Unspeakable Images Ethnicity and the American Cinema EDITED BY Lester D. Friedman UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS Urbana and ChicagoElla Shohat 8 Ethnicities-in-Relation: Toward a Multicultural Reading of American Cinema Debates concerning minoritarian and postcolonial discourse, ranging in full force in prestigious literature departments, have as F yet had relatively litle resonance in cinema studies. Issues of ethnic E -and racial representation have been marginalized within the field, ‘perhaps on the assumption that such narrowly “sociological” mat- E fers are somehow unworthy of the discipline’s newly achieved for- ‘mal sophistication. The dobates over etfmicity and race tend to be Tegarded, furthermore, as having only limited significance, or as be- ing relevant only to a specific corpus of films. But ethnicity and race F inhere in virtually all films, not only in those where ethnic issues “appear on the “epidermic” surface of the text. I propose that ethnic E ity is culturally ubiquitous and textually submerged, thus hoping to challenge the widespread approach to ethnicity as limited to “‘con- tent” analysis, as well as to reconsider the critical approaches to- = ward the (informal) canon on cinema studies from a multiculturaist theoretical frame. The disciplinary assumption that some “ethnic” s others ape HOt is ultimately based on the view that certain grou ee a SiS oe en Tor pain oe Tot, The ion reflects the imaginary oF the dominant group which envisions itself as the “universal” or the “essential” American nation, and thus somehow “beyond” or “above” ethnicity. The very word eth- “hic, then, reflects a peripheralizing strategy premised on an implicit ‘contrast of “norm” and “other.” much as the term minority often ‘earries with it an implication of minor, lesser, or subaltern. Restrict- E ing the quality of “ethnicity” to particular communities, further-eee more, is linked to a ghettoizing discourse which considers et and racial groups in isolation. By projecting “minorities vs if lived apart from the lager culturalhistorcal dynamics ofthe Unier States, this discourse implicitly suggests their “special,” allochrome, quasi anthropological status. (Anthropological teats, as Johooee ne Blan argues, have located the “other” in temporally distinet space different from that of the speaking subject)" This essentializing and ahistorical discourse masks the fact that no group exists in © seed uum. In a multiethnic society communities are necessari gated economically, historically, politically, and culturally i another, subjected to permeable boundaries of identity, The word ethnic in contempora i ‘cont ry parlance often evokes ‘more than sentimental traces ofthe customs and cuisine of the og ‘country. In this sense the adjective ethnic implies a liberal-pluratistc hegemonic national imaginary projects (North) America se const : 0 ca as const tuted by an Anglo-American core, subsequently supplemented ty ethnic “accretions.” Eurocentric historiography posit quash magic) of America, the pilgrims, the Britans, and the pioneers elding Native American el Agios American perspectives and volces. The liberal concept of 2 happy Plurality of “hyphenated Americans” posits a parniiooqeahere 4 slstus, a5 if that which precedes the hyphen--"“Alticany’ "Grek ‘Dutely” (the categories themselves level the continental with the national)—alluded to more-or-less equivalent historia experiences ultimately subordinated to the melioristic teleology implied by the Post-hyphen “American.” The i tg Whenoy one poop Sat nclaneeah ee z ih singe context oust fr ition of subordination to one ° me ane =" Seaready Broup and at the same time in a (os \Yfelation of domination toward another, Flexible contradictory tar ee nny Int“ agree teammate get cyt, ead Ng uy pe Tae he rm re a a 8 eC tei Eh ent Sane eat oe aie ape ft ol ir eager rig see epee ance wae arti tonal poss ro eae geen Aug ee ‘onstructionist formulations, we may argi F and racial identities at pa * fure—for example the striking A\ Ethnicities-in-Relation/Eilla Shohat 217 undermining legitimate struggles for recuperation of cultures ive unienpone brutal ruptres and are in 2 consant Pro s of forging their communal identity, it also has the advantage scending essentialist noons of identity, Without falling io Sails taps and yet without being polly paalyaes ae cular moments of history, articulated in snd without posit- mn to parallel and opposing collectivities. At Fen otic concept of communities, we may speak of ean ices of en : i Focussing on character stereotypes and social mimesis, ned s of America’s ethnicities have tended to pit an isola i > against a fixed, white-American power structure. Joy” have mot generally attempted to register the structural analo- ("4 ‘ S underlying Hollywood representation of “subaltern” groups as © « ail as the interplay of social and sexual displacements, projections, (3 , a nd dialogisms among the diverse ethnicities—whether marginal _ ized, hegemonic, or situated between. Even the recounting of the Sarl ‘on the dominant ethnic cul- infuential role of minortaian groupe on the dominant cub interethnic influ- ‘American music and dance—tends to ignore the interethnic i noes among the diverse of “margins” MY ERY pal ae category? constantly appropriating the margins, even ps ey ret se ee en wey maintaining what Edward Said has termed its ‘postional supe - seeing et ES nc ting tsi a a Peper” ebay lon of pc impr aire fees rt ae he atl a gta er cme Ce Pepto dina a ston ate ting oe Socal perspective but also of geographical representation. ao ca ear et Pee the United States, Since all groups, except for Native Amer- oye21S Unspeakable tmages jcans, descend from some other part of the globe, Hollywood films’ fa den om ore he pc oth pe, lye nities. And since immigration is at the core of the American ethos, the sympathetic portrayal of certain lands of ethnic origin—for i ‘example European lands—and the caricaturing of others—for ex: ample African—indirectly legitimates links to Europe while under ‘mining links to Asia and Africa. The question is complicated, furthermore, by the fact that immigrants themselves played a major + role in Hollywood, occupying a contradictory position. Thus the | study of American cinema is necessarily as well the study of the: projected “American Dream” of these immigrants, their manner of; perceiving the image that hegemonic America would desire for ity | self. Their agility in expressing, and more often repressing and sub- 4 limating, America’s multiethnic dimension offers a barometer for the