendency to raise his voice- Herein fies the £ïim's most arrant dishonesty: it simultaneously stacks the deck against Lila and in favor of Len. Behind all the fancy attempts at social commentary, at juxtaposing two different cultures, is an old-fashioned romantic comedy and the filmmalcers are taking no chances on alienating or disenchanting the audience by bringing it excessively close to reality. Hence, Liia is by Hoilywood standards, homely, while Lenny is, by the same standards, rather a pretty boy ...In addition, where Lila is harsh, he is chamillig; where she is duU and obtuse, he is clever and inventive; where she is all abrasiveness, he is aH pers~nality.~~
It is interesting to note that positive and negative attributes are drawn on Sernitic lines. There seems to be a direct relationship in this film between "how Jewish" a character is and their level of attraction. Thus, Keliy Corcoran (Cybil Sheppard), is both the WASP and the syrnbol of desire in the film. Unlike Mary in neJan Singer, Kelly's character is part of a new breed of shikra characters in Arnerican movies. As Patricia Erens explains,
'?n the seventies [the skiha] is no longer in her old guise as the means into an alien culture, but as a Godsend to Save the hero £tom the oppressiveness of the old culture.
Thus, where once sex served as a sign of the hero's downfd, it now appears as therapy and salvation. As always, the shiksa is languid and beautiful, soft and enticing."" Although the role has changed, the focus is nill to detach the Jewish male fkorn his Jewish farnily's culture and traditions. In Kelly's introductory scene, she appears on the beach where Lenny is sunbathing to inform him that he is in her area. As he shades his eyes to look up at her,
qatricia Erens. The Jew in American Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984. pp. 303-304. the sun behind Kelly creates a halo around her golden blond hair and the expression on
Lenny's face suggests that he has just seen an angel. The moment is quickly intempted as
LiIa sfiriils fiorn behind hirn, 'Zenny! How do you like my suit?." Again, the Jewish woman is the source of humour because of her complete lack of awareness. Not ordy is Kelly beautifùl but she flirts with Lemy in a teasingly, commanding way, knowing that he wiil not be able to resist her. Lila's dialogue is always centered around obtaining Lemy's interest and approval, the female equivalent to the puppy in the willdow.
Lila's presence in the film is a lucid example of Mary Ann Doaneysanalysis of how spectatorship is created via certain images of women. Doane &tes: 'The male gaze is centered, in control ...the spectator's pleasure is thus produced through the fiaminghegation of the female gaze. The woman is there as the butt of a joke - a 'dw joke' which, as Freud has demonstrated, is always constructed at the expense of a
~ornan."~~The joke in me Heartbreak Kid is constructed between the presumed male audience and Lemy, a jo ke that involves the claustrophobie feelings often attributed to men in HolIywood narratives once they realize that rnarriage generally excludes women other than their wîves. Once Kelly appears on the screen the choice for fernale idenacation becomes clear We are aligned with Kelly and as a result, fhd Lila more irritating and see
Lenny's struggle to alienate himself fiom her more understandable.
The curious aspect of the Jewish woman's representation in l'Ire Hewtbreak Kid
'%ary Ann Doane, "Filmand the Masquerade: Theorizing the Female Spectator," in The Sexual Subiect. London: Routledge, 1992. p. 239. and several other hof the penod is that it does not mirror the actual activïties of Jewish women in the United States du~gthe 1960s and 1970s. The following is a brief time line provided to contextualize Jewish women's contribution to American society and their own
In 197 1, Jewish women found Ezrat Nash(translated to rnean '%elper of woman"). This organization was established to aid Jewish wornen in all facets of their religious experience. cl9741 The lewïsh Feminist Organization began and grew to over 1500 members in less than two years. [1976] Lilirh, a penodical dedicated to Jewish women, was established... Other ways in which Jewish ferninism expanded: Haggadah Cprayer books for the Passover seder) were re-written to provide women with larger roles..,ceremonies for female babies were created; more female Refonn Rabbis were ordained; the Bat Koi piayers, a women's acting group, toured chies with plays featu~g Jewish biblicd heroines.. .[the feminists] achievement assured them a reassessment of the traditional, subservient role women have played throughout much of Jewish history."
Yet, despite these many accornplishments, characters like Lila are still drawn as comedic attempts to show the place for Jewish women in Amwïcan society. She continues to play the "traditional, subse~entrole," despite the position of Jewish women off-screen.
In the same study referenced earlier regarding Jewish women's body image and seK- esteem, study author Nora Gold examines the Jewish male preference for gentile women.
She writes:
...many Jewish men project ont0 Jewish women their own internalized antisemitism, and then distance thernselves fkom them.. .This preference [for gentile women] ..-also had the effect of foste~gcornpetition
"Lester Friedman. HoIlvwoods7Image of the lew. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1982. p. 258. between Jewish women and non-Jewish wornen. Matcould be more prototypically se& than pitting women against each other in the fight over a
Both Lenny Cantrow and Alexander Portnoy in Portnoy 's Cornplaint (1 972) 'bseY7 gentile women to dissociate their connection to Jewish women. In the case of Alexander
Portnoy (Richard Benjamin), the Jewish woman he needs to escape fiom is his mother,
Sophie Portnoy (Lee Grant), perhaps the most troubling representation to emerge fiom this period, especidy in relation to Jewish feminism. Sophie Portnoy's role is an extension of
Marna Rabinowitz' s in 7icle Jcrzz Singer. Both live soiely for their Jewish sons and considering that the narrative is told fkom the Jewish son's perspective, both are presented as completety overbearing characters. Although both representations are negative, the two rnother characters are representative of changing trends: 'Begimhg in the postwar period, she siowly evoives fhm the Manipulating Mother into the Suffocating Mother, an object of fear and hatred on the part of the sons who wrote, directed and produced these works. By the 1970s the central conflict is no longer the need to break with traditional Judaism ...but rather the son's fi@ to sever the emotional umbilical cord and establish his rnanhood and a~tonorny.''~~Thus, much like the role of the shiksa changed, the Jewish mother also changed in relation to the changing status of the Jewish man. The fact that the mother was thought of as ccsuffocating"while htilling 'Year and hatred on the part of the sons" is dso
"Patricia Erens. The Jew in Arnencan Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984. p. 303. 82
a reflection of how these Jewish men would treat other Jewish women- The role of Lila is
essentialIy a younger version of the woman who wiil eventually become the Suffocatîng
Mother. The gentiIe woman, conversely, is not fèar inducing because she wiil never become
such a mother-
Sophie Portnoy is blamed for Alexander Portnoy's (Richard Benjamin) failure to
establish his manhood and autonomy. Alex cannot escape f?om her endlessly probing
questions matare you doing that this should be Our reward?," "Call more often, Alex,
visit ...Don't go away without tehg us," "Alex, how much longer will we be around to
bother you anyway?") and neither can the audience. He says: 'T am the son in the Jewish
joke. Only it ain't no joke ... Oh, Marna! Where did you get the idea that the most wonderfiil
thing I could be in Life is obedient ... little fiuitcake is what you're trying to make me.'' Alex
blameç this relationship with his mother for his catasti-ophicrelationships with other
women, specificaily with his WASP dream girl, Jane Reid (Karen Black), whom he cds
''The Monkey." The Monkey is an uneducated fashion mode1 who reacts to every word
that Aiex utters as ifit is a pronouncement of genius, a change that he fuids refreshing &et
being treated Like a dernented child for his entire We. Cntics of Pormoy S Cornplant were
quick to recognize the anti-Sernitic nature of the h:'nie archetypal cajoler, smotherer, guiltlayer, and castrator is Philip Roth's immortal Sophie Portnoy...k Roth's book,
Lehman's movie [stirs] up a storm of controversy. Fred Hechinger [cails] it 'a tmly anti- 83
Semitic film.. .ais0 an unforgivably vulgar one.
Any f'ilm that characterizes a woman as the stereotypical "dumb blonde'' with a moniker like 'The Monkey," needs to be questioned on anti-Semitic and sexist grounds.
Although The Monkey still represents the ideal physical woman to the Jewish man, he does not see her as his an emblern ofclass mobilÏty but rather as an ego enhancing subject in his cTygmalion-esque'' fantasy. The aforementioned critic's use of the word "castrator" in response to Sophie Portnoy's relationship with her son provides fùrther understanding into a character who needs to control a woman both sexuaily and intellectually. Hence, what the spectator sees is a vicious line of femde accountability: the mother's destructive behavior causes the son to prove his dysfùnctionai idea of "masculinity" with another woman. As well, because both women are such annoying characters, the audience is in a position much like the response to Lila in The Hearlbreak Kia; they have little choice but to side with the man.
