The Continuing Relevance of Old Ethnicities

I’d like to start with a quote:

Racism’s effects are dismissed as insignificant until the next tragic death or inflammatory eruption makes it newsworthy once again. At that point, a thing called race gets discovered afresh with the utmost, sincere surprise. Expressions of racism will be approached with horror through a fog of novelty. This pattern, in which tragic and disturbing events punctuate quitter periods of apparent forgetting that endure long enough only for the inevitable lament of ‘we did not know’ to appear plausible, is itself a significant part of the problem that interests me (Gilroy 29).

The broad tendency that Gilroy describes, toward viewing race (and ethnicity) as a problem instead of an ongoing process is all too familiar. It haunts both this week’s readings and films. How is it that time and again, we find ourselves lost in the “fog of novelty,” bamboozled by the fact that racial difference exists, and shocked when it manifests itself in ugly ways in our culture?

Hall sees the designation of race as a process, of course, and he uses the term ethnicity to describe the ways that “history language and culture” assist in the “construction of subjectivity and identity” (446). At the same time, I do wonder about the validity of his hybridity model of new ethnicity as a replacement for the “old” ethnicities that he suggests are too simple. While these old models overlook cultural nuance and identity categories, to be sure, they do at the same time foreground the huge amount of influence that factors like nationality have on ethnicity. Hall’s new ethnicities imagine a post-national, diasporic world that seems not to have arrived yet, over twenty years later. When notions like hybridity (which problematically carries with it a kernel of originary ethnic purity) and diaspora attempt to celebrate the transformative potential of culture, they downplay or overlook the continuing power of history and the state in forming ethnic subjectivities.

The Parker and Song article shares my critique, as it suggests the possibility of “emergent cultural formations [that] cut across any simplistic binary between ‘pure’ old ethnicities, and multi-dimensional, progressive ‘new ethnicities'.” The self-aware British Chinese citizens that they describe exhibit the cultural complexities that Hall describes, or that we found in My Beautiful Laundrette, but at the same time are “ultimately concerned with forging a long-term place in British society” (600). Identity formations like these remind us of the ongoing power of the nation in a way that Hall’s cultural utopianism might not.

As for history, the other great bugbear of “old” ethnicity, maybe we can look to the film Bamboozled to provide us with a cautionary tale? The film presents us with characters who think they have mastered their ethnic history through their command of culture, yet as Sloan insists repeatedly over the course of the narrative, going back to read a book or to watch archival materials awakens awareness that changes everything. The true horror of the film is that it devises a scenario in which hateful, racist images can be looked at as mere objects of culture, without any historical awareness. Gilroy’s commonsensical insistence upon our recurrent cultural amnesia when it comes to understanding race suggests that the forces that underpin notions of “old ethnicities” are decidedly not out of date themselves, and must still be taken into consideration no matter how globalized, translocal, or intersectional we think we might have become.

- Jeremy

Bamboozled and Gender

Although the discourse surrounding Bamboozled largely focuses on issues of racial identity, blackness as constructed by cinematic representation--and rightfully so--I think it is by no mistake that the film simultaneously documents a history of gender relations within the black community. The moments I refer to almost seem to be throwaway scenes, lost in the drama of the story, but I think Spike Lee knows exactly what he is doing in the dynamic he creates between his male and female lead--thus, I wanted to look at Bamboozled from perhaps a different perspective than what we will be discussing in class, just to sort of have the ideas floating around.

Sloan and Dela represent a long history of conflict between black women and men. Though we haven't read material about it for this course, Michele Wallace (Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman) and Paula Giddings ("The Women's Movement and Black Discontent" from When and Where I Enter), for example, have written extensively about current tensions that brew between black men and women, dating all the way back to black families during slavery. Black men as slaves were forced to be less than men, were not allowed paternal authority in their families--in this way, women truly became keeper of the household, overseer of the children, backbone of the family. When slaves were set free and black families were left to rediscover their own power structures, it was with man and woman hand in hand, as equals. But in the mid-20th century, when civil rights' movements were gaining momentum and black voices were heard louder than ever before, it was the black man who stood up highest in the effort to reclaim the masculinity that had been denied him for so long, telling the black woman, essentially, to take a backseat--it was his time to finally hold some authority, his time to step up and be heard. And black woman, understanding the black man's plight for so long, was dutiful and told herself that she could wait--she could stand behind her man, she owed him that much.

