Cinematic identity : anatomy of a problem film / Cindy Patton.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Patton, Cindy, 1956-

Series:

Theory out of bounds ; v. 29.

Theory out of bounds ; v. 29

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Social problems in motion pictures.

Minorities in motion pictures.

Motion pictures--United States.

Motion pictures.

United States.

Physical Description:

viii, 189 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm.

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [2007]

Summary:

Though largely forgotten today, the 1949 film Pinky had a significant impact on the world of cinema. Directed by Elia Kazan, the film was a box office success despite dealing with the era's most taboo subjects-miscegenation and racial passing-and garnered an Academy Award nomination for its African American star, Ethel Waters. It was also historically important: when a Texas movie theater owner showing the film was arrested for violating local censorship laws, his case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled the censorship ordinance unconstitutional.

In Cinematic Identity, Cindy Patton takes Pinky as a starting point to meditate on the critical reception of this and other "problem films" of the period and to explore the larger issues they raise about race, gender, and sexuality. Films like Pinky, Patton contends, helped lay the groundwork for a shift in popular understanding of social identity that was essential to white America's ability to accept the legitimacy of the civil rights movement. The production of these films, beginning with Gentleman's Agreement in 1947, coincided with the arrival of the Method school of acting in Hollywood, which demanded that performers inhabit their characters' lives. Patton historicizes these twin developments, demonstrating how they paralleled, reflected, and helped popularize the emerging concept of the liberal citizen in postwar America, and in doing so illustrates how the reception of projected identities offers new perspectives on contemporary identity politics, from feminism to the gay rights movement.

Contents:

1 American Celluloid: New Medium, New Citizen 1

Back to the Movies 1

Race and Sexuality: Some Analytic Caveats 12

Acting the Citizen 18

2 In the Hearts of Men 21

To Die For 25

Popularizing "the Problem": Politics as Melodrama 31

Into the Closet 37

Alienating Queer 43

3 Censorship and the Problem Films 47

Censoring Race 47

Cinematic Prohibition 53

Race Mixing 56

From Image to Story 59

When a Kiss Is Not a Kiss 65

Censoring Pinky 67

"Prejudice" and Epithet 71

The Dominoes Fall 75

Sacrilege and Race versus Sexuality 79

4 Acting Up: The Performing American 81

Signs of Apartheid 81

Acting History/The Historicity of Acting 84

Sound, Class, and Narrative 90

Narrative Sublation: Recalling-Forgetting History 99

The Question of Acting 101

5 Two Conversations: Black and White Americans on Film 107

Reading (in) "White Time": Black Performance and the Demand for Literacy 107

The Victim-Witness Story 112

Distinguishing Wrongs 115

An Ear for the Master's Tropes 119

"White Time"/Black Place 126

A Final Word, a Feeling, a Hope 136

Appendix Pinky: A Synopsis 139.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 173-178) and index.

Includes filmography: pages 179-180.

ISBN:

9780816634118

0816634114

9780816634125

0816634122

OCLC:

154789865

Online:

Publisher description