Does melodrama speak in lieu of collective silence? Circumventing the social "gag order" on issues of race.

Williams, p. 300:

"Here may lie the special link between melodrama and the melodramatic form of contemporary discourses of race and gender in American Culture. For if melodrama can be understood as a perpetually modernizing form whose real appeal is in its ability to gesture toward inexpressible attributes of good and evil no longer expressible in a post-sacred era, then this quality could explain why race has been such a prime locus of melodramatic expression. For race has precisely become an 'occulted' moral category about which we are not supposed to speak, yet which, far from disappearing, has remained as central to popular thought and feeling as it was in the mid-nineteenth century. In a post-civil rights and post-affirmative action era, Americans are enjoined to be color blind, not to notice race. Now that we are supposed to live in an era of achieved civil rights for all, race has joined the category of the officially inexpressible. Mentioning it is considered in bad taste, a cynical ploy, "playing the race card." Increasingly, however, it is within the irrational, fantasmic, and paranoid realm of the melodramatic "text of muteness" that race takes on a heightened mode of expressivity as a dialectic of feelings -- of sympathy and antipathy -- that dare not speak its name. The mere appearance of the black male body on the film or television screen, for example, creates a heightened expectation for the expression of extreme good or extreme evil. This expectation exists at the level of the mute signs of bodily expression, gesture, and demeanor. All the expressive means of melodrama are brought to bear upon the hyperexpressive body of the black man, in melodramatic configuration with the body of the white woman, and the white man."

Summary

In this passage, Williams seems to be making the point that race has become a taboo subject in contemporary discourse. As a society, we generally wish to be perceived as post-racial, color-blind, and well beyond our brutal history of racism and violent exploitation and persecution. Instead of acknowledging continuing racial issues, well-meaning whites pretend to not even notice race, and to see everyone unquestionably equal. Since racial equality is now universally endorsed in polite modern society, the unstated assumption is that we no longer even need to touch on such sordid mistakes from the past. However, as Williams points out, this utopian ideal is far from reality. Even the appearance of a black man on a movie or TV screen inevitably carries deeply entrenched connotations based on our collective history of race-relations and a long tradition of the representation of racial identity in popular entertainment, from the written word, to the stage, to the silver screen. Even if these associations remain “mute,” to deny their existence is an exercise in futility. Since we, as a society, are thus precluded from discussing race openly, we do so through the medium of melodrama. This vehicle allows us to perpetuate the discussion of good and evil in terms of race without risking personal offense or confrontation. In short, social constraints prevent us from discussing race openly, yet racial issues are still simmering under the surface and need an outlet for expression and discussion. Melodrama provides this medium in a non-threatening form and ideally enables us to use the influence of melodrama to continuously modernize race relations.

Evaluation

I found this passage very interesting in the way it frankly exposes the hypocrisy of the relative muteness of contemporary discourse on race relations. The very fact that unspoken racial issues lie just beneath the surface of so much contemporary discourse demonstrates that open discussion on these topics was prematurely shelved in favor of a collective societal pat on the back for having allegedly moved past such unenlightened times. Designating racial dialogue as taboo and racism as a historical relic clearly creates the risk that stereotypes may be reinforced and reintegrated in certain segments of society, while going unchallenged due to the collective tacit gag order on controversial racial topics. This is one of the reasons that Obama’s campaign and election were so fascinating – it was clear that race and race alone was the key if not the only issue for many people, but very few actually stated so explicitly. Instead race was coded in many different ways, and a certain level of honesty was consequently absent from the political rhetoric. Fortunately, Obama’s victory, and perhaps even the melodramatic components of that victory were powerful forces for social change in and of themselves.

I do think Williams has a good argument for melodrama as a sort of outlet for these conversations and topics that are otherwise avoided in deference to social constraints. People respond to the pathos and action of melodrama on a visceral level, and may not even acknowledge the depth of their feeling and its transformative power. Since contemporary films (on the whole) are fortunately more concerned with racial equality and uplift than perpetuating racial stereotypes, hopefully egalitarian ideals are being collectively internalized, whether on a conscious or subconscious level. However, a recent viewing of the film Crash complicates Williams’ theories. Crash took the unstated but widely adhered to prohibition against frank racial discourse and turned it on its head. In the film, race is always up for discussion. Scarcely a scene goes by where race is not referenced in some manner, usually in an inflammatory way. Crash in this way represents a full frontal assault on the national taboo on race as a topic, and exposes the possibility that racial stereotypes and conflict invade every aspect of our lives -- but to what effect? Is Crash really telling us something we don’t know? Do we need to be shown (in an arguably heavy-handed manner) that people do in fact “see” race whether they admit it or not? Did Spike Lee already do this more effectively in Do The Right Thing? Is there a danger that films of this genre reinforce stereotypes at some level as they ostensibly seek to combat them? Obviously a fair exploration of such questions would require a thorough and nuanced analysis, but tentatively speaking, I’m not entirely sure that William’s conception of melodrama as a modernizing force fully allows for the possibility of racially tinged melodrama as potentially counterproductive in some instances. However, given her astute observation that overtly racial issues have come to be considered unseemly within popular discourse, I’m equally unsure of viable alternatives.