This, coupled with the emergence of second wave feminism and black feminism created a multitude of tensions, felt most heavily in civil rights groups like the SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee). The fact that white women could and did enter civil rights organizations like the aforementioned, gain the skills necessary to start their own grassroots organizations, have interracial liaisons with black men (all while black women held virtually no significant roles in these organizations) and then leave, created all sorts of long-simmering tensions to rise to the surface between black women and white women (further derived from the existence of organizations like the National Organization for Women, or NOW, which black women felt did not care in the slightest to understand the concerns of black femininity), as well as black women and black men--animosities that are still felt. Yet black women were still told to bite their tongues and wait their turn--it was more important to be black than be a woman, they said--and I think Sloan certainly deals with this dilemma.

This was perhaps more of a history than I planned on going into, but to return to Bamboozled--Spike Lee's characters feel more fully realized. Though Sloan and Dela are seemingly on the same team in the film, there in solidarity, Sloan is constantly playing second fiddle to Dela--in his personal quest to reclaim his own sense of masculinity and flip the racist media on its head, he ignores any concerns she raises and basically has to coerce her to be on his side at every step. Toward the end of the film he refers to Sloan as "The Help" (referring, of course, to both a cinematic and actual tradition of black women as mammies and maids), and she in turn tells him "If you weren't so busy fucking Mary-Ann, Sue, and Beth, maybe you would have a little bit more stroke in your back." Sloan's anger at Dela for having sex with white women, and Dela's attempt to distance himself from Sloan, exert authority over her and reduce her contributions and intelligence to a stereotype recall centuries of history between black men and black women in America, which all come to a head in this film. Eventually, Sloan has had it--from Dunwitty and his racist colleagues, from Dela and his masculine, condescending elitism, from Manray and his accusation that she got her job because she slept with the boss, so to speak. Sloan occupies this middle ground in terms of black identity, but she also exemplifies the tension that arises when forced to essentially choose between identities, and I think that Spike represents years of turmoil well in his leading figures by not allowing this intersectionality to take place fluidly in his film.

Bamboozled and ideas of historical racism

I found that watching Bamboozled demonstrated a plethora of issues surrounding representations of race in the media. There are so many facets in discussing the intersectionalities at play in the film but one of the clearest aspects of the film are the historic depictions of African-Americans on screen. As Hall says so sufficiently “there was a concern not simply with the absence or marginality of the black experience but with its simplification and its stereotypical character” (442). As the characters in the film develop the premise for the television show all sorts of discussion occurs regarding what images of black characters will appeal to the white boss, Thomas Dunwitty (and by extension a white audience). Ultimately, it is the absurd and reductive pitch of grotesquely limited characters that wins over the boss and gets green-lit for production. As Pierre (or De La as he is so affectionately known in the film) explains his failed attempts at selling concepts for shows the audience quickly realizes that his stories about middle class and wealthy African American families did not earn the interest of Dunwitty. What we see from the interactions between De La and Dunwitty is that the concerns of De La in representing different and complex images of African Americans do not match the concerns of Dunwitty.  So in order to win over Dunwitty Pierre draws from racist depictions of previous film and television programs. “Racism, of course, operates by constructing impassable symbolic boundaries between racially constituted categories, and its typically binary system of representation constantly marks and attempts to fix and naturalize the difference between belongingness and otherness” (Hall 445). What appeals to Dunwitty are the limits previously constructed in racist images and the way the film shows the progress of the television program seems to imply that many believe these stereotypical depictions belong in media. The in studio audience for the television show initially is unnerved by the premise of the show but by the end of the show the audience members are wearing blackface and brought to a frenzy by the antics of the show. It feels like on one level the film makes it explicit that racism still captivates and controls the circulation of media images, but on the other hand this is destructive and many of the characters end up dead as the film comes to a close. The final montage of historically racist images led me to question just how embedded are media images? From a cultural standpoint how does one address issues of racism both depicted in media content and in reviews of media texts?

