Hören und Lesen

Tritt ein in eine Welt voller Geschichten

  • Mehr als 600.000 Hörbücher und E-Book
  • Jederzeit kündbar
  • Exklusive Titel und Originals
  • komfortabler Kinder-Modus
Abonniere jetzt
se-device-image-1200x1200
Cover for Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White from Uncle Tom to O. J. Simpson

Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White from Uncle Tom to O. J. Simpson

Sprachen
Englisch
Format
Kategorie

Sachbuch

The black man suffering at the hands of whites, the white woman sexually threatened by the black man. Both images have long been burned into the American conscience through popular entertainment, and today they exert a powerful and disturbing influence on Americans' understanding of race. So argues Linda Williams in this boldly inquisitive book, where she probes the bitterly divisive racial sentiments aroused by such recent events as O. J. Simpson's criminal trial. Williams, the author of Hard Core, explores how these images took root, beginning with melodramatic theater, where suffering characters acquire virtue through victimization.

The racial sympathies and hostilities that surfaced during the trial of the police in the beating of Rodney King and in the O. J. Simpson murder trial are grounded in the melodramatic forms of Uncle Tom's Cabin and The Birth of a Nation. Williams finds that Stowe's beaten black man and Griffith's endangered white woman appear repeatedly throughout popular entertainment, promoting interracial understanding at one moment, interracial hate at another. The black and white racial melodrama has galvanized emotions and fueled the importance of new media forms, such as serious, "integrated" musicals of stage and film, including The Jazz Singer and Show Boat. It also helped create a major event out of the movie Gone With the Wind, while enabling television to assume new moral purpose with the broadcast of Roots. Williams demonstrates how such developments converged to make the televised race trial a form of national entertainment.

When prosecutor Christopher Darden accused Simpson's defense team of "playing the race card," which ultimately trumped his own team's gender card, he feared that the jury's sympathy for a targeted black man would be at the expense of the abused white wife. The jury's verdict, Williams concludes, was determined not so much by facts as by the cultural forces of racial melodrama long in the making. Revealing melodrama to be a key element in American culture, Williams argues that the race images it has promoted are deeply ingrained in our minds and that there can be no honest discussion about race until Americans recognize this predicament.

© 2020 Princeton University Press (E-Book): 9780691201337

Erscheinungsdatum

E-Book: 6. Oktober 2020

Tags

    Wähle dein Abo-Modell

    • Über 600.000 Titel

    • Lade Titel herunter mit dem Offline Modus

    • Exklusive Titel und Storytel Originals

    • Sicher für Kinder (Kindermodus)

    • Einfach jederzeit kündbar

    Am beliebtesten!

    Unlimited

    Für alle, die unbegrenzt hören und lesen möchten.

    18.90 € /Monat
    7 Tage kostenlos
    • 1 Konto

    • Unbegrenzter Zugriff

    • Jederzeit kündbar

    • Wechsel zu Basic jederzeit möglich

    Jetzt ausprobieren

    Basic

    Für alle, die gelegentlich hören und lesen.

    7.90 € /Monat
    7 Tage kostenlos
    • 1 Konto

    • 20 Stunden/pro Monat

    • Jederzeit kündbar

    • Abo-Upgrade jederzeit möglich

    Jetzt ausprobieren