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.
#1886491 in Books Princeton University Press 1996-10-14 1996-11-03Ingredients: Example IngredientsOriginal language:EnglishPDF # 1 9.00 x 1.73 x 6.00l; 2.07 #File Name: 069102927X692 pages
Review
11 of 15 people found the following review helpful. Brilliant and ThoroushBy A CustomerDr. Feldman accomplished many things with this book. For one; he gathered together an enormous amount of material that only someone as knowledgeable and as thorough as he could do. The sources cited in the text and the footnotes represent an overwhelming amount of material. His encyclopedic knowledge of ancient texts makes him the right man for this monumental task; one that he accomplished gloriously.Additionally; he added some wisdom and restraint to some overly interpretive colleagues. How much can really be deduced from a particular text? Does this text represent the mainstream of its time or an aberration? Would the author know enough to state anything authoritative on this subject? These are some of the questions Dr. Feldman asks when not only citing ancient sources but analyzing them to extract what can be known about the ancient world.This book is a difficult read but is well worth the effort.13 of 22 people found the following review helpful. Scholarly; thorough and readable.By N. PI purchased this book originally to get insight into what scholarly material was available for this formative and terribly important period in Jewish and Western history. As it appears from the book; much is available; and much that is unexpected. Anyone believing first century jewish/gentile relationships to be nothing more than isolation and conflict are to be suprised. An aside is that much of the book validates Rabbinic Judaism as "a" source of history; but it only stands out if you have some background in the issues (attempts at cooberation are few). I highly recommend it. 4 stars because the authors religious "affiliation" is dangerously obvious from the hyphenation of G-d's name in the text; in narrow minds; this could cast doubt on his ability as an objective scholar.