New Identities, New Media

In the last few days, we’ve read much about race, class, and ethnicity —and how, they, along with gender and sexuality, all seem to “constantly [cross] and [recross]” (Hall, p. 444) when it comes to the formation of “new identities.” For someone rather new to the school of cultural studies, it really was interesting to think about the fact that “how things are represented and the ‘machineries’ and regimes of representation in a culture do play a constitutive, and not merely a reflexive, after-the-event, role…” (Hall, p. 443).

What stood out particularly to me this past week was David Parker and Miri Song’s article on the effects of internet and new media on the lives of young British Chinese in “New Ethnicities and the Internet.” As an American-born Chinese (ABC), I was able to fully relate to much of the content in Parker and Song’s piece—especially in regards to the “two-fold” nature of identity that many young ABCs like myself are known to face. Like the British Chinese, there is a hope among us to belong to America, but there is also a desire to retain aspects of our Chinese identity. Similarly, there are also a plethora of contradictory feelings and opinions among this “embryonic second generation” – which continues to provide discourse and discussion for an ever-ongoing debate: What does it really mean to be ‘Chinese-American?'

Personally, my thoughts tend to stray more towards the comments of British Chinese Online forum user ‘Ook,’ who, in a March 2005 posting, wrote: “I don’t think there is a proper, correct or accurate definition of being British Chinese. For some it is a state of mind, for others it’s an identity. For me, it’s the unique blend of ideas, ideas, beliefs and mind sets of the Chinese and British backgrounds […] I suppose I’m more British than I am Chinese but the parts of me that are Chinese are near the core of my being where the foundations were laid by my mother” (Parker and Song, p. 595). Identity negotiation (ethnic formation), hence, truly does have a “multi-faceted” nature, as both Hall and the article seem to suggest.

On another note, Parker and Song also emphasize the “emergence of new institutions to represent complex identities and experiences” (p. 588), offering the idea that the current obsession with new media has changed ethnic identity formation, giving “wider access to the means of representation, and the supporting social morphology of swift response to social injustices” (p. 599).

Online activity, as Parker and Song suggest, can both express and transform identities—and the article provides much evidence on how online web connections among the British Chinese often lead to offline mobilization that spawned, in many cases, forms of direct action for social change/intervention (i.e. protests, petitions, rallies, etc.). This “banding together” of the ‘new’ Chinese identity immediately reminded me of a similar cultural controversy that occurred on Jimmy Kimmel Live late last year.

Like the April 2001 response of British Chinese to “the adverse representations of Chinese food as a potential source of foot and mouth disease” (Parker and Song, p. 597) or the collective protests of Min Quan (a civil rights action group) against the redevelopment of London’s Chinatown-- the Jimmy Kimmel incident sparked an uproar amongst the Chinese in America, tapping deep into a current of resentment against American media, as well as proving that there is, even today, still a great amount of demonization towards China (and various other ‘marginal’ groups) in American society. 

Just something to think about.

-Pamela C.

Struggling on Two Fronts

         Stuart Hall’s “New Ethnicities” discusses a shift in black cultural politics from the use of blackness as a unifying label of shared marginalization to a recognition of blackness as a constructed categorization of a socially, economically, and ethnically diverse population.  Hall names My Beautiful Laundrette as indicative of the shift, suggesting that “the question of the black subject cannot be represented without reference to the dimensions of class, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity.”  The conflicting need for solidarity and also for recognition of difference is addressed directly in Bamboozled, as the fictional TV network’s attempt to create and package a safe representation of blackness for consumption by the American public is reliant on homogeneity, and much of the film’s conflict results from the reaction to this representation from its diverse cast of characters, many of whom are themselves actively engaged in representing black culture – through dance, through music, through stand-up comedy, through network television.  Spike Lee’s film serves as a manifestation of the paradox that Hall identifies, wherein a wide variety of black characters from different socio-economic backgrounds are faced with a single, monolithic definition of blackness by the American media, yet are all fighting separate, even contradictory social battles.   