This chapter began by asking, 'mat do women want?" and is closing without a definitive answer, narnely because it is a question about the ideological construction of
Woman. Black men and women and Jewish men and women are ideological constructions as weli, based primarily on issues of race, ethnicity, and purity. Unfortunately, this period employed the same characterizations in a more modem context. For example, the argument is not about degrees; Guess Who 's Cornhg to Dinner? is not as racist as Birfh of a Nation,
YLester Freidman. HoUvwoods' Imme of the Jew. New York: Fredenck Ungar, 1982. p. 249. but the sarne principles are involved: the white fdyas the pinnacle of American success and the black male as the catalyst for anxiety. The suffocating Jewish mother in ïhe fm
Singer is almost ridiculed in the characterization of Sophie Portnoy in Porkroy 's
Cornplaint. Although the composition and utilization of stereotypes has not changea the
Arnencan Drearn has come to connote something new in this period. It is too simplistic to suggest that black and Jewish men are striving for the Amencan Dream with the gentse woman as their admission to this world. The binaries of old world and new are not so ciearly defined in the age when Jews and blacks are gaining acceptance into different social environments. As well, it is naive to advocate the "Old World" Mestyle as a completely pious one:
In his book, Jewish Renewal(1994), Michael Lerner rightiy points out that many Jews have left Judaism not because assimilation offers such enticing prospects for personal advancement or because it is so difficult to retain a sense of Jewish identiw. Rather they have lefi because organized Judaism has irnbibed some of the worst traits of wider American society: its materialism, its slavish pursuit of the market, its conser~atisrn.~~
This passage suggests that Jews were not always deciding between the life of their parents or the Amencan Dream. Some felt that neither Westyle deserved complete acceptance or rejection, a subtlety that has been unrecognized in much of the sociologicai literature of this period. One could then assume that this is aiso the case with black men, that they are
3s Rachel N. Weber, 'The Politics of Corning Home: Gender and Jewish Identities in the 1990s," in Celebratin~the Lives of Jewish Wornen. ed's. Rachel J. Siegel & Ellen Cole. New York: Haworth, 1997. p. 18 1. 85 attempting to form identities which are neither an approbation or negation of the classic
Dream. Women me, in a sense, the newest ÏmmÏgrm?ts of the Americun Dream Yef the Amerzcm Dream of the melting pot stopped a generation ago, wirh the generation of the 1960s and 197Us, the Civil RighfsMovemeM African Amerhs could mtme& mey remained b1uck. Many Jews tned to mell with dzfsering degrees of srrccess and with dzjfierent prices to pay for that birtersweet success--.. men the second wave of the Women 's Liberation Movement arrNed, rt soon became clear thut wumen cmdd not melt either, Ellyn Kaschak, 'Tirst There Are the Questions"'
'Melting," perhaps, ceased to be the priorïty for Jews and biacks in this period following the movements for equality. With racism and antisemitism continuing to be such rampant Us of American society, the need to maintain and respect diversity chailenges the melting pot ideology. As stated in a New York Times article fiom 1991, "statistical surveys conhn [that]..-racism rernains a serious problem: 77 percent of white Americans hold negative stereotypes about blacks, accordmg to a 1990 survey by the National
Opinion Research Center. But white support for racial equality has steadiiy gained ground over the pas twenty years - the survey showed that an equal77 percent of white
Americans disapprove of laws against interracial marriage, up fiom 48 percent in 1972.'"
One reason for the greater acceptance of interracial relationships according to this study
'Ellyn Kaschak, 'Fust There Are the Questions," in Celebratïnn the Lives of Jewish Women. ed's. Rachel J. Siegel & EUen Cole. New York: Haworth, 2997. p. 252.
2Gail Lumet Buckley, '%en a Kiss 1s Not Just a Kiss," in The New York Times. Sunday, March 31, 1991. p. 20. could be the numbers of such couples in the United States. As well, the greater number of educated individuals in generai could account for the change in racial perception. The same article quotes another study of "1990 couege eeshmen by the Arnerican Council on
Education" which states that '79.4 percent believe racid discrimination to be a major problem - with 3 8 percent feeling it essential or very important to help promote racial understanding, up fiom 27.2 percent in 1986.'"
Recent statistics conceniing the American Jewish community divulge a sirnilar story. In his book, Shared Dserences: Multicdtural Media and Practical Pedagony:
(1 999,Lester D. Friedman cites a study corn The Jewish Observer (February 20, 1992) which stated that "...the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith reported that the number of anti-Jewish incidents had risen to a thirteen-year high, that Jews were by far the most targeted reIigious group for hate crimes, and that anti-Semitic incidents on college carnpuses had increased by 72 percent ovei- the preceding three years.'" Friedman elaborates by explaining the precarious position that manÿ Jewish students are in on conternporary college carnpuses:
So while most campuses in the U.S. engage in heated discussions about multiculturalism, diversity, and inclusiveness, Jewish students find themseIves lumped together with the white establishment, ofken being seen as part of a political agenda they do not particularly
'Lester D. Freidman. Shared Differences: Multicdtural Media and Practical Pedaeoa. ed's. Diane Carson & Lester D. Friedman. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995. p. 23. endorse- At the same thethe multicultural alliance eliminates Jews as legitirnate partners in the struggie, Jewish students ïncreasingly hdthernselves the target of hate crimes.s
This result of antisemitism is &ed to the notion of 'hhiteness."As addressed earlier,
Jews have an ambiguous relationship with the dominant denotation of what ît means to be
"white," and as a resuit are attacked by white supremacy groups involved with "ethnie
cteansing." Their status as "iuegitfmate partners" in the struggle for multicultural
acceptance combined with their rejection fkom the parameters of whiteness leaves Jews in
a precarious social position in relation to the "dominant" society.
Essentiall~~it is safe to surmise that individuals today are at least more aware of the many problerns inherent with racîst and antisernitic beliefs. Awareness is the first step to acknowledging and hopefully changing the behavior that dismpts the core of living together in one society. This newfound awareness extends to the Hm-going pubk as well.
A 1967 review of the film and Poitier's presence in it suggests just how much our
collective thuiking has chansed according to what defines an authoritative characterization of black men on the screen: 'Tor Poitier, [the] film marks a major step forward, not just in his proven acting ability, but in the opening-up of his script character. In many earlier films, he seemed to corne fiorn nowhere; he was a syrnbol. But herein, he has a family, a professional background, mes, dislikes, humor, temper. In other words, he is a whole 89 human being. This alone is a major achievement in screenwriting? Not only does this writer's cornmentary speak volumes about the characterizations of black men prior to
Gziess Who 's Coming tu Dinner?, it also certifies his inability to recognize that Poitier's character was still very much a symbol. Poitier's influence on the representation of black men in the cinema was so potent that it extends even to Hollywood today, often in an ironic and self-reflexive way.'
Unfominately, it is difEcult to name many Holiywood films that do not use black characters as symbols. Hollywood stiil has difnculty creating 'khole human beings3' who also happen to be black. Of course, there are a few exceptions (Spike Lee's 1989 film Do the Rzght ïhingyfor example), but generally, Hollywood stiu invokes well-worn stock black characters. This has a direct impact on how interracial relationships are represented because without creating complex black characters, the interracial aspect is often also simplified. This is quite likely the reason for the shortage of such relationships on the screen in the 1980s. Considering what a multicultural nation Amenca is, it is surprising that so few films respond directiy to interracial love. However, as Gai1 Lumet Buckley
%riter uncredited, Variety. December 6, 1967.
'JO hn Guare's stage play and director Fred Schepisi's film adaptation of Six Degrees of Separdon employed this popular image of Sidney Poitier as an extra-textual plot device. The story involves a young black man (\Nil1 Smith) who claims that Sidney Poitier is his father in order to gain both access and acceptance into a weii-to-do New York fdly. The audience's preconceived notion of Sidney Poitier as the ''trusted" black man is not only understood fkom the beginning but also an integrai component for believing Smith's character. realizes in her examination of the same topic, the reiationships are stfl being. adopted but
In the early 1980s înterracial romance ail but vanished Eom popular culture. Black women basically disappeared £hm the screen. Because a genuine batch of black male superstars had ernerged in the Iate 19705, interracial relations now took a certain quasi-homoerotic tum. Never before had there been so much black-white male bondiig in the movies. Danny Glover, Lou Gossett Jr., Gregory &es, Eddie Murphy, Richard Pryor and Denzel Washington al.played boon cornpanions ta a series of white male stad
Sidney Poitier, incidentally, could be added to this list with his 1988 £ilmShoot to KX,in which he partners the white Tom Berenger.
