Copyright
by
Kristen Elizabeth Hoerl
2005
The Dissertation Committee for Kristen Elizabeth Hoerl Certifies that this is the
approved version of the following dissertation:
The Death of Activism?: Popular Memories of 1960s Protest
Committee:
Dana L. Cloud, Supervisor
Barry Brummett
Richard Cherwitz
Rosa A. Eberly
Sharon Jarvis
The Death of Activism?: Popular Memories of 1960s Protest
by
Kristen Elizabeth Hoerl, B.S., M.A.
Dissertation
Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of
The University of Texas at Austin
in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements
for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
The University of Texas at Austin
August 2005
For my parents,
for whom the memory of 1960s activism is alive and well;
and for my grandmother,
who taught me to cherish memories and question history
Acknowledgements
Dana Cloud deserves special recognition for her direction of this dissertation. I
could not have asked for a more supportive and intellectually engaging advisor. She has
challenged me with her insightful comments on numerous drafts of this dissertation, and
has inspired me by her dedication to social justice. I also thank the members of my
dissertation committee, Richard Cherwitz, Barry Brummett, Sharon Jarvis, and Rosa
Eberly for reviewing this dissertation and for shaping my previous scholarship in rhetoric
and popular media. Rosa Eberly also provided me with valuable places, physically and
figuratively, from where I could begin thinking and writing about the relationship
between public tragedies and shared memories.
Numerous graduate student colleagues at The University of Texas at Austin have
helped me during my process of completing this dissertation. I am especially grateful to
Lisa Foster, Angela Aguayo, and Caroline Rankin for their advice, encouragement, and
friendship. I am also indebted to my parents Lesley and Donald Hoerl, to my brother,
Kent Hoerl, and to my grandmother, Wanda McCollom, for supporting me and for
making the struggles of ordinary people central to our family history.
v
The Death of Activism?: Popular Memories of 1960s Protest
Publication No._____________
Kristen Elizabeth Hoerl, Ph.D.
The University of Texas at Austin, 2005
Supervisor: Dana Cloud
Between 1988 and 2002, the films Mississippi Burning (1988), Ghosts of
Mississippi (1996), Malcolm X (1992), Panther (1995), Berkeley in the Sixties (1990),
and The Weather Underground (2002) recalled 1960s protest movements. This
dissertation examines these six films and journalistic coverage of them to explore the
relationship between popular culture and historical understanding. More specifically, this
dissertation develops answers to the following questions: How do particular texts in
popular culture ascribe meaning to the past? How do particular texts establish themselves
as important sources of historical knowledge? How do counter-memories of activism
become part of broader cultural discourses?
I apply methods of rhetorical criticism to films and journalism reviews to explain
how popular culture has attributed meaning to 1960s activism. Patterns across films
about 1960s protests symbolically declared the death of activism, but they did not
establish the popular meaning of activism entirely. The films’ narrative genres, stylistic
devices, and journalism reviews appeared in different and often contradictory ways to
vi
construct a range of messages about the role of activism. Each of these films’ rhetorical
stances regarding historical reality contributed to their roles as a source of popular
memory. Mainstream journalism reviews also contributed to the meaning of 1960s
activism by conferring, or denying, legitimacy to particular films as sources for
remembering the past. While these films’ status as truth contributed to their roles as
sources of historical information, this status did not guarantee the films’ positions as part
of popular memory. Documentary films that did not adopt conventions of entertainment
film had limited popular appeal. Alternatively, films that were hybrids of documentary
and entertainment films functioned as sources of popular memory by adopting both
generic narratives that appealed to mainstream audiences and stylistic devices that
establish films as sources of historical information. I conclude that films that produce
contradictions between the generic conventions of film and the cinematic depictions of
the past open spaces for secondary sources to deliberate about the past. Thus, the
counter-hegemonic potential of films might not actually rest in the films themselves, but
in the controversies that they provoke elsewhere in popular culture.
vii
Table of Contents
Introduction..............................................................................................................1
The rhetoric of popular memory .....................................................................5
Films for consideration ...................................................................................7
Charting the landscape of popular memory ..................................................10
Narrative and argument analysis..........................................................10
Formal analysis ....................................................................................11
The intertextuality of popular memory ................................................13
Journalistic framings of 1960s protests................................................15
Journalistic framings as deliberative topoi ..........................................18
Chapter preview ............................................................................................20
Notes to Introduction ....................................................................................27
SECTION ONE: POPULAR CULTURE AND CONTENTIOUS PUBLICS
29
Chapter One: The rhetoric of film, memory, and truth..........................................30
Publicity and publics.....................................................................................30
Films as rhetorical texts ................................................................................32
The rhetoric of documentary film ........................................................33
The rhetoric of entertainment film.......................................................35
Political hegemony........................................................................................37
Popular memory............................................................................................39
Popular memory and political power............................................................41
The rhetorical implications of truth claims...................................................46
Notes to Chapter One....................................................................................50
Chapter Two: Publics, counter-publics and the trajectory of 1960s social
movements ..........................................................................................................54
Participatory democracy and the public sphere ............................................55
Counter-publics and contentious political engagement ................................56
From reformism to radicalism: Civil Rights and New Left activism ...........63
The Civil Rights Movement during the early 1960s............................63
viii
State violence against the Civil Rights Movement ..............................65
The emergence of the New Left: Students for a Democratic Society..67
Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement .....................................................67
From resistance to confrontation ..................................................................68
The rise of the Black Power Movement ..............................................69
Growing confrontation in the Vietnam Anti-War Movement .............70
Radicalism and revolution at the end of the decade ............................73
Killing activism, framing activists.......................................................74
Activism in 1968 and beyond .......................................................................77
The rage and death of the New Left.....................................................78
Activism in the new millennium..........................................................81
Notes to Chapter Two ...................................................................................83
SECTION TWO: MEMORIES OF MISSISSIPPI
84
Introduction to Mississippi Burning and Ghosts of Mississippi.............................85
Notes to Introduction to Section Two...........................................................89
Chapter Three: Memory and counter-memory in Mississippi Burning .................90
Memory and amnesia in Mississippi Burning...............................................91
Mississippi Burning as an historical cop action docudrama ................91
Burning violence against blacks into popular memory........................95
Forgetting civil rights activism in Mississippi ...................................101
Amnesia as a source for invention in journalistic memory.........................104
Notes to Chapter Three ...............................................................................113
Chapter Four: Melodrama and the scapegoat in Ghosts of Mississippi ...............114
The instrumental role of popular memory ..................................................116
The triumph of a civil rights hero in Ghosts of Mississippi........................118
Leaving racism to the past .................................................................119
Melodrama in journalism...................................................................121
Signifiers of realism in Ghosts of Mississippi....................................123
The narrative scapegoating of Byron de la Beckwith.................................124
Fidelity to history as the closing of journalism critique ....................127
ix
Truth and drama in Ghosts of Mississippi..........................................130
Hegemony and counter-hegemony in films about civil rights....................132
Notes to Chapter Four.................................................................................134
SECTION THREE: BLACK POWER IN POPULAR MEMORY
135
Introduction to Malcolm X and Panther ..............................................................136
Notes to Section Three Introduction ...........................................................140
Chapter Five: Doxa and counter-memory in Malcolm X .....................................141
A popular film about an unpopular black leader ........................................142
Malcolm X as a reaffirmation of the American Dream myth......................145
History and ideology in Malcolm X ...................................................151
Restoring liberal hegemony in Malcolm X: Tragic consequences of
isolated activism........................................................................152
Challenges to liberal hegemony in Malcolm X and journalism reviews.....155
Journalistic counter-memories about Malcolm X..............................162
Convention as a force for imagination in popular film...............................169
Notes to Chapter Five .................................................................................173
Chapter Six: Truth and ideology in Mario Van Peebles’ Panther.......................174
A controversial film about a radical movement..........................................175
Panther as an historical blaxploitation docudrama.....................................176
Entangling archival and fictional film in Panther ......................................181
Distinguishing fact and fiction in journalism reviews of Panther..............186
Telling lies or empowering the oppressed? .......................................186
Distinguishing art and history ...........................................................189
Agitprop: reality or ideology?............................................................191
Celebrating film as art, not fiction.....................................................193
Challenges for a critical memory of social protest .....................................195
Notes to Chapter Six ...................................................................................201
x
SECTION FOUR: REMEMBERING WHITE RADICALS IN DOCUMENTARY
FILM
203
Chapter Seven: The rhetoric of objectivity in Berkeley in the Sixties and
The Weather Underground ...............................................................................204
Codes of objectivity in participatory documentaries ..................................209
Protest and political empowerment in Berkeley..........................................211
Verbal evidence of activism and repression on campus ....................211
Visual evidence of activism and the myth of photographic realism..217
The legitimacy of Radicalism in The Weather Underground.....................222
Talking-heads redefine “violence” ....................................................223
The filmic construction of false balance............................................228
Authorizing dissent in public memories of television news ..............230
Reframing dissent as deviance in journalism reviews ................................238
Newspaper frames of activism as absurd, violent, and inept.............239
Leaving activism to the children of the past ......................................244
Struggles for popular memory and dissent after 1980 ................................248
Notes to Chapter Seven...............................................................................253
Conclusion: Activism and memory in the new millennium ................................256
Commemorating the death of activism in popular film ..............................259
The death of activism in the academy (and how to resuscitate it) ..............265
The counter-hegemonic potential of popular memory................................266
Bibliography ........................................................................................................270
Vita…...................................................................................................................306
xi
Introduction
Film director Rob Reiner once told the press that people don’t learn about the past
from schoolbooks, “they get their history through movies.”1
The recent trial and
conviction of Edgar Ray Killen provides a powerful example of the educational role of
Hollywood films.
In the heat of late June 2005 a jury found Killen guilty for
manslaughter in the 1964 murders of civil rights activists George Chaney, Michael
Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman. National broadcast media consistently referred to the
case as the “Mississippi Burning trial” after the commercially successful film that was
loosely based on the events surrounding the murders of the three Mississippi Freedom
Summer activists.2 By naming the trial in terms of a docudrama about the past, news
media attested to Hollywood’s influence on popular knowledge about the past. Indeed,
the American Broadcasting Network used recreated footage from the film to illustrate
events surrounding Killen’s conviction (Gibson, 2005; and Sawyer, 2005). News media
emphasis on the film at the time of the trial also elucidated the role of popular memory in
shaping social life in the present. As several reporters noted, had the film not cast
Mississippi in such a damning light, the state would not have been pressed to prosecute
Killeen in the present (Axtman, 2005, p. 01).
Parallels between the 1988 film and coverage of the recent trial are striking. Both
the film and trial coverage focused on individual whites for racial violence against blacks
in the South during the 1960s. Likewise, both credited government institutions led by
whites, the FBI and the Mississippi legal system, for finding justice for black people in
Mississippi. These texts provided an incomplete picture of racism and of activism in the
United States. They obscured the systemic violence and racism against blacks that has
persisted in the United States. They also ignored how civil rights activists, who were
1
mostly black and lacked direct access to institutional resources, had a central role in
changing race relations in the South during the 1960s. By putting blacks and civil rights
activists in the backgrounds of struggles for social justice, these texts crafted memories of
the past that forgot activism. Texts like these create messages that give ordinary people a
marginal role in the process of social change in the United States.
In this dissertation, I explore a broader pattern of filmic representations of 1960s
protests that symbolically constructed the death of activism. Over the past fifteen years,
several films recalled violent events in the history of 1960s social movements. Films that
followed Mississippi BurningMalcolm X (1992), Panther (1995), and Ghosts of
Mississippi (1996)also brought black activism from the 1960s to the attention of
Hollywood filmgoers.
Documentary films, including the 1990 film Berkeley in the
Sixties and the 2002 film The Weather Underground, recalled events in the history of
student and antiwar activism from the 1960s. Many of these films garnered national
news media attention at the time of their release. As newspapers reviewed and covered
these films, they also brought events from the history of 1960s activism to the attention of
newspaper readers across the United States.
These events bear importance to political life at the end of the millennium.
During the 1960s, protesters engaged in contentious, collective efforts to pose challenges
to corporate and political elites. As Tarrow (1998) argues, confrontational methods of
activism have an important place in democratic politics. For people who lack regular
access to institutions and resources of their own, contentious, collective dissent is often
the main and only recourse that they have against better-equipped opponents (p. 3).
Recent attention to 1960s activism in commercial film, documentaries, and newspapers
raises questions about popular memory and its implications for political and social life at
the end of the millennium. Collective protest and confrontational dissent had been
2
declared dead by political leaders and educators in years prior to these films’ release
dates. During the early to mid-1980s, politicians and professors from both liberal and
conservative perspectives declared the death of activism and the demise of the New Left.
In 1987, former activist and media scholar Todd Gitlin wrote that New Left activists’
hope for a more just society ended in feelings of rage at the end of the 1960s (Gitlin,
1987, p. 420). A year later, former activist and California senator Tom Hayden described
the 1960s as “a time of idealism rusted by tragedy” (as quoted in Hertzberg, 1987, sec. 7,
p.1). According to many scholars from the political Left, the death of activism took place
under the growing conservative political climate of the 1970s. Epstein (1991) lamented
the defeat of the left during the mid-seventies as a key to understanding the demise of
racial activism in the United States, and Miller (1987) suggested that demands for broad
social change from the new left atrophied with the rightist victories of 1968.
Scholars and former activists who decried the death of the left complemented the
assertions of conservative presidential administrations.
In 1981, President Ronald
Reagan characterized antiwar protest as a “temporary aberration” and announced the end
of the “Vietnam Syndrome.” Three years later, Reagan’s Secretary of State George
Schultz cast activism as inherently anti-American and concluded that protesters were
responsible for America’s defeat in Vietnam, for upending world stability, and for
threatening the cause of freedom (Dionisopoulos and Goldzwig, 1992, pp. 64-69).
Likewise, President George H. W. Bush celebrated the downfall of political dissent in the
United States when he told reporters during the 1991 Persian Gulf War that the nation
was overcoming the Vietnam Syndrome as it was “pulling together, unlike any time -- in
this kind of situation -- any time since World War II.” Political rhetoric announcing the
demise of the “Vietnam Syndrome” and political dissent negated anti-war protest as a
dangerous national phenomenon and as irrelevant to contemporary political life.
3
Despite the prevalence of conservative political rhetoric that announced the
danger and irrelevance of activism for the nation’s political culture, recent films about
1960s protest and newspaper coverage of them suggest that popular culture has not
entirely forgotten 1960s activism. Over the past several decades, the ghosts of activism
have haunted the landscape of popular culture.
What meanings have these films
attributed to protests from the 1960s? How have these meanings intervened in political
discourses that have chimed the death knell for activism?
As the rest of this dissertation elaborates, these films complemented the assertions
of political leaders and scholars that activism is dead. Hollywood films about black
struggles depicted the death of activism literally. While activists featured Mississippi
Burning and Ghosts of Mississippi only appeared in scenes that depicted their murders,
activists featured in Malcolm X and Panther were killed in the films’ concluding scenes.
White activists depicted in the documentaries Berkeley in the Sixties and The Weather
Underground did not literally die in these films; however, public protest did experience a
figurative death as former activists featured in these films concluded that public spaces
for dissent and deliberation no longer exist in the United States.
Before I analyzed these films, I expected to find that films and journalism reviews
of them attributed the literal and figurative deaths of activism to protester violence and
obscured the role of state violence in the history of social movement activism. Thus, I
anticipated I would argue that films and their newspaper reviews ultimately encouraged
audiences to disregard social protest. This thesis would extend the conclusion frequently
made by critical media and rhetorical scholars that commercial media shut down spaces
for critically thinking about the role of social, economic, and political power relations.
In the process of developing my argument, I came upon a few surprises. These
films did not uniformly blame activism for movements’ decline. Some films featured
4
state-supported violence as the catalyst for the decline in movement activism toward the
end of the 1960s. Messages critical of the state suggest that some spaces in popular
media do interrogate power relations. I was also surprised to find that patterns across
newspaper reviews of these films did not consistently attend to these films as
representations of the past. For example, reviewers predominantly characterized Panther
as an illegitimate representation of the Black Panther Party and of the FBI; conversely,
reviewers characterized Ghosts of Mississippi as an accurate, but ultimately shallow
rendering of civil rights history. Although patterns across different texts sometimes
worked concomitantly to create a particular meaning about activism, different texts
sometimes worked against one another in a struggle to establish meaning about the past.
Frequently, different texts struggled not only to establish particular messages about the
meaning and purpose of 1960s activism, but to establish what images and messages in
popular culture count as legitimate representations of the past. Given these observations,
this dissertation also explores how particular texts have established themselves as
legitimate sources of historical information. In particular, I answer the question, “How
have messages critical of prevailing power relations become part of the “common sense”
framing of 1960s activism in popular culture”?
THE RHETORIC OF POPULAR MEMORY
By answering this question, this dissertation advances scholarship in rhetoric,
memory, and media studies. I argue that the struggle over meaning and memory of 1960s
activism in popular culture is a rhetorical struggle. A rhetorical perspective on the study
of meaning suggests that history is constructed symbolically.
Documentary and
docudrama films about 1960s activism, as well as news media reviews and reports,
functioned rhetorically by creating narratives and arguments. Films about 1960s activism
created these narratives and arguments through the use of particular stylistic devices,
5
such as editing, film quality, and sound. Films and newspaper coverage about them also
rhetorically constructed films’ roles as sites or topoi for remembering the past. That is,
film’s narratives, argument structures, and formal elements created messages, not only
about events from the past, but about the role of popular media in communicating that
past to audiences. As this dissertation argues, messages attain particular rhetorical force
when they rhetorically assert their status as sources of historical information, and when
secondary sources confirm or deny this role. In this way, the meaning of activism was
constructed intertextually across a myriad of films and journalism reviews that sometimes
affirmed, and sometimes renounced one another.
The rhetorical nature of discourses about 1960s activism in popular culture has
implications for social movement activism and participatory democracy in the future.
Films, especially Hollywood entertainment films, attract broad audiences; thus, they are
likely to gain the attention of more audiences than historians’ lectures and books do.
Thus, depictions of 1960s social movements in mainstream media provided resources for
cultural knowledge about the role of activism in the history of political change in the
United States. Representations of 1960s protests encouraged particular understandings of
what it means to be politically engaged, of ordinary people’s relationship to the state, and
of how subordinated groups ought to proceed when predominant authorities and
institutions do not seem to be serving their interests. Protest movements of the 1960s
challenged prevailing assumptions that leaders of liberal, capitalist democracies primarily
act in the interests of those they purportedly represent, and demonstrated that social gains
may be won through collective dissent. Thus, popular culture might construct images of
public dissent as an effective means to win social justice. Conversely, popular messages
that frame activists as illegitimate and violent may discourage audiences from
considering the social movements as legitimate means of political participation. Worse
6
yet, pejorative frames of activism may teach people not to be publicly engaged at all. In
an era of growing corporate control over multiple avenues of social life, people with
modest resources of their own can ill afford the absence of citizen discourses of dissent.
