Abstract Visibility Matters: The Pursuit of American Belonging in an Age of Moving Images Brian Joseph Distelberg 2015 Visibility Matters examines the history of a long-held American conviction: that to be fully present and fairly portrayed in movies and on television is both a prelude to other forms of inclusion and, in itself, an essential part of national belonging. Virtually since the birth of the motion picture as a commercial entertainment with a mass audience in the 1910s, through the movies’ maturation and then their midcentury battle with television for supremacy, and on to the rise of network television as the predominant medium for mass entertainment by the 1960s and 1970s, this conviction prompted racial, ethnic, and religious minorities, and eventually other marginalized social groups as well, to criticize what they saw on screen, and to organize and agitate to change it. In their pursuit of fair representation, they studied and analyzed moving images and their effects, picketed and boycotted particular pictures and programs, appealed to governments to regulate screen content and diversify employment in the motion picture and television industries, and negotiated directly with producers for specific changes in content and to facilitate routine consultation. Even as Irish Americans and Jews, African Americans and women, and Latinos and gays and lesbians struggled to dismantle the legal, political, and social structures that enforced their marginalization, many were preoccupied by whether people like them were fairly represented on screen. They were certain that their visibility mattered. Brian J. Distelberg, Visibility Matters: The Pursuit of American Belonging in an Age of Moving Images, Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 2015. Copyright © 2015 by Brian Joseph Distelberg. All rights reserved. Available for download at http://briandistelberg.com/writing/dissertation/. Please direct any inquiries, including requests to republish or otherwise use this work, in whole or in part, to the author at briandistelberg.com. Offering a contextualized history of this persistent certitude, Visibility Matters probes a series of key moments between the mid-1910s and the late 1970s in order to lay bare the roots of this notion, trace its development, and weigh its implications. During the twentieth century, racial and ethnic minorities and other marginalized groups staked claims to full citizenship and seized some share of the political and cultural power once wielded by a narrow and more homogenous elite. Simultaneously, new mass cultural forms and media technologies fundamentally altered how Americans spent their leisure time, learned about the modernizing world around them, and participated in politics and governance. In tracing the history of this evolving but persistently powerful way of thinking—one that viewed political and cultural incorporation as tightly interconnected goals—Visibility Matters provides a novel perspective on the diversification of U.S. society and the mediation of U.S. culture during the twentieth century, on the deep entanglement of these two momentous transformations, and on the changes they together wrought in American life. As it does so, it also illuminates Americans’ varied and shifting understandings of citizenship and national belonging, of prejudice, and of the influence and political significance of mass entertainment. Finally, it sheds light on the constant but evolving interactions among different marginalized groups and social movements, and it highlights the persistently central role played by African Americans in consolidating the widely-understood common sense that banishing negative tropes and stereotypes in American moving images was a key step toward full belonging for any social group. The broad embrace of the well-traveled notion that visibility matters, and the particular ways in which it was articulated at different moments and by different groups—including the conflicting visions with which it was pursued—permits a fresh Brian J. Distelberg, Visibility Matters: The Pursuit of American Belonging in an Age of Moving Images, Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 2015. Copyright © 2015 by Brian Joseph Distelberg. All rights reserved. Available for download at http://briandistelberg.com/writing/dissertation/. Please direct any inquiries, including requests to republish or otherwise use this work, in whole or in part, to the author at briandistelberg.com. understanding of the centrality of race and racial struggle in twentieth-century America; of the varying dynamics of exclusions rooted in race, religion, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality; and of the divergent fortunes of different marginalized groups over the course of the century. Brian J. Distelberg, Visibility Matters: The Pursuit of American Belonging in an Age of Moving Images, Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 2015. Copyright © 2015 by Brian Joseph Distelberg. All rights reserved. Available for download at http://briandistelberg.com/writing/dissertation/. Please direct any inquiries, including requests to republish or otherwise use this work, in whole or in part, to the author at briandistelberg.com. Visibility Matters: The Pursuit of American Belonging in an Age of Moving Images A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Yale University in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Brian Joseph Distelberg Dissertation Director: George Chauncey May 2015 Brian J. Distelberg, Visibility Matters: The Pursuit of American Belonging in an Age of Moving Images, Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 2015. Copyright © 2015 by Brian Joseph Distelberg. All rights reserved. Available for download at http://briandistelberg.com/writing/dissertation/. Please direct any inquiries, including requests to republish or otherwise use this work, in whole or in part, to the author at briandistelberg.com. © 2015 by Brian Joseph Distelberg All rights reserved. ii Brian J. Distelberg, Visibility Matters: The Pursuit of American Belonging in an Age of Moving Images, Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 2015. Copyright © 2015 by Brian Joseph Distelberg. All rights reserved. Available for download at http://briandistelberg.com/writing/dissertation/. Please direct any inquiries, including requests to republish or otherwise use this work, in whole or in part, to the author at briandistelberg.com. CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iv INTRODUCTION: This is America: So Goes TV, So Goes Reality 1 CHAPTER 1. A Pencil of Peculiar Force 24 CHAPTER 2. Citizenship in the World of the Movie 73 CHAPTER 3. Intricate, Strange, Implacably Real Relationships 130 CHAPTER 4. The Government Has To Do Something About It 188 CHAPTER 5. The Ultimate Goals of Wider Representation 240 EPILOGUE: When Things Really Begin To Change 290 BIBLIOGRAPHY 300 iii Brian J. Distelberg, Visibility Matters: The Pursuit of American Belonging in an Age of Moving Images, Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 2015. Copyright © 2015 by Brian Joseph Distelberg. All rights reserved. Available for download at http://briandistelberg.com/writing/dissertation/. Please direct any inquiries, including requests to republish or otherwise use this work, in whole or in part, to the author at briandistelberg.com. Acknowledgments This dissertation has been long in the making. I am happy to thank here many of the many people who helped me along the way to its completion. Since our first conversations, George Chauncey has been unfailingly supportive, encouraging, and patient—even when my own commitment wavered and even as my interests evolved. His scholarship drew me to graduate study in the first place, and I have benefited mightily from his care, reflection, and keen analysis in our numerous conversations about my research and writing. As I have worked at last to finish this project during the past year, he has given most generously of his time and attention. I am grateful for this, and for his confidence in me. Studying the histories of gender and sexuality and reading the historiography of the twentieth-century United States with Joanne Meyerowitz was all at once intellectually challenging, deeply rewarding, and thoroughly enjoyable. She posed perceptive questions throughout my coursework and qualifying exams, as well as at early stages of this project. She offers a model of clarity and precision that I have strived to match here. Matthew Jacobson’s enthusiasm has always been heartening, and I am thankful for his good advice about several early chapters of this project, for his influential introduction early in graduate school to the art and craft of research and writing, and for his guidance through the world of U.S. cultural history. I feel very fortunate not only to have had the mentorship of so excellent a committee through my coursework, exams, and dissertation, but also to have had their backing in my pursuit of a nontraditional career in the academy and their support for my decision to finish this project. iv Brian J. Distelberg, Visibility Matters: The Pursuit of American Belonging in an Age of Moving Images, Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 2015. Copyright © 2015 by Brian Joseph Distelberg. All rights reserved. Available for download at http://briandistelberg.com/writing/dissertation/. Please direct any inquiries, including requests to republish or otherwise use this work, in whole or in part, to the author at briandistelberg.com. The pages that follow also bear the traces of classes and conversations with other faculty during my time at Yale, including Scott Bukatman,