These black-white male couples served several important bctions. Firstly, after the great success of black actresses in the 1970s like Diana Ross, Diana Sands, and
Rosalind Cash, black women were ignored in Hollywood as a way of negating bIack relationships as worthy narratives. Including b lac k women meant including black female sexuality, the ultimate ''dark continent" that Hollywood narratives so infkequently choose to explore. Another potential reason for the abundance of male-to-male relations hips in the 1980s is to successfiilly keep the status quo in check. The women in these films are often used as character distractions or the one plot device that wiU corne between the two male "buddies." They are passive characters on-screen, taking often a literal "backseat" to
8E3uckley, Gail Lumet. 'When a Kiss 1s Not Just a Kiss," in The New York Times. Sunday, March 3 2, 199 1. p. 20. the active dynamism of the male characters. Finally, there is a strong racial cornponent to these male pairings as well. Ln each relationship it is the black male who counters and/or shadows the white male's actions. The formula is usually surpnsingly similar: the two characters are paired together much to the aversion of both of hem, they must leam to get dong in order to solve the greater good (usually a cnminal case), and dong the way they realize that they are more alike than they had initidy thought. This conclusion cornes through a great deal of humour, usudy on the part of the black male who typicdy plays the role of the comic-relief sidekick and the one who is outlandish enough to attempt several dangerous stunts. More often than not, the film ends when the white male leams to tolerate the black male's antics and they cm work together to achieve social justice.
The Jewish man plays a Merent role in this modem Arnerican £ilmculture. Mmy film reviewers have analyzed the multitude of Jewish male characters in their variety of roles that only a few decades earlier would have seemed unthinkable.9 A Jewish character in a film is no longer equated with a film about Judaism:
The Jew has wandered all over the topography of the American film, not merely in the countless movies depicting Jews or recounting Jewish experience but even in those works where the material does not warrant his presence, where Jews and Jewish interests would seem to have no necessary relation to the subject at hand. The Jew appears as Jew and also as a specific type of nonspecifk quotidian humanity, the most dusioned, least pretentious, cornmon-clay side of any member, Jew or Gentile, of the current moviegoing pubIic. The ubiquity of this figure and
9Such roles include a 'Jewish Indian' in BI&e Saddles (1974) and a 'Jewish cowboy' in - The Frisco Kid (1980). his world has made him virhially indistinguishable fiom the larger non-Jewish commUNty that once served to drfferentiate but now increasingiy serves to define him.1°
One must question whether Spiege17sassertion is the ultimate result of so many years of assimilation attempts on the part of the Jews. He goes on to say that ""atthe present moment, the Jew seems so thoroughly swallowed by the demotic Amencan drearn of
Jewish men and women that one may legitimately ask how much of his person and manner still belong to himseIf?'yllThis consequence strikes the viewer as an exarnple of being carefiil what you wish for, the Jew no longer simply plays the Jew but the Arnericmz.
When one is able to surpass the socially imposed boundarïes on racial and ethnic groups, the impression generdy is that success has been achieved. After dl, in 2999, we are still hoping to see black actors play roles that are not relegated solely to racially defïned characters. Thus, the Jewish character appearing as simply the protagonist or the love interest in the film is an improvement over only appearhg as the Jew.
Or is it? It would be naive to think that something has not been lost in the process but it is still difficult to define what the void is. Jews have stmggied for centuries over the question of their identity and it is impossible to state that a review of Hollywood's treatment of the Jew would elucidate this issue: 'nie easy answer was that Jewishness
'O~lanSpiegel, 'The Vanishing Act: A Typology of the Jew in the Contemporary American Film," in From Hester Street to Hollywood. ed. Sarah Blancher Cohen. BloomtO.gton: Indiana University Press, 1983. pp. 257-258.
"Spiegel, 258 93 constituted some mixture of ethnicity and religion. But in what proportion? And was not the whole more than sirnply a compound of these two elements?. ..Jews eIuded all classification. They were an anxiety-provoking specter to gentiles, a conundrum to thern~elves."~~The Hollywood narrative representation of the Jew was usudy not concemed with creating the 'khole," while the "elements" appeared in one shape or another aii across the Hollywood ~anvas.'~One could argue that these qualities were part of the larger 'cJewishgenre," a group of stones involving characters who were dnven by the notion of establishg idmtity. ïhis identity endeavor could also be interpeted as a universal search for self. Considering that Jews have been the most represented ethnicity in
Hollywood films, their search for identity has been utilized as the ethnic search for identity- Patricia Erens articlnlates the purpose for such Jewish stereotypes in American movies:
.At is not that these types do not exist in society, but rather that within society- there exist other reahties, other types, which never find their way to film... What does appear are those aspects of immigrant and ethnic Me which are universal enough to be of major interest to masaudiences, especially to other ethnic groups. Thus, though 61m reflects specific characteristics of Jewish immigrant life and brings farniliar social types to Me, the stones are universalized sufficiently to appeal to all groups - especially the desire for assimilation (which always wins out over traditionalism) and the drive for upward
12~ichaelA Meyer. Jewish Identitv in the Modem World. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1990. p. 3
13Theseelements are often reduced to mere iconographie symbols of how "Jewishness" is identified by the dominant culture: money, a suffocating-mother figure, a large nose, etc. 94
mobility. Both goals rnesh comfoaably with the %merican Dream.""
Does the Jewish culîure lose something by being the Hollywood ccevery-culture?"
Lemy Bruce used to joke in his stand-up comedy routines that, 'Wegroes are all Jews."
Perhaps he did not realize at the time just how closely aiigned the two groups have historically been- What becomes increasingly apparent in hsof this latter period is that although Jewish men and black men have more cornplex, filly drawn roles, the wornen are still representative of another world that the male protagonists wish to inhabit. What
JzmgIe Fever and the selected works of Woody Men show the audience is that where
HolIywood narratives may be making some strides in racial and ethnic representation
(albeit with a tremendous amount of discussion and understanding still necessary), the characterizations of the women in relation to these men need a similar state of re- invention- As expressed in Chapter Two, the question of 'mat do women want" is not the popular one to ask, 1 am not suggestùig that it is not important to question and challenge the representation of black and Jewish men, but the core intention of this project has shifted slightly to examine the tension between how men and women are represented and dependent on each other's characterizations. A close analysis of this topic indicates that even when the men are a part of the minority, they receive certain narrative privileges that are not afforded to women of the rnajority.
lJPatricia Erens. The Jew in Arnerican Cinema. Bloornington: Indiana University Press, 1984. p. 20-21- Jungle Fever:
Spike Lee's f2m embodies the cardinal representation of interracial relationships.
In no other rnainstrearn film does the narrative address the issues inherent in these relationships so dïrectly. This direct treatment is a result of Lee's agenda to expose interracial relationships as a site for the expression of the power difEerentia1 between black and white in Amencan s~ciet.y.~~The two stars of the film, Wesley Snipes and Annabella
Sciorra, appeared on the Iune 20, 2991 cover of Newçweek as the symbol of the "new" understanding of interracial relationships in Amerka. The film also ignited several debates across the country in major newspapers and magazines, with most artides Eaming the argument around a round-table discussion of both black and white Americans contributhg to the debate over Lee's treatment of the issue. Part of the response was undoubtably due to the fact that Lee's Do the Xighf KJzing had caused such a public awakening with its provocative finale ody two years prior and Lee was now considered a cccontroversiai" fïhmaker- However, Mo ' Betrer Blttes, which was released in 1990, did not generate any disputation among the press or public. One could argue, then, that Lee is only considered controversial when he tackles the relationship between black and white, as is the backbone
"~his"agenda" dates back to Lee's student days at New York University where '%e was one of only two black students at the tirne. ..His thesis film neAnswer was a humorous story of a black man chosen by a major studio to direct a remake of Birrh of a Nation. The thesis was met with great resentment and opposition by the NYLJ faculty, who had made Birth of a Nclzion an integral part of their teachuig cumculum while igno~gits racist content for years. Lee defended his film adamantly." George Ktioury, ''h Inte~ewWith Spike Lee," in Creative Screenwritinp:. May/June 1999. p. 38. ofJungle Fever. The viewing public has become used to watching t'ilnis about bIack
people fiom the white perspective, but clearly it is white characters from a black viewpoint
that is more dïflïcult to tolerate. Lee believes that part of his controversial following may
be due to his creation of character 'Lypes:"
'There's a difference between a type and a stereotype,' Lee expIains. '1 prefer to use types. They're like signifïers. You want the audience to know who this person is right away, but you can't spend a lot of time with thern, so you use shorthand.' Since Lee is such an out-spoken, well-known personq that kind of shorthand often backfires on him. More than once he's been called a racist - sornething that doesn't happen to more Iow-key filmmalcers Iike Francis Coppola or Martin Scorsese, even though they rely on types just as hea~il~.'~
Certainly, Lee is highly attuned to the popular conceptions of interracial
relationships as they have appeared throughout the century and as such, Jzmgle Fever is a
response to so many decades of hatred- Nthough it is more ccacceptable"now to love
outside of your race, the roots of interracial pairings run deep and Lee is retaliating against
a thne when: "interracial marriage was illegai in many states", when an ficanArnerican
student in a predominantly white college might be asked to sign a pledge not to eaternize with white women students or a white woman dating a black man might be committed by
16~eneRodnquez, "Spike Lee is Keeping Cool Over Heated Controversy," in The Toronto Star. Monday, June 28, 1999. p.C4.
