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Cinema
Civil Rights Regulation, Repression, and Race in the
Classical Hollywood Era
Ellen C.
Scott
New
Brunswick (New Jersey): Rutgers University Press, 2015 Paperback.
x+253 p. ISBN 978-0813571355. $29.95
Reviewed by Keith
Corson Rhodes
College, Memphis (Tennessee)
Ellen Scott’s
thoroughly engaging first book, Civil
Rights Cinema, is part of a broader movement in African American film
studies that looks to expand the parameters established by scholars in the
1970s, 80s, and 90s (Donald Bogle, Thomas Cripps, et al.) The tendency to make sweeping generalizations and use
seemingly representative films as a stand-in for broad swaths of history has
been replaced by more focused work that is rooted in archival research, a
larger set of texts, and a willingness to address and unpack the complications
of film history. Scott’s book does for censorship in the civil rights era what
Christopher Sieving’s Soul Searching (2012,
Wesleyan Press) does for representations of Black Power politics in 1960s and
what Jacqueline Stewart’s Migrating to
the Movies (2005, University of California Press) does for urban film
culture in the “race film” era. Civil
Rights Cinema is an essential step in clarifying the history of race on
screen, replacing reductive labels (“positive” or “negative” representation)
with a thorough engagement of Hollywood’s complex system of production. Whereas
previous scholars have too often looked at black representation during the
studio system solely through the lens of analyzing the images on screen, Scott
sets out to understand how these images made it there in the first place. Moreover,
she also looks to expand the conversation by addressing absence as well as
presence. For Scott, the images of African Americans on screen tell only part
of the story of race in Hollywood. She is equally concerned with the structured
omission of black bodies on screen, be it through censorship informed by civil
rights opposition or white bodies used allegorically to make black political
perspectives more palatable. The impetus for
Scott’s analysis is best expressed in her introductory statement that, “the
structure of limitation itself requires interpretation” [p. 1].
Scott understands commercial filmmaking as a process of creative development,
adaptation, and censorship (be it state sponsored or self-governed by the film
industry itself). Scott splits her analysis into four parts, looking at
separate systems of regulation that shaped the content and tenor of civil
rights depictions within Hollywood films, analyzing the impact of the film
industry’s self censorship (primarily the Production Code Administration, or
PCA), state and local censorship boards, studio executives, and black protests
organizations (namely the NAACP). Each section is rooted in archival research
and expands from the usual set of “problem pictures” to include films not often
placed within the same conversation of racial representation in Hollywood. Scott
gives as much time to little-known films like One Mile from Heaven (1937), Crash
Dive (1943), and Slave Ship
(1937) as she does to Gone with the Wind (1939)
and No Way Out (1950), which is one
of the most refreshing aspects of her study. The first three
sections work in unison, showing the cinematic discourse surrounding African
American culture and politics as being something being enacted, or at least
enforced, by whites. The fourth section complicates this by showing African
Americans as having a level of agency by pressuring Hollywood in matters
relating to screen representation. As Scott argues, the PCA, studios, and local
censors created a “system of vetting” around depictions of racially focused
political content, limiting what audiences could see through vague notions of
what they should see [3]. These
limitations, of course, led to absences. There were absent black bodies on
screen during the height of the studio system, not to mention black political
perspectives. But how does one attempt to write a book about an absence? Scott
chooses “representability,” an approach often used in queer scholarship of
classical Hollywood but not as commonly used for other repressed identities. Scott
finds evidence in texts to support her readings, moving away from creative
analysis to focus on texts with clear evocations of events that could not
otherwise be dealt with explicitly during the era. Rather than only using films
with blackness literally represented on screen, Scott compellingly reads race
into films from the era that deal with central conflicts or iconography of the
civil rights era, even if they are displaced onto white characters. Issues such
as lynching and miscegenation, as Scott argues, were often present in studio
films, even when black performers were not. Scott understands these as “racial
fragments” or, more accurately, “absence presence” using both institutional and
textual analysis [2]. Rather than seeing
the PCA as a static entity, Scott is wise to understand the structural shifts within
the organization and deal with the ways personnel, industry logic, and the
political context shifted over the years in which the code was enforced. Scott
also resists the temptation to look upon the PCA as anything more than
marketing ploy. Although the PCA crafted a series of rules and guidelines,