Questions:

1) Based on Williams’ broad definition of melodrama that includes any form of entertainment containing a dialectic between pathos and action, it seems to be all-encompassing and omnipresent. If we accept her definition, is there any form of popular entertainment that falls outside the realm of melodrama? Don’t all representations contain some appeal to pathos and some level of action?

2) Are there any contemporary examples of a model of citizenship that is currently demonstrating “worth as citizens” through “the very activity of suffering” in the manner that Uncle Tom did for slaves according to Williams?

3) William contends that The Jazz Singer “refigured white sympathy for suffering slaves in a serious pathos-filled musical…”(298). In what way does this reading conflict with the essays by Rogin, Johnston, and Musser in terms of the film as an exploration of black vs. Jewish identity? Which aspects of The Jazz Singer, if any, arguably engender “white sympathy for suffering slaves?”

Curious Sounds in Micheaux's Lying Lips

Sound is an element of film that I think is often taken for granted by the modern viewer. It is such an inherent and familiar aspect of film that it simply seems to wash over us, whether in great sonic waves of Dolby surround sound systems, tinny headphones, or anything in between. Despite it’s obvious and critical presence, I truly had no conscious appreciation for the technical impact of sound on the film viewing experience prior to reading Chapter 7 of Bordwell and Thompson’s Film Art, on “Sound in the Cinema.” This chapter discusses how sound can direct our expectations and reactions as viewers through directorial choices involving not only prominent sounds such as the use of music, presence of speech, and sound effects, but also more subtle nuances such as volume, pitch, timbre, and so on. Bordwell and Thompson also distinguish between “diegetic sound” which has a source within the story, and “nondiegetic sound” which has a source outside of the story (278-9). Armed with this new conscious awareness, I sat down to watch Oscar Micheaux’s “Lying Lips,” a “race film” from 1939.

Even over the feeble sound system of my laptop, I noticed some interesting choices by Micheaux when it came to sound. It’s hard to tell whether these instances would have been jarring in any case, or whether it was only a result of the Film Art chapter on sound fresh in my mind, but regardless, they certainly stood out in my viewing of the film. Music has a large place in the story, as you would expect when the main character, Elsie, is a nightclub singer who we first meet during a performance. This diegetic use of music is expected and meshes naturally with the plot and character development of the film. However, the remainder of the film offered tow particular sound choices that seemed jarring, incongruous, or otherwise questionable. The first occurs when Elsie has returned home for the night and prepares to take a bath. Micheaux includes much of Elsie's undressing process in the film, and as this process occurs, very dramatic music is playing. In what was otherwise a quiet scene of domestic tranquility and relaxation, the contrasting element of loud, dramatic music seemed an odd choice and left me baffled as to Micheaux’s intent. Was he augmenting the perhaps scandalous nature of showing a woman preparing for a bath in 1939? Or, on the other hand, was he trying to distract from it with music that vies for the viewer’s attention? If that were the case, then why show those scenes at all? One possibility is that the dramatic and suspenseful nature of the music anticipates the murder mystery that is about to commence with the anonymous phone call that drags Elsie reluctantly from her bathtub, but if so, the music might have seemed more fitting at the moment Elsie discovers the crime. Regardless, with my aural senses alert to this nondiegetic musical choice, which according to Film Art and common sense, had to have been a conscious choice by Micheaux with some import behind it, I was left with more questions than answers.

A second remarkable use of sound occurred during a scene near the end of the film where two detectives take a suspected criminal to a haunted house in order to coerce a confession out of him via threats to tie him up and leave him with the ghosts. As the detectives interrogate the suspect, strange music is once again playing, but this time it is interspersed with spectral sounds that I assumed were meant to imply the presence of ghosts in the haunted house. However, it was unclear if these sounds were diegetic and meant to be understood as heard by the characters, or whether they were merely nondiegetic and solely designed for the auditory appreciation of the audience. Obviously, the detectives’ threat and the suspect's fear would appear much more understandable if they could hear the ghostly sounds as well, but arguing against that possibility are the facts that the sounds were intertwined with music (that had no apparent diegetic source) and that the characters did not comment on any ghostly sounds despite repeated references to ghosts. Given these facts, it is reasonable to assume that the ghostly sounds were nondiegetic, thereby rendering the haunted house scene somewhat farcical. Still, the salient point is that the scene is otherwise unremarkable (or maybe even bad – poorly written, woodenly acted, etc), other than for the interesting use of sound. Even if the haunted house soundtrack was nondiegetic and unheard by the characters, the use of music and ghostly sound effects created an aura of a possible supernatural presence for the viewer, which was presumably Micheaux’s attempt to lend some sort of credibility to an otherwise far-fetched scenario.