sociopolitical context within which these images were produced. As late as the 19506 and 1960s, films shot or set in New York, f6f ‘example, On the Town (1949) or It's Always Fair Weather (1955), tended, to downplay the ethnic and racial diversity of the metropolis. De spite the role of Jewish immigrants in the industry, Jewishness, ample, was often reduced to the presence of closet Jews. The rebim f” Generar’ Agreement (947) provides a perfect emplum of this polite embarassment in the “abe” for tn thie nae alton sother’y snes Oe et Ethnographic cultural critique has significant implications for fl analysis because film narrative entails not only ethos (character} bi also ethnos (peoples). The assumption that only certain films elevant for the discussion of ethnicity is based on a superfici {hematc amination ofthe fic tet hati whether oF not explicly foregrounds ethnic conflicts or complementari But thi formulation ofthe sue ignores such consideration body language of the actors or characters and the intonations oF cents which define even dominant groups as ethnic in the sense; displaying specific cultural codes. Lily-white films portraying inn ‘uous suburban romances are also ethnic in that they reproduce ethnically coded language. Cinematic space, far from being et cally neutral, is the subliminal site of competing ethnic and. rac discourses having specific resonances for spectators, thi constituted by and who constitute these discourses. The orchest tion of speech, looks, make-up, costume, decor, music and-d and locale implies a set of cultural codes whose “white” e ‘composition often remains invisible to those who have power Yngiib ene iae AN ate ee Ethnicites-in-Relation/Ella Shohat 219 nore the issue of ethnicity in dominant films set in hegemonic and homogeneous environments would be a5 mistaken as to ignore is- © sues of gender and secuakty in films privileging the male presence, _ for example in war or Western films, in which women and sexuality per se tend to be absent from the narrative but issues of sexual pol- ‘tics and gender roles “haunt” the film, ‘Filmic images and sounds come inevitably “saturated” with eth- fic and racial resonances. The Hollywood linguistic paradigm, for ‘example, is inscribed within the play of artifical hierarchies of lan- ‘guages, dialects, and accents. That Cecil B. DeMille's biblical epics depict both the ancient Egyptians and the Israelites as speaking En- ‘glish, and that the audiovisual presence of God in The Ter Command- -imants (1956) is conveyed through the voice of male, upper-class ENorth America, has clear racial, national, and theological overtones. E The same filmic images or sounds have different reverberations for distinct communities.” An iterative® shot of a familial Sunday visit to church, @ character crossing himself or herself, of the sound of E church bells to announce a communal rhythm of birth, marriage Paid death—to take typical examples—all address themselves to a ‘ulturally prepared interlocutor presumed to be, if not Christian, at st familiar with the images and sounds of Christian culture.” But While for the implied (white) “Christian” spectator these images id sounds suppose ‘0 evoke an extra-cinematic norm, for Ue non (Christian they might just as easily provoke a sense of exclusion, and ih the case of Jewish culture come burdened with overtones of op- Session. (In Jewish poetry, for example, church bells often signify ) The shots of Mount Rushmore in North by Northwest (1959) rly evoke for the Euro-American patriotic roots and links to “forefathers,” but for the Dakotan Native American, they pre- bly might elicit a quite different set of feelings having to do ‘rupture and dispossession. A dialogical structural shift in eth perspective would change the emotional and ideological valence . ‘such images. An intercultural reading, thus, would articulate the ic ethnic assumptions, problematizing the text's universal rms as exhibited through its formal view of ethnicity as culturally ubiquitous and textually sub- ‘can hopefully lead to a reconceptualization of the analysis ‘ethnicity in the cinema, opening its present boundaries. Rather Ethan submit our analysis to the films’ discourse of “ethnic” themes, ‘seemingly nonethnic or ethnically irrelevant text can be re ded as a field for discovery, excavation, and reconstruction of ‘and racial con‘radictions. And instead of the traditional.erpeanuote smages Ethnicites-in-Relation/ENa Shohat 221 age” analysis applied to an unproblematized notion of “minorit ethnic representation can be studied in terms of the ers etiones which permeate the tex. In Vertigo (1958), forex Be imate and female (white) protagonists are possessed by a tl matic past~Scote's vertigo, his obssession with “Madeleine's tion m Carlota, and then with Judy’ reincarnation of Madel es crenoloical layers of the psyche, however can aso be ethnographically, as that hidden strata of the psyche, The suppressed Spanish Mesean history of Son tne ern civilization. He liberates the ancient Hebrew ark from ille- ‘Egyptian possession while also rescuing it from immoral Nezi (ol, allegorically reinforcing American and Jewish solidarity th respect to the evil Nazis and their Arab assistants. The geopo- ical alignments here are as clear as in the inadvertent allegory of ‘Ten Commandments, in which a wasrish Charlton Heston is de to incarnate Hebrew Moses struggling against the evil Egyp- féans, thus allegorizing in the context of the 1950s the contemporary Riruggle of the West, Israel, and the United States against Arab- ptians. That at the end of Raiders of the Lose Ark it is the Ameri- fan army which is made to be the guardian of the top-secret ark— th the active complicity of the ark—strengthens this evocation of political alliances. In the ancient past, Egypt dispossessed the sbrews of their ark, as do the Nazis in the 1930s. In a time tunnel rrison Ford is sent to fight the Nazis in the name of a Jewish ine—the word Jewish is of course never mentioned—and in the Piurse of events the rescuer is rescued by the rescuee. A fantasy of [eration from a history of victimization is played out by Steven ESbielberg, using biblical myths of wonders worked against ancient ptians this time redeployed against the Nazis—miracles absent ing the Holocaust. The Hebrew ark itself performs miracles and Ives the Nazis, saving Dr. Jones from the Germans who, unlike "Americans, do not respect the divine lew that prohibits looking ‘the Holy of Holies. The Jewish religious prohibition of looking at d's image and the prohibition of graven images (and from that ‘cultural deemphasis on visual arts) is triumphant over the oe istian prediliction for religious visualization. The film here in wentrate on : a ical paradox of cinematic i is The Fl spear ek eoloay of Rides See a ean wi dbo pees Fspectatorial visual pleasure. formulating identities in relational terms has the advantage of binding: Omer id might be analyzed through such inad vial inadvertant verbal r tusions, for example, the city’s Spanish name and ‘arcutectne i cluding sits “such ‘as. Mistion Dolocs, ie ugh the haunting iconographic presence of 4 ce of th lot Valdez, Her dspossesion from welt aed maternity and final despairing suicide, allegorize a series of North American Mexican relations in which her framed muteness in the museum Cee wey her Hispanic voicelessness. A metaphor for her ci Got an be reo ony a the "wht gat a es ‘sa ‘s—as well as’ Hitchcock’ ti tine apn) Sone, eee aca “3 em ting unconscious of American Noy highly productive for or ven in narratives that explicitly foreground racial and nati ps sea wc ney rl Series, the third world becomes not only a space wherein fing seit The origins of archeology, the search forthe “00 of sionism. However the Iaina foes segs oa ae vision in which Wester r apnea "maT Tad therefore, will explore the repressed ethnic and racial contra- Fictions, transgressing the segregationist discourse on ethnic [presentation a limited to either third-world films or to narratives Flepicting peoples of color. In fact, we may reconsider not only spe- texts, but also whole genres according to such theoretical pa- From The Jazz Singer (1927) and Sting Time (1996) through “Gang’s Ail Here (1943) and Porgy and Bess (1958), to Funny Girl E1968) and New York, New York (1977), the musical genre in particular ‘has articulated ethnic heterogeneity, either explicitly in its themesT+ sempomuoie unages Evhmicites-in-Relation/Etla Shohat 223 or, more commonly, implicitly through music as lance. 54 i Sea aa ah et a, nt indirect expression to white ethnic imaginary.) Carnivalesque p rere nit wera) Crane World, Part One (1981), meanwhile, satirically underline latent eth experiences that classical musical comedy usually glosses over. arcs el ot ely Sw core ceed co eo mci Phasizing a relational discourse on ethnicity analyzed through Sete dee ea a eh sce a Age ea me from which more general methodological lessons can be extra lated for ethnicty and representation ns A" 9 preset, on the levels of narrative, miseen-ctne, 2 hme rattrl and mula Historic sical has had a somewhat special relation to Hitec rates since the advent of sound opened the ‘um to preexisting Aftican and Latin-American expression in Frsic and dence, and subsequently to all forms of performance ith Uhe coming of sound, Euro-American producers and owners of fim industry became the arbiters and filters of black music on sereen, exploiting its popularity at the expense of African crcan musicians." The exclusion of African and Latin Ameri Zins from access to production, scripting, direction, distribution, ‘exhibition is therefore especally stiking in the production of musicals. The musical genre allows us to illuminate the dialectics nce of absence of marginalized, groups, even in easly {white-cast films. The occasi aul re Ca ess mua ocurin the fantasy space oT F skal numbers, asm FATIH) and IPs The Dialectics of Presence/Absence In “Entertainment and Utopia” Richard Dyer analyzes the Holywood musical as performing an artistic "change ot signe whereby the negatives of social existence are turned ¥ ae ad Late are ea tvs of attic bansutation.® The gus flere a sopian vl a i ee La tere ERIE term the fell le pee) that, the vr is ways in which efinic cultures penetrate the s LO wey eng represented by chic and rail Themes or ve PT ene conic sraigs ofthe presence of absence of ar sinalized ethnic grouos isthe minstrel figure, constituting a kin Sockery of blackness. The tatition of HacKface recital was espe F cally popular in musicals—for | ‘example, Al Jolson ae ed F (33), Fred Astaire in Swing Time, Micky Rooney and Judy Gar Uh Babes im Arma (192), and Bing, Crosby in Dixie (943), featuring Eine life of a “pioneer” minstrel Dan Emmett. The presence of ickness” in the form of a mask, as well as the veiled presence ‘AieancAmerican mask, and dance in numerous fllms_—"Remem- “ber My Forgotten. Man” in Goldiggers of 1939 and “Fascinating F yt’ in Girl Crary (1943)—only denotes African-American ab> E sence from the screen. In fact, historically, minstrel shovis evolved ieely im the North and were performed on the basis of lle sg; eee contact with Southern culture and slavery, or even, for ‘matter, with African Americans. The African-American eee apparent in body movements or gestures appropriated from fincke or example “Loulsana Hayride” in The Band Wagon (1959) tpeiDeoadway Rhythm” in Singin’ im the Rain—in which the pe sical’s utopia provides the sensation, as Jane Feuet pulsi-arwl it would “feet like tobe free.” Fredric Jameson suggests that ong ‘ust look not only for ideological manipulation but also for the kerr nal of utopian fantasy whereby entertainment constitutes itself as a projected fulfillment of what is desired and absent within the socio. Political status quo." It is precisely the musicals intrinsic evocation j of social harmony, accentuated in music and dance, that makes the Sense appropriate for discussing ethnicities-in-relation, And it is precisely the musica’s “management” of harmony that makes ex's category of community, of collective activity and communal identity, ethnically problematic. The “imagined community’= of: the classical musical comedy is often limited to the dominant ethnic | ‘group, eliding even a possible “management” of interracial collec: five harmony. This elision can take various forms, most of which point to the purist exclusionary nature of the musical’s communal. = ity. Communal harmony, whether set in the Midwest in Mec! Me in St. Louis (1944) or Oklahoma! (1955); in New York in Demes (1994) or ‘Shall We Dance (197); or in Hollywood in Show Girl in Hollywood (1930) or Singin” in the Rain (1952), is a monolithically white harUAT Speers image 1g yop hemask bot tunes etsy aad REE Re TE | ‘musicals, then, African Americans ten, Suppressed historical voice but also voice because various black musical the screen with white stars, authori ided to constitute not only. (on basically African-American cultural products.!