Blog 5 - The Birth of a Nation, the first racist american movie

We talked about the image of African-Americans in movies and it made me think about the origins of racism in cinema. I remember one of my history classes in high school when we were studying segregation and my teacher showed us a part of the movie The Birth of a Nation (Griffith, 1915). It was the first big budget production in American cinema, and it was also one of the most controversial one. The Birth of a Nation takes place during the Civil War, with a southern point of view and openly against colored people. This propaganda movie shows the Ku-Klux-Klan as a legitimate solution against the raise of chaos created by black people greedy for power. When it came out (50 years after the end of the Civil War), it gave rise to riots in New-York, but still was used as a mean to propaganda by some extreme political parties.

In The Birth of a Nation, black people are shown as the reason why America falls apart. Griffith sends the message that terror is the unique way to struggle against the threat of Black People on the American floor. He shows them trying to rape white women (that was one of the biggest fears of racist people at that time), acting like animals, creating madness during political debates… The main point was to persuade the audience of the black people’s lack of humanity. For example, black deputies in the movie are depicted as clowns whereas black domestics are highlighted in a positive way.  It was a real recruitment tool for the KKK and it created a rise in the number of lynching against colored people at that time.

Even if associations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People tried, in vain, to censure this movie, I find it incredible that such a movie could have come out at a time when KKK had been forbidden since 1871 and black people had already fought for their rights during the Civil War. People were actually going to see this movie in theaters, and it was very successful. I think it really shows to what extend pop culture can make people accept some ideas from the dominant ideology, without even challenging it. Of course it was a long time ago, but all the examples that we study about racism in pop culture today are descendants of this kind of movie, and could have been avoided if people at that time had had a sense of critic that we try to get in this class.

Feminism and Pop Culture : The case of True Detective

This blog will be about a show that I love but in the same time that I have to criticize for the image of women it delivers. True detective is according to me one of the best shows of 2014, mostly thanks to its two amazing main characters played by Matthew McConaughey and Wooy Harrelson. True Detective is a serie about men’s world, in which every man is worse than the other. In this show we are given the point of view of two white heterosexual men, and the lack of female characters has upset many people. Indeed, in the whole season there is not even one woman detective or police officer. The only women that are in the show are either prostitutes, corpses, drug addicts, or cheated and cheating wife. The most important woman of the show is Maggie, Marty’s wife, a one-dimensional character, who is only depicted as “a cop’s wife”. Bu to take vengeance on her husband who cheated on her, she decides to have sex with Rust. But when Rust realizes that she used him to hurt her husband he blames her for seducing him, as if a men could not control himself from the moment he is aroused. She accepts the blame and we are given the message that anything a men does is the woman’s fault because she tempted him.

Moreover, in the second episode of True Detective, Marty seems really outraged when he meets an underage prostitute. When he starts to blame the woman who employs the young girl, she answers “Girls walk this earth all the time screwing for free. So why is it you add business to the mix and boys like you can’t stand that thought? Because suddenly you don’t own it the way you thought you did.” And even if at the moment Marty seems disgusted, he will prove 7 years later that the woman was right by sleeping with the young prostitute.

After being accused of giving misogynistic messages, True Detective creator, Nic Pizzolatto defended himself by saying that the show is given from two misogynistic men points of view, and that men hurting women is one of the major themes of the serie. It is true that True Detective also gives a bad image of men since they are either monsters, killers, alcoholics, or men who can’t love and respect women as they should. Instead of loving them, they hurt them, and the whole serie is about women killed in a mysterious way. There are no models in this show, and I think it is quite pessimistic, but it is what gives True Detective all its gloomy atmosphere that makes it different from other shows. 

The racist video of European Commission

Two years ago a video-clip published by The European Commission created a very bad buzz. (you can watch the video HERE). The advertise was supposed to promote the enlargement of the European Union toward the youth. But the video only stayed online for 2 hours before to be removed by the Commission. A lot of viewers criticized the video, accusing it to be racist.

The video takes place in an abandoned factory, a white girl dressed like Uma Thurman in Kill Bill is supposed to represent Europe. In front of her three different opponents arrive, apparently they come from Asia, India, and Brazil (three emerging countries). They seem to be very aggressive toward the white woman, and each of them is dressed with a traditional outfit from his country, and attacks the woman with martial art, sword or capoeira. But the woman remains calm, even if she is threatened; she just closes her eyes and splits several times to create a circle around her opponents, and takes the power back from them. The video ends with the slogan “The more numerous we are, the stronger we get”.

Obviously this video was very clumsy since it can give the idea that Europe wants to take the power (and wealth) back from the emerging countries. The outfits, the way of fighting and the aggressiveness of the three men give a trivial and boor image of these countries, in a threatening position, in opposition to Europe which is depicted through the images as a modern and thoughtful Union.

Moreover the intertextuality refers to Kill Bill which is a very violent movie from Tarantino and it adds a sense of hatred, and war to the ad. Even if at the end everybody seat and seem to be more peaceful, it is only thanks to the European woman, and it delivers the idea that without the EU there would be only aggressiveness and chaos in the world.

We can be very surprised that such a video was aimed to be used as a promotion of the EU, and that no one noticed the racist issue of it before broadcasting the video. Anyway the audience immediately complained about it and a lot of European media criticized it afterward, showing that such an important institution as the European Commission should really be more careful about the messages they try to deliver to the audience. 