Discussion Question:

As I was watching Lying Lips, I was also thinking about film genres. At first, I thought it was a Musical, then changed my thinking to Gangster film, and finally arrived at Detective story. However, there are also elements of romantic drama, and possibly even horror/thriller if we allow for a very generous reading of the haunted house scene. Clearly, genre categories are fluid, and films often draw from more than one genre, but how do we ultimately determine how to characterize a film? How would you classify Lying Lips? How does its status as a “race film” affect its genre characterization? Why do we generally feel compelled to “fit” films within certain genres?

Black Silence and the Politics of Repression in light of Oscar Micheaux's 1920 silent film Within Our Gates

In his essay "Black Silence and the Politics of Representation," Clyde Taylor urges that the time has come for film scholars to directly confront the too often "sidestepped issue" of racism in American cinema via serious critical examination. Taylor addresses the issue through the conceptual lens of "unequal development" which he wryly nicknames "Undie" due to unequal development's "resemblance to those garments that are seldom seen but considered fundamental to anyone's public equipment..." (4). In other words, unequal development or "Undie" is a ubiquitous component of the film industry. In Taylor's use of the term, unequal development denotes a one-sided relationship in which the dominant party invariably "takes" anything it wants or desires from the subjected party, while simultaneously enjoying inherent advantages. Taylor applies this concept to the relationship between the American film industry at large and the fledgling offshoot of black cinema producing "race films." The dominant film industry took and appropriated anything it desired from black cinema, including actors, physical movie screens and theaters for displaying films, and successful genres such as "black comedy," which Taylor likens to the taking and exploitation of "cash crops" (7). The unequal relationship between mainstream and black cinema was so firmly ingrained, that after the backlash against Micheaux's anti-racist Within Our Gates, no other filmmaker even attempted a "major assault on racism...until Melvin Van Peebles in Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song in 1971," a span of 51 years (5). Nevertheless, despite the resistance to Within Our Gates and the institutionalization of unequal development in the film industry, Taylor suggests that early black filmmakers such as Micheaux actually did address racial issues, albeit through a more subtle approach. Taylor argues that these filmmakers utilized the vehicle of the "young black woman" in film to promote blacks as equal and critique racism in a somewhat covert manner. This agenda was accomplished through portrayal of the young black woman as valued and worthy of protection, in part as a rejoinder to the history of physical and sexual assaults and exploitation of black women. By showing young black women as valued and protected, Micheaux and his ilk implicitly suggested that these historical injustices would no longer be tolerated or accepted as the status quo. Despite a lack of direct confrontation in the films, Taylor argues that the message gets through -- "oblique," but present. As Taylor puts it in his conclusion, "these films have a way of speaking vehemently, even through their veil of silence" (10).

It is difficult to argue the fact that the relationship between the mainstream or "Hollywood" film industry and black filmmakers, both in the "race film" era of Micheaux and today, has been an historical study in "Undie" or unequal development. In fact, you would think it would go without saying, but as Taylor points out, it somehow mostly has. Race and racism is a curiously under developed topic of study in this history of film. Amazingly, even criticism of D.W. Griffith's racist epic Birth of a Nation was originally overwhelmingly positive, audiences of the time frequently applauded, and even subsequent critical examination of the film tended to focus on technical breakthroughs and the aesthetics of viewing as opposed to the blatantly racist propaganda -- but I digress....Returning to Taylor's essay, his argument for the presence of racial undertones personified in the body of young black women is on display in Micheaux's Within Our Gates. Sylvia Landry is shown as a woman of upstanding character who deserves the good fortune that befalls her in terms of befriending an elderly white female patron, raising money for her charitable school, and attracting the affections of Dr. Vivian. Conversely, her numerous personal tragedies -- betrayal by her cousin resulting in rejection by her fiance, being hit by a car, her family being lynched -- are all the fault of others, including relatives and other misguided members of her race, as well as whites. Despite all her trials and tribulations, Sylvia maintains a respectful and respectable character that undeniably reflects well on her race, just as Taylor suggests that Micheaux intended. Of course, a more complete response to Taylor on this particular issue might raise some complicating questions, such as the relevance of Sylvia's relatively "white" appearance and how that might impact viewer reaction, or the feminist response to the whole notion of women needing to be "protected" (which Taylor does acknowledge). Regardless, a case can certainly be made for Sylvia Landry as a mechanism for promoting racial equality.

Questions for Discussion:

1) Serious question:

Taylor suggests that the legal prohibition against miscegenation "silently reinforced the policy of denying directorial roles to Blacks in the industry" (5). While miscegenation laws clearly codified inherent and socially acceptable racism in virtually every aspect of life, what factors or circumstances denote a specific link to directorial roles in film, as opposed to discrimination in any other articulable arena? In other words, he's certainly right about this, but why would miscegenation laws have affected directorial opportunities for blacks more or less than anything else?

2) Less serious, but also potentially somewhat serious question:

Does a person's youthful affinity for a genre of movies that Taylor indicts as an appropriated "cash crop" genre of New Jack gang-banging movies (such as New Jack City, Boyz N the Hood, Menace II Society, etc, etc) make them tacitly complicit to some degree in the unequal development derided by Taylor? Are there any facts that might mitigate this latent guilt, such as the relative prominence and freedom of expression of black filmmakers, actors, directors, etc?