"It would be simple and convenient if all the media were simply the ventriloquists of a unified and racist 'ruling class' conception of the world. But neither a unifiedly conspiratorial media nor indeed a unified racist "ruling class" exist in anything like that simple way. I don't insist on complexity for its own sake. But if critics of the media subscribe to too simple or reductive a view of their operations, this inevitably lacks credibility and weakens the case they are making because the theories and critiques don't square with reality..." --Stuart Hall, Whites of Their EyesThis issue of racial coding in the media is a complicated one. However, I do think that too often it is over simplified. It is human nature to polarize issues in order to understand them, this is why many films and novels center around the Good vs. Evil theme. There are many ways to depict the difference between these two forces, usually characters are developed and moral values are revealed in the side of the Good and typical sins like jealousy, corruptness, and cruelty toward the weak are revealed amongst those on the side of Evil. Another way of more subtly showing the contrast between the two forces is to assign them polarity within the appearance (most people are primarily visually-dependent learners and so this would be a useful tool in order to get through to the audience which side they should be cheering on). In showing the polarity between Good and Evil it would only naturally follow to choose the two colors (non-colors technically) most opposite in the color spectrum, the colors opposite in the eyes of every person, colorblind or otherwise, has long been perceived as Black and White.
Here is where the argument is often made that Black is always assigned to Evil and White always assigned to Good and that this extends to the racist notions of today that live within white supremacy and black inferiority. I see a problem in this too easily simplified theory. First, however I will agree with some aspects of it.
I understand the theory and the obvious harm that can be misconstrued out of this assigning of white and black to Good and Evil. However racist some of these films and novels might be in this, I believe the majority choose to assign colors to Good and Evil without thought for race but merely thought for clarifying the "other" in the movie that should be conquered. Indeed, many movies, I'd argue an equal amount, assign white to Evil and black to Good. It does not really matter in most cases which goes to which side, so long as they are opposite.
In a quick brainstorm I thought of the following characters, each pair consists of the Good leader and the Evil leader in a series of films that are fairly popular. In The Golden Compass the Good is represented by Serafina Pekkala a witch shrouded in darkness contrasted against the shimmering brightness of the Evil Miss Coulter, next we have the hitman Leon from The Professional always wearing sunglasses and black trench coats as the force of Good against the Evil corrupt cop always wearing a white linen suit, in James Bond: Die Another Day the girl on the side of Good is played by African American Halle Berry who wins Bond's affections over the Evil Miss Frost who works for the bad guys, when in Mean Girls Cady tries to make friends at a new high school the true friend of Goodness is the bitter goth Gretchen and the school's cruelest popular girl is light, breezy blonde Regina, in the classic comic book series Batman the good guy known as Batman wears a black cowl and his Evil nemesis The Joker wears white face paint, in the action film Blade Good guy African American Blade kicks the butt of the Evil white guy Deacon Frost.
GOOD SIDE EVIL SIDE
I believe that if Evil is more often depicted with blackness and darkness it is done so not as African American-ness, but as actual darkness. Shadows are dark, children are afraid of the dark, coffins are dark, rats, spiders, and bats dwell in dark areas (all typically feared creatures), this is not to say that any of these are Evil, but they are mysterious, and to many frightening, race aside, I believe that if Evil is assigned blackness and darkness it is under the assumption that what people fear most, more than closed coffins, rats, spiders, and bats is Evil itself.
Thus I see a problem with the assumption that just because something in film or literature is color coded in darkness it is inherently causation to believe that this will subliminally coax the idea that being black is being "bad." I think people who are white come to that assumption all their own as being black is most easily recognized to them as being "most" other. Even this however, I see as a bit of a leap. How then can we explain the negative attitude toward the fair skinned Irish, often considered "as low as blacks" in the beginnings of our country?
I think perhaps more detrimental to racial equality in the attitudes of the people are Jar-Jar-Binks-like characters and characters like the Na'vi in Avatar. Here we see actual cultural influences, dreadlocks and gaged ears, from African culture used to signify a race of people that depicted as "primitive" and "inferior." These are the cultural codes within movies that should be taken into consideration and have merit for worry as they are freshly tied to African culture in the minds of the average viewer. In terms of The Lord of The Rings I see racism in the cultural coding of the Scandinavian armor for the Good and the dreadlocks, African tribal paint, and black body paint on the Evil orcs to be most offensive, but again, these are not matters of assigning each side Black or White but assigning the Black culture and White culture to each side, an entirely different message and much more worrisome at that.
Yes, these issues are of course complex, and Hall's argument is about generalities that can be seen and were perhaps more prevalent in the past. The examples you pick are all interesting because they are relatively recent and reflect a deliberate attempt to play with this rather classic dark/light= evil/good dichotomy. As we talked about in regards to Star Wars and the Stormtroopers, artists often explicitly choose the opposite - light=bad - as a way to play with our expectations because of a knowledge that those expectations exist. Thus your points are very true. However these exceptions also in many ways prove the rule - the exceptions stick out so much because the "rule" is so deeply embedded that we often don't notice how very prevalent it is. And remember Hall isn't necessarily arguing that these representations will cause us to see blackness as evil, but that there is a relationship between social reality and representation.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, the choice of coding good/evil as light/dark doesn't necessarily mean an intentional or overt reference to race on the part of cultural producers - it's what Hall calls inferential racism. It's the fact that the idea that "dark" equals "bad" is so entrenched in our culture that Hall is talking about - so that when we think about what is "bad" we immediately go to "dark". As we talked about in class, this isn't just a natural thing - if it were we wouldn't see cultures in which whiteness or albinism was coded as evil, but those cultures do exist.
And your example of the Irish is interesting in that it actually highlights how socially constructed race and our understandings of "evil" are - early representations of the Irish in America frequently compared them with monkeys and slaves or depicted them as "dark" in order to devalue them (for instance: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_PRW_WGxqTbo/SEhTCGthwxI/AAAAAAAAAU4/hueIqCNtimw/s400/anti-Irish+toon2.jpg). Remember our discussion of "racial proof cases" - being seen as "white" historically had less to do with actual skin color than with class, religion, national origin, etc. The actual "fact" of the light skinned-ness of the Irish does not mean that they were always seen as white, fair or "good," and in order to represent them as "bad" they were frequently depicted as or with animals or slaves - as "dark" or less than human.