         One of the most striking things about Lee’s film is the juxtaposition of the diversity of his black characters and the singular image of blackness as represented in the use of blackface.  Bamboozled portrays a minstrel show that is modern not only in terms of the era of performance, but also in the fact that it exists amongst a mix of other representations of black culture operating with varying levels of influence and social legitimacy both within the film and outside of it.  The images of early black memorabilia that populate Pierre’s office function narratively like a sort of tell-tale heart – they stare with accusatory eyes, seemingly taking life at the end of the film as a physical manifestation of his guilt.  They also function more literally as a reminder of the particular representation of blackness that Pierre has enabled (that of blackness-as-sameness) in the face of the other more genuine and complex representations of blackness he has seen displayed by other characters throughout the film.  “Black is beautiful” becomes the rallying cry of the TV network, though Lee demonstrates how dangerous this phrase can be when “black” is only acceptable when it is one thing and one thing only, something easily understood and without inherent conflict or complication.  Such is the blackness of blackface, that which is desired and perpetuated by the TV network.  Sameness becomes a tool and a weapon of the culture industry just as it is in racist rhetoric, turning the very different characters of Manray and Womack into the same stereotype, the same color, the same commodity.  It is easier to appropriate a culture when it is made to be seen as one-dimensional.  As Hall points out, the challenge lies in developing a politics that can generate positive results through maintaining a sense of unity of resistance while also negotiating difference of interests, though challenge does not absolve us of the responsibility.  

Multiple Marginalities: A Primer for Cultural Studies?

            Much has been said about Cultural Studies’ “poverty” in recent times and its decline from a state of grace. Nevertheless, despite this threat of descent to a “let-us-study-everything-under-the-sun” approach, some of the readings for this week have shown us that the potency of a cultural studies approach lies in the liminal space it occupies academically. John Hartley, for instance points out Cultural Studies’ origins in the opposition to the rationalization of education and culture and the perceived need for an “ethical” engagement with the immediate social surroundings. Even Michael Bérubé’s lament for Critical Studies’ apparent lack of impact in the United States and the left’s simplistic appropriation of cultural studies as a pre-determined approach in which the faults of neoliberalism are already “given” (and all analysis is subsequently subsumed under this pre-determined frame) does not totally write off its critical potential.

One thing is certain though—Cultural Studies, at least as the Birmingham School envisaged it, sought to write against a monolithic explanation of the world. Williams’ dictum, “culture is ordinary” (1989) stood in stark contrast to Matthew Arnold’s characterization of culture as the “best that has been thought and said in the world” (2006: 5) and necessitated a material and mental re-orientation of what comprised a legitimate object of study. Marginalities, therefore, became essential to Cultural Studies and the “popular” became a valid focus of research. This was not merely an expansion of the “list” of objects that could be studied, but a reorientation of the boundaries of disciplines themselves—for instance E.P Thompson’s work on the English working class and the work of the Subaltern Studies Group in the field of history.

When we watched Stephen Frears’ My Beautiful Laundrette last week, my initial query was “Why are we watching this?” The question was not loaded as much with a judgment of what one should or should not watch, as with a curiosity about the context in which we were watching it. This specific instance of viewing My Beautiful Laundrette was different from my earlier viewings, and stopped being merely “a Stephen Frears film about immigrants in London.” Rather, the film became part of a dialog with the texts assigned in the syllabus. In corollary, maybe the “syllabus” too ceased being a “list” of readings and chores, and became an organic entity that sought to define Cultural Studies even as it purports to “teach” it. For me, the larger connecting strand between the readings and the film was a focus on various levels of marginality and a polyvocal approach that Hartley defines as a “philosophy of plenty” (2003: 3). The “ontology of the syllabus” is one thing, and reading the film is quite another. From a cultural studies perspective, what does My Beautiful Laundrette tell me about Thatcherite Britain?

I think that it is precisely in the film’s focus on the travails of individuals, rather than on “real” political events that the film becomes potently political. What does it mean for Omar to be immigrant and homosexual? Conversely, what does it mean for Johnny to be part of a sweeping racist, anti-immigrant form of Nationalism, and at the same time homosexual? The “culture(s)” of Thatcherite Britain are captured in these pressure points of multiple marginalities. The destruction of the launderette itself (much like the destruction of the pizzeria in Do the Right Thing) stands a symbol of the frictional relationship between these different marginalities that can explode at any moment. As a film that was released during the heydays of Thatcherism, My Beautiful Laundrette can also be seen as a “cultured” response (if one may use the pun) to the immediate and pressing social issues of the day.