® A similar dialectic of presence other subaltern groups, and Japanese in the "Les Girls” number in Les Girls (1997); of Ch nese in “Shanghai Lit” in Footlight Parade (1933); or of Native Amer jcans in “Crazy Horse” in The Girl Most Likel Phantasm of the “other” within the musical numbers, seemingly unrelated to the liy-ody language of Anglo-American culture, which had stigmatized expressive gestures or bodily undulations as lof backward and uncultivated societies. In The Jazz Singer, F the older immigrant generation is associated with melodramatic ges- " geulation, while the eagerto-assimilate younger generation incar- E nated by Al Jolson uses more expressive gestures when in blackface, Ndevice employed not only in musical sequences but also in E Straightforwardly dramatic sequences. Jackie RabinowitziJack Rob- in’s Wdentity crises is articulated in blackface. His mirror reflects not teral self, but the image of the Jewish community, echoing as aes ze pale tee meng = a ee (1953). In “When Love Goes Wrong,’” ie 3 wai eras Oe oe ang contest evokes an Arab cultural presence. But when the camett aoe see, black children tap dancing. A Process of con< q ae \, then, superimposes on the distant “other’—the Arab— ae liar “‘other”—the African American, e ethnic consciousness of the late 1° I Pe rigrerengehitooey ere i groups via "Root lke recuperation ofthe past, Thus we find | et te mip Reon ho fu 27, Fame (1980), and ‘Dirty 7 air (9 Om nd Sk eee Om) oe reve whiin ng Chesney tein music in an See itinerant ack, culture, such fms as Bye Bye Birdie (1969) deploy Euro Ramla rere wi mere comin wae Aa some A eae woman /itagren ie weber oe eon the ‘musicals of the 1980s about the 1950s and early 19606. Sipe eae | inte aaa eee films: moment lesir ethnic communal utopia, her fac rel prs died ei cop tp rose ante aces, Ory Dg, luctior ir 2 perenne oe be oat face ‘the ma: lized white ing-class or Je als Spam poe ugh the music and dance are African and Latin American. Ethnic Allegories Although incorporating coma i ating or alluding to “subaltern” tes through music and dance, the Hollywood musical brought behaved,” domestined version of ssa Eonsameae ee8.2. Al Jolson in blackface: «, contradictions. ee ec ; le suggests, the “call ot his race.” u ae bred ot Jewish and black ident in Fito 7 ae displacements and dialogisms within the ‘The American its ip = iio evn sin ie ata oat esc ed nee Pi a ef Sg a We BGs Oral rave pei! ema ‘le Se a ine nly ee = 7 of the film the two conflicting Crd, eben Na re msi ae “mammy” to his sing Mm Pa. cee comincea dues ing ets 82, Jewish minstrel figure as the site o Ethnicities-in-Relation/Ella Shoat 231 4 a musical kinship between Afro-American “blue fine “blue note” of Hasidic chant” and George Gersh- Grid Yidclish folk tunes with African-American melodies in ith analyzing the structural analogies in the representa- finalized communities, for example, the sirulacral pres- and Jews in liberal films from the 1940s such as Piiky an's Agreement, we may also examine intertextual dimen- Gubaltern cultures and their analogical “structure of feel Concept of situated multivalent ethnic relations is well by Zelig, which ultimately concerns a bizarre chameleon 6 haa an uncanny talent for taking on the accent and eth- ‘Obviously “white” and Jewish, Zetig cha- is to become wasr, Native American, in, Trish, Chinese, and Mexican, thus “condensing” ‘ethnic and racial plurality.* Each particular metamor- ‘the multiethnic protagonist bears its particular burden of yeverberation, illuminating the latent intercultural "struc Hing” which undergirds them. Zelig’ recurrent chamele- “fo blackness, for example, is deeply rooted in the Jewish in Europe. Medieval European iconography contrasted image of the synagogue with the white of the church, an DRY which transmuted itelf in the nineteenth century into ¥F the “black Jew” common in end-of-the-century racist Polish noble, Adam G. de Gurowski, reporting, on his voy- 1857 wrote that “Numbers of Jews have Bhcatest resemblance to the American mulattoes. Sallow carna- Heomplexion, thick lips, crisped black hair. Of all the Jewish Félition scattered over the globe one-fourth lives in Poland. 1am, re, well acquainted with their features. On my arrival to this ithe United States] I took every light mulatto for a Jew." Y Wegener called Jews “white negroes,” and Julius Streicher, we most no jeimar Republic and ‘Reich, argued in 1928 for the identity of language between Wand black: “The swollen lips remind us again of the close rela hip between the Jews and the Blacks. Speech takes place with 2 Bally determined intonations.” The American heirs of European Rasim and anti-Semitism, the Ku Klux Klan, have carried on the reption of “colored” people as a threat to white racial purity, tituting a kind of menacing heteroglossia. In Woody Allen's the KKK. views Zelig as a triple threat precisely because of ‘multiple Otherness as black, Jew, and Native American. The fact sapiens22 Us es Inspeakable Image Ethnicities-in-RelationJENa Shohat 233 that Zelig, in his moments of metamorphosis, is both the el “Other” and recognizably Woody Allen, white, and Jewish, m phorizes American ethnic interaction and hybridization, perso ing the cultural syncretism characteristic of a multiethnic society.” The partial play of identity already in early films such as The institutionalized, establishment-oriented desires for what Americans should see, they stil enjoyed enough power to prevent, for exam- jle, most anti-Semitic film imagery. Assimilation, the norm of the Fnelting pot, was therefore experienced differently by ethnic and ra- ‘Gal groups. Tf Jewish characters could more easily achieve assimi- Fated status as in The Jazz Singer—and if assimilated Jewish actors such as John Garfield and Kirk Douglas could become stars within .glo- American-oriented institutions—African Americans, due to ‘heir undisguisable racial difference, were obliged to perform within he black actantal sot, or within the segregated space of al-black- films. ‘The possibilities of erotic interaction in films before the 1960s E were severely limited by apartheid-style ethnic and racial codes. ‘Hollywood could project mixed love stories between Anglo- ‘Americans and Jews or even Hispanics and Arabs—especially if in- Jexenated by white American actors and actresses such as Valentino Fin The Sheik (1921), Dorothy Lamour in The Road to Morocco (1942), oF E Natalie Wood in West Side Story (1961)—but was inhibited in relation ‘African American or Native-American sexuality. This latent fear Fs blood-tainting in such melodramas as Call Her Saoage (1932) and F Pinky necessitates narratives where the "half breed” (Native Amer- fan in Call Her Sapage and black in Pinky) female protagonists are E prevented al the closure