FILMS FOR CONSIDERATION
To understand how popular culture texts cultivate particular frameworks for
audiences to make sense of violent events in the history of 1960s activism, this
dissertation performs a critical reading of the patterns and contradictions across six
aforementioned films about the 1960s and across news media texts about these films.
These films include the docudramas Mississippi Burning (1988), Ghosts of Mississippi
(1996), Malcolm X (1992), and Panther (1995) It also includes the documentary films
Berkeley in the Sixties (1990) and The Weather Underground (2002).
I have chosen
these films specifically because the movements for civil rights, black power, students’
rights, and an end to the war in Vietnam represented in these films were prominent
activist movements during the 1960s in terms of both the numbers of activists involved
and in national news media attention to protest movements during the 1960s. These films
represented both the early and later years of the decade. Mississippi Burning and Ghosts
of Mississippi featured the early successes of civil rights activists and violence directed
toward activists while the films Malcolm X and Panther recounted the emergence of the
Black Power Movement and the violent blows that radical activists faced toward the
latter half of the decade.
The documentaries Berkeley in the Sixties and The Weather
Underground featured confrontational strategies of radical activists near the end of the
decade. By focusing on several movements and on different historical moments in the
history of several movements, I provide a more holistic account of how popular films
have constructed memories of 1960s activism.
7
I also chose these films because they are more likely than other texts to contribute
to the popular memory of 1960s activism than other texts in commercial media culture. I
define popular memory in opposition to more commonly used terms “public memory”
and “collective memory.” Publics constitute collectives brought together to deliberate
shared problems and common relationships to the political, economic, and social
institutions that structure their lives.
Popular memories constitute those memories
constructed by popular media that provide a basis for shared common discourses about
the past. Rather than presume that such memories are automatically shared publicly, I
view popular memories as resources for deliberation that may be embraced or rejected. I
do not purport to know how audiences might have used these texts; instead, I make an
argument about the meanings constructed by texts in popular culture. Although no single
text can constitute the popular memory of 1960s activism, some texts have a stronger
presence as popular memory than others. That is, the texts that circulate more broadly
are more likely to contribute to popular memory of that culture. In order to delimit my
study to those texts that played a prominent role in creating memories of 1960s activism,
I focus on films that garnered extensive national media attention and/or circulated widely
in commercial theatres at the time of their release. Panther, the least commercially
successful docudrama to be featured in this dissertation, earned 8 million dollars at the
box office. By contrast, Malcolm X earned 48 million. Although Malcolm X had a
considerably larger audience than either Panther, that each of these films was able to
generate large revenues and circulated in theatres throughout the United States
demarcates these films as popular, or accessible to a broad spectrum of society, rather
than as specialized or alternative. Other docudramas I explore also garnered a large
national audience.
According to the Internet Movie Database, Mississippi Burning
earned $34 million at the box office, and Ghosts of Mississippi earned $13 million.
8
The documentaries I have selected for this dissertation, Berkeley in the Sixties,
and The Weather Underground, did not have the same circulation as the commercial
entertainment films featured here, but I believe that these texts are also worthy of study to
understand popular memories of activism. Aside from Panther, these documentaries
were the only films to feature the perspectives of activists who used strategies of
confrontation to challenge prevailing political and economic institutions. That these
perspectives appeared in documentary, not entertainment media, and primarily reached
audiences though independent venues may tell us something significant about the ways
that popular culture created the meaning of 1960s activism. Although these
documentaries were not made for commercial distribution, they aren’t completely foreign
to popular culture either. Each of these films was nominated for an Academy Award for
best documentary the year following their release (“Academy”). By recognizing these
films as exemplary, these awards drew national television and news media attention to
these texts, and encouraged audiences to view them as legitimate sources of information
about 1960s activism.
Finally, I chose to primarily study films instead of other forms of commercial
media because they provide a useful starting point to begin theorizing popular memories
of activism.
Television programs such as American Dreams, the 1967 Buffalo
Springfield song, “For What It’s Worth,” and even the 1999 print magazine
advertisements for the 2000 Volkswagen Bug automobile contributed to the meaning of
1960s activism in the past decade.3 In order to develop a cogent argument about the
rhetorical strategies by which popular culture attributes meaning to 1960s activism, I
chose to limit my study to film as a subset of popular media. Thus, I explain the role that
films have played as major contributors to the meaning of 1960s activism in popular
culture.
9
CHARTING THE LANDSCAPE OF POPULAR MEMORY
Narrative and argument analysis
Several rhetorical devices in films and journalism reviews of these films helped to
construct popular meanings of 1960s activism. I distinguish these features as narratives
features, formal features, and secondary features of films. In my analysis of the films
Mississippi Burning, Ghosts of Mississippi, Malcolm X, and Panther, I explain that the
films’ narratives make rhetorical arguments about the role of activism and its attendant
violence in 1960s political culture. I answer the following questions about each film’s
narrative: Who are the films’ protagonists and antagonists? What is their relationship to
activists in the film? What demarcates the moment of climax in these films? What are
the consequences of activism for the lives of protagonists in these films? What explicit
conclusions do these films offer about the role of 1960s activism for America’s civic life?
What is the outcome of violent confrontations between prevailing authorities and activists
of these movements? I also explain how several films fit within a particular genre, or
story type, to establish the social meaning of the film.
Schatz (1981) argues that
particular film genres contribute to the social meaning of a film by establishing particular
expectations from audience members (p. 5) and by reinforcing prevailing ideologies (p.
261). By describing how the narrative framings of 1960s activism frequently conform to
generic expectations, I point to the ways in which form and content in films construct
meanings about social relations in the past and present.
The documentaries Berkeley in the Sixties and The Weather Underground also
constructed meaning of 1960s activism through argument. Rather than convey arguments
through narrative structure, these films crafted the meaning of activism predominantly
through talking-head interviews and visual images.
Nichols (1991) distinguishes
documentary films from fictional films according to documentaries’ use of explicit
10
language that makes explicit social commentary and claims on the past. Although I do
not share all of Nichols’ assumptions about the differences between documentary and
fiction films, I find Nichols’ description of the features by which documentaries construct
arguments useful. He demonstrates that verbal images in documentaries frequently make
explicit claims on the past, and that visual images often provide the material evidence, or
support for the explicit claims made in the films (p. 125). In Section Three of this
dissertation, I identify the primary verbal arguments that talking heads provide about the
role of 1960s activists. These talking heads are the central spokespersons for protest
events that took place during the 1960s; thus, I explain how the repetition of particular
claims by these spokespersons forms the basis for the films’ arguments and how talking
heads provide verbal support for these claims as well. I also describe the visual images
featured in these films and explain how these visual images constitute the primary
evidence for the claims asserted by former activists in these films. By comparing and
contrasting the range of verbal and visual messages provided by these documentaries I
shed light on ways in which documentaries construct meaning about 1960s activism. By
highlighting the most vivid images and most repeated statements offered by former
activists, I also demonstrate how these films constructed predominant meanings about the
role of social protest from the 1960s.
Formal analysis
My discussion of the films’ arguments and plot development explains how these
films create meaning about the past, but it does not describe how films themselves
constitute sources of memory in popular culture.
To explain how films establish
themselves as sources of historical information, I also describe the film’s stylistic
devices, which include their editing techniques, film quality, and use of sound. These
elements signify the film’s rhetorical stance toward its relationship to history, or to the
11
extent to which images appearing the films existed outside of filmic construction. The
rhetorical stances films take toward events outside of the film’s own production merit
particular attention to this dissertation because they shape the ways in which predominant
meanings of activism emerge in popular culture. In this dissertation, I identify the
stylistic cues that invite audiences to understand these films as either as fictions or as
representations of a historic reality that existed outside of the film’s construction.
Conversely, I explain how codes of objectivity, including visual images and
sounds, signify that events would have taken place regardless of the films’ recording of
them. Since documentaries are not complete representations of events in the world
outside of film, documentaries achieve their rhetorical goals by convincing audiences of
their indexicality to the past. Nichols (1991) defines indexicality as the “bonds created
between a film’s images and the historical world outside of the film” (p. xii). According
to Nichols, visual images provide evidence for documentary’s claims and encourage
audiences to believe that “the world fits within the framework of its representations” (p.
110). Nichols concludes that through the use of image, documentary filmmakers
legitimate their films as having direct bearing on the historical world itself (p. 117). In
contrast to Nichols, Plantinga (1997) argues against thinking about nonfiction film as a
recording of reality. He emphasizes that the distinction between fiction and non-fiction
film should be based on “the stance taken toward the projected world of the text and to
the text’s indexing” (p. 33). He explains that textual cues as well as secondary sources
(producers, writers, directors, distributors who publicly identify the film as nonfiction)
don’t reproduce the real, but make claims about the real instead (p. 38-42).
I position myself somewhere between these positions. While documentary films
address events that did occur in a world outside of film production, the rhetorical role of
documentary films is not established by the outside world itself, but by the textual cues
12
that invite audiences to read the films as representations of social reality. I suggest that
codes of objectivity are not unique to documentary films, but also function to create
meaning about the past in docudrama films as well. I argue that docudrama films are
rhetorical hybrids that blend features of both conventional modes of entertainment and
documentary films. Lipkin (2001) describes docudramas as films that make claims about
historic reality in narrative terms. He argues that docudramas are distinguished from
documentaries because docudramas recreate events rather than rely on stock footage to
depict them. Consequently, docudramas’ recreations of events are indexically linked to
the present, not to the past (p. 9).
Lipkin insists that docudramas should not be
disregarded as sources of historical information, for the narrative construction in
docudrama films also provide evidence for arguments about the historical world (p. 6).
In Chapters Two through Five, I explain how docudramas about 1960s activism have
sought to meet the demands of narrative and documentary film modes by blending codes
of drama and objectivity. By blending these codes, docudramas establish their relevance
to historic events outside of their filmic construction in ways that documentary and
entertainment films do not.
The intertextuality of popular memory
My methodology is premised on my belief that the accumulation of messages
about 1960s activism in popular culture shapes how audiences are encouraged to make
sense of violent incidents that took place as a result of social protest. Because several
texts have referenced 1960s activism in popular culture, the meaning of dissent in the
1960s cannot be understood solely in terms of an individual, isolated text; instead, the
meaning of 1960s activism emerges through the patterns and tensions across a collection
of texts about the same event. To demonstrate how a larger story about activism emerges
from these films, this dissertation describes the interplay between films and journalism
13
reviews. In my conclusion, I explain how the patterns which emerge across these films
under investigation construct a particular meaning about 1960s activism. Throughout my
analyses of each individual film, however, I also demonstrate how popular memories of
protest are constructed intertextually through the films that ascribe meaning to the past
and through newspaper coverage and reviews that establish relevance to films and to
events depicted by these films. This second application of the intertextuality of memory
is significant because it shapes the ways in which the films individually contribute to the
broader popular memory of 1960s protest.
My analysis of journalistic attention to films about the 1960s demonstrates how
secondary texts such as national news media coverage of these films help constitute the
popular memory of 1960s activism and constrain memories provided by popular films.
Dow’s (1996) analysis of messages about feminism in television programming after 1970
suggests that secondary texts are central to understanding how media messages function
politically in particular historic moments. Dow argues that television programs featuring
female protagonists are situated and restricted by their relationship to other forms of
cultural discourse. Working from Fiske (1987), Dow adds that secondary texts “show
how treatment of programming in mass media can both enable and constrain
interpretation” (in Dow, pp. 6-7). Dow and Fiske convincingly argue that a multitude of
discourses influence how particular texts come to have meaning in a particular cultural
milieu. It is the confluence of messages in mass media that shapes audience reception to
individual messages. As Bennett and Woollacott (1987) suggest in their study of James
Bond as a popular hero, the popularity of an icon emerges, not through isolated texts, but
through the “the circulations and exchanges” between texts. They conclude that “it is
impossible to analyze any particular text [that contributes to the popularity of an icon]
without, at the same time, considering its relations to other texts of a similar nature” (p.
14
6).
Thus, the cultural significance of heroes such as Bond or, in the case of this
dissertation, 1960s protest movements is established intertextually across texts that shape
and reinforce notions of taken-for-granted common sense.
The study of intertextuality resonates with McGee’s (1990) observation that the
meaning of a text cannot be understood outside of the context in which it is presented.4
McGee’s emphasis on message consumers as creators of message meaning is based on
the premise that different audience members have such vastly different experiences with
texts and with non-mediated experiences, that we have no resources for developing
shared understanding.
This dissertation will argue, on the contrary, that texts
disseminated by our increasingly centralized commercial media conglomerates do, in
fact, create conditions for shared knowledge. Texts that reach national audiences such as
films released in cities nationwide, network television programs, and articles in major
newspapers give audiences a common set of experiences. When those texts share similar
features, they create patterns of ideas that constitute the common sense of a culture. As
scholars of communication and social justice, we need to pay attention to the ways that
these patterns construct “common sense” notions that represent the interests of elites and
obscure the perspectives of less privileged members of society.
Journalistic framings of 1960s protests
To explain how mainstream commercial news media contributed to the meaning
of 1960s activism at the time these films were released, this dissertation explains how
journalists framed these films in the years when they were released in theatres and home
video. Gitlin (1980) describes patterns that emerge across news media texts in terms of
“media frames.” Such frames, he argues, employ principles of selection, emphasis, and
presentation” to organize discourse and “make the world beyond direct experience look
natural” (p. 7). Working from Gitlin’s discussion of news frames, this dissertation
15
explores the principles of selection, omission, and emphasis in depictions of 1960s
activists across journalism texts. Previous scholarship on news frames indicates that
journalists routinely cover events in ways that affirm the core values and interests of
political and economic elites.
To understand how newspaper reviews and coverage of the films contributed to
the popular memory of 1960s activism and to the role of film in shaping popular memory,
I explore newspaper articles and reviews about these films from the 28 United States’
newspapers with the broadest circulation, as determined by the Lexis-Nexis news
database.5 When they are available, I also explore transcripts from broadcast television
networks, Fox News, ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN.
My analysis of each film, then, is
accompanied by my analysis of approximately thirty news media reviews or reports.6 I
have chosen these sources because they are representative of the national news coverage
of these films at the time that these films were released to widespread audiences. I have
also chosen to look at this range of sources because they reflect the range of messages
about these films available to national news media audiences. Thus, the patterns that run
across these newspaper articles indicate the extent to which popular media perpetuate
particular frameworks for national audiences to make sense of 1960s activism.
In his analysis of journalistic coverage of the New Left during the 1960s, Gitlin
(1980) argues that news media emphasize scenes of disorder and violence in coverage of
social protest. More recent scholarship suggests that news patterns have consistently
framed activists within spheres of deviance (Hallin, 1994). Describing news coverage of
the first Persian Gulf War, Reese and Buckalew (1995) explain that patterns in local
television news stations in Austin, Texas, used framing devices to neutralize antiwar
protest and advocate a prowar stance. Cloud (1994) also suggests that news coverage of
the Persian Gulf War muted voices of opposition by characterizing antiwar positions as
16
acts of violence and aggression, and by appealing to national unity and therapy. In his
analysis of the Million Man March of 1995, Watkins’ (2001) argues that journalists
represent potentially polarizing issues and individuals in ways that confirm the presumed
commonsense values and ideas of their audience; thus, media frames of Farrakhan
neutralized the political and social significance of the march. These studies of journalism
frames resonate with arguments made by Hall et al., (1978) who observe that news media
align with state institutions to promote moral panics as a means to redirect challenges to
the prevailing hegemony.
I extend these observations by explaining how a different rhetorical genre, the
journalism review, shapes popular meanings of dissent.
I also advance framing
scholarship by noting how news media reviews and reports frame events from the past
depicted by films. My study of how these films were framed by mainstream commercial
media at the time of their release elucidates some of the factors outside of the films
themselves within commercial media that contributed to these films’ emergence as
popular memories of activism.
By discussing these films’ representations of 1960s
protests, news media provided their own memories of 1960s activism and reframed the
memories of protest in popular film.
Thus, news media coverage and journalistic
criticism of several of these films provided another venue for audiences to recognize and
make sense of these films. Ostensibly, journalistic attention to these films also helped
commercial distributors determine the commercial films’ circulation in theatres and video
rental stores across the country and helped potential audiences decide whether they would
watch these films, helped theatres determine how long these movies would run, and
helped filmmakers and producers determine whether additional films about the subject
would be created in the future.
17
Journalistic framings as deliberative topoi
Because these films’ circulation and reception in journalism coverage influenced
their roles as sites of popular memory about 1960s activism, I follow my descriptions of
these films with descriptions about the predominant themes present in news media reports
and reviews of these films. This approach follows Beamish et al. (1995), who examined
news media coverage of the Vietnam anti-war protest movement. These authors note that
individual articles frequently described protesters as both “troop blaming” and as “troop
supporting” in different instances. Thus, they concluded that journalistic coverage played
an ideological role as patterns of “instances” emerged across newspaper articles to
attribute particular meanings to protesters. Because different perspectives of activists and
of films about activists often appear in the same news media report or review, my
description of news media frames about activists is also organized around the different
instances that emerge across national news media coverage attending to these films.
Although different perspectives often appear in the same newspaper report, instances that
convey similar messages across several texts reveal patterns of thought and convey
particular meanings and understandings about how we should remember 1960s protest.
Patterns of instances across news media coverage also provide guidelines for
audiences to interpret and evaluate the meaning of these films and of 1960s protests for
contemporary civic life. For scholars of rhetoric, particular instances in news media
coverage may be more aptly understood as topoi, or subjects for deliberation, which serve
as the foundation for the invention and judgment of arguments. In her study of public
spheres revolving around controversial literary works, Eberly (2000) traces recurring
topoi within letters-to-the-editor written in response to professional literary criticism.
She argues that the recurrence of particular topoi, as well as the way different writers
associated or disassociated different topoi, elucidate how citizens “reading and writing
18
publicly about provocative novels, endowed fictional texts with the capacity to effect
social and political changes” (p. 6).
Unlike Eberly’s study, this dissertation does not address the discourses that can
properly be called “public.” Given the market imperatives directing mainstream news
media, journalistic reviews and coverage are more likely to represent the perspectives of
advertisers or target audiences that make commercial media profitable.
Thus, their
professional goals of news media institutions are often at odds with the interests of
groups who may seek to counter prevailing economic and political institutions.7 My
dissertation does, however, share Eberly’s emphasis on the discursive processes by which
texts become meaningful and relevant for publics. Eberly’s discussion of topoi bears
some resemblance to Gitlin’s (1980) description of news frames; in both cases, the
choices of selection and emphasis within texts constructed for widespread consumption
lay a foundation for public deliberation about the role of popular culture in political life.
Even though I am studying how professional media rather than citizens or publics
generate discourses about these films, the recurrence of particular topoi in news reviews
and news media coverage of these films create frameworks for widespread audiences to
make sense of the popular memories constructed in film. By studying the topoi that
emerge through mainstream media attention to films about 1960s protests, this
dissertation will highlight how news media texts may direct public deliberation about the
political and social roles of docudrama and documentary films.
