Early Cinema to 1915

BURNT CORK: TRADITIONS AND LEGACIES OF BLACKFACE MINSTRELSY
MARCH 28-29, 2008

http://www.utm.utoronto.ca/~w3minstr/conf_press.html

1:00pm to 3:00pm

Blackface on Film

Curated by Nicholas Sammond and Alice Maurice, Cinema Studies Institute, University of Toronto

‘Spooky Action at a Distance’ (1999)

Screening with Dean Moss

3:15pm to 5:15pm

Introduction: Charlie Keil, Director, Cinema Studies Institute

Arthur Knight: American Studies, College of William & Mary in Virginia

‘Whiteface’

Linda Williams: Rhetoric and Film Studies, University of California, Berkeley

‘Surprised by Blackface: D. W. Griffith, Blackface, and One Exciting Night’

Alright so I’m just going to talk about “Negroes Laughing at Themselves? Black Spectatorship and the Performances of Urban Modernity.” Because I really enjoyed reading it.

So the reason I enjoyed it was because it captured the levels and fluidity in which groups of people operate. In this essay the distinction does not operate as simply black and white but with other forms of outsidership including behavior, migration status, and class. And it also describes how these ‘differences’ work in different spaces. It’s probably true that the migrants who came to Chicago were less different in Black only spaces from other Black Chicago residents but were outsiders in mixed spaces because of their lack of self censorship.
There are two things I would like to add about Black Spectatorship within the context of this essay.

1. Stewart leaves out the possibility of identifying with characters which share other struggles with the audience. I.E. a white character who is an outsider who reminds them of their inability to be overtly visible in mixed spaces. Or maybe other minorities who fight a system of stereotyping.

*Could Black audiences identify with representations of ‘the new woman’ who fights stereotypical assumptions of her femininity?

2. The admiration of Black character’s who despite their negative roles are admired for the ability to act and live in a white run workforce.

3. Stewart says the Black audience’s liked Noble M. Johnson, regardless of his roles as other races. I think the black audiences would love him BECAUSE of this. In this article it expresses the anxiety between wanting to be in a space and being bodily aware one could not inhabit it. Nobel may have allowed Black Audiences the ability to put themselves in other spaces because his black body fits in them. (I don’t think this was well said but I may try to put it better in class)

*I also really enjoyed her notion or ‘reconstructive strategies.’ See you guys tomorrow!

Hi everyone,
Tamara here.

There is a film called “Maple Flavour Films” premiering Wednesday March 26, 3:30 at the Carlton Cinema.  The film is about Canadian National Cinema (only not lame!) The creators of the film, plus a lot of other big names, are going to be there, so it’s an excellent opportunity to meet them and ask questions about how film really works in this country.

March 13 class will be divided into two parts The second half of class will be a presentation by Phillip Barker in Nat Taylor from 12:30

The draw for film shifted from technological novelty to its stars because, firstly, the technology loses its novelty factor fairly quickly, and secondly, because people generally relate to other people better than they do to machines.  Also, there were stars in theatre, one of the main precursors of cinema.  It is easier to “lose oneself” in a film when one relates to a particular character.  Notably, stars almost always play roles within a certain archetypical persona.

Tamara