THE CREATION OF BLACK CHARACTER FORMULAS: A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF STEREOTYPICAL ANTHROPOMORPHIC DEPICTIONS AND THEIR ROLE IN MAINTAINING WHITENESS THESIS Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Master‘s Degree in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Melissa Renee Crum, B.A. Graduate Program in African American and African Studies The Ohio State University 2010 Master‘s Thesis Committee: Professor Horace Ike Newsum, Advisor Professor Maurice Stevens Professor Kenneth Goings Copyright by Melissa Renee Crum 2010 ABSTRACT The mass media industry as a hegemonic entity has played a vital role in displaying fallacious accounts of black life. Grounded in ideas from scholars like Richard Schechner, Patricia Ticineto, Joseph Roach and Sara Ahmed, this research is a critique of the ways in which memory, and its possible manifestations, plays in non-blacks‘ (specifically whites) interpretation, motivation, and perception of stereotypical visual portrayals of blackness. The focus will be on how the continuing phenomenon of stereotyping blackness in the 20th and 21st centuries is perpetuated in child-targeted feature-length animations with animal characters. I argue that the possible furtive and/or involuntary visual manifestations of ―black identity‖ in animation have their sources in a white historical memory that clings to the desire to maintain whiteness. This work demonstrates how ideas of blackness in white memory were not solely constructed from the imaginations of producers of mainstream culture. Rather black stereotypes are the result of a combination of black protest against negative portrayals, blacks as accomplices in perpetuating their negative stereotypes, and whites‘ imagined ways of blackness. Following the work of Anna Everett and Robin Kelly and commentary from Bert Williams and George Walker, the perpetuation of whiteness through imagined black i identities in media outlets does not take into account the ways in which blacks think of and present themselves within black communities, the ways blacks display their identity outside the constraints of white imagination, or how blacks openly or discreetly oppose stereotypical caricatures. However, the change in the portrayal of black people after the Civil Rights Movement (1945-1964) is the result of the powerful black collective voice influencing change in nefarious deceptions of African-Americans in media outlets. This change, according to Donald Bogle, Robert M. Entman and Andrew Rojecki, however, simply gave new faces to old caricatures. Therefore, the continued practice of stereotyping blacks by way of dated Enlightenment thinking regardless of black protest speaks to the pervasiveness of ―blackness‖ via the malignant ideology of whiteness. The desire to sustain ideologies and practices of mainstream media has prevented the erasure of black caricatures. The compromise between portrayals of whiteness and holistic portrayals of black life is more sophisticated making black caricatures more elusive, but still evident. Through a critical evaluation of Scrub Me Mama, Shark Tale and Madagascar, this research will demonstrate how ideas of Enlightenment theories of race from the 17th and 18th centuries has a prolonged history that leads to anthropomorphic animation of the 21st century. Movies have the ability to be used as a critical space for the interpretation and evaluation of stereotypes. When typecasts are confronted, they can be used to make more complex black characters and the information acquired during critical evaluation can be used to interrogate the trends seen in housing, employment, and judicial discrimination ii against people of color. The ultimate goal of this project is for audience members to be conscious consumers of media products and recognize that movie characters have the ability to influence real-life interactions with the people those characters supposedly represent. iii DEDICATION The research is for all of those who know, and hopefully one day will know, that that which is designated as harmless ―entertainment‖ is affecting our society. Where will be your place in the struggle for responsible conscious consumerism? iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First giving honor to God who assisted me on this very long academic journey. He gave me the initiative to keep going. I would like to thank my mother for always believing in me and being the most and sometimes only support system especially when times don‘t seem so easy. My son Langston for being a constant reminder that I must always question the intent of media and help shape him into always wondering, questioning, and never being comfortable with what is placed in front of him, whether virtually or physically. The work would not have been complete without the help of my committee members: Dr. Horace Ike Okafor-Newsum, Dr. Maurice Stevens and Dr. Kenneth Goings. More specifically, a hardy thank you goes to Dr. Newsum and Dr. Stevens for their long-term help. Thank you for helping me to realize that cultural studies was the best place for my research. Thank you for encouraging me and letting me know that my connections were not abstract, rather grounded in history and theory that needed to be utilized for contemporary media forms. Lastly thank you to the numerous scholarly works that shaped my research. v VITA BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION Masters of Art African American and African Studies 2007-2010 The Ohio State University Bachelor of Arts Visual Art Studies 2000 - 2004 The University of Florida Multicultural Feminist Frameworks 2010 Ohio Wesleyan University Delaware Ohio Race, Gender, Class in Anthropomorphic Animation…And How Social Politics Inform It The National Conference of Black Studies [NCBS] 2009 AtlantaGeorgia Re-remembering Mammy and Reconfiguring the Matriarch: Gloria’s Duel Black Female Personalities in DreamWork’s Madagascar Association for the Study of African-American Life and History [ASALH] BirminghamAlabama The New Coon: An Examination of Oscar in DreamWork’s Shark Tale 2008 The National Conference of Black Studies [NCBS] AtlantaGeorgia The New Coon: An Examination of Oscar in DreamWork’s Shark Tale FIELD OF STUDY Major Field of Study vi African American and African Studies Cultural Studies Cinema and Media Studies Critical Race Theory vii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................................... i. DEDICATION ................................................................................................................................ ii. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................................ vi VITA .............................................................................................................................................. iii. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 1 THE MAKING OF RACE: SOCIAL POLITICS AND ENTERTAINMENT ......... 8 RACE MAKING IN EARLY U.S. HISTORY .......................................................................... 10 WHITENESS AND ITS POLITICS ABROAD AND DOMESTIC ......................................... 13 PERFORMING BLACKNESS ................................................................................................. 23 BLACKS CRITICISM AND SELF PERCEPTION ................................................................. 27 MINSTRELSY‘S LEGACY ...................................................................................................... 40 CHAPTER TWO: HISTORY AFFECT AND THE UNCONSCIOUS ........................................ 47 THE HISTORY OF BLACK IDENTITY IN ENLIGHTENMENT THEORY AND ITS ROLE IN THE OTHERING PROCESS ............................................................................................... 54 THE ROLE OF HISTORY MEMORY, AND AFFECT IN BLACK AND WHITE IDENTITY FORMATION ............................................................................................................................ 57 OBJECTS AND OTHERS ........................................................................................................ 58 viii THE SIGNIFIER AND THE SIGNIFIED................................................................................. 64 AFFECTIVE ECONOMIES ...................................................................................................... 81 THE ROLE OF MEMORY ....................................................................................................... 84 FORMING THE ―I‖ AND THE ETHOS .................................................................................. 90 CHAPTER 3: ISSUES OF GENDER AND RACE IN ANIMATION ....................................... 101 CINEMATIC REPRESENTATIONS OF WHITENESS THROUGH FEMINIST RHETORIC AND ANTHROPORMORPHIC DISNEY CHARACTERS .................................................. 102 CHAPTER 4: SHARK TALE ..................................................................................................... 141 CHAPTER 5: MADAGASCAR ................................................................................................. 178 RACE, ETHNICITY, and PATHOLOGY BRIDGED UNDER ENLIGHTENMENT IDEOLOGY ............................................................................................................................. 179 (RE)CONFIGURING THE MAMMY AND (RE) REMEMBERING JEZEBEL: GLORIA‘S MULTIPLE BLACK FEMALE CARICATURES IN DREAMWORK‘S