171nterracialmarriage was forbidden in twenty-four states until the Loving v. Vuginia Supreme Court decision in 1967 which deemed the outlawing of such marriages unconstitutiona1- 97 her family to a psychiatnc institution."'* One may recall firom the discussion of The Jarr
Singer the practice of sitting shiva that Jewish parents performed for theû children who rnanïed non-Jews to symbolize their death. The extreme reaction is sirnilar to the response that interracial couples have faced. Lola Young writes in Fear of the Dark that: "An investigation of historical writing reveals that the set of ideas and myths attached to interracial sex go back centuries and appear to be founded on a nurnber of justifications for keeping racial groups in their separate social, semai, and geographic ~pheres."'~
Above everything else, "puriw' must be maintained. The mixing of blood is equated with the mixïng of power, and hence, the fear becornes the breakdown of a white rnonopoly over the powerfùl positions in Society. Angie Tucci, Sciorra's character in
J~tngIeFever, has an interesting relationship to this notion of purity. Uniike Little Sister in
Birzh of a Nation, Mary in The Jazt Singer, Katharine in Gzress W%o 's Comzng to
Dinner?, and Kelly in 7he He~rrfbreakKid,Angie is Italian and thus, not considered to be one hundred percent white. She is, however, "more white" than Flipper Pufi's (Snipes) wife played by Lonette McKee who is the product of an interracial union (visually, there is no cccolordZerence7' between them). Mer leaming about his &airy she says to Flipper, 'T just wasn't white enough for you, was I?" She then describes how painful her own
I8Paul C. Rosenblatt, Tem A Karis, and Richard D. Powell. Multiracial Coudes: Black and White Voices. Thousand Oaks: Sage hblications, 1995. p. 120.
'tala Young. Fear of the Dark: Race. Gender. and Sexuality in the Cinema. London: Routledge, 1996. p. 45. upbringing was because she did not feel like she beionged to the white or btack comunity. Her character is indicative of the pain that can result fYom the lack of understanding between white and black. Lee successfdly explores these Iayers of race that exist in Amencan society and questions how we prescnïe meaning and value to each. It is surprising that the interplay between these three characters could have the power to create such a stir in the public's consciousness, but Dyer explains that it is their connection to reproduction that incites such discornfort:
The centrality of reproduction to heterosexuality can also be sensed in the extraorduiary anxiety surrounding interracial sexuality, sornething explicit to the point of psychosis in earlier texts but still betrayed by the fact that a film like Jungle Fever can be regarded as controversid.. .[The film is not] 'about' sexual reproduction, and the fact of reproduction does not necessady, nor perhaps even usually, enter directly hto the representation of interracial sexuality, yet it is what is at stake in it. Interracial heterosexuality threatens the power of whiteness because it breaks dom the legiîimation of whiteness to the white body. For all the appeal to spirit, still if white bodies are no longer indubitably white bodies, ifthey can no longer guarantee their own reproduction as white, then the 'natural' basis of their dominion is no longer credible.'O
Flipper's last narne is deliberate; ccpurïty"is still at the heart of this issue. Although Angie is not a WASP, the ultimate of white, it is her status as a white (aibeit Italian) woman that causes his attraction to her.
Angie's status as a young white woman f?om a working-class farnily brings about a reversal of class status which complicates the issue of the American Dream: 'lherestingly, the Amencan Dream is exemplified by Flipper with his middle-ciass values, house, wife
2%ichard Dyer. White. London: Routledge, 1997. p. 25. 99 and clever child, whereas Angela's domestic situation is set against a background of strong patriarchal values and macho racist posturing in a motherless environment.'"' By characterizhg Flipper as the purveyor of the upper-middle class lifestyle, it is apparent that he has less to lose in this romantic endeavor. Although his wife threatens to leave, by the end of the film they are atternpting to reconcile their mamage- Agie, conversely, is ternporarily homeless by the narrative's end: her £âther7sdisgust over her choice for a romantic partner causes him to attack and then expel her fiom the fdyhome and then her cohabitation with Flipper ends when he goes back to his de.In beIl hooks' book,
Reel to Real: Race. Sex and Class at the Movies (1 996), she discusses Angie's character in a conversation with Arthur Jaffa. JaRa states that Tou really feel that [Angie's] sacrificing the most.. .it7sstriking to me that in black fisthat corne out of Hollywood, in general, there are usudy more cornplex portrayals of white people than of black people in those spaces."" bel1 hooks responds with: "That's because a black nImmaker has to prove to a white audience, via characterization, that their hum- has been acknowledged.
Then the filmmaker is vigilant."= Their dialogue raises the question of who the film is being made for, questioning whether there is a "target" audience. Ifvalidating the white audience is the primary concern that hooks suggests it is then directly addressing the
------
"Karen Ross. Black and White Media. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996. p. 69.
"~rthur as quoted in Reel to Real. beli hooks. New York: Routledge, 1996. p. 186.
%ooks, 186. 1O0 issues inherent in interracial relationships is impossible. Karen Ross attacks Lee's material
Eom another angle: 'Lee's preoccupation with examiring the role of white racism in subverting black success ignores equally important aspects of the black expenence such as dmg abuse, sexism, violence, and, more generally, the class dimen~ion."'~Thus, Lee is criticized for focusing too heavily on both white racisrn and the imagined needs of the white audience. Although these arguments are valid and important ones, one must question whether white directors are subjected to the same Line of questioning.
Essentiaw, Lee is incorporating the sarne issues present in Birrh of a Nation in a more modern context. The premise of a white wornan as the ideal woman is what causes both Angie and Flipper's cunosity about the ''opposite race." Lee is very direct about his mission regarding the relationship between these two characters; their interest in each other is solely derived from the same stereotypes that dominant society has dways held about why white and black are drawn to each other. In the production notes provided to accompany the release of the film, Lee States that, 'Tdentity is what we're trying to touch on in this film. Society still fiowns on interracial relationships and this film isn't so much a dissection of them as it is an attempt to look at the myths that bring these people together.
Flipper buys into the belief that to be successful you have to have a white woman, that white women are the epitome of bea~ty."~The production notes continue dong this vein
"Ross, 70.
25~rod~~tionNotes, Jungle Fever. Released by Universal News, Press Department, Universai Studios, l99T. p. 2. 101 with the description of Flipper's motivation. Snïpes is quoted as saying that FLipper7saiYiair
'%as Meto do with his relationship with his deand more to do with conditioning. As an
African-American male in this society, he7sbeen bombarded with images of things that are supposed to be ideal - Miss Amerka, Miss World. And for Flipper, there's ody one thing missing: a white wornan. That puts the penod on the end of his accomplishments.'"
Instead of attempting to dispel the myths that surround interracial relationships, Lee is integrating them into the actual marketing of the f3m. His intention is to create a dialogue around the dissection of the fkq and yet by basing the interracial relationship solely on sexual motivation he misses the oppo-ty to make a cornplex statement about race relations in Arnerican society.
JWeFever is inspired by and dedicated to the memory of Yusef Hawkins, a young black man who was bmtaily murdered in the sumrner of 1989 by a gang of white men in Brooklyn who rnistakenly thought he was dating a white woman simply because he was walking in the neighborhood of a white woman invoIved with a bIack man. In a
Vanitv Fair article, Lee candidly explores the sarne issues inherent in Birth of a Nation:
'Wasn't the KKK formed to protect Southern womanhood? Isn't that how thousands of black men got Iynched? 'It's no coincidence that many of those black men who were lynched were also castrated,' he says. 'Yusef Hawkins, 1saw that murder as a lynching, too.' Lee is srniling again, Iooking almost mischievous. 'You could Say that the subtitle of
'6~roductionNotes, 2. JzmgIe Fever could be Fenr of the Big BZack Dick. In fact, one could argue that subtitle for bath Bidi of a Nation and Guess Who 's Coming to Dinner? as weil. In Birth of a Nation, the fear is resolved through the violent murdering of black men while in
Guess mo.i Comirig to Dinner?, the fear is illustrated through the characterization of Dr.