censorship decisions were primarily concerned with brand management of
Hollywood studios and the reputation of cinema as wholesome entertainment. The
rules that were at the heart of the production code were malleable, often
changing along with broader political contexts or made to fit individual
circumstances. A clear example of this can be found in the relationship between
the United States Office of War Intelligence (OWI) and the PCA during World War
II. The OWI’s impact on the PCA’s logic of censorship was immense, and through
it Scott provides an alternate understanding of black-cast studio films like Stormy Weather (1943) and Cabin in the Sky (1943) by using
archival information to reverse common notions that they were viewed as
progressive at the time of their release. To the contrary, the OWI feared that
releasing films with all-black casts would reinforce and normalize segregation,
hurting the war effort [42-43]. Moments like this show Scott at her best,
giving focused analysis of her archival findings to make a clear intervention
in the ways in which African American film history has been understood. Scott balances
discussions of the PCA with other bodies that shaped Hollywood’s strategies for
production and distribution, avoiding the scores of oversimplified histories
that have turned PCA chief Joseph Breen into an almost mythic figure of moral
rigidity. At the same time, Scott maintains the PCA as the most prominent and
persuasive of governing bodies when she suggests that the spike in African
American representation in the mid-to-late 1950s was tied to censorship, with
the “Miracle decision” in 1952 (Joseph
Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson) granting
film’s protection under the first amendment and, therefore, ruling that state
and local censorship boards were unconstitutional [64]. This decision did not
only undermine the power of the PCA, but it also highlights the undervalued
power of state and local censorship boards. State boards were largely more
oppressive than the PCA, cutting films further to adhere to local racial
attitudes, not national ones, and doing so without the participation of the
filmmakers or studios. Most of Scott’s information
on state and municipal decisions was found through the PCA’s archives, giving
this section a more anecdotal basis. State boards were founded (or justified at
least) to govern foreign films that did not fall under the reach of the PCA,
but they often were used to further censor the same Hollywood films that had
already been granted the PCA’s seal of approval. Aspects of sexuality were
particularly singled out by state and local censors, reflecting the concerns of
Bible Belt communities. The PCA gave guidelines to the studios and a working
idea of what they could (and could not) do, but state boards destabilized this
streamlined method for pre-planning. Instead, state and municipal boards added
an extra layer that not only altered film content and spectatorial
possibilities locally, as Scott argues, but also made studios shy away from
making films that might elicit challenges and changes beyond the PCA. The perspective of
the studios is provided through a single case study, using Daryl F. Zanuck’s
tenure at Twentieth-Century Fox as a window into Hollywood. Scott outlines the
role of individual producers in the classical studio era pressing for
representation of civil rights issues, using a telling quote from Zanuck where
he says of himself that, “I have sought more than any other person in the
industry to break ground in touching on social and political causes” [108]. This
claim is problematic not only for being self-serving, but also for failing to
fully grasp how limited this achievement would be in comparison to the output
of the executives at other major studios. While Zanuck spearheaded films like No Way Out, Pinky (1949), and Island in
the Sun (1957) for Fox he also helped in the making of far from progressive
fare like The Littlest Rebel (1935)
and In Old Kentucky (1935). Zanuck’s
symbolic role as a contradictory figure caught between progressive impulses and
retrograde attitudes is best captured by Scott in her analysis of the
production of Slave Ship (1937). Production
files contain over a hundred pages of memos from Zanuck to the filmmakers,
showing that studio films became an outgrowth of the producer’s personal politics
and sensibilities, often with contradictory attitudes involving race [112]. Zanuck’s
memos, and the film itself as shown through Scott’s textual analysis, reify
racial mythologies and typographies while also striving to break new ground
politically. Zanuck, as was the
case with any producer at a major studio during the era, functioned as an added
layer of censorship, albeit subjective and informal. Studio heads and producers
often removed creative decisions from the hands of directors and writers, superseding
creative or ideological intent by foregrounding the budget and box office
concerns that were at the heart of movie making as a business. Yet the input of
producers, as seen through Zanuck’s memos, reflected the ideology and
aesthetics of the studio chiefs as well as their financial concerns. On Pinky and Island in the Sun, Zanuck took conservative literary texts and gave
them to left-leaning writers in hopes that they would transform the text [135].
