The new Hollywood racelessness: Only the fast, furious, (and multiracial) will survive

Cinema Journal

Volumn 44, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 50-67

  Beltrán, Mary C ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MADISON   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 47749118214     PISSN: 00097101     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/cj.2005.0003     Document Type: Review

References (65)

1. As Michael Omi, Howard Winant, and other scholars have argued, while racial categories are social constructions, race has a material impact on individuals, families, and communities. Continuing, although decreasingly strong, taboos about miscegenation, for example, serve as indicators of the valence of racial boundaries in the United States. Nevertheless, growing numbers of U.S. citizens are of mixed racial or ethnic descent. For the purposes of this essay, "biracial" will be used to refer to individuals who can claim two racial backgrounds as defined by the U.S. Bureau of the Census, while "multiracial" will refer to individuals with more than two racial backgrounds. The racial groups identified by the Bureau of the Census in 2000 included white; black, African American, or Negro; Asian/Pacific Islander; and American Indian or Alaskan native. Multiethnic and the more popularly used term "mixed race" will be used here more generally to identify individuals who belong to two or more ethnic or racial groups or who are of indeterminate but mixed racial or ethnic status
2. See, for example, Thomas Doherty, Teenagers and Teenpics: The Juvenilization of American Movies in the 1950s (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1988)
3. and Eric Schaefer, "Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!" A History of Exploitation Films, 1915-1959 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999)
4. Donald Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An interpretive History of Blacks in American Films (New York: Continuum, 1991), 195
5. and Ritchie Pérez, "From Assimilation to Annihilation: Puerto Rican Images in U.S. Films," in Clara E. Rodriguez, ed., Latin Looks: Images of Latinas and Latinos in the U.S. Media (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1997), 147
6. Eric Avila addresses this dynamic in relation to science fiction films in "Dark City: White Flight and the Urban Science Fiction Film in Postwar America," in Daniel Bernardi ed., Classic Hollywood, Classic Whiteness (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), 53
7. Pérez, "From Assimilation to Annihilation," 146. Discussion of the historical construction of the Hollywood Latino/a as hypersexual in comparison to whites can be found in the work of such scholars as Ana M. López, "Are There Latins in Manhattan?" in Lester D. Friedman, ed., Unspeakable Images: Ethnicity and the American Cinema (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991)
8. Charles Ramírez Berg, Latino Images in Film: Stereotypes, Subversion, and Resistance (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002)
9. and Mary Beltrán, "Bronze Seduction: The Shaping of Latina Stardom in Hollywood Film and Star Publicity," Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, 2002. Scholars have documented a similar historical pattern for African Americans. David Cook's scholarship on the unequal, racialized utilization of Production Code norms regarding female nudity also is instructive here. Cook, A History of Narrative Film (New York: Norton, 1996)
10. Elaine Pennicott, "'Who's the Cat That Won't Cop Out?' Black Masculinity in American Action Series of the Sixties and Seventies," in Bill Osgerby and Anna Gough-Yates, eds., Action TV: Tough Guys, Smooth Operators, and Foxy Chicks (London: Routledge, 2001), 108
11. For further discussion of the blaxploitation film and black urban dramas of the 1990s, see Manthia Diawara, "Black American Cinema: The New Realism," in Diawara, ed., Black American Cinema (New York: Routledge, 1993): 3-25
12. S. Craig Watkins, Representing: Hip Hop Culture and the Production of Black Cinema (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998)
13. Ed Guerrero, Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film (Philadelphia: Temple University Press)
14. and Beretta Smith-Shomade, "Rock-a-Bye, Baby!: Black Women Disrupting Gangs and Constructing Hip-Hop Gangsta Films," Cinema Journal 42, no. 2 (winter 2003): 25-40
15. Diawara describes Bambara's position in "Black American Cinema," 9. No information is provided regarding the source of the quotation
16. For a discussion of miscegenation taboos as presented in Hollywood film, in The Birth of a Nation (1915)
17. and Imitation of Life (1934)
18. in particular, see Anna Everett, Returning the Gaze: A Genealogy of Black Film Criticism, 1909-1949 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001)
19. and Chon A. Noriega, "Birth of the Southwest: Social Protest, Tourism, and D. W. Griffith's Ramona,"
20. and Gina Marchetti, "Tragic and Transcendent Love in Forbidden City," in Daniel Bernardi, ed., The Birth of Whiteness: Race and the Emergence of U.S. Cinema (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1996), 203-26, 257-70. Both Noriega and Marchetti discuss how portrayals of interracial romance were used, as Marchetti argues, "to recognize, domesticate, and absorb differences of various sorts to continue the ideological hegemony of the dominant culture" (270)
21. Ed Guerrero, "The Black Image in Protective Custody: Hollywood's Biracial Buddy Films of the Eighties," in Diawara, Black American Cinema, 237-46