John Prentice (Poitier) who is characterized as Wtually asexual by the void of any sexual potency which could potentially hurt the white woman. In the sarne Vanitv Fair articIe he is quoted as explainkg:
'Myths on seniality have realiy gotten people messed up - on both sides... Love has nothing to do with it,' Lee says flatly. 'For white women its this whole sema1 myth of the black man. And for black men it's been pounded in since the time they could think that the white woman is the epitome of beauty. So a lot of black men have this cravhg for white women-..It7sthe big taboo, interracial sex. But it's been happening ever since black people were dragged kicking and screamhg fiom Afiica. [onginal italic~]'~
Lee includes these myths in one of die more elucidating passages of the film as the basis for Flipper's father's response to interracial unions. Instead of the typical meet-the- parents-for-the-first-time scene usually depicted in Hollywood fis,thîs moment is filled with hostility which causes an awkward reaction in the viewer. The father begins the tale as orchestral music accompanies his words:
The white man said to his flower of white Southern womanhood, 'You're too holy, too pure, to be touched by any man, even me. I'm going to put you on a pedestal, so the whole world can fall
"Gem Kushey, ccSpikeysPeak," in Vanity Fair. Iune 199 1. p. 80.
'8Hirshey, 80. down and look at you. Any nigger so much as look at it, I'll iynch his ass-' She believed him, Her husband ran down to the slave quarters, grabbing every piece of black poontang he codd get..- the white ladies felt abandoned... so proud to be white and superior... mouths shut, legs locked together... late at night and alone on the hot bed of lust, they must have thought what it would be like to have one of them ...thought about the big black bucks their husbands were so afiaid of. [to Flipper] 1 feel sony for yoy in the nineties trying to make up for what you misse& a bIack man who still has to fish in the white man's cesspool-'
In one speech, Lee neatly encapsulates ali of the integral issues to this topic: purity, the sanctity of whiteness, the desired virginal status of the white womaq slavery, the myths of black men and women's sexu*, and the '~oly"reasons black men and white women are thought to be drawn together. Although there is an element of irony at play in this scene, what is not mentioned is the potentid to grow beyond cultural signifiers, for example, to completely reject the notion that there is a proportionate relationship between the color of a person's skin and their desirability to others. Jungle Fever does not challenge the sipifiers, it merely acknowledges their presence in Arnerican society. The acknowledgment is important but it is not enough. Presentation alone does not challenge myihs and racist ideology. What, then, becomes of the interracial couples who insist that their relationships are based on more than sexuai myths? How does this film affect them?
Newsweek created a special circle discussion in 1991 to address this very issue.
Various interracial couples contnïuted their thoughts on the film's representation of their own reality. The following is a compendium of their comments:
'(The] implicit message [is] that reIationships between blacks and whites will only be sexual and that's the ody glue.' ...' I did not like the way he ended up portraying the black man...to reduce the black man to the point where he ody wants the white woman for se- 1 didn't Iike that at aii.'. ..'[SpikeYs] point of view is very racist, even though he rnakes rnovies about racist issues.'.-.'ThereYsan intellectuaf current in the black cornmunity which suggests that interracial couples are not poIincdy correct. And there's a certain issue with black men who feel an obligation to be with black women, because there is a shortage of
In the end, one must consider whether it is enough that Lee is not inventing anything, that he is basing his story on real-life actuaf events, that he is weU-versed in the racial myths that contribute to the overd fabric of our culture. Jungle Fever is a contemporary re-working of myths without a contemporary consciousness to accompany the narrative. With Spike Lee's gifked artistic talent, it is a sharne that he did not feel a greater need to challenge the very images he was Earning on the screen.
Woody Allen:
Woody Allen, not unlike Spike Lee, is a conundmm for those interested in analyzing his relationships with women on the screen. In one respect, "the women's parts in his films are particularly me*. .. Since Annie Hail his women have been strong, three- dimensional figures who dominate many films."30 There is Little question that Men invests his writing and directing with fernale characters who are drawn as the active participants in fùrthering his narratives, Men says himself '7 have a tremendous attraction to mo-,es or
29 [uncredited author] "You Can't Join Their Clubs," in Newsweek. June 10, 1991. pp- 48-49.
"'Eric Lax. Woodv Men: A Bioaraphy. New York: AEed A. Knopf, 1991. p. 3 5. 105 plays or books that explore the psyches of women, particularly intelligent ones. 1 rarely think in tems of male characters, except for ~nyselfonly.''~~However, the viewer can acknowledge that often the strong, fernale, romantic leads are played by gentile women as representatives of the gentile world. In Amie Nall and Nmnah dNerSisters, as well as several other of his works, the Jewish male (played by Allen) directly pursues only gentile women as love interests while simultaneously portraying Jewish women as the comfortably "sexless" fiiend or family member character.
The key questions one must ask when delving into his oeuvre, is why does Allen perpetuate this trend and what is the meanhg behind it? 1s it accurate to assess his gentile women characters as the 'Yorbidden fruit?" In many ways, Men is grappling with the same issues of identity that plagued his Jewish forefathers, the same men who created the studio system that he works withïn. Amie Hall opens with a monologue that Allen, in his film character of Alvy Singer, delivers directly to the unseen audience. The following passage quoted fiom this monologue provides great insight into Singer's character as weli as explaining something about the nature of Jewish identity in America: 'The other important joke for me is one that's usually atîributed to Groucho Marx, but 1 think it appears originally in Freud's WTt and Its ReIation to the Unconsciorrs. And it goes like this - I'm paraphrasing: '1 wodd never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member.' That's the key joke of rny adult life in terms of my relationships with
3 1uncredited author- 'Xeview: Han& and Her Sisters," in The New York Times. Febmary 21,1986. 106 wornen-" This joke draws its humour fiom decades of cHollywood Jews" desperately attempting to join country clubs fiom which they were excluded. The Jewish studio system founding fathers were fkst rejected by the schools that they desired their children to attend, 'khich was especially agonizing to the Hollywood Jews, who held a naive faith that education would enable their chiidren to enter the precincts of the gentile elite fiom which they themselves had been ba~ed.'"'~Perhaps even more dernoraiking for these
Jewish men was the anti-Sernitism they were forced to endure at the Hollywood country clubs: "As a policy, none of the country clubs accepted Jews - not the Lakeside Country
Club, which was adjacent to the Warner Brothers studio in Burbank; not the Los Angeles
Country Club, which was a stone's throw fiom the Fox studios; not even the Santa
Monica Beach Club, which was just down the road fbm Jesse Lasky's and Louis Mayer's homes."33 The implication in Alvy Singer's joke is that he would never want to belong to the "Jewish club," the only club that he codd gain acceptance fi-om. The humour is not lost on the viewer in regard to this assessment; obviously, Woody Allen is making a joke which is not intended to be analyzed as literally. However, the link between his joke and the historical reality of the Hollywood Jews should not go unnoticed. His role in both films to be exarnined mirrors the role of the Jewish studio presidents; close to the gentile world through the love of gentile women but never gaining fdl acceptance into the gentile
'Weal Gabler. An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood. New York: Anchor, 1988. p. 272- society.
Much has been written concerning the relationship between Jews and humour,
specifïcally, the ways that Jewish comedians c'use'' humour as a tool for negotiating the
need to assimilate. Woody AilenYsJewishness allows the audience to associate his work
with Jewish humour conside~ghis inclusion of Jewish characters and customs, and yet,
in other respects he is the representative of general ccethnicity,"as Jewish characters are so
often interpreted. Eric Lax, an Allen biographer, writes: 'Woody does not deny it either,
and everybody reminds him he is a Jew, but his Jewishness as an artist is more the result of
extemal identifkation than it is the source of his humor ...The tension and hurnor in
Woody's work corne f?om the anxiety produced in him by his wanting what he doesn't
have and by the discomfort the world inflicts on him for being the thing he i~.''~Thus, the
tension in his work between the Jewish and gentile world is ernployed as a tactic to
demonstrate the outsider role versus that of greater society. As weIl, the comrnentary that:
'the discomfort the world inflicts on him for being the thing he is," elucidates the power
that an identity crisis may assume. In this respect he represents ail ethnicity for being
persecuted for being less than the ideal, an understanding that causes the very cCanxiety
produced in him." Lester D. Freidman identifies this insecunty as a comrnon trait arnong
Jews in America:
Many Jews, no rnatter how successful, stiil see themselves as defined by their religion, as never beuig part of mainstream
34Lax,Eric. Woodv Men: A Biographv. New York: AEed A. Knopf, 1991. p. 165. America because they are not Christian... Knowing that their ancestors were hounded out of various countries over the centunes precisely because they rejected total assimilation, modem Jews recognize their vulnerability in any society domïnated by another religious group. hdeed, one reason Jews tradibonally mach in the forefYont of movements that fight discrimination against other identity groups is because they remain exposed to attacks.''