My study of the topoi that emerge within news media reviews of films about
1960s protest highlights the rhetorical potential of journalistic framing.
I believe that
journalism texts often set a standard for what constitutes common sense in popular
culture. Outside of the academic disciplines of communication and rhetoric, journalism
norms of objectivity are often assumed. Debates about media bias in popular culture
19
revolve around the belief that journalists can, and should, provide neutral or balanced
coverage of events.
In other words, conventional doxa assumes that news media
represent value free coverage of recent events.
This presumption of journalistic
objectivity gives journalism its rhetorical edge; the presumption of journalistic neutrality
which rarely goes unquestioned naturalizes its discourses.
CHAPTER PREVIEW
In my analysis of the films under investigation for this dissertation, Mississippi
Burning, Ghosts of Mississippi, Malcolm X, Panther, Berkeley in the Sixties, and The
Weather Underground, I detected one overarching pattern threading these films together.
Collectively, these films told the story of activism’s demise. As the following chapters
elaborate, scenes featuring the deaths of key activists in the history of the civil rights and
black power movements were pivotal to the plots of these films; likewise, documentaries
about white student movements highlighted the sacrifices that 1960s activists made to
pursue justice in the face of overwhelming state repression. Films about black and
antiwar movements toward the end of the decade also emphasized activists’ feelings of
rage and alienation toward mainstream society in the face of ongoing state supported
brutality. As I explain in my conclusion, the patterns across these films put a pall over
the future of social movement protest by suggesting that ultimately, activism is doomed.
Patterns across films ascribe the death of activism in popular culture; but they do
not necessarily constitute the memory of 1960s activism in popular culture. Although the
death of activism is inscribed by these films, these films provide different and sometimes
competing messages about the role of political dissent. Indeed, these films did not
present ideologically coherent messages about the role of 1960s activism, nor did they
convey this history with similar stylistic devices. Just as these films created different
messages about activism, reviewers wrote different evaluations of these films. Although
20
reviews of the same film were consistent with one another, reviews of different films
were markedly different.
Some films were praised highly; others were panned.
Surprisingly, reviewers’ evaluations of these films did not coincide with the films’
ideological stances. I explain that rhetorical devices in these films of style, narrative
framework, and ideological stance all functioned to establish the film’s meaning as a
source of popular memory; the combination of these devices contributed to the popular
memory of 1960s activism. By conferring, or denying legitimacy to these films as
sources for remembering the past, secondary texts in mainstream journalism also
contributed to the memories that counted as doxa in popular culture. Thus I argue that the
patterns and contradictions across texts may do more to construct the meaning of 1960s
activism than these patterns do alone.
I am centrally concerned with the construction of popular memory and the
possibilities for counter-memories to have legitimacy in popular culture. Chapter One
presents a review of the literature that has shaped my thinking about the rhetorical
features of films and public memory, and the implications of those features for political
hegemony. To understand the implications of popular memories of 1960s protest for
contemporary political life, Chapter Two provides an account of the rhetorical
perspectives on social movements and the history of social movement activism written by
activists and historians.
The accumulation of evidence from the historic record
elucidates the relationship between powerful institutions and bottom-up social
movements under late capitalism. The political trajectory of the New Left coincides in
many ways with the theoretical development of publics and social movements theory in
the past several decades. Both New Left movements and publics theory emerged out an
interest in the development of participatory democracy among inclusive publics.
Movements shifted their focus over the course of the decade to increasingly
21
confrontational and sometimes destructive strategies to achieve their goals. Likewise,
theorists began to question the possibilities of all inclusive publics and turned their focus,
among other things, toward counterpublics. I argue that scholars interested in public
deliberation and the possibilities for participatory democracy must understand the
trajectory of social movement activism as a response to increasingly brutal and coercive
efforts by state agencies to silence and repress political dissent.
The rest of the chapters in this dissertation describe the rhetorical devices that
constructed popular memories of 1960s activism in film and journalism reviews. Section
Two describes films about the civil rights movement in the first half of the 1960s:
Mississippi Burning and Ghosts of Mississippi.
These films provided ideologically
conservative narratives in which the deaths of civil rights activists provided the catalysts
for white public officials to institute civil rights in the South. The conventional narratives
of these films were complemented by conventional devices of Hollywood entertainment
films. My analysis of these films demonstrates how these films navigated competing
demands of dramatic Hollywood film and historical fidelity. In Chapter Three, I argue
that Mississippi Burning used stylistic visual cues that purported to represent both the
past and a Hollywood melodrama; although the film purported to represent the past, its
narrative more closely followed Hollywood conventions of a cop action drama that did
not bear semblance to events from the history of civil rights. These contradictions
sparked controversy and debate in mainstream journalism reviews, and thereby opened a
space for mainstream journalism to incorporate counter-memories in popular culture.
Conversely, Ghosts of Missisippi did not provoke much debate or counter-memory in
journalism reviews.
In Chapter Four, I explain why Ghosts of Mississippi did not
constitute a prominent source of popular memory.
Although Ghosts of Mississippi
provided a narrative framework similar to Mississippi Burning (and was as partial and
22
selective in its telling of events about the past), it did not provoke the kind of controversy
that Mississippi Burning did because it had narrative fidelity to historic events.
Section Three describes films about the Black Power Movement that emerged in
the years following events that inspired civil rights films: Malcolm X and Panther.
Unlike earlier civil rights films, Malcolm X and Panther advanced counter-hegemonic
ideas about race relations and the role of activism in the history of social change. These
films featured radical black activists who rallied black urban communities to organize for
economic justice and self-defense. They also framed state authorities and federal agents
as villains who menaced black communities and crippled Black Nationalist movements.
In this section, I argue that these films’ stylistic devices and narrative structures were
pivotal to these films’ ability to introduce counter-memories into popular culture. In
Chapter Five, I explain that Malcolm X positioned radical ideas of the black leader within
an ideologically conservative narrative and filmic structure. By framing Malcolm X in
the context of prevailing doxa, Malcolm X invited reviewers to include Malcolm X in
popular memory; indeed, film critics and reporters applauded Malcolm X as an important
alternative to memories that framed Malcolm X and black struggle outside the doxa of
mainstream culture. Several of these reviews and reports critiqued race relations and role
of history in maintaining social inequities.
In Chapter Six, I explore what happens when ideologically challenging messages
are framed in an unconventional filmic genre. The film featured in this chapter, Panther,
blended generic conventions of entertainment and documentary film. Thus, this film
represented a rhetorical hybrid. The narrative of the history of the Black Panther Party
presented by this film also incorporated events that have little evidence from within the
historic record with events that did. This film’s blending of entertainment and
documentary film genres and narratives troubled prevailing beliefs about the distinction
23
between truth and fiction in popular culture. Unlike reviews of Malcolm X, mainstream
journalists predominantly dismissed Panther as a fiction.
Based on my analysis of the
rhetorical devices and secondary sources of Malcolm X and Panther, I conclude that
counter-hegemonic films that challenge mainstream ideology can attain legitimacy in
popular culture by embracing mainstream conventions. By presenting controversial and
unfamiliar messages about the history of racism in the United States within conventional
narrative frameworks that reinforce dominant ideology, Malcolm X created a space for
controversial ideas to become part of popular memory. Without such legitimacy, films
with counter-hegemonic messages are unlikely to receive support from mainstream
journalists; nor are these films likely to prompt journalists to include counter-memories in
their reviews and reports. Panther failed to become part of popular memory because it
neither conformed to established doxa or to mainstream film conventions.
Chapter Seven, which comprises the fourth section of this dissertation, addresses
films that diverge from the docudramas about black activism explored in Sections Two
and Three. These films, Berkeley in the Sixties and The Weather Underground, are
conventional documentary films about white student and anti-war activism from the
1960s. Similar to films about civil rights in chapters two and three, these films engaged
conventional rhetorical stances. Stylistic devices in these films followed the conventions
of participatory documentary by which talking head interviews and archival footage
constitute the primary verbal and visual evidence for the films’ claims. Similar to films
about the Black Power movement, these films also posed challenges to prevailing
ideology that positions radical activists as deviant. These films featured the voices of
former activists who argued that white activists expanded free speech rights on college
campuses throughout the nation and impeded the United States’ efforts to wage an unjust
war in Vietnam.
Although these films included the perspectives of critics of student
24
activism in the latter half of the 1960s, these films primarily urged audiences to share
perspectives of activists. The stylistic devices in these films prompted reviewers to
characterize these films as balanced, reasonable, and objective; however, they did not
provoke critics to include counter-memories in their reviews.
Instead, reviewers
foregrounded the critics of activists in the films. The stylistic devices in these films
functioned as objectivity codes that obscured these films’ partiality and enabled
reviewers to blunt the films’ ideological challenge.
My analysis suggests that
conventional documentaries that engage the rhetorical stance of objectivity have limited
potential to extend counter-memories in popular culture.
The films’ purported
representations of “truth” close spaces for deliberation and belie their own ideological
positions.
My comparisons across films and their reception in mainstream news media
indicate that popular memories emerge through rhetorical devices in both films and
journalism reviews that legitimate particular films as sources of entertainment and as
sources of knowledge about the past. The legitimacy of particular films as sources of
historic information is established intertextually through filmic conventions and through
secondary sources that encourage audiences to attribute historical relevance to the
messages constructed by these films. A film’s legitimacy as a source of historical
information is central to films’ ability to become part of popular memory, but it does not
guarantee a film’s ability to circulate additional counter-memories in popular culture.
Conventional narrative films circulate counter-hegemonic texts more broadly than
counter-hegemonic narrative films or documentaries. This observation suggests that
films must appeal to conventions of popular film and dominant ideology in order to insert
counter-memories into popular culture. Thus, convention is a force for imagination. For
a counter-memory to become popular, it must produce tensions and contradictions
25
between lived and cinematic experience, or between prevailing ideology and the countermemories. These tensions prompt the inclusion of counter-memories that rarely gain a
hearing within popular media into popular culture. The counter-memories that emerged
in journalism reviews of Mississippi Burning and Malcolm X also point to the counterhegemonic potential of mainstream journalism reviews of popular film. Films might not
advance controversial claims themselves, but the provoke controversy and open spaces
for deliberation about the past elsewhere in popular media. Thus, the counter-hegemonic
potential of films might not actually rest in the films themselves, but in the controversies
that they provoke.
26
NOTES TO INTRODUCTION
1
Reiner gave this statement to film critic Joel Siegel during a press junket in 1996
for his film, Ghosts of Mississippi (Vargas, 1996, online archives).
2
For examples, see Cooper et al., 2005; Gibson, 2005; Sawyer, 2005; and
McLaughlin, 2005.
3
Worth”
Rolling Stone magazine rates Buffalo Springfield’s 1967 song, “For What It’s
as
the
63rd
greatest
song
of
all
time.
See
www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/6595908/buffalospringfield.
4
McGee (1990) argues that no single text constitutes the common sense of
contemporary culture; rather, fragments of texts have come to stand in place of any
homogenous, common sense of our culture. Since it is up to individuals to assemble
fragments of discourse they are presented with, McGee concludes that consumers of
discourse, not speakers or writers, make meaning of popular discourse (p. 287).
5
These newspapers are: The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, The Baltimore Sun,
The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, The Buffalo News, The Chicago Sun-Times, The
Christian Science Monitor, The Columbus Dispatch, Daily News, The Denver Post, The
Hartford Courant, The Houston Chronicle, The Los Angeles Times, The Miami Herald,
The New York Times, Newsday, The Omaha World Herald, The Plain Dealer, The San
Diego Union-Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Seattle Times, The St. Louis
Post-Dispatch, The St. Petersburg Times, The Star Tribune, The Times-Picayune, The
Tampa Tribune, The Times-Picayune, USA Today, and The Washington Post.
6
For instance, my study of Ghosts of Mississippi will include an analysis of
nineteen news media reviews and seven interviews that the films’ leading actors gave to
reporters on national television news programs.
27
7
My interest in the circulation of discourses and their implications for publics
should not be confused with Warner’s (2002). According to Warner, the circulation of
discourse constitutes the public arena because the act of addressing a public brings the
public into being (p. 90). Thus, he concludes that the world is made up of the circulation
of cross referencing discourse (p. 94). Although I agree that the scene of circulation
presupposes the idea of a public invested in shared concerns and interests, I do not
believe that the scene of circulation constitutes the public. A narrow public that shares
the interests of the commercial marketplace, (and is invested in liberal capitalism) is
predominantly reflected in the discourses produced by popular culture.
To make
arguments about the relationship between alternative publics and the circulation of
discourses, I would look outside of the landscape of commercial media toward other sites
of circulation, including spoken and vernacular discourses that don’t circulate in the ways
that written discourses, the focus of much of Warner’s work, do. I would also look
toward sites that provide opportunities for debate and deliberation among its members.
Finally, as my interest in social movements attests, I would look for forums in which
debate and deliberation produce not only recognition of shared interests, but the
foundation for people to act collective to reach a common goal.
28
SECTION ONE
POPULAR CULTURE AND CONTENTIOUS PUBLICS
29
CHAPTER ONE
THE RHETORIC OF FILM, MEMORY, AND TRUTH
Scholarly debates about the rhetorical role of truth, power, and memory in popular
culture point to the ways that power relations are mediated in popular culture. This
chapter reviews the literature on the rhetoric of publicity, film, power, memory, and truth.
This literature review describes the scholarship that has informed my own position, the
theoretical controversies about these concepts, and my own positions about the rhetorical
nature of film, truth, and memory. I argue that popular culture is a site of popular
memory; as such, it represents a source of contestation between competing publics.
PUBLICITY AND PUBLICS
Media messages, including popular memories, play a role in how audiences think
about public life and their role as citizens in the United States. Schudson (1992) explains
that television news events, such as the Watergate committee hearings and the Kennedy
assassinations, create “cultural flashpoints,” which enjoin audiences “to care about a
relation to public discourse and public action” (p. 66). It is only when publics recognize
themselves as such that they are able to deliberate effectively about their common
interests, and media convey information that helps audiences identify their collective
interests and that encourage audiences to imagine themselves as a collective.
According to some scholars, the structural features of mass media have created
conditions for public life. Warner (2002) argues that publics are constituted by attention
to widely distributed texts.
“The idea of texts that can be picked up at different times
and in different places by otherwise unrelated people,” enables us to imagine “a public as
an entity that embraces all the users of that text, whoever they might be”
30
Warner’s
consideration of publics as entities that can be imagined through engaging mass media
texts resonates with Anderson’s (1983) observation that news media coverage itself
makes it possible for audience members to imagine themselves as members of a public
interested in common issues.1 According to Warner and Anderson, by witnessing others
read the same texts at relatively the same time, the mass media become integral to the
public’s formation. As Dayan and Katz (1992) have argued in their discussion of media
events, more recent forms of mass media, including television, also make it possible for
individuals to consider themselves in relation to a widespread constituency
(p. 138).2 Mass dissemination of television news programming, newspaper articles, and
news magazines enables readers to imagine a public observing the same texts at
approximately the same time.
The idea that we can locate publics textually may describe how people perceive
collective life in cultures saturated by the commercial mass media; however, scholarship
examining the possibilities for imaging the public through contemporary forms of mass
media has forgone Habermas’ (1996) early project of exploring the limitations and
possibilities for achieving democratic public life.
Models of publics that privilege
dissemination over deliberation as the constitutive feature of public life collapse publicity
and the public. Warner’s (2002) thesis suggests that publicity and the public sphere are
one when a public is dominated by commercial interests.
Thus, he suggests that we
cannot consider common interests outside of the spectacle of mass media. Instead of
promoting a model of public life that features open deliberation, Warner’s emphasis on
an indeterminate, unlocatable public that may be imagined through mass media texts
overlooks considerations of participatory democracy in favor of models of public life that
may be reasonably understood within the context of the commercial mass media.
31
A similar thesis is advanced by DeLuca and Peeples (2002) who argue that the
model of the public sphere needs to be adapted to include a notion of the “public screen”
in which political actors create public issues through their visual spectacles that grant
media access. Scholarship that focuses on commercial media as a site for the formation
of public life or of publics is misguided, in my view, when it fails to consider the
implications of principles of framing and selection that shape how political actors become
representative of a public.
By foregoing critical observations about contemporary
publics, such scholarship eschews the ideals social equality and democratic government.
Instead of presuming that that popular culture constitutes the public realm, media and
rhetoric scholars interested in causes of social justice and democracy need to explore how
it is that particular actors come to represent the culture-at-large in commercial media, and
who is excluded from representation in that process.
FILMS AS RHETORICAL TEXTS
I have premised this dissertation on the notion that commercial media provide
audiences with messages that they can use to make meaning of their experiences that take
place outside of popular culture. Burke (1941/1967) argues that all texts in popular
culture provide audiences with “equipment for living.” Works of art may compel readers
(or viewers) when these texts are representative of common experiences within the
broader social structure in which these readers and viewers live. Thus, literary or artistic
endeavors, indeed, all texts, provide strategies that enable readers or viewers to assess
situations, develop attitudes about them, and identify socially appropriate strategies for
responding to them (in Brummett, 2001, pp. 758-760). The rhetorical role of popular
culture, then, may be found in popular culture’s ability to guide audiences’ experiences
and understandings of the world in which they live. Of particular interest to me in this
dissertation is the rhetorical function of documentary and Hollywood entertainment film.
32
In the following section I explain the rhetorical perspectives scholars have taken to
explain the social function of documentary and Hollywood entertainment films.
The rhetoric of documentary film
Literature on the persuasive function of documentary films suggests that
documentary films function rhetorically as they reflect upon contemporary social issues.
Rhetoric scholars Anderson and Benson (1991) and Dow (2004) define documentaries as
social commentaries.3 Film scholars also attest to film’s instrumental rhetorical purpose.
According to Nichols (1991), documentary films are distinguished from entertainment
films by their instrumental rhetorical purpose. He writes, “[T]here is urgency to the
category of documentary film that isn’t as marked in fiction” and concludes that, unlike
fictional film, “words in documentaries are preludes to action” (p. 110). Plantinga (1997)
concurs that nonfiction films are unique “instruments of action” (p. 45). These scholars
suggest that the relationship between the subject matter addressed in documentaries and
historical reality outside of film is central to understanding how documentaries function
rhetorically. Documentaries have salience to a world that is more tangible or real than the
world of film itself, and films’ relationship to lived human experience outside of viewing
films may propel audiences to belief or action.
Although Nichols and Plantinga distinquish “fiction” films from “non-fiction”
films, I prefer to distinguish films as either “documentary” or “entertainment” films
because the distinction between fiction and non-fiction tends to belie the rhetorical nature
of both filmic genres. The distinction between “fiction” and “non-fiction” suggests that
one genre represents an objective reality and that the other has no relevance for lived
experience outside of film. As several filmmakers and scholars (including Nichols) attest,
both documentaries and entertainment films select and frame content to construct a
particular world view for audiences. Nichols (1991) characterizes documentary film as
33
“a fiction unlike any other” (p. 110).