22. See also Mark Winokur, "Black Is White/White Is Black: 'Passing' as a Strategy of Racial Compatibility in Contemporary Hollywood Comedy," in Friedman, Unspeakable Images, 190-214
23. Herman Gray, Watching Race: Television and the Struggle for "Blackness" (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 87
24. For further discussion of the urban environment in the Hollywood science fiction film, see Avila, "Dark City."
25. Jacquie Jones and other scholars have argued that this slice of life was foregrounded in 1990s films at the expense of representation of the black community beyond these confines. Jones, "The New Ghetto Aesthetic," Wide Angle 13, nos. 3-4 (1991): 32-43
26. Guerrero, Framing Blackness, 159
27. Diawara, "Black American Cinema," 23. Other examples of the ghetto action film include New Jack City (Mario Van Peebles, 1991), Straight out of Brooklyn (Matty Rich, 1991), Juice (Ernest Dickerson, 1992), and Fresh (Boaz Yakin, 1994)
28. José Arroyo, preface to Arroyo, ed., Action/Spectacle Cinema (London: British Film Institute, 2000), v
29. Todd Boyd, "A Small Introduction to the 'G' Funk Era: Gangsta Rap and Black Masculinity in Contemporary Los Angeles," in Michael J. Dear, H. Eric Schockman, and Greg Hise, eds., Rethinking Los Angeles (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1996), 133. See also Smith-Shomade's discussion of the influence of hip-hop on the gangster genre in "Rock-a-Bye Baby!" 28
30. See, for example, Yvonne Tasker, Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre, and the Action Cinema (London: Routledge, 1993)
31. Tasker, "Fists of Fury: Discourses of Race and Masculinity in the Martial Arts Cinema," in Harry Stecopoulos and Michael Uebel, eds., Race and the Subject of Masculinity (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997)
32. Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks
33. and Darius James, That's Blaxploitation: The Roots of the Baadasssss 'Tude (New York: St. Martin's/Griffin, 1995)
34. Richard Dyer, "Action!" in Arroyo, ed., Action/Spectacle Cinema, 18
35. Quoted in Rick Lyman, "Job Openings in Hollywood: Heroes Wanted," New York Times, August 4, 2002, sec. 2, 1
36. Marilyn Halter, Shopping for Identity: The Marketing of Ethnicity (New York: Schocken Books, 2000), 3
37. Neil Howe and William Strauss, Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation (New York: Vintage, 2000), 15
38. Quoted in Leon E. Wynter, American Skin: Pop Culture, Big Business, and the End of White America (New York: Crown, 2002), 180
39. Rudolfo Acuña, Anything but Mexican: Chicanos in Contemporary Los Angeles (London: Verso, 1996), 3
40. U.S. Census Bureau, "The Two or More Races Population: 2000," Census Bureau brief, November 2001, www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/c2kbr01-6.pdf
41. Halter, Shopping for Identity, 83
42. Wynter describes the same development in American Skin, 136
43. Wynter, American Skin, 136
44. "TV Viewing Habits Differ in Black Households: While Black vs. White TV Viewing Habits Continue to Polarize, There Is Growing Mutuality of Preferences among Black and White Viewers 12-17," Minority Markets Alert 7, no. 5 (May 1995): 2
45. See also Jane M. Gaines, Fire and Desire: Mixed-Race Movies in the Silent Era (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001)
46. and Freda Scott Giles, "From Melodrama to the Movies: The Tragic Mulatto as a Type Character," in Naomi Zack, ed., American Mixed Race: A Culture of Microdiversity (Landham, Mass.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995), 64
47. Everett, Returning the Gaze, 221
48. Everett and Bogle both point to a number of indicators of Washington's intense popularity among black moviegoers. Everett, Returning the Gaze, 220-23
49. and Bogle, Brown Sugar: Eighty Years of Black Female Superstars (New York: Da Capo Press, 1980), 76-82
50. Teresa Kay Williams, "The Theater of Identity: (Multi-) Race and Representation of Eurasians and Afroasians," in Zack, American Mixed Race, 91
51. Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987), 79
52. Naomi Zack, Race and Mixed Race (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), 164
53. Carol Roh Spaulding, "The Go-Between People," in Zack, American Mixed Race, 110
54. Joel Silver, producer's commentary, Romeo Must Die DVD, Warner Bros., 2000
55. Rob Cohen, director's commentary, The Fast and the Furious DVD, Universal, 2001
56. See, for example, Edward Soja, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (New York: Verso, 1993), 223
57. and Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (London: Verso, 1990)
58. The Fast and the Furious DVD
59. For further scholarship on the legacy of whiteness in Hollywood film, see Richard Dyer, White (London: Routledge, 1997)
60. and Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (London: Routledge, 1994)
61. A number of seminal essays on this subject can be found in Daniel Bernardi, The Birth of Whiteness (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996)
62. Werner Sollers, Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986)
63. Antonia Grace Glenn, "Hapa Passing (and Non-passing) in Contemporary Film and Television," paper presented at the conference of the Northeast Modern Language Association, Toronto, April 12, 2002
64. Williams, "The Theater of Identity" 86
65. According to numerous publicity sources, Keanu Reeves is of Hawaiian and other mixed descent, while Jennifer Beals is of African American and Irish heritage. Meg Tilly is purportedly of Chinese and Canadian descent