Although this is probably missing the point of our
discussion after watching the film Ethnic
Notions, I would like to address an interesting aspect of the film. To me,
it seemed like the film portrayed the change in African American culture as an
invasion. This invasive theme can be seen in both the content of the
documentary, but also in the music and other technical aspects.
African American culture, before the
Civil War, is portrayed as a “look at all of those happy Negroes!” kind of deal.
The black people in books and songs are happy, non-aggressive, and are happy with their position in society. They are not depicted as a threat to society. Yet after the Civil War,
this attitude changes. Not only does the content in films and books change to a
more hostile view of black people and culture, but the attitude of the documentary
changes as well. There is ominous music with odd screeching sounds playing in the
background of clips and pictures that the documentary presents. It is the kind of
music that is often present in those cheesy science films about an invasive
species or disease. It’s somewhat unnerving. Combine this with the odd echoey
sounds in the version of the documentary that we watched and you get a very
compelling background to support this claim. What’s more unnerving, though, is
that many people during that time (and still today) actually believe in this
invasion.
You're touching on a very important aspect of this dynamic--and these aspects of pop culture aren't the only area where African American culture is viewed as an encroachment on the normative (white) culture. Rock n roll in its early years was viewed with alarm by cultural critics who saw it as a "blackening" of white American youth, the same with jazz, and later, hip-hop. It's easy to see this carefully policed realm of black fictional characters being limited to degrading and self-effacing roles as a way of keeping the real stories of black culture outside the realm of popular entertainment. This is a crucial context for African American literature more generally--why the issues of representation and identity is so central to this tradition from the start. A white novelist in the 1930s doesn't have a burden of trying to "prove" or demonstrate his protagonist's humanity, to push back against a range of stereotypes and one-dimensional representations. Wright's, Hurston's, and Ellison's (and others') anxieties about how their characters will be received makes a lot of sense when we consider the field of existing representations they're stepping into. I don't necessarily agree with Wright's reading of _TEWWG_, but I do see the source of his displeasure. These are distinct pressures that white writers do not face.
ReplyDeleteThis is funny, because when we talk about rock, jazz, and hip-hop now (by "we" I mean in class and with my peers) it's always concerned with the "whitening" of the genre as opposed to the "blackening". Although I think part of this is a result of a greater awareness and sensitivity when it comes to black culture, it's possible there is also an element of romanticizing and even exoticizing what is thought of as "authentically" black when we criticize black culture as being "whitened".
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