of the films from participating in mixed marriages, ironically despite the roles being played by “pure white” actresses. It is therefore the generic space of melodrama that preoc- [eupies itself with interracial romantic interaction. The trajectory of constituting the couple in the musical comedy could not allow for a F'racially subaltern protagonist. "The Production Code of the Motion Picture Producers and Direc “tors of America, Inc. (1930-34) explicitly states that “Miscegenation (ex relation between the white and black races) is forbidden.” The E delegitimizing of the romantic union between “white” and “black” races’ is linked to a broader exclusion of African Americans and [Native Americans from participation in social institutions. Translat- {ng the obsession with “pure blood’ into legal language, Southern tmiscegnation laws, as pointed out by such African-American femi- Enists as Anna Julia Cooper and Ida B. Wells as early as the end of F the last century, were designed to maintain white (male) supremacy and to prevent a possible transfer of property to blacks in the post- F abolition era. “Race” as a biological category, as Hazel V. Carby for- E mulates it, was subordinated to race as a politcal category.” It is {within this context of exclusionary ideology that we can rethink crit- Jews, between two groups excommunicated by Europe and he es eae eee as and diaspora have played a major role in the collective conscioy ness. In Jewish religious culture, the yearly Passover recounts t Exodus story, celebrating the liberation of the Israelites from tian enslavement. Bible-based black spirituals, meanwhile, land. . .. Let my people go.” The Jewish conception of the Promised Land and the Nostalgia of Return became Sig in the creation of a rebellious black la testifying to the an daspora perience thoughout te Atenas "T5 cong is arcuate in the language of the Rastafarian movement and seggae music with its lyrical leitmotifs of “Babylon,” “Jerusalem;3j and “Lion of Judah,” rendered for example he mone Tie ie Gate I02)- Mich Bhacke in Ameria alle collective oppressx +5 people, so Jews in America allegorized their historical sorrow a black expressivity; blackface becomes iconic of exclusion. j Altican-Americans’ allegorization, in contrast to the Jewish, ever, did not take place in a caricatural show-business con While searching for multicultural dimensions in American cine then, latin histori situations which determined the acess fo self-representation in the Hollywood studio system must be taken into acount. The marginalization of Jews, rsh, and Halas, as op, posed to that of African Americans, was hardly identical, suggest, ing that ethnicity and race can, at times, form the locus of contra: dictions on the “periphery.” Jews, for example, chose to immigrat to the United States, and their process of assimilation was eased the facility with which they could pass, their color masking the (ethnic) difference. African Americans, like Asians and Native Americans, meanwhile, could not conveniently mask their - ‘White ethnic minorities,” furthermore, had much more power positions in Hollywood than racially marginalized groups. And though European immigrants, in some ways, had to conform totEthnicities-in-Relation/Ella Shohat 735 ‘244 Unspenkable Images ically the Production Code’s universal censorship of sexual violence and brutality in which the assumption is one of purely individual Victimization, delegitimizing a collective notion ‘of victimization, 4 ‘This formulation undermines the racially and sexually based vio: | lence toward African Americans, wiping out the memory of the rape, castration, and lynching of slaves. The Production Code elim: nates a possible counternarrative by third-world people for whoa sexual violence has often been at the kernel of historical experienc? and identity. Keeping in mind this significant structuring abeence, i is ironic to encounter the compensatory “liberal” gesture by which the word nigger—hygenically mentioned in the alphabetical lat of ethnic slurs defined as “offensive” words to the “patrons of motion Pictures”—is proscribed. ‘An analysis of the history of American cinema in ethnic terms uncovers a tendency toward ethnic “allegories” in Jameson's sense, of texts which, even when narrating apparently private stories, managed to metaphorize the public sphere, where the micro-indivi ual is doubled by the macromnation and the personal and the pot ical, the private and the historical, are inextricably linked. The ethnic hierarchies of the cinema allegorize extradiscursive social tercourse. The musicals version of ethnic utopia, embodied by 8 films as Follow the let, Annie Get Your Gun (1950) and Oklahoma, often exclusionary; when representatives of marginalized groups do 4 appear, “social order” and the “purity” of ethnic-sexual interact are still maintained. The overwhelming majority of love stories i musical comedy avoids all hints of miscegenation by focalizing's! 4 glamorous hetrosexual white couple, epitomized by Ginger Rogers! and Fred Astaire. In Swing Time, the narrative role of Rogers's lover Latin musician (George Metaxa), isto act as a catalyst for het se. lationship with Astaire, who wins Rogers from the libidinal Latin = a variation on the romantic plot of Top Hat (1938), again with a volatile Latinlover character (Erik Rhodes). Astaire is foregrounded! by the fm both as lover and performer. The romantic performance. 4 of the Anglo-American entertainers, as the purveyors of the “norm of the text” is narratively and cinematicaly privileged, while Lati. and black entertainers handly function outside the musical numbers) Mixed couples are relatively rare in musical comedy, except i times of acute economic lust on the part of North American corpo: rations. In Flying Down to Rio (1933), for example, Dolores del Rio discards her Brazilian lover for an American.» The file's mythical slscourse of love, a8 Brian Henderson points out, masks the crude promotion of the new airline route of New York-Rio de Janeiro, the ‘merged imperialist interests of PanAm and RCA. In the period of 1 Policy, Hollywood attempted to enlist Latin Pe co wate st aca film markets reduced their film consumption as the war began, Hol- F lywood, hoping for Latin American markets and pan-American po- litical unity, flooded the screens with films using Latin stars, focales,* historical heroes, and particularly Latin American music Se dance. (ving, in ths prod, was eclipsed by shunt.) The [ope of "good neighbor” very rarely extended to winning family Matus through interacial or interethnic