Likewise, documentary filmmaker Grierson
referred to documentaries as “the creative treatment of actuality” and documentary
filmmaker Wiseman described them as “reality fictions.”4 Anderson and Benson (1991)
explain that the process of constructing any text into a recognizable and meaningful
message necessarily imposes some form onto the social actuality that the film depicts (p.
1).
Benson (1980) also remarks that the formal composition of film and content
constitute the rhetorical structures that establish meaning to a film. Since documentaries
are mediated representations of historic reality, they are necessarily partial and
incomplete representations of actuality or “real life.” Benson (1980) states that
documentaries rely on historical realism, but do not necessarily provide accurate accounts
of events.
He urges critics to attend to the ways in which behaviors depicted in
documentary film are contextualized by filmmakers, not within the context in which they
occurred (p. 253).
Plantinga’s assessment of documentaries’ relationship to the real reflects a
rhetorical approach to the study of documentary film. Plantinga (1997) adds that images
are subject to same misrepresentations that complicate any evidence. Thus, audiences
and film critics “must approach the indexical bond between a moving image and a
profilmic scene with skepticism about what it shows or proves” (p. 64). For Plantinga,
judgment is based on textual cues within documentary films and intertextual cues that
convince audience that documentaries have social significance. Rosteck (1994) and Dow
(2004) elucidate the rhetorical strategies by which documentary texts make the partial
and selective realities they depict appear natural or self-evident. According to Rosteck,
the convention of documentary films is a powerful signifier lending legitimacy to the film
as a source of historical truth (p. 183). Dow (2004) contributes to the discussion of
documentaries’ rhetorical role by describing the ideological effects of documentary
34
convention. She argues that “codes of objectivity” in television documentaries obscure
films’ partiality (p. 59). Codes of objectivity, including the voice of God narration style
and commentary by at least two persons with different points of view give the impression
that the film’s portrayal of events provides a commonsensical and impartial
representation of social life (p. 59).
This review of literature on the rhetorical
implications of documentary film indicates that documentary films function rhetorically
when they purport to represent a world that exists outside of films themselves. As
reflections of real world problems and as suggestions for possible solutions,
documentaries solidify particular world views and encourage people to respond to those
views in specific ways.
The rhetoric of entertainment film
In contrast to scholars of documentary film, scholars of Hollywood entertainment
film indicate that films do not have to purport to represent historical reality to have
rhetorical significance.
Although the perspectives offered by these film critics
fundamentally depart from one another, they commonly suggest that the structure of
films’ narratives and their place within the cultural milieu have relevance for
contemporary political and social relations. Brummett (1991) argues that films
“rhetorically manage the meanings by which agents approach particular problems” (p.
125). For Brummett, the connections between films’ formal construction and the patterns
of experiences that appear across texts in social life give films a rhetorical dimension (p.
125).5 By contrast, Rushing and Frentz (1980, 2000) and Frentz and Rushing (2002)
suggest that films respond to political and social tensions by tapping into enduring
psychic structures of human thought. Rather than equip people to engage the world,
Rushing and Frentz contend that films reveal the collective unconscious and
contemporary social tensions that audiences rarely acknowledge consciously.6
35
Alternatively, other scholars characterize formal structures in films themselves as
expressions of an ideological system. Scholars including Jameson (1979), Ryan and
Kellner (1991) and Lipsitz (1990), argue that films function ideologically as they manage
and contain social conflicts and anxieties. Social theorists Ryan and Kellner (1991)
assert that films make rhetorical arguments as they make the world views that they
represent appear natural and inevitable. They also argue that films merit attention as
rhetorical documents for what their narratives reveal about contemporary social life.
According to Ryan and Kellner (1991), cinematic narratives “transcode the discourse of
social life” and thereby reflect the political climates in which they emerge (pp. 8-10). For
fictional narratives to function rhetorically, plot and character development must reflect
contemporary social circumstances and anxieties. Goodnight (1995) argues that two films
adapted from popular novels during the early 1990s, The Firm and Jurassic Park,
capitalize on particular fears and anxieties about public life. For Goodnight, anxieties
expressed in these films have social consequences because these narratives suppress
opportunities for reflection about the lack of public spaces during the 1990s and promote
disaffection from public life as mass entertainment. As Goodnight attests, films exist
within a cultural and political system; thus, they are expressions of conflict and tension
within that system.
Jameson (1979) and Lipsitz (1990) suggest that as films express ideological
content, they have implications for social hegemony. Jameson argues that films, indeed
all contemporary works of art, “have as their underlying impulse our deepest fantasies
about the nature of social life, both as we live it now and as we feel in our bones it ought
rather to be lived” (p. 141). He concludes that narratives within films offer “fantasy
bribes” or imaginary solutions for repressive social conditions that exist outside of the
film’s narrative (p. 141). By offering imaginary solutions for existing social problems,
36
popular films contain challenges to prevailing social relations.
Lipsitz (1990) also
acknowledges that generalized myths in films draw their social power from ways in
which they are positioned within particular social circumstances (p. 170).
Unlike
Jameson, Lipsitz (1990) maintains that films do not necessarily contain social conflict.
Instead, they reflect the contested nature of political discourse itself (p. 170). Because I
am centrally interested in the ability for social movements to intervene in established
hierarchies of power, I prefer this latter perspective offered by ideology film critics. I
believe that films are sites of struggle over meaning. While they predominantly reflect
prevailing ideology, they also reflect the social tensions that emerge from the
contradictions between that ideology and ordinary peoples’ lived experiences.
Literatures on political hegemony and collective memory help me set up the foundations
that shape my perspective on the rhetorical role of films that make meaning of the past.
POLITICAL HEGEMONY
Although I focus on the rhetoric of film and popular culture in this dissertation, I
also explore the rhetorical discourses about truth and memory in popular culture. I argue
that these discourses shape popular meaning about 1960s activism and have implications
for power relations in the United States at present. Representations of 1960s activism in
popular culture give cultural meaning to contentious civic engagement.
In this era
dominated by images of corporate and private individualism, these representations have
the potential to provide alternative models of human engagement that are based on
collective goals and mutual concern for human equality.
Such representations of
activism also have the potential to encourage audience members subordinated by
prevailing social hierarchies to join organizations that challenge the prevailing
institutions that privilege elites.
37
As a scholar of commercial media, however, I also recognize that the social and
political climate in which these messages are produced delimit the possibilities for
witnessing texts that celebrate contentious collective activism. The variety of messages
commercial media may construct about social movement activism is also constrained by
the corporate media structure that produces these texts. McChesney (1999) argues that
financial imperatives guide commercial media; consequently, messages that challenge
corporate life and the ideals of capitalism are unlikely to receive widespread distribution
or support from the media industry.
The control of media by wealthy elites helps to explain why many people in the
United States adhere to positions that don’t serve their economic interests, or why people
who do not benefit from the widening economic gap in this country (including many
people of color, women, and other minorities) have not demanded structural changes in
large numbers. Many rhetoric and media scholars find Antonio Gramsci’s model of
hegemony to be a useful heuristic for explaining the relationship between popular culture
and the persistence of unequal power relations in Western nations. Gitlin (1980) explains
that Gramsci recognized that
Those who rule the dominant institutions secure their power in large measure
directly and indirectly by impressing their definitions of the situation upon those
they rule and, if not usurping the whole of ideological space, still significantly
limiting what is thought throughout society. (p. 10, in Gitlin)
Because elites have greater access to the resources for producing popular texts,
commercial media are more likely to highlight the perspectives of elites. Rhetoric
scholars including Dow (1996) and Cloud (1996), argue that the delimited world view
offered by popular media encourage audiences to view the ideology of the dominant class
as a reflection of the world at large, or as the full range of human experiences in a given
social milieu. When they encourage audiences to perceive the perspectives of elites as
38
the common sense of the entire culture, commercial media serve the hegemony of the
prevailing political system.
POPULAR MEMORY
Many social and rhetorical critics argue that the collective memories of a culture
play a significant role in maintaining hegemonic relations. The broader field of collective
memory scholarship attends to the ways in which memories may be shared through
audience’s collective engagement with particular texts. Halbwachs (1950) coined the
phrase “collective memory” to refer to the ways in which social norms and institutions
are indistinguishable from individual memories (p. 76). Fentress and Wickham (1992)
extend Halbwachs’ implications for mass media by noting that contemporary forms of
public communication play a strong role in shaping individual memories in the present.
They argue that particular events in the news media provoke “flashbulb memories” which
prompt audience members to talk to one another about the news media (p. 8).
Unlike Halbwachs (1950) and Fentress and Wickham (1992), who suggest that
collective memory may determine the memories of individuals, I do not believe that we
can infer individual memories from the representations of the past depicted by mass
media. Nor do I believe that commercially mediated representations of the past can be
said to constitute the memories of publics and individuals who observe them. Thus, I use
the term “popular memory” to identify those texts which construct for audiences a
representation of the past that may be shared collectively, but don’t necessarily represent
the memory of the individuals who constitute a culture. Rather than suggest that texts
that reference the past are uniformly remembered by the individuals who engage them, I
explore how representations of the past recur across sites of memory in popular culture
and invite, although they do not guarantee, audiences to draw particular meanings from
these memories. Texts in popular culture are the predominant lieux de memorie in the
39
modern era. According to Nora (1989), lieux de memorie or sites of memory have
become an obsession in modern society. He argues that these collective, visible remains
of the past, including “remains, testimonies, documents, images, speeches, any visible
signs of what has been” (p. 13) have become central to contemporary society because
traditional memories have disappeared from the terrain of modern life.
Popular
memories may be shared broadly; thus, they play a key role in shaping how
contemporary media audiences link themselves to a common past.
Collective memory scholarship asserts that memory sites say more about
contemporary social life than they do about the past.
As Kammen (1991) argues,
“[S]ocieties…reconstruct their pasts…with needs of contemporary culture clearly in
mind─manipulating the past in order to mold the present.” (p. 3). Many rhetorical critics
argue that representations of the past resolve contemporary social conflicts by reasserting
the legitimacy of prevailing power relations. Scholars have attributed this role to
collective memory in disparate artifacts including memorial structures (Bodnar, 1992;
Ehrenhaus, 1989; Kammen, 1991), public address (Browne, 1993; Browne, 1999;
Dionisopolous & Goldzwig 1992), and film (Biesecker, 2002; Ehrenhaus, 2001; Owens,
2002).7
Scholars who have theorized films as sources of collective memory suggest that
films symbolically resolve social tensions by constructing images of shared national
identity. Sefcovic (2002) argues that significant films are sources of cultural memory
because they enact and disseminate particular cultural values (p. 330). Specifically
Sefcovic describes how two films about union struggles produced in 1954, On the
Waterfront, and Salt of the Earth express differing philosophies about the tensions
between individualism and community in American identity. Sturken (1997) suggests
that a string of films about the Vietnam War during the late 1980s and early 1990s also
40
served to provide national closure for a war that had badly damaged the collective psyche
and national resolve. More recently, several scholars have argued that the 1998 film
Saving Private Ryan reillusioned national identity and provided moral justification for
war in the wake of the Vietnam syndrome. (See Biesecker, 2002; Ehrenhaus, 2001;
Hasian, 2001.8) Hasian and Shugart (2001) explain that the film Indochine was an
allegory for post-colonial relations between France and Vietnam after the Vietnam War
that reflects upon the needs of contemporary audiences struggling to grapple with the
legacy of post-colonial relations (p. 329). Film scholars have also pointed to the ways in
which entertainment films have negotiated racial conflicts in the United States’ recent
past. In their analyses of films about the civil rights movement, Madison (1999) and
Brinson (1995) maintain that recent films about civil rights symbolically restore white
hegemony.
Madison argues that recent films about race symbolically reassert the
subordination of blacks by relegating them to the background of stories about their own
struggles. Brinson (1995) asserts that the 1988 film Mississippi Burning communicates
the myth of white superiority to resolve cultural tensions about the authority of the white
power structure in the late 1980s. For these scholars, films that purport to represent
events from the past are significant, not only because they attribute particular meanings to
the past to resolve contemporary conflicts, but because they engage the past in order to
reframe contemporary understandings about political struggle and conflict; by providing
national closure for traumatic conflicts at home and abroad, memories constructed by
Hollywood direct attention away from the structures of power operating in the United
States that have maintained social and economic hierarchies throughout its history.
POPULAR MEMORY AND POLITICAL POWER
The cultural hegemony of wealthy elites portends weak publics and limited
deliberation among groups speaking outside the spheres of commercial media, for it
41
constrains possibilities for critical deliberation about problems and injustices that result
from unequal social relations.
The control of the common sense of a culture is a
rhetorical concern that dates back to Greece during the fourth century BC, where
Isocrates counseled would-be orators in attend to the common sense or doxa of the
community. Poulakos (2001) notes that doxa is commonly translated as opinion, but he
also indicates that doxa more specifically referred to the accepted norms and beliefs of
the society (p. 69). According to Poulakos, Isocrates believed that orators could secure
new beliefs from an audience if they related new beliefs to the community’s accepted
beliefs and traditions (p. 69). Poulakos also notes that Isocrates viewed experience from
the past as a rich resource for developing conclusions about the future (p. 72).9 In my
view, the concepts of experience and doxa are closely related; experiences with the past
function as resources for shaping doxa, and shape the possibilities for public deliberation
about contemporary social issues. As a preeminent resource for experiencing events
from the past, popular media informs popular opinion about the past; consequently,
popular media inform possibilities for deliberating about future courses of action as well.
Although I do not disagree that popular media are controlled by and
predominantly reflect the interests of dominant (predominantly white, wealthy, male)
segments of society, texts about activism suggest that popular media do not automatically
reflect the interests of dominant social groups in any absolute way.
Many social
movements of the 1960s struggled against bourgeois domination on behalf of
marginalized people: people of color, poor people, and women. Thus, there is some
kernel of resistance to elite domination of popular culture, at least in texts that recall
1960s activism. Rather than view hegemony as a total bourgeois domination of the
common thought of a culture, I conclude that popular culture is a site of struggle over
42
doxa between dominant groups and ordinary people who lack immediate resources to
political power.10
I argue that dominant leaders are able to maintain their legitimacy with
subordinate classes, at least in part, because texts in popular culture have relevance to the
audiences who engage them. To achieve consent from the broader segments of the
population, the dominant culture must make cultural texts commensurable with the
experiences of some of the marginalized groups who consume them. This perspective
accords with that of other scholars, such as Lears (1985) and Lipsitz (1990). Lipsitz
declares that hegemony “is not just imposed on society from the top; it is struggled for
from below” (p. 16). Popular memory, then represents a subset of doxa that texts
struggle over by inviting audiences to recall the past in particular ways.
While mainstream media tend to reflect the beliefs and opinions of dominant
groups, people in subordinate positions of power may participate in the construction of
popular texts in order to intervene in prevailing doxa. My position complements Owens’
(2002), who argues that elements of conflict in films about events from the past also
expose challenges to the social order and shifts in hegemonic relations. In her analysis of
Saving Private Ryan, Owens points to the ways in which the film simultaneously reflects
ideologically conservative longings for a national identity based on white masculine
power and the contradictions and ruptures within that ideology cased by the legacy of the
Vietnam War. She concludes that the “full measure of horror” depicted in the film
destabilizes the film’s ideological claims to a “just war” (p. 274). Owens might share her
position on the hegemonic implications of film with film scholar Winn (2001), who
argues that the 1995 film Malcolm X revealed both elements of dominant ideology and
ruptures within that ideology (p. 464). For Owens and Winn, contradictions within
Hollywood films reflect the outcomes of political and social struggle.
43
Other scholars point to the ways in which different cultural forms represent the
interests of different, and often oppositional groups. Bodnar (1992) distinguishes
“official” from “vernacular” expressions that contribute to memory.
In contrast to
official memory, which “reduces the power of competing interests that threaten patriotic
sentiments,” vernacular culture “represents how people react to the actions of their
leaders” (p. 8). Sturken (1997) notes the distinction between history, “a narrative that has
in some way been sanctioned or valorized by institutional frameworks or publishing
enterprises” and memories that are “asserted specifically outside of or in response to
historical narratives (p. 4). Along a similar vein, Lipsitz (1990) distinguishes memory
and counter-memory.
While memories represent “a story-telling that leaves history to
the oppressor, counter-memories constitute “a way of remembering and forgetting that
starts with the local, the immediate, and the personal …[and] forces revision of existing
histories by supplying new perspectives about the past” (p. 2).
Representations of
conflicts from the past in popular culture, including commercial media, indicate that
people immersed in social struggle have reached back to the past to call forth forgotten
insights and solutions. Lipsitz (1990) argues that “cultural forms create conditions of
possibility, they expand the present by informing it with memories of the past and hopes
for the future” (p. 16).
But Lipsitz is not utopian about the possibilities for popular
memory. He concludes that memories perpetuated by commercial media “also engender
accommodation with prevailing power realities, separating art from life, and internalizing
the dominant culture’s norms and values as necessary and inevitable” (p. 16). Thus,
popular memories contain countervailing tendencies.
While popular memories
predominantly elicit a memory in keeping with the prevailing social order, they also may
elicit an alternate, or counter-memory that challenges that order.
44
The mingling of representations of the past that have been institutionally
sanctioned and those that have emerged from local, personal experiences of groups
subordinated by those institutions suggests that recollections of the past in popular culture
are never complete or fully representative of the population at large. Thus, commercial
media, a predominant source of popular memory, provide spaces for memory and
counter-memory and make available their competing claims on the past. Sturken (1997)
notes that memories may inform us of “the stakes held by individuals and institutions in
attributing meaning to the past” (p. 9). Thus, she notes that memories may be invoked
strategically for political ends. Paradoxically, Sturken also argues that cultural memory
and history are “entangled rather than oppositional” (p. 5). Because the boundaries
between history and memory are typically so fluid, she reasons that it “may be futile to
maintain a distinction between them” (5). For Sturken, then, the political implications of
cultural memory are unclear. While she notes that they may be employed for political
ends, she also emphasizes that cultural memories are not politically prescribed.
In contrast to Sturken, I argue that it is important to distinguish memory from
counter-memory or official history from vernacular representations of the past. Because
popular memory sites are battlegrounds for political struggles at present, they are not
neutral texts.
As this dissertation will elucidate, popular memories legitimate the
perspectives of particular groups and obscure the views of others. This dissertation
elucidates the rhetorical strategies through which popular culture negotiates the tension
between memory and counter-memory. Identification of these strategies highlights the
possibilities for counter-memories to become part of popular culture and delineates the
conditions in which they may do so.
The presence of counter-memories in popular
culture, including memories of 1960s activists, transfigures popular culture’s support for
the prevailing political order. Alternatively, many of the framings of these counter45
memories within film and journalism also neutralize the challenge counter-memories
pose to the establishment and restore legitimacy to the dominant political system.
