Hollywood at the Intersection of Race and Identity

Published by Rutgers University Press 2020

Hollywood at the Intersection of Race and Identity

Edited by: Delia Malia Caparoso Konzett
With contributions by: Ruth Mayer , Alice Maurice , Ellen C. Scott , Delia Malia Caparoso Konzett , Jonna Eagle , Ryan Jay Friedman , Charlene Regester , Matthias Konzett , Chris Cagle , Dean Itsuji Saranillio , Graham Cassano , Priscilla Peña Ovalle , Ernesto R Acevedo-Muñoz , Mary Beltrán , Jun Okada and Louise Wallenberg

https://doi.org/10.36019/9780813599359

Overview
Contents

About this book

Hollywood at the Intersection of Race and Identity explores the ways Hollywood represents race, gender, class, and nationality at the intersection of aesthetics and ideology and its productive tensions. This collection of essays asks to what degree can a close critical analysis of films, that is, reading them against their own ideological grain, reveal contradictions and tensions in Hollywood’s task of erecting normative cultural standards? How do some films perhaps knowingly undermine their inherent ideology by opening a field of conflicting and competing intersecting identities? The challenge set out in this volume is to revisit well-known films in search for a narrative not exclusively constituted by the Hollywood formula and to answer the questions: What lies beyond the frame? What elements contradict a film’s sustained illusion of a normative world? Where do films betray their own ideology and most importantly what intersectional spaces of identity do they reveal or conceal?

Author / Editor information

DELIA MALIA CAPAROSO KONZETT is a professor of English, cinema, and women’s studies at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. She is the author of Ethnic Modernisms and Hollywood’s Hawaii: Race, Nation, and War. She has published in numerous critical journals on film, focusing on race, imperialism, and aesthetics. Her present work discusses race in Hollywood and its representation in mass culture.

Reviews

"Konzett deserves thanks for curating another must-have book on cinema studies. Highly recommended."

— Choice

"This is a timely collection - forthright, expansive, and right up to date. Commonly situated at the margins of discussions of race and identity, intersectionality here is placed at the center, crucial to understanding Hollywood's uneven engagement with race, social justice, and ethics. These rigorous and generous readings of key moments across cinema history reveal Hollywood encountering and marking more fluid senses of identity than usually credited to popular film. In all this book shows how, in bell hooks's terms, Hollywood can 'make culture' in problematic, revealing, and surprisingly anticipatory ways."

— Jeffrey Geiger, author of American Documentary Film: Projecting the Nation

"Those interested in identity politics and representation in film and media would find this helpful."

— Communication Booknotes Quarterly

"Wide ranging and critically deep, Hollywood at the Intersection of Race and Identity addresses the persistence of race in Hollywood film with considerable implications for the intersection of racism, misogyny, and identity we see today on big and small screens alike."

— Daniel Bernardi, editor of Race in American Film: Voices and Visions that Shaped a Nation

"Those interested in identity politics and representation in film and media would find this helpful."

— Communication Booknotes Quarterly

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Introduction Delia Malia Caparoso Konzett Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part 1. HOLLYWOOD FORMULAS
1 Daydreams of Society Class and Gender Performances in the Cinema of the Late 1910s Ruth Mayer Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	21
2 The Death of Lon Chaney Masculinity, Race, and the Authenticity of Disguise Alice Maurice Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	39
3 MGM’s Sleeping Lion Hollywood Regulation of the Washingtonian Slave in The Gorgeous Hussy (1936) Ellen C. Scott Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	58
4 Yellowface, Minstrelsy, and Hollywood Happy Endings The Black Camel (1931), Charlie Chan in Egypt (1935), and Charlie Chan at the Olympics (1937) Delia Malia Caparoso Konzett Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	84
Part 2. GENRE AND RACE IN CLASSICAL HOLLYWOOD
5 “A Queer, Strangled Look” Race, Gender, and Morality in The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) Jonna Eagle Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	105
6 By Herself Intersectionality, African American Specialty Performers, and Eleanor Powell Ryan Jay Friedman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	122
7 Disruptive Mother-Daughter Relationships Peola’s Racial Masquerade in Imitation of Life (1934) and Stella’s Class Masquerade in Stella Dallas (1937) Charlene Regester Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	141
8 The Egotistical Sublime Film Noir and Whiteness Matthias Konzett Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	159
Part 3. RACE AND ETHNICITY IN POST–WORLD WAR II HOLLYWOOD
9 Women and Class Mobility in Classical Hollywood’s Immigrant Dramas Chris Cagle Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	179
10 Hawai‘i Statehood, Indigeneity, and Go for Broke! (1951) Dean Itsuji Saranillio Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	195
11 Savage Whiteness The Dialectic of Racial Desire in The Young Savages (1961) Graham Cassano Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	214
12 Rita Moreno’s Hair Priscilla Peña Ovalle Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	231
Part 4. INTERSECTIONALITY, HOLLYWOOD, AND CONTEMPORARY POPULAR CULTURE
13 “Everything Glee in ‘America’ ” Context, Race, and Identity Politics in the Glee (2009–2015) Appropriation of West Side Story (1961) Ernesto R. Acevedo-Muñoz Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	249
14 Hip-Hop “Hearts” Ballet Utopic Multiculturalism and the Step Up Dance Films (2006, 2008, 2010) Mary Beltrán Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	266
15 Fakin’ da Funk (1997) and Gook (2017) Exploring Black/Asian Relations in the Asian American Hood Film Jun Okada Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	283
16 “Let Us Roam the Night Together” On Articulation and Representation in Moonlight (2016) and Tongues Untied (1989) Louise Wallenberg Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	301
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	319
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	321
Notes on Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	337
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	341

Language: English
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 314
Illustrations
- Other: 32 b-w photographs
Keywords: Hollywood; race; identity; intersectionality; ethnicity; gender; sexuality; nationality; cinema; movies; film; camera; video; aesthetics; ideology; film analysis; United States cinema; American cinema; Hollywood formula; representation

eBook

Published: November 15, 2019
ISBN: 9780813599359