But as Scott shows in her summaries of the production of each film, Zanuck’s
role as a producer often muted the impact of these hired writers by giving them
notes that dismantled significant changes to the source material. At times
premised on his own gut instinct in how to make a successful film, Zanuck’s
role as a one-man censorship board helps underline the inexact process of
exclusion. The book’s final
major segment focuses on the “interpretive activism” of black critics and civil
rights organizations that used public discourse to foreground issues “left in
the shadows” by Hollywood [147]. While a much-needed counterpoint to the
previous three sections, Scott misses a number of opportunities to expand
arguments she makes earlier in the book and complicate the role of NAACP and
the black press in shaping screen representation. Scott’s analysis falls in
line with previous scholarship, looking at the benefits of vocal protest to
force change in Hollywood or educate the filmgoing public about damaging
stereotypes. One of the biggest shortcomings of interpretive activism is that
being premised on reading film texts it foregrounds representation of race on
screen rather than broader, structural omissions. Pointing out what is wrong
with the racial depictions in, say, Song
of the South (1946) is useful, but the protests surrounding the film failed
to address the hundreds of films made that same year in which African Americans
were wholly absent. When Hollywood
takes on depicting black lives on screen it runs the risk of backlash, not only
from racist censor boards but also through the interpretation among the black
press and social organizations. By playing it safe and ignoring race altogether,
Hollywood has made a practice out of avoiding these headaches altogether. The
question of how to address absence is one of Scott’s primary concerns early on
in the book, yet she does not do enough to extend this critical observation to the
interpretive community during the civil rights era. As the NAACP gained
steam following World War II it began pushing to end broad stereotypes (Mantan
Moreland, Stepin Fetchit, et al.),
showing a preoccupation with erasing certain black images rather than
cultivating spaces for new ones. The same impulse defined the response to the
blaxploitation cycle in the 1970s by the conservative black press and civic
leaders (i.e. Jesse Jackson). Scott
quotes a 1943 Pittsburgh Courier
survey to substantiate this impulse, the poll that asked readers if they should
boycott movies that depict African Americans as “inferior”: 82.7% said yes [169].
Yet, the poll fails to mention the boycotting of Hollywood films where blacks
are not represented at all as an option. Scott looks at interpretive activism as
a needed oppositional voice to the studios, and in many cases it was. But the
details Scott provides about the protest in the black press against a proposed
production of Countee Cullen’s play St.
Louis Woman suggest that interpretive activism often functioned as another
layer of censorship [173]. Scott hints as “safe” exclusion in the 1960s, but leaves
this observation underdeveloped. Cinema
Civil Rights is wildly ambitious in its scope, taking on every studio
film (and a number of non-studio films) from the 1920s to the early 1960s. On
one hand the book can be understood as a jumping-off point for future
scholarship, as Scott never lingers on a single film for more than a few pages.
At times Scott struggles to find a balance between her own analysis and the
wealth of information she found in the archives. With so many telling quotes
that get to the heart of PCA’s train of thought, the book often mirrors the
archivist’s pleasure in unearthing material as well as the tendency to delve in
too deeply without coming up for a breath of air. Yet this may not be a
shortcoming. Given the same material, another writer may have turned this book
into a sprawling tome that unpacks every detail and, in doing so, loses the
thrust of the argument. Scott’s writing may be dense at times, but she has
command over the material, never losing her broader argument within the
details. The contribution that
Scott makes to African American film history with Cinema Civil Rights is sizeable, but it is her sense of purpose
rather than her exhaustive research that makes the book essential. Scott
introduces her subject eloquently and finishes the book by tying civil rights
issues (as opposed to the “civil rights generation”) to contemporary cinema,
which is a crucial way to understand what is at stake. This book is not about
cataloguing the push for progress in the distant past, replicating in
scholarship the simplified and sterilized depictions of the civil rights
movement in Hollywood films like The Help
(2011) and The Butler (2013). It
is a crucial reminder that issues of civil rights are still at stake, even as
we have grown apathetic and unfocused in our response. Scott’s book is a call
for engagement that forces the reader to not only reinterpret the past but to
also reassess the present.
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