THE RHETORICAL IMPLICATIONS OF TRUTH CLAIMS
The concept of truth is central to the rhetorical construction of popular memory
because it is the legitimating frame that gives particular memories ideological weight.
Rhetorical appeals to truth in popular media legitimate particular representations as
significant cultural memories and block alternative representations of the past from
establishing a position as credible memories in popular culture. Critical theorists in
rhetoric and social theory have questioned notions of truth. Many scholars of mass media
and rhetoric have convincingly argued that the distinctions between “truth” and “fiction”
are not as transparent or objective as Enlightenment thought has suggested.11 Several
scholars have also suggested that the distinction between “real life” and “media” is moot
because the media are as much a part of our reality as experience external to that media.12
For critics of ideology, claims of truth frequently represent a truth that is partial.
As an alternative to the concept of absolute truth, Hartsock (1983) advocates standpoint
epistemology, or the position that particular class and subject positions shape individuals’
own understandings of reality. Thus, she suggests that scholars interested in questions of
truth consider in whose interests particular truth claims are made and whose realities
stand in for the truth of an entire society. While ideology scholars locate interests and
truths in material relations, post-Marxist scholarship locates truth in the production of
discourse and culture. Foucault (1980) describes truth as a category of discourse that is an
effect of power. He writes that knowledge or truth claims are produced by the workings
of power (p. 131) which he locates in the production of knowledge. Foucault concludes
that knowledge and power continually intersect or overlap in discursive practice. Despite
their marked differences, Marxist and post-Marxist scholars agree that the status of truth
46
is constructed through relations of power. Concomitantly, the individuals or texts that
establish the particular events and ideas as true also construct and maintain social
relations.
Recently, social theorist Eagleton (2003) has called for a relegitimation of truth
claims, and has argued that rejection of truth claims as ruling class mystifications or
attention to truths as relative to specific viewpoints does not always make sense or
resolve social conflicts. Eagleton asserts that truths can be discovered by argument,
evidence, experiment, and investigation. He acknowledges that much of what is taken as
true may turn out to be false, but insists that what is not true for some people can not be
true for others (pp. 107-109). Most of Eagleton’s examples focus on claims of fact. For
example, he asserts that it “cannot be raining in a particular part of the world” only from
his particular viewpoint (p. 109). I share Eagleton’s concern over the dismissal of truth
claims at the stasis of fact because these claims form the basis for public judgment
regarding the social justice of particular events and decisions. Indeed, the accumulation
of evidence about the past from a collection of sources, government documents, personal
testimony, and photographic recordings is important to determine how events have
transpired, and whether or not particular individuals have wielded excessive force to
oppress others.
I would also add that truth claims function rhetorically. Certainly, references to a
particular recording of an event as “the truth” legitimates particular perspectives as
natural, inevitable, or superior to others.
Truth claims should be evaluated, not only
according to whose interests are advanced by particular truth claims, but also according
to the verifiability of such truth claims within the broader historic record. Because claims
to truth call for consensus and agreement, they often shut down critical deliberation and
the search for additional evidence about the past. The search for truth is a necessary step
47
in the struggle for social change and justice, but questions about what counts as truth
should remain open to deliberation and critical interrogation. In this dissertation, I focus
on films and journalism reviews of films as sites of popular memory where the struggle
for political hegemony takes place over the meanings of a real or “true” past. Power
relations are mediated in popular culture, in part, by rhetorical devices that frame
particular messages in popular culture as true or real representations of the past.
I argue that popular memories are constructed, not only through the construction
of particular texts, but through the circulation of particular messages about the past in
popular culture. To explain how films function rhetorically, I interpret the narratives, and
editing techniques that create meaning about activism. I also examine media frames
across journalism texts to understand how secondary sources circulated particular
meanings generated by films, and to understand how filmic genres met expectations of
mainstream film critics. Through my analysis of both filmic devices and news media
framings, I assess the ways in which filmic conventions of entertainment and
documentary films help to construct popular memories of activism.
In Sections Two and Three, I suggest that films about civil rights acquired status
as sources of popular memory by rhetorically managing the tensions created by the
imperatives of documentary films and entertainment films. These films adopted both
generic narratives that appeal to mainstream audiences and stylistic devices that
established films as sources of historical information. In Section Four, I explain how
documentary films that engaged codes of objectivity to construct meaning about the past
had a more limited rhetorical role in popular culture. Because their status as objective
sources of information was uncontested, documentaries did not prompt debate and
deliberation about the past; I could be said that they were just “too true.” Alternatively,
films that blended narrative genres of popular entertainment films with stylistic devices
48
of documentary films created ideological contradictions. Those contradictions propelled
counter-memories into popular culture, and thereby reframed established doxa about the
past.
49
NOTES TO CHAPTER ONE
1
For instance, Benedict Anderson has argued that the emergence of novels and
newspapers contributed to the formation of national identity by enabling readers to
imagine themselves as members of a widespread community.
Writing from a
communication studies perspective, John Durham Peters also argues that the public
emerges through its mediated representation.
2
For example, Dayan and Elihu Katz argue that the practice of witnessing
televised events, such as the Academy Awards and the Watergate hearings, in concert
with individuals throughout the United States unite the audience as members of a
widespread community.
3
According to Anderson and Benson (1991), documentaries are “social documents
that speak to us about difficult public matters” (p. 3).
4
Anderson and Benson (1991) cite Grierson and Wiseman in their history of the
controversy surrounding Wiseman’s () documentary Titicut Follies (pp. 1-2).
5
Brummett (1991) describes films as homologies, or “formal linkages across
messages, media, and content” that parallel “patterns of experience that appears across
texts in social life and popular culture” (p. 125). A homological interpretation of films
directs critics to understand narrative structures in films as significant, not for the
particular issues featured in the film’s narrative, but for the film’s reflection of broader
human experiences depicted in the relationships among characters and plot development
(p. 110).
6
Rushing and Frentz (1980) also eschew the immediate subject matter depicted in
films for the archetypes, or “enduring structures of thought” that films evoke (p. 106).
Rushing (1999) Rushing and Frentz (1980, 2000) and Frentz and Rushing (2002) argue
50
that films perpetuate and transform enduring cultural and archetypal myths to respond to
developments in human thought and technology. By incorporating myth into films about
contemporary themes, films appropriate archetypal imagery for rhetorical purposes.
7
In contrast to scholarship that uncovers the prevailing power structures or
ideological frameworks evoked within public memory, several scholars have reinforced
the unifying function of collective memory (Dickinson, 1997; Jorgensen-Earp &
Lanzilotti, 1988) or have highlighted the multiple meanings that may be taken from
collective memory artifacts (Blair, Jeppseon, & Pucci, 1991; Hasian 2001, Hubbard &
Hasian, 1998, Sturken, 1998). Scholarship that focuses solely on the processes by which
audiences perceive social unity through shared memory obscures critical understandings
of the ways that references to the past support the interests of dominant social groups.
Conversely, scholarship that emphasizes the multiple meanings that may be attributed to
texts overlooks the frames that make particular texts intelligible for audiences.
8
Although Hasian (2001) suggests that Saving Private Ryan contained polysemic
and polyvalent dimensions allowing viewers to read the film in divergent ways, he
concludes his essay by suggesting that the majority of viewers celebrated the film as an
illustration of America’s resolve in fighting the “Good War” (p. 355). For the purposes
of this literature review, the debates about the film that emerge across these articles are
submerged by their shared understanding that the film had greater implications for
understanding the present than it did for understanding the United States’ role in World
War II or the Holocaust.
9
Poulakos cites Isocrates’ work in Areopagiticus, “Through experience one can
reach conclusions on the basis of past events” (p. 75, Poulakos, p. 72); and in Demonicus,
“In your deliberations, let the past be an exemploar for the future; for the unknown may
be soonest discerned by reference to the known” (p. 34, Poulakos, p. 72).
51
10
Most scholars theorizing hegemony seem to agree that popular media adapt
representations of social life for the audiences who consume them, the implications of
shifts in the prevailing ideology of popular culture are less certain. In the field of
rhetoric, Condit (1994) suggests it is possible for commercial media to play an
emancipatory role for subordinated audiences. According to Condit, texts in popular
culture today reflect a process of negotiation, or concordance between contested interest
groups. Other scholars exploring ideologies within popular culture and political speech
disagree. Rhetoric scholars Cloud (1996) and Murphy (1992) suggest that dominant
groups may allow reform in the representation of marginal groups, but ultimately
preserve the legitimacy of the prevailing social order. I argue that shifts in the prevailing
doxa elicited in popular texts carry potential to open greater spaces in popular culture for
critical questioning of dominant groups; however, I part with Condit insofar as I do not
view the shifts as a concordance between competing publics. Instead, I argue that
subordinate groups shift prevailing doxa by drawing attention to contradictions within the
dominant ideology.
11
The view that reality is socially constructed through language, most notably
advanced by Berger and Luckman (1966) rests on the premise that versions of reality are
the results of communication, and not on reflections of objective truth. Likewise, Scott
(1967) argues that truth is not fixed but created moment by moment (p. 17). For Scott,
the search for truth represents human efforts to make moral decision in an inherently
uncertain world (p. 16). Following from Scott’s assertion that rhetoric is epistemic,
several rhetorical scholars have argued that even a scientific community’s version of
reality depends upon rhetoric. See, for instance, Weimer (1977) and Overington (1977)
for seminal essays in the rhetoric of inquiry.
52
12
Baudrillard (1988) eschews the idea of representation because reality itself is
inaccessible in the absence of images (p. 27-28). Scholars in the field of rhetoric who
trouble the distinction between mediated representation and a reality external to that
representation include Brummett (1991, p. xvii) and Dow (1996, p. 5).
53
Chapter Two
Publics, counter-publics and the trajectory of 1960s social movements
The scholarly literature on publics theory and on the history of New Left activism
during the 1960s suggests that progressive social change for human rights depends on the
ability of contentious publics to organize and challenge prevailing institutions.
The
democratic goals and ideals envisioned by 1960s activists who constituted the New Left
resonate with scholarship theorizing publics and counterpublics.
Thus, the history of
New Left activism elucidates how social movements have sought to enact publics that
mirror models of public life illuminated by scholars over the past several decades. The
New Left’s trajectory over the course of the decade also illustrates the limitations and
possibilities for realizing democratic public spheres in the United States during the latter
half of the twentieth century.
Rhetorical scholarship has yet to fully attend to the role of violence and
confrontation in the rhetoric of social movement protest and the process of social change
in the United States. While rhetorical scholarship has featured the role of deliberation and
argument as central to the welfare of democratic life in the United States, it has not fully
explored the social, political, and economic conditions that have delimited the efficacy of
deliberation and of democratic civic engagement in recent United States history.
Contentious collective activism prompted by ordinary people’s inability to deliberate
with powerful decision makers should also be part of our academic memory of civic
engagement in the United States. In this chapter, I describe the theoretical literature
about publics and the historical record about 1960s activism constructed by activists and
historians.
54
PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE
Many scholars point to the Students for a Democratic Society, or SDS, as the
beginning of the New Left during the 1960s. The SDS sought to enrich democracy in the
United States by implementing participatory democracy nationally and locally. The
principles of participatory democracy called for deliberation among ordinary people to
facilitate collective decision-making and individual empowerment.
In contrast to
representative democracy in which the voices of the few speak for the interests of the
many, participatory democracy includes vocal participation in decision-making for all
individuals affected by those decisions. The SDS’s founding document, The Port Huron
Statement noted:
The political order…should provide outlets for the expression of personal
grievance and aspiration; opposing views should be organized so as to illuminate
choices and facilitate the attainment of goals; [and] channels should be commonly
available to relate men to knowledge and to power so that private problems…are
formulated as general issues. (“Port Huron,” 1963/1992, p. 452)
According to this statement, the SDS regarded public deliberation as central to
participatory democracy. Presumably, members of a society would peaceably resolve
conflicts and recognize their common interests if they engaged in face-to-face discussion
rather than leave decisions to political leaders.
Several features of participatory democracy resonate with scholarship written
about public life at roughly the same time that the SDS began developing its model of
participatory democracy. In 1962, Jurgen Habermas argued that collective deliberation
was central for the public sphere to empower its members. His book, The Structural
Transformation of the Public Sphere, (1996/1962) extolled a model of public life where
all of its members could deliberate openly about issues of common concern. According
to Habermas, this public sphere was most closely realized during the 17th and 18th
centuries as literary salon culture and the emergence of the press enabled members of the
55
bourgeois to engage in rational-critical debate about their shared interests (p. 51). In this
sphere, questions of status between interlocutors did not matter as long as each member
regarded the force of the better argument as the highest virtue (pp. 33-36).
For
Habermas, the public sphere that developed at this time contributed to the dissolution of
domination by the aristocracy because it enabled the rising bourgeois to establish
consensus about what was practically necessary and in the interests of everyone within
that sphere.
Written decades earlier, Dewey’s (1957/1927) description of a democratic public
resonates with the New Left’s vision of participatory democracy. According to Dewey,
publics arise when people recognize that the actions of particular groups and individuals
have far-reaching consequences beyond the decision-makers themselves (pp. 15-16).
Common interests emerge when publics perceive that conjoint, combined, and associated
action among members will lead to desired consequences for everyone (p. 34). Although
Dewey does not feature deliberation in his model, it is ostensibly through communication
between potential members that publics are able to recognize themselves, determine their
common interests, and coordinate action. The resonance between the ideals of the New
Left and theories of ideal publics suggests that deliberating publics were central to the
goals of activists during the 1960s, and that such goals bear relevance to scholars
interested in the relationship between communication and social justice.
COUNTER-PUBLICS AND CONTENTIOUS POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT
As both the history of the New Left and critical responses to Habermas indicate,
models of democracy based on collective deliberation among individuals of equal status
do not represent actually-existing democracy.
Critics of Habermas point to the
exclusivity of his model, noting how women (Landes, 1998), the working-class (Eley,
1997; Negt and Kluge, 1993) and blacks (Baker, 1995; Hanchard, 1995) were removed
56
from the centers of decision-making in the bourgeois public sphere. Thus, groups whose
interests did not neatly map onto the interests of the white, male bourgeois class were
excluded from decision-making about issues of national and international consequence.
Informed by experiences of the early civil rights and antiwar movements, the New
Left also began to recognize the limitations of the model of participatory democracy that
they had envisioned.
Between 1960 and 1963, activists sought to deliberate with
members of the Kennedy administration to demonstrate the importance of enforcing
racial integration and ending the Cold War. Political leaders’ seeming disinterest in
peaceful resolutions to the Cold War led activists to believe that deliberation with
establishment leaders was fruitless (Gitlin, 1987, p. 96).
Likewise, the Democratic
National Committee’s refusal to recognize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in
1964 highlighted the exclusionary practices of mainstream politics (Bloom, 1987, p. 182183).
Civil rights and peace activists’ who believed in the power of deliberative
principles and sought inclusion within legitimated spheres of political activity found that
the system would not include them or deliberate with them.
The experiences of New Left activists in the early years of the 1960s indicates
that in stratified societies such as the United States, we cannot consider a single, all
encompassing public without recognizing that some members are more fully represented
than others. (Indeed, it may be difficult to discern that any widespread public constituted
by shared interests exists at all, given that our interests are dispersed across a variety of
social identifications and class stratifications). As Eley (1997) and Negt and Kluge
(1993) argue, the notion of the public itself is often an ideological fiction that legitimates
unequal social arrangements.
Likewise, rhetorical scholar, Michael McGee (1975)
argues that references to “the people” motivate people to act in accordance with the
“collective fantasy that the language invokes” (p. 247).
57
Instead of focusing on the notion of a single, overarching public constituted by
common procedural models for deliberation, several scholars and activists have advanced
notions of multiple, and often competing publics that collectively constitute civic life.
Rhetoric scholars Hauser and Eberly describe how publics converge around discursive
practices that highlight members’ common interests and shared stakes in resolving
particular problems. Hauser (1999) concludes that publics are reticulate, or based on the
web of relations that shape our discussions about particular issues (p. 71). Eberly (2000)
suggests that literary public spheres emerge when individuals read and respond publicly
to controversial novels. For Eberly and Hauser, publics may be recognized through the
texts that illuminate how members of publics deliberate with one another.
Other scholars have noted how political dissidents have formed counterpublics in
response to problems of social injustices and state repression. Fraser (1997) suggests that
groups excluded from mainstream political organizations may constitute “subaltern
counterpublics” as they recognize their own identities, interests, and needs in opposition
to dominant social groups (p. 81).
According to Fraser, societies that permit
“contestation among a plurality of competing publics” (p. 82) approximate the ideal of
participatory democracy more closely than do societies that insist on the viability of an all
encompassing public. Young’s (1997) model of democratic inclusion also features social
difference as central to democratic communication. She argues that social spaces where
differentiated groups struggle and engage one another across their differences facilitates
the inclusion of diverse perspectives and enables a more comprehensive understanding
of the issues that call people to act conjointly. [See also Asen & Brouwer’s (2001) edited
collection of essays that provide a series of case studies identifying various formations of
counterpublics who have challenged prevailing power structures.]
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The SDS represented one counterpublic that came into ascendancy toward the
middle of the 1960s was based on the New Left’s growing recognition of themselves as a
movement that opposed the political establishment. Informed by the exclusionary policies
of mainstream politics, New Left activists turned their attention to creating democratic
decision-making publics within marginalized communities. Although the SDS began to
eschew formal political participation, several of the movement’s programs grew out of
activists’ faith that participatory democracy could enrich decision-making practices
within smaller groups.
Particularly during their incipient years, members of the SDS
implemented the deliberative principles of participatory democracy within their own
organization. Meetings among activists were frequent, and decisions about movement
goals and strategies were made collectively. Activists’ faith in the powers of participatory
democracy for empowering citizens also propelled the SDS’ Economic Research and
Action Project which sought to engage people in poor, predominantly black, urban
communities in collective deliberation about their common problems and shared
interests.
The strategies of protesters in the SDS suggest that the New Left held an
ambivalent position about the possibilities of achieving a widespread participatory
democracy in the United States. On one hand, the New Left rejected the notion of an all
encompassing public as they began to organize local communities on the basis of their
exclusion from political power. On the other hand, the New Left remained committed to
enacting the models of democratic engagement within these smaller communities. Thus,
they expressed continued faith in deliberative democracy even as they withdrew from
deliberation with mainstream publics.
Ambivalences regarding the possibilities of participatory democracy appear in
Fraser’s (1997) writing as well. For Fraser, the liberatory potential of counterpublics lies
59
in their ability to function simultaneously as spaces of withdrawal for subordinate groups
and as training grounds for agitational activities direct toward the wider public (p. 82).
Thus, she suggests, effective counterpublics employ practices of participatory democracy
among members, but engage in more confrontational practices that make demands of
oppositional forces rather than seek deliberation and common ground with them.
Fraser’s description of counterpublics as spaces for withdrawal suggests that
counterpublics provide a foundation for the emergence of contentious social movements.
