Visible and Invisible Whiteness: American White Supremacy through the Cinematic Lens

231 Pages·2018·4.47 MB·English

by  Alice Mikal Craven

Visible and Invisible Whiteness
Alice Mikal Craven
Visible and Invisible
Whiteness
American White Supremacy through
the Cinematic Lens
Alice Mikal Craven
Department of Comparative Literature
American University of Paris
Paris, France
Department of Film Studies
American University of Paris
Paris, France
ISBN 978-3-319-76776-5 ISBN 978-3-319-76777-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76777-2
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Dedicated to Olivier and Zoe
and to Henriette Kasaruhanda
P
reface
The seeds for this book were planted a long time ago, and though I may
have invented some of the details as I have grown older, the memories still
persist. They may ultimately be myths that I invented for myself, but they
have certainly marked me. My grandmother ran a florist service from
home in the small town of Elliott, South Carolina, population one hun-
dred or so. There were three gas stations and three churches: There was
the Baptist church, the Methodist church, and the black church.
Apparently, my grandmother was the only white woman who ever entered
the black church, since she was in charge of the floral arrangements. When
I was six years old, she took me there and explained to me that this was a
church only for black people. It was a revelation to me that there could be
such a thing as a church only for black people.
When I was eight or nine, my elementary school in Durham, North
Carolina, became “integrated.” This entailed having one black child enter
my class. He was the only black who came to my school that year and his
name was John Wise. As I recall, I was one of the few people who ever
talked to him. Plenty of the other children seemed to be talking at him.
Only much later did I realize just how miserable he must have been in that
alienating situation. Samuel Fuller recounts a similar instance in his film
Shock Corridor (1963), a film which I have unfortunately not been able to
treat in detail in this book. I have thought about John Wise and the obsta-
cles facing him in being an American social experiment ever since I met
him and was reminded of this episode in my childhood when I first
watched Fuller’s film.
vii
viii PREFACE
When I was a bit older, maybe twelve, the pastor of the Baptist church
where my parents were members invited a young, upper-middle-class
black couple to join our congregation. During the Sunday service when he
welcomed the couple, white members of the congregation stood up one
by one and called for the pastor’s resignation. I told my mother I would
never set foot in that church again.
This book began to take shape in my head while I was working on the
Richard Wright Centennial Conference at the American University of
Paris in 2008. Later, when attending the James Baldwin Conference in
New York in 2011, the direction such a book might take was still vague
but felt more and more compelling. I was teaching a course on James
Baldwin at Eugene Lang College in New York in 2012 when Trayvon
Martin was killed. I learned of his death while doing research at the
Schomburg Center in Harlem. At the Schomburg, I was not quite sure
where my research was going to lead me, but there was a sense of urgency
about getting there. This book was in its home stretch when Heather
Heyer was killed in Charlottesville in 2017.
The world I grew up in was no uglier than the world in which I live
today, though my perspective has evolved and I look at it from across the
Atlantic and have done so for the past twenty-four years or so. I have spent
years reading and at times teaching the works of authors such as Maya
Angelou, James Baldwin, Chester Himes, and Richard Wright. I have also
written and taught about film directors who found themselves in new and
alienating environments. Adding to that twenty-four years of expatriation,
it seemed appropriate to me to look more closely at the world of the white
supremacist mythologies that grounded my childhood through the lens of
my profession. This is an academic book, but I would never have written
it if I were not haunted by my past and fearful about the world in which I
live today.
Paris, France Alice Mikal Craven
a
cknowledgments
I would like to thank the American University of Paris for a sabbatical
research period that allowed me to complete research on this book. I am
also grateful for an opportunity to teach and research in New York thanks
to a visiting professorship funded by Mellon and granted by the American
University of Paris. I am indebted to my past chair, Jula Wildberger, who
helped secure my sabbatical and to my current chair, Geoffrey Gilbert, for
his support in the final phases of the manuscript. My collaborations with
William E. Dow and Yoko Nakamura have been an invaluable source of
inspiration for thinking through this project. In particular, William made
some insightful suggestions at the inception of this project that enabled me
in shaping the book. Yoko has been extremely helpful in many of my proj-
ects. I owe great thanks to them both and hope to continue working with
them in the years to come.
At Palgrave, I have had the privilege of working with Shaun Vigil and
Glenn Ramirez, who have been gracefully patient with me in seeing this
project through to the end. I was also happy to get advice in the initial
planning stages from Palgrave editor Brigitte Shull. Her perspectives con-
tributed a great deal to the final shape of the project.
An earlier version of the first chapter of the book, “The Gangster in The
Devil Finds Work as a Template for Reading the Parisian Banlieues,”
appeared in Rich Blint and Douglas Field, eds., African American Review
46, no. 4 (Winter 2013): 573–586. Though the current chapter is altered
from the original article, I was grateful for my opportunity to work with
these editors. Our continued communication up to and throughout the
ix
x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
International James Baldwin conference, which I cohosted in May 2016,
has been a positive influence on my work.
I have had much support and encouragement from many of the partici-
pants of this and other conferences, and some of them, such as Rashida
K. Braggs, James Campbell, Anna Everett, and Douglas Field, have shared
their work with me. My colleagues, university librarians, and many others
at the American University of Paris have been supportive in many ways.
Ann Borel was helpful with the final submissions of the manuscript.
Isabelle Dupuy, Ann Mott, Sally Murray, and others aided me in locating
hard-to-find materials or walked me through important details of the
manuscript process. Mark Rostollan cheered me on when I got bogged
down in details, and Ursula Darien was always an encouraging presence.
Many colleagues and friends were supportive, and, in particular, Susan
Fox and Gail Hamilton never became impatient with my frustrations along
the way. Deborah Magocsi and Jason Boyd made suggestions on certain
portions of the manuscript when I was unsure if the tone was correct. My
family in the United States kept tabs on my progress and cheered me
along as well. My daughter Zoe was always solicitous, and I thank her for
her support. My biggest debt of thanks is to my husband, Olivier, who
during the final stages of writing had to listen every day to every single
detail of my thoughts and decisions concerning the manuscript. I guess he
will thank me for submitting it.
Finally, I take the words of Ossie Davis seriously when he claims that
“the social consequences of a book do not always act out the good inten-
tions of the author,” a remark he made in his 1968 exchange with James
Baldwin and William Styron concerning the publication of Styron’s novel
The Confessions of Nat Turner. Despite my well-intentioned efforts, I take
responsibility for any mistakes or negative consequences that might be
occasioned by this book.
c
ontents
1 Visible and Invisible Whiteness: An Introduction 1
2 Looking at American White Supremacy “Through a Glass
Darkly”: James Baldwin on Birth of a Nation 25
3 “A Monstrous Wrong”: James Agee and the Miraculous
Birth of a Nation 45
4 “The Colored Angle”: Contending Visions
of Imitation of Life 67
5 Having Forsaken Hollywood: Samuel Fuller’s “Art
House” White Dog 91
6 Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s “Western,” Whity 113
7 Cream Rises to the Top: Jean Renoir’s The Southerner 137
8 Invisible Whiteness mise en abyme: J’irai cracher
sur vos tombes 159
xi