Marie-Jeanne Layec

Ellen Page's Coming Out

I would like to use the Neo-Aristotelian Criticism that I learned in class to analyze the rhetorical impact of a speech which really moved me (I recommend you to watch it there : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hlCEIUATzg). So here is the rhetorical situation: The speaker is the 27 years old actress Ellen Page, known for her roles in Juno, X-Men or Inception. She gave her speech on the 14^th of February 2014 during an LGBT (lesbians, gays, bisexual, transsexual) youth conference in Las Vegas. So most of her audience that day was young homosexuals, or gay-friendly. But Ellen Page also knew that her speech was recorded and was going to be broadcasted on TV and on the internet, so her audience is much larger than only young gay people. The exigence for this speech was for Ellen to come out as a gay woman, to share her experience and to influence the audience by giving them the strength to do the same that she did. The constraints were of course to put herself in a dangerous position since she revealed some very personal information about her in front of an audience and cameras. 

That day, Ellen Page made the announcement that she is gay in a very moving and personal speech. "I'm here today because I am gay, and because maybe I can make a difference, to help others have an easier and more hopeful time” she said, “I am tired of hiding and I am tired of lying by omission”. She stood for struggling against the heterocentrist hegemony that we are living in and to fight against all the norms that the society imposes to us. In that way she seems like a round character because she breaks the socially accepted rules and she even criticizes the industry she is part of.

What we can retain from this speech is the sincerity, and the empathy of the actress. Indeed, even if she tells about her own story, she always includes the others by using “you” and “us”. This is her way to say that every young gay people have to go through the same obstacles and pains. But even then, she still talks about her personal story (storytelling) in order to give some legitimacy to her “advocacy”, and to prove people that she is just like them. Besides, she talks as part of the group, thanks to “us” and “our” and raises some pride to be part of this community: she positions herself as one voice of the suffering gay youth.

Moreover, in order to be coherent she admits that she has integrated the consumer society’s norms and standards (being pretty every day for example) and by saying that, she conveys that struggling against these norms is really difficult and that she may have failed to do so. She also admits that she is making her coming out for a selfish reason: She is tired to have to hide and to suffer from it. That’s a way for her to play the honesty card, as an imperfect woman who can have some weaknesses, whom everybody can relate to, and it makes her a believable speaker.

Her way to deliver her message is, in my opinion, the most effective factor of her speech. We can hear in her voice all the emotions she is going through, and because she doesn’t read any notes it really gives the feeling that she really means what she is saying.

Finally, I think that the overall impact is really effective because her story is moving, and because her speech matches the fidelity factor since she shares the same values than the audience. She conveys a moral which is to accept who you really are and to be proud of it. She puts herself as an example for the youth LGBT community and encourages the others to follow her lead.

Sons of Anarchy : A misogynistic of feminist show ?

Last Wednesday we talked about countering women stereotypes with this country music video and I asked myself which image all the shows that I am addicted to give about women. So the first example which appeared in my mind was Sons of Anarchy. In case you haven’t heard of it before, Sons of Anarchy is an American TV serie about a violent motorcycle club in the fictional town of Charming. 

My friends always find it weird that I love this show since all the plot is about this criminal gang which deals guns and makes its own laws, with its strong own culture and family values. But why girls couldn’t be interested in bikers stories? Some people could say that girls don’t have any figures to refer to in such TV shows, but in the case of Sons of Anarchy there are some crucial female characters. In fact, if only 3 or 4 women have an important part in the show, they are strong-willed characters with complex personality and some real problems to deal with. But the complexity of Sons of Anarchy lies in the fact that these important female characters are in opposition with the misogynistic world they’re living in.

In the show, women are often treated as sexual object, they are the “groupies” who can be cheated on as long as their men haven’t decided to make them their “old ladies” (their regular girlfriends or wives). Even the “old ladies” can’t take part of the club’s decisions processes and are just supposed to be housewives waiting for their men to come back home alive (or not). Most of the women in Sons of Anarchy are drug addicts, prostitutes or porn stars. In fact, vice-president and main character Jax Teller decides to invest in a whorehouse because he thinks it is more “legitimate” than selling guns, and everybody seems to welcome this decision as if they were finally doing something right and ethical.

Nevertheless, some women appear to be the most authoritative characters of the show. The first one is Gemma Teller, mother of Jax Teller and Clay Morrow’s old lady, president of the club. Gemma is very calculative and powerful, and she manages to achieve her goals by subtly manipulating all the other characters. She is almost always armed and she doesn’t hesitate to hurt people in order to protect her family. The second central character is Tara Knowles, Jax Teller’s girlfriend, who differs from the stereotypical girls since she’s a brilliant surgeon with a strong temper. During all the seasons she tries to take her family away from the club, she wants to leave Charming and start a new life. Will Jax agree to quit his friends, family and bikers’ culture to live thanks to his wife’s income? It may be a bit too progressive for the Sons of Anarchy…

So I think that Sons of Anarchy is a great example of what struggling against hegemony means. The men struggle against the law, they only obey to their club’s rules, but women fight in their own way as well. They can be violent too, but the most efficient way is by influencing the men without them even knowing it. 

Marie-Jeanne Layec

Picture : http://www.examiner.com/article/sons-of-anarchy-season-6-finale-no-reviving-tara-from-gruesome-bloody-death