In their analyses of several instances of social protest that took place during the 1960s,
Bowers, Ochs, and Jensen (1993) identify agitation in acts in which “people outside the
normal decision-making establishment advocate significant social change and
encounter…resistance within the establishment such as to require more than the normal
discursive means of persuasion” (p. 4). Bowers, Ochs, and Jensen suggest that social
movements are defined by their contentious relationship to established institutions and
authorities who have excluded them from participation in formal decision-making
process. The resonance between Fraser and Bowers et al. indicates that the study of
counter-publics is essential to the study of social protest because counterpublics provide
the conditions necessary for social movements to function.1
Although counterpublics provide spaces for marginalized groups to withdraw
from and challenge the predominant social order, they also establish conditions for
transforming the social order they oppose.
The dual nature of counterpublics is
illustrated by SDS activities after the middle of the decade. While the SDS employed
participatory democracy in their own organization, their strategies for ending the war in
Vietnam became increasingly confrontational.
Although members of the SDS
deliberated with each other at length about the best strategies that would achieve the
movement’s goals, protest events including the student takeover of several buildings on
60
the Columbia University campus and students’ efforts to halt the train at the Oakland
Army terminal near Berkeley represent the SDS’s turn toward non-deliberative strategies.
Social movements’ confrontational strategies have often been effective for
achieving political and social change in the United States. As Zinn’s (1980/1995) history
of social change in the United States suggests, collective activism has been an effective
means for marginalized groups in society to seek political redress from established
institutions in a liberal democracy. Social movements in the United States have exposed
contradictions between equality and liberty in liberal democracy and have effectively
called upon established institutions to resolve those contradictions by including
marginalized groups in the democratic process.
Although movements emerged in
opposition to mainstream institutions, the success of agitational social movements in the
United States has often rested on activists’ commitment to widespread participation in the
decision-making processes in the United States.
Social movements during the 1960s
emerged as counterpublics because their members believed that the ideals of a
participatory democracy needed to be implemented throughout the United States. That
is, 1960s activists struggled against dominant institutions in order to gain fuller inclusion
within them.
Social movements’ simultaneous extrication from and desired participation within
dominant political institutions represents another sign of the New Left’s ambivalent
attitude toward participatory democracy. The SDS emerged as a counterpublic as it
sought to eradicate exclusionary political practices and eventually open up spaces for
greater political participation in spheres of influence in the United States.
The forums
for deliberation and activism that the New Left created were modeled after the
democratic ideals that they hoped would reanimate political life throughout social life in
the United States.
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The literature on publics theory, as well as the trajectory of New Left activism
during the 1960s, conveys several lessons that inform this dissertation and my
understanding of social movement activism in the history of the United States.
Counterpublics that question the state and resist appeals to an all inclusive public provide
important alternatives to mainstream political institutions in the United States. The
presence of counterpublics also provides marginalized groups the space for addressing
their own goals and interests regarding issues of widespread social consequence. The
history of New Left activism also suggests that state violence restricts the development of
social movements and counterpublics in late capitalism. The emancipatory potential of
social movements rests in their ability to transform the mechanisms for decision-making
to include previously subordinated groups.
When members of counterpublics are
physically threatened or silenced for demanding that their voice be recognized by the
state (or any other influential institution), subordinated groups have fewer resources for
ensuring that their voices are recognized or that their needs are met by decision-makers in
prevailing institutions.
The history of state violence against agitational social movement activists in the
United States demonstrates that participatory democracy represents a model for public
life that has yet to be realized. Although the presence of counterpublics in the history of
the United States attests to the difficulties of achieving a more fully democratic public
sphere that is inclusive of all of the individuals who purportedly constitute it, I believe
that the notion of participatory democracy is fundamental to achieving a just and
egalitarian society. When we recognize our shared interests as humans who all ultimately
want the same things for ourselves and our loved ones, the possibilities for widespread
social justice and human equality may be actualized. This rest of this chapter
chronologically outlines the trajectory of 1960s activism, the patterns of violence
62
between protesters and the state throughout the decade, and the social conditions that
prompted increasingly confrontational protest strategies toward the end of the decade.
FROM REFORMISM TO RADICALISM: CIVIL RIGHTS AND NEW LEFT ACTIVISM
During the early years of the 1960s, some of the most active social movement
organizations sought social change by working within prevailing political institutions.
Through the course of the 1960s, members of these organizations became increasingly
frustrated by political leaders’ unwillingness to respond to activists’ appeals. In response
to political leaders’ intransigence, activists began to engage in collective protests which
used the presence of collective protesters, rather than the appeals of argument, to compel
political leaders to meet activists’ goals. Frequently, mass protests were met with
physical brutality and repression from state authorities and whites who benefited from
prevailing social relations. According to McPhail et al., police principally used force to
disperse even peaceful protest during the 1960s (pp. 50-51). State-sanctioned violence
against civil rights, student, and Vietnam antiwar protesters further alienated activists
from the prevailing political establishment.
As the decade progressed, activists used
increasingly confrontational strategies to compel political leaders to meet their demands.
When conditions for African-Americans did not improve, and an end to the war did not
appear in sight, groups such as the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and The
Weather Underground advocated the force of arms to fundamentally change the political
order that they believed was inherently oppressive.
The Civil Rights Movement during the early 1960s
Civil Rights activism between the late 1950s and early 1960s featured both
strategies of reformism and passive resistance. Civil Rights activists sought to achieve
integration and equal opportunity with whites by seeking changes within formalized
63
institutions. Concurrently, activists increasingly turned to acts of nonviolent civil
disobedience to draw national attention to the issues of civil rights in the south. These
early years were also marked by perpetual state intransigence against integration and by
violence against civil rights activists and blacks at the hands of state authorities and antisegregationist whites.
Toward the end of the decade, intransigence to civil rights
prompted many black activists to disregard the legitimacy of the prevailing political
system altogether.
The slow process of integration following the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in
Brown v. Board of Education pointed to the limitations of strategies that sought change
from within the legal system. Despite federal orders to integrate universities, governors in
the South continued to prevent black students from attending college. In 1962, white
students in Oxford, Mississippi, rioted when federal orders demanded that black student
James Meredith be allowed to attend the University of Mississippi. Black students were
not allowed to attend the University of Alabama until 1963, when President Kennedy
ordered federal troops onto the campus. Bacciocco (1974) writes that the generation of
black activists who came of age during the 1960s concluded that social change would not
be won through the legal system and sought to replace reformism with the strategy of
resistance as a means for achieving racial integration (p. 31). During the early 1960s,
many of these students organized their activist efforts as members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Thus, the history of civil rights activism may
be read as a history of the movement’s growing militancy against state and civil
authorities as powers that be responded to the movement with continued violence and
repression.
During the early 1960s, thousands of black activists at in least 100 cities refused
to leave the lunch counters until they were served. These sit-in protests represented early
64
activist efforts to resist segregation, rather than seek to establish integration through legal
means. During the Freedom Rides of 1961, black and white student activists traveled
throughout Southern states by bus to sit-in at segregated restaurants and rest areas. In
response to activists’ efforts, several stores in the South began to integrate their stores in
the early years of the 1960s. Likewise, protest activities garnered the attention of federal
authorities who desegregated major railroads operating through the south by October
1961 (Bacciocco, 1974, p. 41). Thus, the sit-in movement demonstrated how collective
agitation could compel prevailing institutions to comply with their demands.
State violence against the Civil Rights Movement
In cities including Rock Hill, South Carolina, and Birmingham Alabama,
segregationists attacked the buses carrying Freedom Riders and local police repeatedly
beat and arrested activists when they got off of these buses. A series of beatings and
murders against civil rights activists, including the 1961 beating of SNCC fieldworkers
Travis Britt and John Hardy, the 1961 murder of black farmer Herbert Lee at the hands of
Mississippi State Representative E.H. Hurst, the 1963 murder of SNCC fieldworker
Jimmy Travis, the 1963 murder of Medgar Evers, and the 1964 murders of Freedom
Summer activists Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Chaney point to the
lengths many whites were willing to go to prevent the integration of blacks in prevailing
institutions in the South. Federal and state authorities did little to prosecute whites who
repressed activists with violence. A federal grand jury acquitted Hurst on the basis of
false charges that Hurst acted in self-defense (Bacciocco, 1974, p. 46).
Likewise,
Medgar Evers’ murderer, Byron de la Beckwith was not convicted for Evers’s death until
1994 despite the strong physical evidence against him (Nossiter, 1994/2002, unpaginated
preface).
65
In addition to the courts’ failure to convict men for the deaths of civil rights
activists, federal agents passively stood by as state authorities intimidated SNCC
volunteers and blacks attempting to register in Selma, Alabama in September and
October of 1963. Public officials who turned a blind eye to attacks against civil rights
activists suggested that violence against protesters was not only life-threatening but
condoned by prevailing government authorities. Thus, many people in the movement,
particularly younger activists in SNCC, increasingly doubted the efficacy of nonviolent
strategies, and began advocating direct action against the country’s racism.
State violence against peaceful protest confirmed many activists’ skepticism
toward strategies of civil disobedience for ending racism in the United States. On May
2, 1963, Martin Luther King and other members of the Southern Christian Leadership
Council (SCLC) organized six thousand people, including grade-school children, to
march in Birmingham, Alabama. During the march, Alabama Governor Bull Connors
ordered the police to blast demonstrators with fire hoses, and set police dogs on protesters
who included women and children. Attacks on children in Montgomery, in addition to
the continued exclusion of African-Americans from American educational and political
institutions, sustained many black people’s feelings of disdain toward established
political institutions. In 1964, white and black civil rights activists from Mississippi
organized the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) to challenge the exclusion
of blacks from Mississippi politics. At the National Convention in Atlanta that year, the
Democratic Party’s white leaders refused to recognize the MFDP as a legitimate arm of
the party. The Democratic Party’s exclusionary practices during the 1964 convention
confirmed many activists’ position that the nation’s injustices would not be eradicated
through efforts toward achieving reform within the system.
66
The emergence of the New Left: Students for a Democratic Society
Taking lessons from early antiwar and civil rights activism, many activists
concluded that political empowerment for marginalized groups could not be achieved by
working within formal political institutions. Toward the middle of the decade, activists’
strategies increasingly turned to strategies that resisted principles of representative
democracy.
Student activists began to reimagine political participation to include
ordinary citizens working outside of formal institutions to achieve common goals and an
end to social injustice. As the decade wore on, the state’s efforts to repress peaceful
protest through force and intimidation encouraged many activists to question the efficacy
of passive resistance as well.
Student and antiwar activists learned from the experiences of the Mississippi
Freedom Democratic Party that reformist goals and party politics could provide only
limited gains for marginalized groups in the United States.
The Kennedy
administration’s seeming disinterest in peaceful resolutions to the Cold War also led
activists to believe that the democratic system in the United States was immoral and
oppressive (Gitlin, 1987, pp. 94-96). Consequently, many young activists increasingly
repudiated the political system in the United States that excluded many of the individuals
it purported to represent.
Toward the end of the decade, many of these students
determined that radical politics was necessary to dislodge the prevailing political system.
Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement
In 1964, student movements began to develop across college campuses in the
United States. In addition to seeking greater civil rights and an end to the war, students
began to call for changes in university policies that would recognize the rights of students
and marginalized groups (Anderson, 1995, p. 101).
The most notable of these
movements emerged on the California State University at Berkeley. In the fall of 1964,
67
the university administration banned the promotion of “off campus” materials, including
civil rights leaflets, on campus. A series of student protest activities rallied against the
administration’s clamp down on free speech. These protests were dampened by frequent
police arrests. During protest on December 2, Mario Savio argued that the threat to free
speech at Berkeley was the consequence of a broader social system that oppressed its
members. Savio implicated all institutions in the United States as oppressive to the
people who functioned within them and highlighted the imperative for social movements
to place pressure on the system from the outside in order to achieve social change.
Administrative responses to the protests at Berkeley demonstrated that university and
government leaders would not tolerate systematic critique against the United States.
Governor Brown called upon 600 police officers who arrested 770 student protesters
(Anderson, 1995, p. 103). Despite efforts to shut down protests, students achieved their
goals. At the start of the new year, the university administration at Berkeley legalized
rallies. Although California’s political and educational system was repressive, it was not
impenetrable. Indeed, the responses of Berkeley officials indicate that social protest can
be effective at the times when administrations verbally insist that it is not.
FROM RESISTANCE TO CONFRONTATION
Toward the middle of the decade, social movement activists began to engage in
more contentious, confrontational politics as activists increasingly witnessed, either
directly or on television, the establishment’s use of force and brutality against nonviolent
protest. During a peaceful civil rights march on May 7, 1965 in Montgomery, Alabama,
one hundred deputies and state troopers severely beat and injured over forty protesters
(Anderson, 1995, p. 115). For many activists, state repression of the Montgomery march
demonstrated that the doctrine of non-violence was insufficient to end systematic
oppression against African-Americans in the United States (Bacciocco, 1974, p. 92;
68
Bloom, 1987, p. 184). Many black people well acquainted with the brutality of the
establishment in the early years of the 1960s began to riot against white businesses in
their communities as an expression of rage and dissent against racial injustice and
inequality. Police treatment of African-Americans and growing economic and political
struggles also sparked race riots in urban ghettos throughout the country. One of the
deadliest riots took place from August 11 -14, 1965 in Los Angeles, California, leaving
34 people dead, 1,000 injured, and 4,000 in jail (Anderson, 1995, p. 132).
The rise of the Black Power Movement
In response to systematic oppression of activists, many members of the civil
rights movement began to invoke the ideals of Black Power. Influenced by the work of
Franz Fanon and Malcolm X, advocates of Black Power insisted that equal strength must
replace strategies of persuasion and non-violence as means for achieving greater rights
for blacks (Bacciocco, 1974, p. 94). Black activists expressed their growing support for
the Black Power movement in 1966 when SNCC elected Stokely Carmichael and CORE
elected Floyd McKissick to lead them. In contrast to earlier leaders John Lewis and
James Farmer, these younger leaders expressed growing disinterest in working within the
system to achieve greater rights for blacks. Instead, Carmichael and McKissick argued
that black activists must wrest political power for themselves.
Taking up Carmichael’s call for African-Americans to join the Black Power
Movement, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party for Self
Defense in Los Angeles during the fall of 1966. The Panthers’ platform aimed to
overthrow the establishment, achieve economic equality through socialism, and bear arms
to protect blacks from the white establishment. During the next several months, the
Panthers established a legal system of armed patrol cars to trail police through the slums
of Oakland as a means to hinder police brutality against blacks (Foner, 1970, p. xvii).
69
Over the next several years, Party members also created free breakfast programs for
community children, provided sickle-cell anemia testing for blacks, led community
meetings to raise awareness of racism and oppression in the United States, and rallied for
dramatic restructuring of economic and political power in the United States.
Not all leaders of the civil rights movement supported the movement’s turn
toward the strategies of the Black Power Movement.
Martin Luther King and his
supporters in the Southern Christian Leadership Council continued to argue on behalf of
nonviolent protest within the movement. Disagreement among civil rights activists over
what protest strategies would serve the movement best led to fragmentation among
activist organizations and contributed to the eventual disappearance of civil rights
activism toward the end of the decade (Marable, 1984, pp. 107-108). However, the
decline of civil rights activism cannot be entirely attributed to the emergence of the Black
Power Movement. Many activists concurred with H. Rap Brown’s incendiary remarks
that “violence is as American as apple pie.” The violent suppression of civil rights
activism and systemic abuses against blacks frustrated many activists and prompted more
militant perspectives in the movement.
Growing confrontation in the Vietnam Anti-War Movement
Although most student activists adhered to the principles of civil disobedience
and peaceful protest, confrontational politics had a prominent place in student activism,
particularly as efforts toward expanding participatory democracy began to flail. SDS
members who looked like part of the elite establishment struggled to organize a
movement of mostly poor, mostly black communities. As older SDS members became
frustrated by the inability to enact participatory democracy, and as more members joined
the SDS to protest the war, the social movement organization turned further from
deliberative politics toward strategies of resistance and performance. Student activists
70
began to eschew participatory democracy as they acknowledged that peaceful protests
were not prompting an end to the war; indeed, United States involvement in the war was
becoming more intense in the years that the student antiwar movement expanded. In
February of 1965, President Johnson escalated the United States’ role in Vietnam by
ordering the bombing of North Vietnam under the name Operation Rolling Thunder.
This bombing prompted antiwar activism among many liberal and radical organizations.
Leaders of the antiwar movement initially sought to engage leaders and ordinary
citizens in deliberation about the war.
Several organizations, including the SDS
participated in national “teach-ins” across university campuses during the spring of 1965
to draw links between universities and the destruction in Vietnam.
Many activists
concluded that the teach-in movement did little to facilitate and end to United States’
involvement in Vietnam. Thus, students’ faith in argument and reason as a foundation
for social change began to wane. Chafe (1995) quoted one protester who concluded that
a responsible citizen was “utterly unable to write to his Secretary of State because there is
no common ground of communication” between activists and administration officials (p.
325). Reflecting Savio’s call for activists to “put their bodies upon the gears” of the
“machine,” activists increasingly engaged in confrontational protest to express dissent
against the war. Rather than appeal to values and procedures of established institutions,
activists began seeking ways to disrupt established procedure.
Several large-scale demonstrations took place during the spring and autumn
months of 1965. On Easter Sunday, 20,000 protesters including both moderate and
radical activists participated in an antiwar rally in Washington, D.C. That same month,
30,000 protesters attended a New York City Peace Parade. On October 15 and 16 of
1965, the International Days of Protest, nearly 100,000 activists participated in
demonstrations in 80 cities and university campuses across the country (Anderson, 1995,
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p. 141). Public authorities sometimes reacted with violence and anger toward these
protests. When 10,000 activists gathered for a “peace invasion” on the Oakland Army
Base near Berkeley, California, activists were met by 300 policemen and a number of
belligerent Hell’s Angels. Police officers and ordinary people also beat and threatened
activists in other large cities including Boston, New York City, and Washington, D.C.,
(Anderson, 1995, p. 144).
Public protests became increasingly confrontational as the decade progressed. In
1966, students engaged in the draft resistance movement beat on the car of White Official
Robert McNamara during his visit to Harvard. That same year, several hundred activists
at Berkeley attempted to stop or board the trains at the Oakland Army terminal to
disseminate antiwar literature to soldiers and prevent the trains from moving forward.
Performance-based protests also became more common as many activists questioned both
activist and establishment organizations as oppressive to individual spirit and
authenticity. A growing number of activists chose performance and individual acts of
liberation over the more traditional, organized protests activists. In San Francisco, the
Diggers ignored civil authority, eschewed organization, and suggested that social justice
could only be wrought by individuals who acted out the ideals they sought: “Don’t
demand food,” they opined, “Get it and give it away” (Gitlin, 1987, p. 224).