Finally, I am left wondering what Adorno, with his complete dismissal of film as a culture industry would say about a film like My Beautiful Laundrette. True that as a film, My Beautiful Laundrette is a product of a set of industrial and commercial practices—but what art isn’t? Michael Baxandall, writing about Renaissance painting once wrote, “money is very important in the history of art” (1988: 2). The same axiom could perhaps be extended even more accurately in case of film. Perhaps what is crucial is recognizing what the film manages to convey, even while it operates within the constraints of an industrial system.

Arnold, Matthew. Culture and Anarchy. Oxord: Oxford University Press, 2006

Baxandall, Michael. Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Hartley, John. A Short history of Cultural Studies. Sage: London, 2003.

Williams, Raymond. “Culture is Ordinary” in Resources of Hope: Culture Democracy and Socialism. London: Verso, 1989.

Adorno’s Pessimism vs. Hall’s Optimism

My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) seems as good a place as any to begin to feel out the field of Cultural Studies and my developing attitudes toward it. Stuart Hall famously celebrated the film for “its refusal to represent the black experience in Britain as monolithic, self-contained, sexually stabilized and always ‘right-on’ – in a word always and only ‘positive.” (see link). He’s right, of course, that Frears’ film doesn’t represent stable identity categories (indeed, the film, to me, begins to feel downright schematic in its determined efforts to ensure that every character gets seen in multiple lights). Still, one of the questions that we must ask ourselves in this class is whether or not this arrival at positive, or even complex, forms of representation can be viewed as a positive endpoint in its own right.

Adorno, so remarkably pessimistic in his assessment of mass culture (or culture industries, as he carefully terms them), emphasizes the complicity between culture and commodification. He writes that the “culture industry misuses its concern for the masses in order to duplicate, reinforce and strengthen their mentality, which it presumes is given and unchangeable” (104). Emphasizing distribution processes, Adorno demands that we think more deeply about films as objects of exchange rather than merely assess what we see on screen. By this logic, it becomes important to understand that My Beautiful Laundrette was a film commissioned for Britain’s Channel 4.  Adorno reminds us that the film’s progressive message, whatever cultural work it might perform, also ultimately and primarily serves to foster the further consumption of media (doing so by providing viewers with a sense of edification and by promoting the Channel 4 brand). Positive identity politics in media are invariably akin to a marketing gimmick, he latently argues. Bérubé makes a similar accusation, stating that the field has lost sight of these complex systems of capital when he writes that “cultural studies had gotten distracted by postmodernism and identity politics and had lost sight of the simple truth that the free market is a sham and that people are mislead by mass media” (8).

These unresolved tensions exist within the film itself, to a degree. After all, the laundrette, the space where heterosexual and mixed-race homosexual love can exist side by side, is a semi-public space, at best, utopian and unattainable at worst. The film’s sound design, and its music in particular, designate the laundrette as a place apart, with many scenes set there functioning similarly to the production numbers in a Hollywood musical. Unsurprisingly, the film’s narrative comes to a climax as the racial and economic tensions of Thatcher era England come crashing through the building’s façade, upsetting the dreams of progress and freedom. Nonetheless, the film concludes on a hopeful note, conflating sexual freedoms with capitalist market freedoms as Omar and Johnny splash one another, supposedly “free” as they hide unseen in the confines of their place of business. The free market finally is presented as the solution to the ills of society and a way to eradicate differences in race, gender, and sexuality.

This problematic proposition seems to prove Adorno’s point. The culture industry’s narratives are seductive (indeed, they even seduced Hall to a degree) and self-perpetuating. While I would not as readily dismiss the contributions of Cultural Studies as a field as Bérubé (indeed, I would claim the field has made its greatest strides outside of the academy) it seems that to a large degree we’d be wise as scholars to heed his call to pay attention to mass media’s capacity to deceive, especially when it claims to be progressive.