Ultimately, what the Allen character in his work wants is acceptance fiom the ideal; the
same ideal embodied by Mary in neJazz Singer and Keliy in The Hem~breakKid. In an
article entitled, "Face it, Woody Allen, You're Not a Schlep Anymore," Villase Voice
writer Vivian Gornick explains that "the most potent characteristic of the outsider's humor
is the creation of a foil. For rnost Jewish-Amencan comics the foil was goyim and
women ...a Jew in GoyImd, and the Ugly WXe he was saddled with as opposed to The
Beautiful Girl he could never get."'36 Patncia Erens, in The Jew in Amencan Cinema,
conclüdes that this exphnation is precisely the reasoning behind the majority of the anti-
Semitic and anti-feminist work that plagues certain comedies. She tùrthers her argument
by reintroducing the preeminence of the Shiksa presence and "the persistent appeal of 'the
other' ...a concomitant response to Jewish self-hatred turned against Jewish wornen. For
Woody, survival means the warm acceptance of a compassionate woman, who is always
35LesterD. Freidman, "Stniggling for America's Sod: A Search for Some Cornmon Ground in the Multicultural Debate," in Shared Differences. ed's. Diane Carson & Lester D. Friedman. Urbana: Illinois University Press, 1995. p. 24.
"Vivian Gornick, Tace it, Woody Men, You're Not a Schlep Anymore," in The Village Voice. January 5, 1976. pp. 9-1 1. gentde.'"'
The very plot structure of Annie Hall is based on the concept of inter-ethnic relationship tension. Alvy Singer meets A~ieHall (Diane Keaton) through mutual fiends and they begin dating despite their obvious dserences. Such differences provide much of the humour in the narrative; for example, when Annie says that her necktie was a gift Eom her ccGrammyHall," Alvy responds with the news that his grandmother did not buy him esbecause she was 'Yoo busy getting raped by Cossacks." Annie's character is symbolic of a sirnpler life and she is the result of a childhood unfettered by anxiety, unlike Alvy, whose rnother took hirn to the doctor because of his irrational fear that the 'earth was expanding." Alvy' s character even mocks the approximation explored in Chapter Two about the Jewish male's relationship with the phallus. As circumcised individuals, the idea of potency has been £kequently discussed in accordance with Jewish men which makes the following exchange between Alvy and Annie even more humorous:
ANNIE:And then she mentioned penis envy... Did you know about that? ALVY: Me? I'm one of the few males who suEers fiom that.
With Alvy as the quintessential Jew and AmGe as the absolute gentile, it is interesthg to note that Woody Men hirnself claims {O not attempt to create largely Jewish and non-
Jewish characters: "'It's not on my mind; it's no part of my artistic consciousness. There are certain cultural differences between Jews and non-Jews, 1guess, but 1think they 're
37PatriciaErens. The Jew in American Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984. p. 310. largely superfkid. Of course, any character 1 play would be Sewish, just because I'm
Jewish. "'3g
This argument strikes the reader as a spurïous one when analyzing the narrative content of Amie Nall as well as Nmnah and fiér Sisfers- Vit is "no part of bs] artistic consciousness," then why would the Jewish and non-Jewish characters be imbued with very specific social and cultural qualities? The division between Jew and gentile is dehberately transparent in one particular scene in Amie Hall that is literalIy exhibited as a split-screen between the two worlds. When Ahy meets Annie's family for the first time over Easter dinner at their home in Chippewa Falls, the screen is polarized so that the spectator can also simultaneously view what the Passover seder was like in Alvy's cbildhood home. Alvy turns to the camera at one point to deliver the following sequence:
'7 canytbelieve this fdy.Annie's mother- She's really beautifùl. And they're talkïn' swap meets and boat basins, and the old lady at the end of the table is a classic Jew hater.
And, uh, they, they reaily look American, you know, very healthy and ...like they never get sick or anything. Nothing like my fdy.You know the two are like oil and water." Once the screen is split, Alvy and Annie's families begin talkhg to each other:
MOM HALL: How do you plan to spend the holidays, Mrs. Singer? D AD SINGER: We fast. DAD HALL: Fast? DAD SINGER: (With a mouthfid of food) Yeah, no food- You know, we have to atone for Our sins.
38WoodyMen, quoted in Twavne's Filmmakers Series: Woody Allen, by Nancy Pogel. Boston: Twayne, 1987. p. 25. MOM HALL: What sins? 1 don? understand. DAD SINGER: Teil you the tnith, neither do we.
Judaism is interpreted as a joke in this context: a group of loud, large, and incessantly
cornplainhg family rnembers who perform the necessary fiinctions of their birth religion
without understanding the meaning behind the cerernonies. Conversely, Annie's fdyis
the image of quiet restraint: they have proper table mamers and only speak when spoken
to- Even the assertion of Alvy's that they "really look American" is apropos when juxîaposed with his own farnily who never quite assimilated into Arnerican culture and
Society.
The implication throughout the film, and especially in this scene, is that we cannot
blame Alvy for attempting to raise hirnself to a higher class of people just as Lenny aspires
to in The Heartbreak Kid- Amie Hall is a more sophisticated story, however, because it
does bestow a sense of caricature on the gentile characters as well as the Jewish
characters. This occurs primarily with the brief but significant characterization of Duane,
Annie's brother, played by Chrïstopher Walken. Duane tells Alvy that, "sometimes when
I'm driving. ..on the road at night-.-1 see two headlights corning toward me. Fast. 1 have
this sudden impulse to tuni the wheel quickly, head-on into the oncoming car. 1 can
anticipate the explosion. The sound of shattering glass. The... flames nsing out of the
flowing gasoline." Alvy responds to this confession with, 'night. Weli, 1have to - I have
to go now Duane, because I'm due back on the planet earth." This comedic moment is
included to tell the audience that ail is not impeccable in this seemingly perfect gentile world-
The inclusion of Duane's character is an early harbinger of Allen's cornplex aEEation with the gentile world. This is what separates him £tom other storyteilers who portray the Jewish and gentile cornmunities as solely black and white entities. In both he sees characters of reIative goociness as well as those with less mord "purity." This quality aligns him with Spike Lee who shares a sirnilar mode of representation. For Lee, effective storytelling is not to present the black characters as the omniscient heroes whife the white characters are dways the messengers of evil. These binaries are well-suited for fables while discriminating storytelling requires enigmatic characters who mirror flawed human beings. Hence, Allen's association with the gentile world is both praiseworthy and critical as is his treatment of the Jewish comunity. In an essay in The Politicai Companion to
Amencan Film, Leonard Quart recopizes this trend: "Obviously, Allen could make a wonderfùl cornic-pathetic film depicting the ambivalence of a solernn and despairing
Jewish moralist who is both attracted to and repressed by a hedonistic, af£iuent WASP w~rld."~~
Fundamentally, this is exactly what Men does with Hmt2ah mzd Her Sisrers. He capitalizes on certain ccclassics"to tell this story; besides the Chekovian infiuence of the tension and unspoken emotional depth existing between three sisters, the film also has an undeniable quaiity of Ingrnar Bergman's work, one of Men's acknowledged cinematic
'Teonard Quart. 'Woody Men," in The Political Companion to American Film. ed. Gary Crowdus. New York: Lakeview Press, 1994. p. 22. 113 heroes. The three sister triad complete with love, hostility, and jeaiousy in Cries md
Whispers is realized in Hmmh and Her Sisters in a contemporary Manhattan context.
Wcrody A1Ien7scharacter, Mickey, has a relationship with two of the gentile sisters throughout the course of the film. In flashbacks we see his relationship with Hannah (Mia
Farrow) before the marriage disintegrates. In his voice-over narration Mïckey explains that the key reason their rnarriage failed was because they were unable to have children due to his 'low sperm count" (another comment on Jewish masculinity, perhaps?) Mer their divorce he dates HoUy, played by Diane Wiest. The film review in Now succinctiy provides one interpretation of the relationship between Mickey and Holly: "There's this odd quality to Allen as a suitor- His paying compliments to Wiest here - has this abject quaMy to it. There's something in his voice when he grabs her and says 'You're so , beautiful' that carries with it an undertone corollary: 'and 17msuch a worthless worm barely fit to lay in your path and be trampled."* This is the sarne quality that emerges in
Annie HaII, that Allen's character is the fortunate one for being involved in this alliance while the gentile women are still dramatized as the ccchosen"ones. The only Jewish wornan in Hannah and Her Sislers (besides Mïckey 's fiantic mother in one scene) is his working partner, played by Julie Kavner. She is presented as a fnend and as a patient listener, but the audience never envisions her as a romantic possibility. This is not to suggest that women are ody desirable when they are conternplated as sexual beings, but
40uncreditedauthor. Now. February 6-12, 1986. p. 20. 114
one cannot help but notice the stark contrast she stands in when compared with the other
femde gentile characters in the film.