The politics of performance and confrontation created spectacles rather than seek
identification with others who shared common beliefs and interests. These shifts in
protest marked a political climate in which changing people’s minds seemed either
impossible or irrelevant to the cause of social justice. Thus, efforts to persuade others
were transplanted with efforts to achieve recognition. While spectacular protests were
not the prevailing forms of dissent at any point during the 1960s, they garnered extensive
72
media attention. Consequently, they played a strong role in shaping public attitudes
about social protest during the last half of the decade.
Radicalism and revolution at the end of the decade
Andrew Kopkind famously noted that “to be white and radical in America” in the
summer of 1967 was “to see horror and feel impotence” (Anderson, 1995, p. 182; Gitlin,
1987, p. 246). After 1967, state suppression of protest and dissent began climbing toward
a terrifying climax. Toward the end of the decade, police and federal troops beat even
moderate student activists to hinder protest against the war. In 1967, students at twentyone universities protested their campuses’ ties to Dow Chemical Corporation, a leading
manufacturer of napalm.
A demonstration against Dow recruiters who visited the
University of Wisconsin ended in violence as police equipped with riot gear and tear gas
beat several of the 300 protesting students (Anderson, 1995, p. 177).
Physical
intimidation was part of a larger systemic effort to quell activism on campus; the same
year that police bloodied several University of Wisconsin activists, the state legislature
passed a resolution demanding that the university expel protesters. As the intransigence
of the prevailing political system would not allow room for dissent or disagreement, civil
disobedience began to lose its appeal. Radical activism grew in appeal as government
officials appeared as equally likely to descend upon a passive resister as they would a
violent one.
Abandoning efforts to generate public sympathy for the antiwar movement
through acts of civil disobedience, student activists increasingly disregarded passive
forms of collective protest for more overt actions to hinder the war effort. Protest
activities in Berkeley that occurred during Stop the Draft week between October 14 and
October 21, 1967 represented one such instance of resistance.
Near Berkeley, some
10,000 protesters marched on the draft induction center in Oakland, California and pulled
73
over objects such as trash cans to disrupt the city and close the induction center. In
Washington D.C., Stop the Draft week activities concluded at the Pentagon, where many
radicals meditated in order to levitate the Pentagon and “exorcise” its “demons”
(Anderson, 1995, p. 178). Activists at Berkely and in Washington were met by police
armed with nightsticks, batons, and cans of Mace. According to Anderson (1995), the
confrontation at the Pentagon “was a last sit-down” for activists fed up with passive
resistance (p. 179). For these protesters, decision-makers could only be compelled by
force.
Killing activism, framing activists
The years 1967 and 1969 also witnessed continued frustration among civil rights
activists and the growth of the Black Power Movement that repudiated passive resistance
to racial discrimination. When Martin Luther King was shot on April 4 1968, riots
rippled throughout urban ghettos. After the rioting subsided, 3,000 people were injured
and 46 of them had died (Anderson, 1995, p. 192). For many activists, King’s death
represented the death of the nonviolent wing of the civil rights movement (Anderson,
1995, p. 192; Gitlin, 1987, 313). While law enforcement officials began using violence
to repress antiwar activism, police and FBI officials terrorized and killed members of
militant civil rights activists and poor blacks. As the more moderate wing of the Civil
Rights Movement subsided, Black Power activists began to garner national attention as
they denounced racist police officers and the castigated the judicial system that
continually exonerated the killings of blacks when little evidence demonstrated that
police officers lives had been threatened. The Black Panther Party garnered national
attention on May 2, 1967 when 24 armed Panthers walked to the steps of California’s
capitol building in Sacramento and read their statement of principles which advocated
black independence and self-defense (Foner, 1970, p. xxi).
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In response to the Panthers’ disavowal of state authority, police officials engaged
in a pattern of violence and repression against militant black activists. Between 1968 and
1971, the FBI’s COINTELPRO (Counter-intelligence Program) resulted in frequent
arrests of Black Panther Party members, raids of party offices, and the deaths of at least
29 party members. As Churchill (2001) and Foner (1970) demonstrate, party office raids
were often based on false pretenses. Likewise, many of these arrests were made on
dubious charges that could not be substantiated in court. On September 27, 1968, the
courts sentenced Newton to two to fifteen years in prison for the voluntary manslaughter
of Police Officer John Frey even though court proceedings demonstrated that Newton did
not have a gun with him at the time Frey was shot. A May 29, 1970 California Court of
Appeals decision reversed the conviction and acknowledged that Newton was
unconscious at the time of the shooting (Foner, 1970, p. xxv). In 1969, police escalated
violence against Black Panther Party members. In the most clear and notable instance of
systemic repression of Panther Party activism, Chicago police shot and killed Panther
leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in their sleep. Although police officers claimed
they shot in self-defense, a Federal Grand Jury concluded that charges were false and that
Hampton and Clark were asleep when they were shot (Foner, 1970, p. xxvi).2
State police and federal troops continued to beat back antiwar and student
activists with excessive force as activists engaged in increasingly destructive protest
tactics. On March 2, 1968, Yippies exploded two cherry bombs at Grand Central Station,
harming no one. Fifty cops broke up the protest with nightsticks, badly injuring several
activists (Gitlin, 1987, p. 238).
In April, 1968, students who protested Columbia
University’s treatment of blacks and sponsorship of war related research were also
repressed with excessive police force.
After students occupied several university
building, the university administration called in hundreds of New York City police
75
officers who arrested 692 protesters and struck many of them with billy clubs and brass
knuckles.
Adding to the mounting violence of 1968, democratic presidential candidate
Robert Kennedy was shot to death on June 6 by Sirhan Sirhan in Los Angeles California.
Just as Martin Luther King’s assassination symbolized the death of the nonviolent wing
of the civil rights movement, Robert Kennedy’s death represented the last hope for
activists who held out for the possibility that the democratic system could be reformed to
facilitate social justice and equality in the United States. By the time of the Democratic
National Convention from August 25-28, multiple activist organizations, including
nonviolent antiwar activists, the SDS, the Black Panthers, and the Yippies planned to
demonstrate against the Democrats and the political system the Democratic Party
represented.
Yippies garnered extensive media and political attention when they
announced plans for outlandish activities such as lacing Chicago’s water supply with
LSD and painting activists’ cars yellow to hijack unsuspecting convention delegates
(Anderson, 1995, p. 219).
Chicago Major Daley and other city officials took these threats seriously and
amassed a 12,000 number police force to govern the city during the convention. Daley
also ordered plainclothes police to infiltrate movement organizations. One agent for every
six protesters participated in the demonstrations in Chicago during the convention
(Anderson, 1995; Gitlin 1980). After Daley denied activists’ permits to rally or to camp
out in nearby city parks, Chicago police charged the crowd of protesters that began
marching toward the convention site.
Reporters covered the attacks as police beat and
gassed protesters who cried, “the whole world is watching.” Anderson (1995) estimates
that 90 million Americans witnessed the events on national television (p. 224).
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Despite images of violence against protesters that news coverage exposed, news
media polls suggest that a majority of conservative and moderate audiences sympathized
with the city and Major Daley (Anderson, 1995, p. 224). The lack of expressed sympathy
from more moderate audiences to the violence in Chicago indicates that the New Left had
become severely marginalized from mainstream America. For many non-activists, events
at Chicago signaled a breakdown of civil society caused by movement activists.
Alternatively, the events in Chicago confirmed radical activists’ conclusions that United
States’ political system was corrupt and that the public was impervious to reason and
deliberation.
ACTIVISM IN 1968 AND BEYOND
Waves of state violence and repression severely weakened nonviolent student
movements at the end of the decade. By the end of 1968, members of the SDS could not
come to agreement over the best ways to respond to state repression. The Weathermen, a
militant faction of the SDS, publicly endorsed “the violent overthrow of an inherently
violent society” and called for a complete overhaul of the United States’ political system.
(The group later referred to themselves by the more gender neutral moniker, “Weather
activists.”) When eight leaders of the protests at Chicago during the 1968 Democratic
convention were put on trial for inciting riots, Weather activists revisited Chicago in
protests referred to in newspapers as “the Days of Rage.” Protesters marched down the
streets of Chicago wearing helmets and several activists carried clubs and wore gas
masks. Despite talks of engaging in bloody confrontations with police, most of the
brutality was directed toward activists. Chicago police shot at protesters, hit six of them,
and arrested protesters en masse.
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The rage and death of the New Left
In contrast to the weak publicity accorded them by the Days of Rage, Weather
activists garnered national publicity when they destroyed several buildings that advanced
the war effort. Between September 1969 and May 1970, 250 major bombings targeting
ROTC buildings, draft boards, and other federal offices were linked to the white left
(Gitlin, 1987, p. 401). Although many members of the SDS struggled to maintain
momentum for nonviolent student activism, Weather activists came to the forefront of the
movement and reframed movement activism in revolutionary terms.
Gitlin (1987)
argues that the New Left’s turn toward revolutionary aims contributed to the demise of
the student movements at the end of the decade; torn by factionalism within the
movement and violence from without, the New Left’s base began to dissolve.
This disillusion was marked by the deaths of many activists in the fall of the New
Left in 1970. On March 6, the home of Weather activist Cathy Wilkerson blew up on
West 11th Street in New York when one member accidentally connected the wrong wire
to a pipe bomb the group was manufacturing.
Weather activists Ted Gold, Diana
Oughton, and Terry Robbins died in the explosion. Gitlin (1987) describes the bombing
as a “flashpoint for …death surrounding the left” at the end of the decade (p. 402). The
May 4 1970 shootings at Kent State University in Ohio also punctuated the demise of the
New Left.
After the university’s ROTC building mysteriously burned down, Ohio
Governor James Rhodes called in the National Guard to enforce a ban on collective
protest on campus. After students began throwing rocks at members of the National
Guard, the guardsmen fired into the crowd, shooting several students and killing four.
Ten days later, police officers fired upon and killed two protesters at Jackson State
University, a black student college in Mississippi.
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In contrast to the terror that student and radical activists faced in the fall of 1970,
protests emanating from mainstream America following the shootings at Kent State and
Jackson State did not result in violence. While the SDS began to dissolve, the antiwar
movement peaked with record numbers of middle-aged and middle-class people
participating in the October 15 Moratorium protests and the November 15 Mobilization
protests. Zinn (1980/1995) provides reasons to be optimistic about the role of antiwar
activism during the 1960s.
He notes that growing antiwar activism during 1968
influenced Johnson to scale back bombing efforts and seek a resolution to the war (p.
491). Likewise, Zinn notes that the growing antiwar movement at the end of the decade
persuaded Nixon from escalating the war because he did not want to divide American
public opinion by escalating the war (p. 492). Furthermore, the protests that took place
across 400 university campuses in the aftermath of Kent State and Jackson State indicate
that the shootings did not deter student activism. Protest events after Kent State generated
some of the largest number of participants of the Vietnam antiwar movement. It wasn’t
until the war’s conclusion in 1974 that activism diminished on college campuses in the
United States.
Unlike New Left student movements at the end of the decade that challenged the
structure of American political and social life, protests emanating from mainstream
America called for minimal change within a system that went unquestioned. Activists
who sought more fundamental social change in the United States began to experience
protester fatigue and withdrawal after facing continual struggle against system violence.
The Nixon administration’s techniques of repression intimidated activists. The
government’s use of firearms to silence unarmed student protesters demonstrated that
mass protest was potentially deadly and would not be protected by the state; the
government seemed willing to kill to shut down protest.
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The court’s reaction to the shootings at Jackson State confirms the state’s
belligerent attitude toward protesters seeking structural social change in the United
States. A local grand jury found the attack against students at Jackson State “justified”
and U.S. District Court Judge Harold Cox declared that students who engage in civil
disobedience “must expect to be injured or killed” (Zinn, 1995, p. 454). After both
criminal and civil trials against the National Guardsmen who shot the students at Kent
State, no one has been convicted or held accountable for the shootings at Kent State.
Following protest events in Berkeley in 1969, Governor Ronald Reagan also suggested
that political leaders were willing to engage in extraordinarily violent acts to eradicate
dissent. “If it takes a bloodbath,” Reagan told reporters, “let’s get it over with” (Gitlin,
1987, p. 414-415). As New Left groups could not come to agreement over the strategies
most appropriate for responding to system violence and the intransigence of the
prevailing political system, it dissolved its base for organizing protest and splintered into
movements based on particular interests.
The trajectory of leftist activism during the 1960s suggests that contentious
collective protest emerged out of the exclusions of particular groups from prevailing
deliberative and decision-making bodies in the United States. It also indicates that
activists’ efforts to deliberate with political leaders and seek social change through
established political institutions eroded over the course of the decade. Movements for
civil rights, free speech, and an end to the war in Vietnam began to employ strategies of
nonviolent resistance after political leaders failed to acknowledge the arguments for
greater equality and an end to the war. As the decade progressed, state sanctioned
repression and violence against activists prompted many social movement organizations
to replace strategies of civil disobedience for more confrontational strategies of protest.
Bloody confrontations that marked the end of the decade represented for many activists
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the withering of radical activist movements and the demise of participatory democracy in
the United States.
Activism in the new millennium
The cultural climate increasingly emphasized private, individual interests during
the decades after the 1960s. Gitlin (1987) argues that, rather than focusing on widespread
social problems and collective engagement in political-decision making, former activists
turned their attention to personal salvation (p. 424). Activist events on college campuses
over the past several decades indicate that Gitlin’s assessment is somewhat misleading.
Although protests for widespread social change waned in the 1970s, activism has not
disappeared completely from the United States’ political landscape. Indeed, the 1970s
witnessed the growth of social movements for women’s liberation and for environmental
protection. Student protest in the United States also played an important role in the antiapartheid movement during the early 1980s against the South African government.
Likewise, student activists on university campuses in the United States have continued to
engage in protest to demand that companies in the United States not use workers from
sweatshops overseas.
Contentious collective dissent in recent years indicates that agitational activism
for structural change in the United States and overseas is not dead. Indeed, the 1999
Seattle protests and 2003 Miami demonstrations against the World Trade Center and
International Monetary Fund indicate that thousands of engaged citizens continue to
engage in mass civil disobedience to challenge political and economic institutions that
they believe are unjust. Likewise, worldwide protests against the George W. Bush
administration’s 2003 war on Iraq demonstrate that dissent is alive in the United States.
In New York City, over a hundred thousand people demonstrated against the war (Eaton,
2003, p. B11).
Hundreds of thousands or protesters throughout other cities worldwide
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likewise rallied against Bush’s foreign policy during the last two weeks of March in 2003
(see Cowell, 2003, p. B11; Lichtblauh, 2003, A15; and Lueck, 2003, p. A14).
Recent protests demonstrate that contentious collective activism has not died out
completely. Throughout the history of the United States, activism has appeared in waves
in response to political, social, and economic circumstances. Thus, it is often declared
dead only to resurface. During the most recent waves of activism in the United States,
films about 1960s social movements framed activism in ways that sent confusing
messages about the history of activism in this nation’s recent past. The record of civil
rights activism conveys important lessons about what may be gained from collective,
contentious dissent; however, popular memories of civil rights provide a hazier image of
that legacy for contemporary media audiences.
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NOTES TO CHAPTER TWO
1
Several essays in Asen and Brouwer’s (2001) Counterpublics and the State
describe how social movements function as counterpublics.
See, for example,
Palczewski’s essay on the role of the Internet within social movements, and Cloud’s
essay on the implications of the 1998 Indonesian Revolution for social movement theory.
2
In 1982, a federal district court ruled that the police had violated Hampton and
Clark’s civil rights (Churchill, 2001, p. 107).
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SECTION TWO
MEMORIES OF MISSISSIPPI
84
Introduction to Mississippi Burning and Ghosts of Mississippi
The civil rights movement is remarkable.
When it became clear that white
legislators refused to act for the interests of blacks, black Americans seized the initiative,
took control over their own lives, and demanded their rights. Activists not only put an
end to formal segregation and increase black people’s voting rights throughout the South;
they achieved these aims in spite of physical threats and bodily injury imposed on them
by state police and white separatists. The movement provides an exemplary model of
how a group of committed people with few financial resources of their own can bring
about widespread social change.
Although the civil rights movement made racial equality a focal point for the
entire nation, it did not eradicate racism in the United States. A 2004 The National Urban
League report states that notable gaps between African-Americans and whites remain,
especially in the area of economics. Twenty-five percent of blacks live in poverty
compared to twelve percent of whites; male earnings are seventy percent that of white
males; and African-American unemployment is twice the national average.1 Given that
African-Americans have yet to achieve equal status with whites in the United States,
collective protest and agitation may still play a role in advancing civil rights and racial
justice. The memory of the civil rights movement may thus serve as an important
resource for African-Americans and other subordinated groups who continue to struggle
for civil liberties in the United States. Understanding how civil rights activism advanced
racial justice in the recent past may serve as a model for how justice might be achieved in
the near future. Attention to images of civil rights activism in popular media provide one
avenue for understanding how contemporary black audiences have been encouraged to
envision possibilities for social change in the decades after the movement’s decline.
85
In this section, I explain how two films, Mississippi Burning (1988) and Ghosts of
Mississippi (1996) encouraged audiences to remember events from the history of the civil
rights movement. Mississippi Burning told the story of the FBI’s efforts to solve the case
of three civil rights activists who disappeared in Neshoba County, Mississippi, in 1964.
Eight years later, Ghosts of Mississippi narrated the story of the 1994 prosecution of
Byron de la Beckwith for the 1963 murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers in Jackson,
Mississippi. The directors of these films told reporters that they believed the films would
influence how audiences understood racism in America’s recent past. Alan Parker, the
director of Mississippi Burning, stated that he made the film because he wanted to bring
people “largely ignorant of the events from two decades ago” to “some level of
understanding [about events] that radically changed the South and the nation” (Hall,
1988, p. C01). Given that the imperatives of commercial media call for the entertainment
value of films more than they call for historical accuracy, these filmmakers faced an
interesting rhetorical challenge. How did these films negotiate the competing demands of
commercial media and historical accuracy necessary for these films to become part of
popular memory?
Both generic conventions of melodrama and conventions of documentary film
contributed to these films’ status as engaging resources for understanding the history of
the civil rights movement. In the process, they constructed particular messages about the
role of activism and the process of social change during the civil rights movement.
Directors Parker and Reiner suggested that they wanted their films to influence how
audiences perceived race relations and social injustice. Reiner stated that he hoped
Ghosts of Mississippi would represent “a step” in changing our memory of race relations
in the United States (Vargas, 1996, transcript #2658-1), and Parker asserted that his film
was more than a “history lesson”; it was “about the racism that’s within all of us. And
86
it’s about now” (Hall, 1988, p. C01). Both Reiner and Parker suggest that films provide
resources for understanding social struggles from the past and may encourage audiences
to recognize contemporary instances of social injustice. By highlighting the ways in
which Mississippi Burning and Ghosts of Mississippi represented racial injustices that
have been predominantly forgotten, they imply that these films are significant sites of
counter-memory.
