Black Film, White Money Film Analysis
In his Book Black Film, White Money, Jesse Algeron Rhimes makes an interesting parallel. He declares “Edison initiated mass film viewing with the introduction of the large-screen projector in New York City on April 23, 1896. Less than one month later, on May 18, the U.S Supreme Court formally sanctioned “Jim Crow” segregation by formulating its anti-Black “separate but equal” doctrine in Plessy v. Ferguson”. He adds, “ Racial segregation and mass film viewing are siblings, if not forever squabbling fraternal twins” . Baptized after a minstrel song that criticized African Americans, “Jim Crow laws” were segregationist’s laws that materialized the racial oppression in the United States. These laws will end 68 years later, July 1964 by the adoption
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And the beginnings of the early cinema will bring out a controversial motions picture: a white representation of black Afro-Americans. Theses representations are called the “Blackfaces”; borrowed characters from the Minstrel Show, a musical show allying the singing, the dancing and the comedy very popular in the United States of America. The civil rights and the image of the Black were thus both controlled by the White. Moreover, some White actors were specialized in theses roles of Black men (Thomas D. Rice, William H. West…). And it is naturally a “blackface” that represents the first Black character of the history of the cinema: the adaptation of the book Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher-Stowe. Released in 1903 and directed by Edwin S.Porter, Uncle Tom’s Cabin used white men to play the leaders Black roles. As Laure-Anne Cari said in her thesis Les noirs dans le cinéma américain: des stéréotypes raciaux à la representation d’une véritable identité, the very first representation of the Black is not as follows entrusted to an authentic man of color, it is rather a projection of what a producer, a director and an actor perceive and want to show of the black man. She adds therefore the character of the black is not a common character; he appears as a caricature of the Black Man. The
And the beginnings of the early cinema will bring out a controversial motions picture: a white representation of black Afro-Americans. Theses representations are called the “Blackfaces”; borrowed characters from the Minstrel Show, a musical show allying the singing, the dancing and the comedy very popular in the United States of America. The civil rights and the image of the Black were thus both controlled by the White. Moreover, some White actors were specialized in theses roles of Black men (Thomas D. Rice, William H. West…). And it is naturally a “blackface” that represents the first Black character of the history of the cinema: the adaptation of the book Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher-Stowe. Released in 1903 and directed by Edwin S.Porter, Uncle Tom’s Cabin used white men to play the leaders Black roles. As Laure-Anne Cari said in her thesis Les noirs dans le cinéma américain: des stéréotypes raciaux à la representation d’une véritable identité, the very first representation of the Black is not as follows entrusted to an authentic man of color, it is rather a projection of what a producer, a director and an actor perceive and want to show of the black man. She adds therefore the character of the black is not a common character; he appears as a caricature of the Black Man. The