Cinematic Identity

by Patton, Cindy

• ISBN13: 9780816634125
• ISBN10: 0816634122
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-11-09
• Publisher: Univ of Minnesota Pr

Summary

Though largely forgotten today, the 1949 film Pinkyhad a significant impact on the world of cinema. Directed by Elia Kazan, the film was a box office success despite dealing with the erars"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 Pinkyas 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. It was films like Pinky, Patton contends, that helped lay the groundwork for a shift in popular understanding of social identity that was essential to white Americars"s ability to accept the legitimacy of the civil rights movement. The production of these films, beginning with 1949rs"s Gentlemanrs"s Agreement, coincided with the arrival of the Method school of acting in Hollywood, which demanded that performers inhabit their charactersrs" 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 offer new perspectives on contemporary identity politics, from feminism to the gay rights movement. Cindy Patton holds the Canadian Research Chair in Community Culture and Health at Simon Fraser University, where she is professor of womenrs"s studies and sociology. Her books include Inventing AIDS, Fatal Advice: How Safe-Sex Education Went Wrong, and Globalizing AIDS(Minnesota, 2002).

Author Biography

Cindy Patton is professor of women's studies and sociology at Simon Fraser University

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
American Celluloid: New Medium, New Citizen	p. 1
Back to the Movies	p. 1
Race and Sexuality: Some Analytic Caveats	p. 12
Acting the Citizen	p. 18
In the Hearts of Men	p. 21
To Die For	p. 25
Popularizing "the Problem": Politics as Melodrama	p. 31
Into the Closet	p. 37
Alienating Queer	p. 43
Censorship and the Problem Films	p. 47
Censoring Race	p. 47
Cinematic Prohibition	p. 53
Race Mixing	p. 56
From Image to Story	p. 59
When a Kiss Is Not a Kiss	p. 65
Censoring Pinky	p. 67
"Prejudice" and Epithet	p. 71
The Dominoes Fall	p. 75
Sacrilege and Race versus Sexuality	p. 79
Acting Up: The Performing American	p. 81
Signs of Apartheid	p. 81
Acting History/The Historicity of Acting	p. 84
Sound, Class, and Narrative	p. 90
Narrative Sublation: Recalling-Forgetting History	p. 99
The Question of Acting	p. 101
Two Conversations: Black and White Americans on Film	p. 107
Reading (in) "White Time": Black Performance and the Demand for Literacy	p. 107
The Victim-Witness Story	p. 112
Distinguishing Wrongs	p. 115
An Ear for the Master's Tropes	p. 119
"White Time"/Black Place	p. 126
A Final Word, a Feeling, a Hope	p. 136
Pinky: A Synopsis	p. 139
Notes	p. 143
References	p. 173
Filmography	p. 179
Index	p. 182
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