marrige, however. Lain ‘Americans or African Americans are almost invariably marginal ‘by the narrative and cinematic codes, and usually limited to roles as entertainers within musical numbers. a “The disjunctive structure of the musical, in which a relatively “re aistic” mode of narrative representation is foiled by implausible musical numbers which flaunt playfulness and imagination (for ex- "ample Busby Berkeley's surreal play with abstract esthetic forms), .makes possible superficial allusions to the culture of the “Other’ E ‘The musical often allots its narrative “spaces” in ethnic terms. The "presence of marginalized groups is largely felt through music and ‘dance or entertainers, while the “realistic” narrative development E becomes largely the space of white action. The disjunctive nature of the musical thus homologizes segregationist attitudes in the larger E ocity. The presumed nonscalichc etatue of the musical numbers provides a narrative license for displaying “exotcism,” while allow- E ing for subliminal eroticism via the safe channel of the “Other” The musical numbers not only provide the spectacle of difference but also function narratively by uniting the North American couple F with respect to the “Latins.” Guys and Dolls’ erotic metamorphosis of-the Salvation Army worker (Jean Simmons) during her visit in Havana is condensed in the sweeping music and dance, allowing for her romance with Marlon Brando. In this sense, the musical’s F bifurcated narrative mode enables heightened presence of the sub- altern, which otherwise would not merit entering the space of the ‘feeal” particularly since “reality” is assumed to be white and Euro- = American. , Te Marginalized within te narrative, the Latin characters in Fangs All Here (199) Tio Many Gt (10), Peron (1985), sr Wand Ha OA the fale tnd bea the ec point from which they began, in contest wth the tology Erling saya the North Amerean proper Pine eh = Tie Gangs Al He. tathermore, demorate 1 geen dso o [bor whereby the sai, "senous” or romantic nmbers such a6 FJoucy toa Sar” tend to be performed by the Non American490 unspeakable Images Se ome 8.3. The Gang’s All Here: sexual metaphors and agricultural reduetioniam. ee Ter one sans, hat ne ing swaying hips, exaggerated facial expressions, careaturaly sory 4 stumes, and “think big” props embodied by Carmen Miranda ae ce Miranda's number “The Lady with the Tutti-Frutt? ncaa enact the agricultural reductionism of Latin Ameri but als phallic symbols, here raised by “voluptuous” Latinas reat, pin eg Th mtcon oa inate fg of rt at Nr orc he Lat ane het et err hacia Pace ogee sag ig ces Serge jeder Se Earns eo eee ee a wine are et ies (even quasi-didactic allegories) of ethnic tensions F-meanwhile, were largely prod ferefore do not form part of. Ethnicities-in-Relation/Ella Shohat 237 ‘and reconciliation in which youthful mixed couples microcosmically unite, or attempt to unite, conflicting communities. Thus ethnic and ‘lass ‘conflicts are “solved” by “acceptance” or reconciliation and implied harmony. In the process of assimilation, Al Jolson in The jax Singer, rather like Hollywood's stereotypical tragic mulatto, is torn ‘otween two worlds—between the role of a cantor—synecdochic of F his Jewish heritage—and the role of a Broadway jazz singer -syr- ‘America embodied by his Anglo- ind. The musica’s losure—in contrast to the F hesitant integrationist ideology toward “non-white” communities— “celebrates the New World as an ultimately utopian place, perspec: Ftive underlined by the melting-pot trope. A Jewish cantor is :franslormed into a jazz singer without completely discarding his Fertage. Jewish music is melded with black music, and a mixed E Jewish-gentile couple is implied. This implication of an ethnically Spiked marriage, however, occurs within the classical narrative Targely among white ethnicities, and often presumes the assimila- F tion of the “minority” character. When assimilationist discourse is no longer politically feasible within the civil rights context, the mixed ethnic love of West Side Story is presented as tragic. The love-death nocus, foregrounded by the end of the film, is at the same time accompanied by utopian longing for ethnic and social harmony, the idea that "somehow, Somewhere, someday, we'll find a new way of living.” The film Sends with the implied ethnic peace won by the sacrifice of victims fon both sides. Nonassimilationist intercommunal romantic closures, juced since the late 1960s when the pluralist ideology replaced the earlier melting-pot trope. Recent fms such as Breakin’, La Bamba, Dirty Dancing, and Salsa thematize the subject of “ethnic” music and dance, celebrating its pluralistic integration into mainstream American culture, ‘fin the past a latent white desire to incorporate the “Other” was reflected in the attempt to absorb jazz, samba, and rhumba rhythms, contemporary Hollywood films center around pronouncedly “eth- ic’ characters. In La Bamba, for example, the dass ascendency of the Hispanic character allegorizes the American Dream. In Dirty Dancing, the Jewish characters constitute a kind of simulacrum of mainstream Anglo culture, whereas the white working-class male protagonist is associated with Latin and African-American rhythms, 2nd dancers. The film ends with integration through Eros. The ex F duded, even forbidden “dirty” music and dance played only in ghettoized surroundings—and its “ethnic” and lower-class per-formers—a1 ire accepted, Swaying the hips—or “going sired fantasy of the upper-mid. ing couple surrounded by eit movements encapsula an any een ms, the te common attitude that cs are "wong tion presumed to solve confi he over-a 3 wer-arching jepresents the transposition int licts, as if mixed marriage aft Mall calls “Inferential racism,” tha Tepresentat ooentrc ist prensa ch Tations whote ethnocentric a Inscribed in them asa set of unquest Proach would question, for example, Ims such as Gentlemen Prefer ‘Blondes ward white-dominated South Afi a ile the musical represents the” srmonious, transparent ut American master nerative, nd courses, The term pare largely Bakhtinian—sense htinian. of quently satirical mode of discourse which Sion_ or entonton ofa eects ae rome or eect te to its historical critical marginalization, with its respectful att ttitude dts diamond mines)” Ada AG cok anatyy 815 parody exposes the silences of the is med, here ae inferentially racist in its. contemy self-critical, and, fre- renders explicit the ‘exaggeration, inver- Parody is especially ap- and thus can critique as well as its capacity for opriating and critically