Ailen's attraction to and repulsion of the gentile lifestyle is apparent in the
direction of the film. The repression and hosîility that exists in Hannah's farnily manifests
itself in several ways. Firstly, the third sister, Lee, played by Barbara Hershey, has an &air
with Hannah's husband, Eliot (Michael Caine). Secondly, the daughters' relationship with
their parents is an interesting one as they each make peripheral comments about their
childhood with an alcoholic mother and two philandering parents. However, Allen is also
very taken with this WASP farnily and the closeness and the elitist Mestyle that does exkt
This is conveyed through the impressive Manhattan apartments, the intellectml art scene, the family involvement in the acting comunity, and the wealthy fnends and coiieagues.
Certain reviewers have criticized Allen's fascination with this world: "The joke, in this
context, is an admission of defeat - he can't stay up on that highbrow plane. For Men, the
failure is distinctly Jewish, a product of his Forties Brooklyn upb~ging... in Hannah, when asked by his son why evil exists, Mickey's dad shrugs and says, '1 don? even understand how the can opener works?"" As close as Allen cornes to the gentile world, the implication is that he is never a tme card-canying rnember, never completely assimilating. As well, Mickey's father's comments suggest that, once again, the Iewish religion is not something to be taken very senously. Just like Alvy's parents in Annie Hall
4'~avidEdelstein, 'Woody Makes a Masterpiece," in Rolling Stone. February 13, 1986. pp- 25-26. 115
who are inadequate in their attempt to explain Passover, Mickeyysfather cannot explain
the deficiency of a God because Judaism is not presented in a serious light.
The inefficacy of the Jewish character relates back to the issue deliberated
throughout this project of the distinctive nature of Jewish identity. With the prevalence of
Jews in all aspects of the media, Jewish identity in film was often understood andior
interpreted as a universal search for self. This premise is manipdated throughout Hannah
adHer Sis~ersas the main motivation for Mickey's character. Due to an encounter with
his own immortality, Mickey searches for an identity and for meaning in the world. He
rejects Judaism, stating that he "got off to a bad start," and entertains the ideas of
Socrates, Nietzsche, and Freud before explorhg Cathoiicism and the Hare Knshna beliefs.
In this respect, the Jewish search for identity literally does become the universal search for
identity. The rneaning he does find is a combination of the poets and the Marx brothers,
'Zove is the only answer." Thus, love with a gentile woman is still the light at the end of
the tunnel for Mickey.
Although it is not aiways correct to assume that with time comes advancement and
progress, when analyzing interracial and inter-ethnic love relationships in Hollywood fïhs,
one may surmise that although the representations still bear certain destructive qualities,
the characterkations are becoming more complicated and thus more diEcult to categorize
into the binaries of good and bad. Unfortunately, they both utïlize stereotypes involved
with the nature of these unions to share their stories; examples ùiclude Spike Lee's inab* to elevate the interracial relationship up eom a merely sexual one and Woody 116
Allen's fascination with the WASP Mestyle and ali that it entails. However, as the range of interracial films sketches fTom Birth of a Nation to Jungle Fever and inter-ethnic £ïhs run the gamut starting in this project with The Jazz Singer and reaching Hmnah and Her
Sisfers, the issues inherent in the relationships presented become increasingly more discursive and as a redt, more challenging to articulate. This is the welcome consequence of andyzing relationships that run deeper than simply watching two stock characters attracted to each other for very specific assidative reasons. Both directors are aware of adopting certain weil-worn beliefs about race and ettuiicity, but they may be unaware of how they themselves are also guilty of perpetuating several notions of the meanings behind race and ethnicity. They use the farniliar racial and ethnic images as drarnatic and comedic devices while failing to acknowledge how their work contn'butes to society's understanding of the way we define love between interracial and inter-ethnic couples. CONCLUSION:
With the rise of the CMRights Movement und a reasserrion of ethnic conscious7zess in the sixfiesrfollowed by the Wome~l's Movement in the earZy seventies, there hm been a renewed interest in stereotping, albeit along meren1 lines. Ralher than emanafingpom wirhin estabfished institutionsrthe new writings on stereotyping have cmjForn disparate minoritzes who are dissatisfid with their contemporary preseniation. In the main their sfudies have 6een undertakennfrom a social activist perspective. Mmy accept a realist position (the notion that film sharld mimiye) and the impact rheory, which hol& that changes infilm Nnnges will redin changes in sociefy. Patricia Erens'
Although not an exhaustive study on the ïnfiuence of interracial and inter-ethnic
Hollywood relationships, this analysis has attempted to adopt the same social activist perspective as a format for gauging what the meaning is behind such relationships.
Considering the breadth of a topic as this which incorporates race, ethnicity, whiteness, blackness, purity, sexuality, gender, assimilation, and identity, a myriad approach is necessary. By addressïng several different avenues like spectatorship studies, race relations, capitalism, femlliist film theory, and both the Civil and Women's Rights
Movements, one is in a position to understand the complexity of this matter. Besides exploring the significance of the realist position and impact theory that Erens identifies in the aforementioned passage, a goal for this study has been to detemiine not only how film images may result in societal changes but aiso how our ever-evolving North Amencan
'Patrïcia Erens. The Jew in Arneriwi Cinema. Bloornington: Indiana University Press, 1984. p. 25. 118
society may affect cinematic representations. For ail of the research involved in answering
this question, the end result hally reached is that aspiring to create one defhÎtive
response is a simpiistic strategy that negates the open-ended nature of the dilernma. Rather than an answer, what emerges fiom the question of Hollywood's impact on society is a continuhg series of new questions. Concluding this topic fkds one in unchartered temtory, there is stiIl a desire to devise an authoritative conclusion while simultaneously recognizing the futility of such an endeavor.
There are certain more contemporary films, however, that approach the issues of assimilation and identity in reference to interracial and inter-ethnic relationships in a new format. One such film is Crimes mdMisdememtors (1989), another work by Woody
Men. Unlike the earlier perspectives giimpsed in i%e Jazz Singer, neHearf break Kid, and Amie Hall, Crimes and Misdemeanors presents a cornplex image of Judaism. Lnstead of being presented as something simply to mock or reject, Allen features the Jewish religion as a complicated system of not oniy religious but moral and ethical beliefs. The title ailudes to the drarnatic tension in the film which prirnarily questions whether one could commit a murderous act and live with this -th. Judaism is questioned and examined in the process, as the protagonist Judah (h4artin Landau), recds his religious upbringing when he was told 'The eyes of God are on us always." In the process, the audience walks away with a greater understanding and respect for the main tenets of the religion. Judah asks his Rabbi fiend, Jack (Sam Waterston), for advice regarding his dilernma, and Jack responds with his belief that there is a higher power and a deep 119 meaning to He in a passage that communicates the profound spintuality at the heart of
Judaism. Considering the majority of the earlier, humourous inclusions (or blatant rejections) of the Jewish rehgion in most Hollywood narratives, this perspective provides a refieshing and thought-provoking one for the audience.
However, the film has two simultaneous storylines that converge at the end, and the one involving Allen and Mia Farrow's character, Halley Reed, explores yet another compulsion for inter-ethnic romance. Allen plays a married docurnentary nImmaker who meets the gentile producer Halley and is instantiy attracted to her. Hailey is warm, hy, beautifùl, and has taken a real interest in the current project he is worlang on about a philosophical professor. In stark contrast to Halley is his wife, Wendy Stem (Joanna
Gleason), who is angry, sarcastic, and unsupportive of the non-commercial work he is involved in. Once again, the division between the supportive and lovîraggentile woman is contradicted with the confiontational and annoying Jewish wornan. However, what makes
Crimes mdMisdemeanors a more interesting film than the earlier narratives of ne
Hemtbreak Kid and Porhtoy 's Cornplant is that Ailen has created in CWa pathetic and in many ways loathsome character who the spectator cannot blame Wendy for wanting to desert. The earlier works focused on the abrasive attributes of the Jewish women which causes the spectator to ascertain the Jewish man's gentile desire. In this flhq Cliffis seen as equally as dysfùnctional as Wendy which allows the audience to view their entire relationship as problematic, rather than simply the Jewish woman being the cause of strife due to her idiosyncratic behavior. 120
Another recent film that experiments with the conventions of these specific cinematic relationshîps is Mike Figgis' One Nighf Strmd (2997). Une Nighr Stand institutes certain expectations through the very discourse of race and in the process creates a complicated position for the spectator. The cornplexity aises fion the notion that non- racially spec5c roles are utilized instead of the accustomed racially specifïc characters.
