Playing the race card : melodramas of Black and white from Uncle Tom to O.J. Simpson
著者
書誌事項
Playing the race card : melodramas of Black and white from Uncle Tom to O.J. Simpson
Princeton University Press, c2001
大学図書館所蔵 全25件
  青森
  岩手
  宮城
  秋田
  山形
  福島
  茨城
  栃木
  群馬
  埼玉
  千葉
  東京
  神奈川
  新潟
  富山
  石川
  福井
  山梨
  長野
  岐阜
  静岡
  愛知
  三重
  滋賀
  京都
  大阪
  兵庫
  奈良
  和歌山
  鳥取
  島根
  岡山
  広島
  山口
  徳島
  香川
  愛媛
  高知
  福岡
  佐賀
  長崎
  熊本
  大分
  宮崎
  鹿児島
  沖縄
  韓国
  中国
  タイ
  イギリス
  ドイツ
  スイス
  フランス
  ベルギー
  オランダ
  スウェーデン
  ノルウェー
  アメリカ
注記
Includes bibliographical references (p. [369]-384) and index
内容説明・目次
内容説明
The black man suffering at the hands of whites, the white woman sexually threatened by the black man. Both images have long been burned into the American conscience through popular entertainment and today they exert a powerful and disturbing influence on Americans' understanding of race. So argues Linda Williams in this boldly inquisitive book, where she probes the bitterly divisive racial sentiments aroused by such recent events as O.J. Simpson's criminal trial. Williams, the author of Hard Core, explores how these images took root beginning with melodramatic theater, where suffering characters acquire virtue through victimization. The racial sympathies and hostilities that surfaced during the trial of the police in the beating of Rodney King and in the O.J. Simpson murder trial are grounded in the melodramatic forms of Uncle Tom's Cabin and The Birth of a Nation. Williams finds that Stowe's beaten black man and Griffith's endangered white woman appear repeatedly throughout popular entertainment, promoting interracial understanding at one moment, interracial hate at another.
The black and white racial melodrama has galvanized emotions and fueled the importance of new media forms, such as senous, "integrated" musicals of stage and film, including The Jazz Singer and Show Boot. It also helped create a major event out of the movie Gone With the Wind, while enabling television to assume new moral purpose with the broadcast of Roots. Williams demonstrates how such developments converged to make the televised race trial a form of national entertainment. When prosecutor Christopher Darden accused Simpson's defense team of "playing the race card," which ultimately trumped his own team's gender card, he feared that the jury's sympathy for a targeted black man would be at the expense of the abused white wife. The jury's verdict, Williams concludes, was determined not so much by facts as by the cultural forces of racial melodrama long in the making. Revealing melodrama to be a key element in American culture, Williams argues that the race images it has promoted are deeply ingrained in our minds and that there can be no honest discussion about race until Americans recognize this predicament.
目次
Illustrations ix Preface xiii Acknowledgments xvii Introduction: Playing the Race Card 3 Chapter One: The American Melodramatic Mode 10 Chapter Two: "A Wonderful, 'Leaping 'Fish": Varieties of Uncle Tom 45 Chapter Three: Anti-Tom and The Birth of a Nation 96 Chapter Four: Posing as Black, Passing as White: The Melos of Black and White Melodrama in the Jazz Age 136 Chapter Five: Rewriting the Plantation Legend: Scarlett "Totes a Weary Load" 187 Chapter Six: Home Sweet Africa: Alex Haley's and TV's Roots 220 Chapter Seven: Trials of Black and White: California v. Powell and The People v. Orenthal James Simpson 252 Conclusion: Our Melodramatic Racial Fix 296 Notes 311 Bibliography 369 Index 385
「Nielsen BookData」 より