transforming existing discourses pay ‘of renewal and demystification, a way of desing away outmoded forms of thinking, Parody, by exposing ng avjorns of mimesis and the processes of intertextuallty, be, reer apt locus for rendering explicit the ethnic “mimesis” ap arkerican cinema, its representation of the “natural,” F American way.” E Many of the parodics I discuss are important for thein incosPor tn aT he carnivalesqe, which Mikhail Bakhtin traces back to Ra- an and to Menippean satire. The carmivalesque, for Bakhtin, {to att of the spirit of carnival—pop- yee esvities offering a brief entry into a sphere of utopian freedom se ereak the conventional world is symbolically tured “upside F down. Because both evoke utopias, the carnivalesdi parody is a _paricularly interesting genre to compare with the tradiena! "Weer “Pie ethnic discourse. Whereas musicals, even those with “miner ffy” characters, tended historically to offer communa) wlopia 4 2 ural monolith, tre cmivalesque parodies, even when produced Hollywood, have to some extent offered a multivoiced othe ttopia wherein syncretism is privileged, Parody’s capacity t9apP* priate different genres—most associated with, hegemdn ethnic Print seo nallows for a broad interweaving of different texts, defo: ca eeaeeet from their original cultural context, especially through riding them with “ethnic” discourses, in user to forge a eatre | palimpsest of synchetic identities Such films as Hai Spray foreground the collectivity of various trarginalized groups: the obese, working-class Euro-American o> Thale protagonist an¢ her “mother” Divine, as well as the comm nity of African Americans defeat the racists, allegorizing the YP tre nonracist, communal America. At the film’s end, the prolséo” ort dances the black-style “bug” and wins over the “all-American Tel" and her racist supporters. In one seene, white paranoid oti Biles toward Aizican Americans are satirized by showing blacks playing with the radst expectations of a whife matron “stranded” Eva pherto. By focaizing the scene through the traditionally Tet ‘nalized perspective of the African-American neighborhood, Joh Fare raves the spectator into an antracist viewpoint, much as strategy, represents two terrified mid- perspective of the p Teste ar ih Brother from Another Planet 0964). To Fake tumph of the various “margins” is celebrated, cu eae)eee een at é inating in the police's participation in the collective dance—m as the baton-twirling officer in Lionel Richie's “All Night ‘music video, If in most films African American: “guests” in the narrative, or the enteriai numbers, and rican community. Exploring ideological flicts between light- and dark-skinned African Americans as we a8 between middle-class and lumpenproletarion blacks, ‘the fi black positioning in relation to white cen sus black (African) models of beauty, a ques! cebvious relevance to black males—consider Michael Jackson, Setar 2 stylized decor of a black beauty salon, the jazzy number fon grounds the role within African-American i metonynic and metaphoric terms as an object of praise or blame de pending on political outlook.*" The colonized Wannabees censure 7 the African look—"Don’t you wish you had hair like this/then the: boys would give you a kiss . .. cain’t cha, don’t cha hair stand on high/eain’t cha comb it and don’t you ty.” Their view is counter. fated by the politically conscious jigaboos—"Don’t you know my “4 hair is so strong/it can break the teeth out the comb, mind being sLack/go on with your mixed-up head/l ain't gonna . never be ‘fraid."*" The dancers carry Vivien Leigh and Hattie’ McDaniel fans, reflexively alluding to the representation of race ve, lations in Hollywood and implicitly to their impact on the African. American self-image. “Straight and Nappy’”s focus on looks and identity must be understood against the backdrop of Malcolm X's suggestion that the white man’s worst crime was to make blacks hate themselves. Offering an alternative to the usval tourist status of African Americans within mainstream cinema, a status which Spike Le’ Sol Das reinvoiing Back enting their jer with the role of repr ive my Me tl By sae me ‘out the cont ’ ican-American use to play ommunity. oe aultipiities of the African-Ame: vrventions. of the Psat another fimmaker who employs ethnic conventions OF Jet natn Spat etnnocenriom i Mel Brooks. Hs depley- ae cally musical parody 66 I" Zpjoration of the ‘ment of parody, specific iucers, allows further expl Word, Bart One and The Prods. elation. The History ing selected moments tion, to tl F cient Rome and the Spanish Inquisition elig, plays imagine the film, Narrated by Orson Welles, the fio subverting anachronisti- a de- 2 a ie sage othe rman an pepe Palestro te Wr Part One tld fom canonization. Th ve the pesphery moves (0 Sore4 Uunspearane images = Ethicitiessin-Relation/Ella Shohat 243 Rome episode, for example, is focalized not through the emp and their triumphs and defeats, but rather through the 1 ized—the Jewish “fool,” schlemiel, and “stand-up philoso (Brooks) and the black slave. Brooks's presentation of history re that of the Annales school of historiography, which shifts the em sis to peripheralised communities, in contrast to dominant histo graphical accounts that focus only on the powerful ‘The shift of historical perspective has crucial implications issue of ethnic representation, a shift which goes beyond the bin discourse of negative versus positive images. We tend to associ ‘the musicals esthetic forms with an innocuous, harmonious while in the Inquisition episode, much as in "Springtime for and Germany” from The Producers, Brooks employs Busby B style forms, particularly the forms of Esther Williams's musical recount horrifying moments of history. In this sense, it is a’ fi selfcleclaredly in “bad taste.” It neglects the elevated and impli offers a critique of the “refined” and rigid conception that seria matters deserve only “serious” genres—and seriousness is arti dally contrasted with humor. This separation of styles, a5 P Bordiew documents, has tended historically to be tied to class: oe ethnic—hierarchies.