The h'sreview in Eve magazine interprets this choice of casting: 'The fkst twist that
Figgis tries with his screenplay is a multicultural one. Max (Wesley Snipes) is black, his wife (Ming-Na Wen) is Chinese, his lover (Nastassja Kinski) is Dutch and his fiend
(Robert Downey Jr.) is gay. In case anyone misses the point, the opening scenes include shots of a chaotic U.N. delegation which includes every conceivable nationality and ethnic group.'" The film seems to detierately cultivate images and relationships based on various ethnicities and yet the narrative does not once directly address the daerences. There is almost an impficit questioning as well of why the audience would question such images; does questioning the choice of actors inddge a racist ideology? The film seems more manipulative than progressive as a result. The silence accompanying the images rings false in the viewers ears because in Figgis' attempt to create a narrative around the notion that opposites attract, he ignores the potential to challenge some weli-worn beiiefs about interracial relationships.
The final film to be included in this contemporary consideration of interracial and
'Tom Lyons. 'Xeview: One Mghl Stand,'' in &-November 13, 1997. 121 inter-ethnic relationships successfùlly blends the two. Zebrahead (1 992), is a film directed by Anthony Drazan and expIores the union between two high school students in Detroit: a
Jewish boy (Michael Rapaport) and a black girl (N'Bushe Wright). The film provides a candid look into the lives of these students through dialogue that seems to reaiistically bring the conventions to the surface. As opposed to the highly stylized rnanner of Lee's hngle Fever, Drazan has created two characters who aspire to find meaning for their mutual interest in spite of the personal obstacles that greet them. These characters seem to reaily care for one another and are not simply attracted to each other for reasons of curïosity or assimilation. This is not to suggest that the contentious issues surrounding race and ethnicity are ignored, rather, they are directly confronte6 so that the characters can reach a deeper state of love and acceptance. When one of the teenage character's challenges his father about modem interracial relationships with the comment that, "This is
1992. Things change suice back in the day," his father responds with, "He's white. And she's black. And this is America. Any time you got a couple made up of a black person and a white person in this society, anything is IiabIe to happen." What sets the film apart is that the couple is contending with the same issues that have been identïfied f?om the beginning, but they are doing so gemzizely carhg for another. This one factor may seem inconsequential but it completely changes the flavour and impact of the mm's message-
Although these three films approach the matter of blackness, whiteness, and
Judaism in contrasting ways fiom their cinematic predecessors, one could not theorize that their representation reflects fùll acceptance. Perhaps this shouid not even be the goal as it is clearly an impossible one to fuifiil. A recent article in The Glabe and Mail about 'mat the 'multiculti' youth think about dating the Other in modem urban society," indicates that popular belief today is not very far removed fiom the ideas expounded in Birth of a
Nation and neJazz Singer: "Rinaldo Waicott, who teaches Black Studies at York
Universisr in Toronto, says that ... for black men there is the attraction of taking the white man's woman, while bfack men have a dangerous quaiity that appeds to white women ...
'Men are using women as pawns,' Walcott surmises. 'It's about men speaking to other men, by taking the other's women."'-'
It appears that due to the focus on race relations, the representation of gender equality has been relegated to non-priority status. Adopting Lama Mulvey7slanguage, the concentration is on the active men cornrnunicating to each other through thepassive wornen. It many ways, this practice is no dEerent than the expldative nature of blacldace, considering that the 0this used, as Walcott identifies, as a "pawn" to broadcast messages of power. It is also similar to the "black vehicle" role, like Sam in
CmabImca and Whoopi Goldberg's character in Ghost, whose main fùnction is to unite the white couple. Women, in Walcott's estimation, are not unitkg the white male and fernale together but are cernenting the patnarchal strength between men. Women are the site of displacemenf the location through which the "g-reatef' narrational good is served. bell hooks deciphers this phenornenon:
'Ste~hanieNolen, "MxingIt Up In the '90s," in The Globe and Mail. Thursday, December 10, 1998. p. D5. Critical, interrogating black Iooks were maidy concerned with issues of race and racism, the way racial domination of blacks by whites over- detemiined representation. They were rarely concemed with gender... Given the real-life public circumstances wherein black men were murdered/lynched for looking at white womanhood. .the private realm of ..dark theaters could deash the repressed gaze... Even when representations of black women were present in film, our bodies and being were there to serve - to enhance and maintain white wornanhood as object of the phallocentric gaze.'
Understanding the black female spectator is cntical for Mycornprehending the essence of both interracial and inter-ethnic relationship representations. For even though the Jewish women are segregated, as Frantz Fanon pinpoints, black wornen assume an extra disadvantage: ''Both the woman and the black would bey in a sense, overvisible- However, it is dangerous to Say that white women and blacks are analogous simply because they have taken on the position of the orher in relation to the white man-But the experience of black women does not enter into the parameters of parallelism. The black woman has no
This issue extends to much of the ferninist film theoretical writing as weli. Feminist film theory has notonously dismissed the specific position of both the Jewish and black fernale spectator. Paraliehg their penpheral expression on-screen, black and Jewish women have not been satisfactorily acknowledged theoreticdy as holding an alternative
4 bel1 hooks. Reel to Real: Race, Sex adClass at the Movies. New York: Routledge, 1996. pp. 200-201.
'Frantz Fanon, as quoted in Femme Fatales: Fernini= Film Theorv. and Ps~choanalysis. ed. Mary Ann Doane. New York: Routledge, 1991. p. 23 2. 124 stance to other women We need to reject the monolithic notion of wornen spectators: 'Tt would be too simplistic to interpret this faiIure of insight soIely as a gesture of racism.
Importantly, it also speaks to the problem of structuring feminist &n theory around a totalking narrative of women as object whose image fiinctions solely to refirrn and reinscribe patnarchy.'*
The patnarchy is preserved in narratives concerning Jewish men and women as welI. For the same reasons that the "racist" clairn seems simplistic, so wodd an anti-
Semitic one. For ifantisemitism was whoUy responsible for the characterizations of Jews, then how does one reconcile the large number of popular Jewish male actors (e-g. Billy
Crystal, Albert Brooks, Richard Dreyfuss, Woody Men, Me1 Brooks) compared to Jewish females (primarily Barbra Streisand)?
Spectatorship studies offers important questions about representation and identification but it is mcult to determine the ratio of acceptance to opposition with reference to these images. On a personal note, 1 have conducted several informal inte~ews with Jewish female fnends and farnily mernbers concerning the image of Jewish women in the films they have seen. Every single one of thern mentioned the emptiness they experienced following the popular representation of the Jewish woman as the less attractive and less desirable counterpart to the gentile fernale. These admissions from beautifid, intektuai, confident women troubled me with the realization that no one is immune to a negative representation of what 'cdominant" society assumes you to be.
%ion is a curious thing. We associate it with '7mth," giving it perhaps more power than it deserves. For whose C'tnith'3are we witnessing? Are we forced to accept the
"popular" vision as our own? Perspective plays a vital role in the looking-process which is why the representations of interracial and inter-ethnic narratives deserve a second look,, a revision, fiom the perspective of those relegated to the sidelines. In fact, my initial research and writing was focused on the black and Jewish men who were the active participants in these relationships. It was not und 1revisited the films and the related materials that 1 realized the possibilities of broadening my topic to include an analysis of the black and
Jewish women in these narratives, those, perhaps, who were represented in the most manipulative Iight. Lookùig back, I realize the greater magnitude in studying the 0th's other and how the justification behind such representations was created. In the end, 1see how my revisions parailel the re-vision that 1 ask the spectator to do for thernselves. Works Consdted
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Annie Hall, Woody Allen, 1977, U.S.A
Birth of a Nation, D-W. GrBith, 1915, US-A-
Buyz Nihe Hood, John Singleton, 1991, U.S.A.
Crimes dMisdemeartors, Woody Ailen, 1989, USA
Do the Right ming, Spike Lee, 1989, U.S.A.
Europa, Ezcropa, Agnieszka Holland, 199 1, FrancdGemany
Gtess W3o 's Corning to Dinner?, Stanley Kramer, 1967, US.A
Hmnah and Her Sisfers7Woody Ailen, 1986, U.S.A.
Heurtbreak Kid, EIaine May, 1972, US.A-
The Jclzz Singer, Alan Crosland, 1927, USA.
Jtmgle Fever, Spike Lee, 1991, U.S.A.
Nexf Stop, Greenwich VzlZage, Paul Mazursky, 1976, U. S. A
One Night Stmzd, Mike Figgis, 1997, US.A
Portnoy 's CompZm>zt, Ernest Lehman, 1972, U.S.A.
Six Degrees of Sepmafion, Fred Schepisi, 1993, US.A.
mere 's Poppa?, Car1 Reiner, 1970, U3.A-
Zebrahead, Anthony Drazan, 1992, US.A.