© Rather than classical Hollywoodian sublin °Mel Brooks as Torquemada in History ofthe World, art One: tion, we are given a strategy of reduction and degradation whid que incarnation of the haunting oppressor uses obscenity and caricature. Rather than the mutica’s ideal Ly sanitized fetishization of the white female body as a source of pe poses signs associated with @ presumably inferior race preisly ‘sure for spectatorial gaze, here we find the crude and satirical the Nz ideologues who theorized and tried to enforce that ine «ruel fetishization of the “ethnic” male body. The film parodicall feorty. By associating traditional musical forme with recognizable celebrates sexuality as transcending ethnic and religious differences: arginalized communities, The History of the Work, Part One and Where torture has failed, sex succeeds, that is, in converting Jews MMMMMIR The Praducers call attention to their traditional exclusion from the ‘The musical’s ethnic purity is also subverted by showing ethnic: inusical’s communal harmony. The inquisition rae ees religious conflicts transcended through a syncretic ending. The thermore, imagisticaly associates the medieval Catholic Nerarchy lure of sex is presented reflexively, equated with the lute of Holly- ‘with Busby Berkeley's esthetic order, just as Seg ae aie ‘wood's entertainment and glamour. The final image associates the and'Germany” subliminally links fascist esthetics with the Favy Jewish symbol (the menorah) with stereotypically Anglo-American Wood spectacle The Inquisition episode, satirine® te visu fondes who carry it—all within @ mainstream artistic form: the: civilized world celebrated by Hollywood. The episode initially vies- Hollywood musical. ABB sizes Catholic massa if drawn from a horror fil (fg. 8.5), Sounds The History of the World, Pert Onés parody of the musical also in- MMM that the dominant lturgic sensibility associates with purification, corporates specific languages, dialects, accents, and paralinguist E ty, and holiness are superimposed on the cies of tor sounds associated with specific ethnic groups (“Oy!,” “Nay, Nay, people. In one of the following sequences a tortured Jew asks ft Nay,” “Hey man!” as well as ethnically specific gestures, for ex dice accented English: “Is polite? te i considerate? To make ample, black-style speech, for purposes of ironic inversion. Inthe mu- my privates a public game?” Jews, Uke other third. word peopl, sical show “Springtime for Hitler and Germany,” Hitler and Goebbels were accused of barbarism, savagery, vulgarity; the politeness, and talk and move in a black-inflected street manner. Brooks thus super- jection of bourgeois codes of etiquette of privacy, eEcthmicites-in-RelationJElla Shohat 247 anise 1. Johannes Fabian, Time end the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983); for a major critique of fern anthropological representation, see James Clifford, The Predcament of Culture: Twentietl-Century Ethnosrapiy, Literature, and Art (Cambridge: ard University Press, 1988) 2, Richard Dyer has proposed a critical discussion of “whiteness” in wna, “White,” Screen 29 (Autumn 1988): 44-64. 3. The reasons for Jewish producers’ supression of Jewish presence on the screen, despite their relative power in the industry, are discussed by a Eres, The Jew in American Cinema (Bloomington: Indiane University 1984) and Lester Friedman, The Image of the Jew in Hollywood (New [Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1982) 44. In most cases I prefer to use the term Africas American to black in der to emphasize not only the radal, but also the historical dimension in forcing of an African-American eritical discourse. For the same reason, I a, whenever possible, the problematic term while, shifting the focus to furo-American, or Anglo-American, hegemonic culture as inseparable from. broader history of colonialism and the encounter between the first and the third world in the United States. [= 5, For an illuminating discussion of the question of black spectator- ship, for example, see Manthia Diawara, “Black Spectatorship— Problems of ‘Mentification and Resistance,” Screen 29 (Autumn 1988): 66-72. FS" 6 On iterative scenes, see Gérard Genette, Narrative Discourse: An ‘Esty in Method, trans. Alan Sheridan (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980). Nazi. In The Producers, moreover, dozens of salutin are Tin tb a aig” em ain 2 ‘demystifies the haunting figure of the Fuhrer, as does the ending ‘The History ofthe World, Part One, in which Brooks promises a soqu Which includes “Hitler on Ice” and “Jews in Space.” wearing the persona of Torquemada or Hiller can be seen as a ‘musical represented a single ethnic ideal ego, the carnivalesque resents the multiplicity of histories and conflicting utopian visi A discourse of ethnic representation rather than ethnic images! volves issues of textual structuring of historical perspective a Power relations. The History of the World, Part One’ implicitly lla trates this point in the ordering of the episodes themselves, The Quisition number follows the Rome episode. whose final seq focuses on persecuted Jesus and the Last Supper. The episede Christians persecuted by Rome is thus juxtaposed with Christ as Persecutors. Similarly, within the episode itself, the Chris 7, Since spectators are ethnically constituted, a marginalized com- ‘munity might be especially alert to certain references on the margins of [mic text. In Singin’ in the Rain, Gene Kelly and Donalei O'Connor, as they sing “Moses,” briefly wrap themselves with lined curtains reminiscent of E Jewish prayer shawls (talith), a visual allusion that Jewish spectators are ‘more likely to catch and appreciate. In Foolight Parade, which features a character ofa (closet) Jewish producer, a presumably Jewish soldier sings of “Shanghai Lil’: “She wor't be mine for all of Palestine. .. . Oy,” beating F his head with his hand in a Jewish styl. '8, See, for example, Shaul Tchernechovsky and Chaim Nachman ‘Bialik’s poetic work. <9, Richard Dyer, “Entertainment and Utopia,” in Movies and Methe ds, vol. 2, ed. Bill Nichols (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). F320. Jane Fever, The Hollyood Musial (Bloomington: Indiana Univer- F sity Press, 1982), p. 4. F 11. Fredric Jameson, “Reificetion and Utopia in Mass Culture,” Sociat Text 1 (Winter 1979): 130-48. 12. The phrase is borrowed from Benedict Anderson, Imagined Com- E> munities: Rflexions on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 198). racial relations. A critical analysis of ethnicity in films, then, also: involves historicizing the question of the specific and evolving, atic: ulations of cultural and political power. An awareness of texts Palimpsests of competing ethnic and racial collective discourses 15:1 thus critical for a multicultural reading which goes beyond any: number of invisible ethnocentricisms. NOTES: 4 1 woul he to thank he College of Staten sand: The City Univers ‘of New York for providing a Junior Faculty Research Grant (Summer 16 of that helped support this project a