I take issue with the claim that these films univocally provided counterhegemonic discourses. Both of these films indicated that white authority figures, not
black activists, played a pivotal role in winning justice and civil rights for AfricanAmericans in the South. The narratives within these films contradicted the record of
activism constructed by activists and scholars. According to this record, black activists
took the lead in prompting an end to racist institutions in the South and in finding justice
for activists who were murdered by white separatists during that decade. The narratives
of these films obscured the history of civil rights activism that contemporary groups
might emulate to achieve social justice in the present; however, these films should not be
entirely dismissed for reasserting inequitable race relations. By misrepresenting the
FBI’s role in the civil rights movement, one of these films, Mississippi Burning, opened a
space for journalists to include counter-memories of activism into popular culture.
The next two chapters describe the narrative and visual devices that constructed
the film’s messages about civil rights as resources for understanding the past. These
chapters also explain how news media attention to these films contributed to the popular
memories that the films evoked. My analysis of the narrative and visual features in these
films and of the journalistic responses to them demonstrates how popular memories
emerge through the combination of both compelling narratives about the past and textual
cues that encourage audiences to read these narratives as sources of historical
87
information. It also suggests that secondary sources to films about the past including
journalists and reviewers may play more of a role in constituting popular memory than
the films themselves.
88
NOTES TO INTRODUCTION TO SECTION TWO
1
The 2004 National Urban League Report executive summary also notes that a
black person’s average jail sentence is six months longer than a white person’s for the
same offence (thirty-nine months compared to thirty-three months), and that blacks are
twice as likely to die from disease, accident, behavior, and homicide at every stage of life
than whites.
In 2005, Booker (2005) also reported that blacks represent forty-four
percent of the prison population serving long-term sentences (p. 12).
89
Chapter Three
Memory and counter-memory in Mississippi Burning
Mississippi Burning represents the first Hollywood film to bring memories of the
civil rights movement into popular memory. As network television news coverage of
Edgar Ray Killen’s recent conviction attests, it is one of the most successful films to have
done so. The film’s ability to become part of popular memory stemmed from its use of
melodramatic narrative and documentary film conventions. Conventions of Hollywood
melodrama propelled Mississippi Burning’s popularity while visual cues more typical of
documentary film constituted this film as a source of historical information. Although
Parker advocated Mississippi Burning as a resource for promoting social justice, scholars
and film critics derided the film for subordinating the experiences of African-Americans
and reasserting white hegemony in popular culture. [See Brinson (1995) and Madison
(1999) for criticisms of the film in communications scholarship.] I argue that this film
prompted counter-memories in journalism by depicting events that simultaneously
resonated with and contradicted the record of civil rights activism established by
activists, historians, and journalists.
Mississippi Burning’s paradoxical presentations of the civil rights movement
prompted film critics to challenge the film’s historical accuracy. Indeed, contradictions
between Mississippi Burning’s representations of events and activists’ memories
encouraged news critics to provide alternative memories of civil rights activism that
complemented the memories of many civil rights activists and historians. By adopting
the generic conventions of Hollywood entertainment within films that purported to
represent the past, Mississippi Burning invited critical reflection about the past. Thus,
90
both the melodramatic narratives and resonances to events from the civil rights
movement in these films opened limited spaces for counter-memories of civil rights
protest to become part of popular memory.
MEMORY AND AMNESIA IN MISSISSIPPI BURNING
Mississippi Burning garnered particular salience as a source of popular memory in
contemporary culture by incorporating elements of documentary film in a conventional
Hollywood melodrama. While the film’s resonance with Hollywood cop action dramas
propelled the film’s circulation, other features within the film─including brutal images of
violence against blacks─constituted the film as a form of historical information. Both the
film’s circulation and legitimacy as a source of historical information prompted
mainstream newspaper critics discuss both the history of violence against activists in the
civil rights movement and the film’s historic accuracy. Thus, both commercial success
and historical legitimacy are necessary for films to inform how popular audiences
understand the past. By negotiating these competing demands, Mississippi Burning
opened up additional spaces for popular culture to remember the history of political
repression against civil rights activists.
Mississippi Burning as an historical cop action docudrama
Mississippi Burning featured the struggles of two fictional FBI detectives in their
quest to solve the mysterious disappearance of three unnamed civil rights activists in a
fictional town in central Mississippi. Although scenes in the film bore semblance to stock
documentary footage of violence against civil rights activists, the film’s narrative more
closely resembled a fictional melodrama than a documentary about the civil rights
movement. This narrative followed the conventions of what Brown (1993) refers to as a
cop action drama. Within this film genre, protagonists form an antithetical partnership in
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order to root out an inhumane villain who threatens the community. Mississippi Burning
revolved around the efforts of fictional FBI agents Rupert Anderson, played by Gene
Hackman and Alan Ward, played by Wilem DeFoe, to solve the case of the missing men.
Much of the film focused on the tension between Anderson, a former Mississippi sheriffturned FBI agent, and his superior, Ward, a by-the-books agent put in charge of the case.
The film depicted Ward as a Northerner who felt outraged by the South’s treatment of
African-Americans was unable to solve the men’s disappearance. Under Ward’s
direction, bureau agents fruitlessly searched for signs of the missing activists and were
continuously rebuffed by white locals. Anderson was also depicted as an FBI agent
committed to solving the case of the men’s disappearance, but he displayed little of the
earnest concern of his partner. Instead, he made wisecracks about Ward’s ineffective
methods for finding the missing activists and made small talk with local white
Southerners to determine who might have had information about the case. Anderson also
romanced the deputy sheriff’s wife, Mrs. Pell, who eventually provided him with the
information crucial to solving the case.
The heroic efforts of Ward, Anderson, and Mrs. Pell contrasted sharply with the
actions of the film’s central antagonists Sheriff Stuckey and Deputy Sheriff Clinton Pell.
Throughout the film, local police under Stuckey collaborated with local Klu Klux Klan
members to undermine the FBI investigation; the film frequently provided startling
images of KKK leaders and police beating and threatening to lynch African-Americans in
response to the FBI’s continued investigation into the activists’ disappearance. Likewise,
the film conveyed spectacular images of black churches and homes being terrorized and
burned by segregationists as the FBI agents get closer to solving the case.
The trenchant racism within Mississippi’s law enforcement agencies was a central
theme throughout the film. Violent images of Klansmen beating black people in response
92
to the FBI’s investigation suggested that the FBI could not prevent or hinder the Klan’s
unmitigated torture of blacks and civil rights activists. Indeed, when Anderson questioned
Frank Bailey, the police officer who shot one white activist in the head in the first scene,
Frank told Hackman, “Still suits in Washington D.C. ain’t gonna change us…unless it’s
over my dead body [pause] or a lot of dead niggers.” Bailey concluded his meeting with
Anderson by declaring, “there ain’t a court in Mississippi that’d convict me.” For
Anderson, Bailey’s confidence in the racism of Mississippi’s legal system proved that
Ward’s commitment to formal procedures for FBI conduct would never pose a challenge
to the authorities who sanctioned violence against blacks. Thus, Anderson concluded that
federal agents would have to act outside of the law in order to seek to root out the killers
responsible for the deaths of blacks and activists in Mississippi.
After Mrs. Pell was brutally beaten by her husband for confiding in Anderson,
Ward acquiesced to Anderson’s call to “fight fire with fire” and handed the case over to
him. The following scenes portrayed FBI agents tricking and terrorizing Klan members
to confess their involvement in the activists’ deaths. Anderson threatened Deputy Pell in
a barber shop with a razor blade positioned at Pell’s throat and tricked one Klan member
into believing that he needed FBI protection to survive impending attacks from fellow
Klansmen. In another scene, Anderson flew an unnamed African-American agent to
Mississippi to interrogate the town’s mayor and threaten him into providing the names of
the Klansmen responsible for the deaths of the activists. Through these coercive actions,
FBI agents attained the evidence they needed to prove that the men had impeded the civil
rights of the activists. Thus, the threats of violence against Klan members, which were
warranted by the Klan’s own disregard for the law, enabled Ward and Anderson to find
some justice for the community. The film’s final scenes depicted the men who helped to
murder the activists, including Sheriff Stuckey and Deputy Pell, being arrested by federal
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agents. By demonstrating how the activists’ killers could only be brought to justice
through the FBI’s use of “dirty tricks,” this film’s conclusion suggested that people must
sometimes go outside of the law to achieve justice and social equality.
Anderson’s enthusiasm for going outside legal parameters to apprehend the killers
fit closely with the conventional plot development of the cop action genre. According to
Ames (1992), villains in crime dramas take actions that “place them outside the pale of
civilization,” and “grant their pursuers the moral right to abandon the restrictions of law.”
Ames explains that the depiction of the unconscionable villain is an essential element of
action films; “it provides the legitimating premise for the extreme violence (and the
elaborate special effects needed to depict it), which is a primary selling point of the
movies” (Ames, 1992, p. 52). As Ames suggests, the good cop versus evil villain plot
development and spectacular action sequences typical of the cop action genre is a
formula for commercially successful film. Brown (1993) explains that the commercial
success of early cop action dramas such as Die Hard (1988) and Lethal Weapon (1987)
prompted a series of sequels and low budget films with similar themes and action
sequences (p. 85). Thus, it is likely that Mississippi Burning’s adherence to conventions
of the cop action drama made the film compelling, or marketable, as a Hollywood
blockbuster.
Mississippi Burning provided a site of popular memory, at least partially, because
it was, well, popular. The accolades and box office success Mississippi Burning received
attests to the film’s artistic commercial success. After the film was released to theaters in
December 1988, it generated $34 million at the box office (“Business data,” 1988). The
film also ranked number twelve among top video rentals in 1989 (“Top video,” 1989, p.
13). Awards given to the film also suggest that the film was able to meet the standards
for compelling film within Hollywood’s creative community. The National Board of
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Review of Motion Pictures chose it as the best film of 1988 (McGilligan & Rowland,
year, p.G01). Later that year, the film was nominated for an Academy Award for best
picture, and Gene Hackman and Frances McDormand won Academy Awards for best
actor and best supporting actress (respectively) for their performances in the film (Curry,
1988, p. D01). These accolades attest to the film’s success, but they do not provide a
complete explanation of how the film contributed to popular memory. Films that earn
high box office revenues and receive Academy Award nominations might convey
important social meaning, but are not often recognized by national news media as
resources for understanding history. Thus, particular signifiers in conventional films
prompted audiences to understand Mississippi Burning as a film about the past.
Burning violence against blacks into popular memory
Mississippi Burning’s status as a source of memory about the civil rights
movement derived from its reflection of violent events from the history of the civil rights
movement and from textual cues that borrowed the social conventions of documentary
film. Although this narrative fit with generic conventions of Hollywood action drama, it
incorporated visual cues that suggested the film was based on actual instances of racial
injustice during the 1960s.
As they emerged within the framework of a cop action
drama, visual and narrative signifiers of realism attributed particular salience to
Mississippi Burning as a source of historical information in contemporary culture.
The film’s correspondence to actual events provided the strongest signal that the
movie represented a site of popular memory. Frequently, the film provided images that
resembled events from the history of the civil rights movement that garnered extensive
national news media attention during the 1960s. Audiences with historical knowledge
about events surrounding the civil rights movement might have recognized graphic
images of Klan members beating and lynching African-Americans as tactics white
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segregationists used to maintain the subordinate status of African-Americans in the
South. Likewise, images of churches and homes being burned to the ground vividly
recalled the ways in which segregationists terrorized the African-American community to
dissuade them from fighting for civil rights at that time.
Audiences with knowledge of the history of the civil rights movement might also
have recognized the initial scenes in the film. The film’s introductory scenes featured
three men, two white and one black, being chased down an otherwise deserted country
road late at night by three other cars. The men pulled over when they recognized police
lights flashing behind them. Then, a police officer approached the car, called the white
man driving the car a “nigger loving Jew,” drew his pistol to the driver’s temple, and
fired. As the screen went black, sounds of additional shots rang out, and another man’s
voice declared, “at least I shot me a nigger.” These images bore some semblance to
information regarding the real-life disappearances of George Chaney, Michael Goodman
and Andrew Schwerner who came to Neshoba County, Mississippi in June 1964 as part
of the Mississippi Freedom Summer project.
This project was a joint effort of the NAACP, CORE, SCLC, and SNCC to
organize white and black activists to register blacks in Mississippi to vote. Organizers
anticipated that activists would face violent resistance from Southern whites. They also
believed that images of white, educated youth being brutalized by white segregationists
would rally middle-class Americans across the north and mid-west to the cause of the
civil rights movement.
As attention to the young men’s disappearance mounted,
President Johnson ordered two hundred 400 marines and 200 FBI agents to find the
young men. On August 4, FBI agents discovered the bodies of the activists in an earthen
dam. Forensics indicated that the men had been shot in the head before they were buried
alive.
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Cagin and Dray’s (1988) history of events surrounding the activists’
disappearance suggests that Mississippi law enforcement officers colluded with KKK
members in attacks on blacks and civil rights activists. Two police officials, Neshoba
County Sheriff Rainey and his deputy Cecil Price, closely resembled the characters of
Stuckey and Pell. Cagin and Dray indicate that these officers refused to interfere with
growing KKK activity during the summer of 1964, (pp. 326-327) and that Rainey and
Price had organized the crime or were covering up for those who had (p. 335). Because
several features of the film corresponded to actual events from the history of the civil
rights movement, audience members who recognized some of these events, but didn’t
have extensive knowledge of the history of the civil rights movement, may have believed
that the entire film was based on events surrounding the activists’ disappearance.
Images of journalists in the film also resonated with popular memories of
journalists who covered the activists’ disappearance in 1964. Several scenes in the film
depicted reporters as they questioned local and federal officials about the status of the
missing activists and the state of race relations in Mississippi. Other scenes portrayed
FBI agents watching newsreel footage of white Southerners beating and terrorizing civil
rights activists. In one scene, Ward and several FBI agents watched newsreel footage of
a Klu Klux Klan rally to understand the extent to which the lives of black people were
threatened throughout the South. During the next scene, Ward demanded that FBI agents
step up their efforts to find the men responsible for the activists’ deaths. This scene
suggested that journalistic coverage of violence inflicted on civil rights activists incited
the FBI’s moral outrage and prompted them to retaliate.
Although there is little evidence to suggest that the media galvanized the FBI to
fight racism in the South, television journalism helped to galvanize widespread support
for the civil rights movement in the United States. In response to these televised images,
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white audiences in the North and Western put pressure on political leaders and Southern
businesses to support integration and voting rights in the South. Mississippi Burning did
not illustrate the relationship between broadcast news media and the movement’s success,
but it did distinguish national news media as important to the narrative of the FBI’s
efforts to find the bodies of the missing activists and bring their murderers to justice. The
film’s images of the press suggested that racism in the South was an important national
issue at the time that Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner disappeared. For audiences who
recognized the narrative’s fidelity to events that took place well before Parker directed
Mississippi Burning, the film might have taken on particular salience as a lesson about an
important national event.
Other visual techniques also encouraged audiences to read the film as a
representation of actual events. These techniques borrowed from documentary film
strategies that suggest the images projected by film reflected historic reality, and might
have existed independently from the film’s production.
For example, one scene
interspersed images of the FBI investigation with documentary-style interviews of
citizens speaking to reporters.
While FBI agents and marines searched a muddy river
bottom for the bodies of the missing activists, journalists covered their investigation and
interviewed white residents who were also observing the FBI’s search. Interviewees
spoke directly to the camera and described their opinions about race relations in their
community. From this camera angle, the film’s audience was positioned to see the local
white people being interviewed from the vantage point of the journalists depicted in the
film.
The first scene in this sequence featured a middle-aged woman who stood with
her face to the camera while marines combing the river appeared in the background. A
voice from behind the camera, presumably a reporter, asked, “How do you think the
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negroes have been treated in this community? The woman responded, “They’re treated
about fair. As good as they outta be.” A few seconds later, the film focused on a man
sitting with his back to his pig pen as he told the camera, “If you ask me, the Negroes
around here have been treated awful bad for a long time.” Moments later, the film
focused on another man who sat in the driver’s seat of a truck. He told the camera, “I
think Martin Luther King’s one of the leaders. I mean, J. Edgar Hoover said that he was
a communist. I don’t know if they had proof to that effect, but, you know, I hadn’t seen
it myself. But that’s what they say.” These scenes followed the conventions of the
talking-head interview common to documentary film and news reporting. In addition to
portraying journalists as important to the film’s narrative about FBI efforts to find the
missing activists, the film invited audiences to understand the film as an extension of
journalistic memory surrounding the activists’ disappearance. Images of people speaking
directly to a camera typically appear in films that purport to have a one-to-one
correspondence to the world outside of the film; thus, images of individuals speaking
directly to the camera in Mississippi Burning suggested that the opinions expressed by
the characters of local Mississippians in the film represented the opinions expressed by
whites who lived in the South during the 1960s. For younger audiences who had limited
knowledge of the history of the civil rights movement, these cues may have provided
compelling signs that the film was a legitimate representation of historic reality, instead
of a conventional action drama.
The film’s conclusion also encouraged audiences to perceive the film as a
commentary about events from the past. At the end of the film, captions that described
the sentences of the men apprehended for violating the activists’ civil rights also signaled
that the film represented historic reality instead of a conventional action drama. As
Stuckey, Pell, and other Klan members were arrested in the film’s final minutes, captions
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at the bottom of the screen described the length and severity of their prison sentences.
For instance, as the film depicted Frank Bailey’s arrest, captions at the bottom of the
screen read, “Frank Bailey sentenced to ten years imprisonment.” Captions at the bottom
of the screen depicting Pell’s arrest likewise read, “Clinton Pell sentenced to ten years
imprisonment.” The film also denoted that Sheriff Ray Stuckey was acquitted. Although
the names of the men provided on screen were fictional, these men had real-life
counterparts who were arrested for violating civil rights laws in connection with the
activists’ deaths. Cecil Price was sentenced to six years in prison, and, as the film
suggested, Sheriff Lawrence Rainey was acquitted (Douthat, 1989, p. 19). For audiences
who had witnessed the news coverage of documentary footage of the events surrounding
Mississippi’s Freedom Summer, the film’s images were likely to have reminded them of
the images they saw on television in previous decades. For audiences who had not, the
captions at the bottom of the screen during their arrest cued audiences to believe that the
film was based on “a true story”. The conclusion also suggested that this narrative
carried important social lesson with it.
The film’s final moments also broke with the convention of the cop action drama
by preventing its central protagonists from assuming the position of heroes during the
conclusion. During the film’s final scene, the two FBI agents discovered that the town’s
mayor hung himself in the wake of the mass arrests of the town’s police officers. A
lower ranking agent asked Ward, “Why did he do it? He wasn’t involved.” Facing the
camera, ostensibly toward the direction of the lower ranking officer, Ward answered,
“Any one is guilty who watches this happen and pretends it isn’t. No, he was guilty all
right, just as guilty as the crazy fanatics who pulled the trigger. Maybe we all are.” By
facing the camera and invoking everyone who has witnessed racial injustice as guilty for
violence against subordinated groups, Ward implied that audiences who have witnessed
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brutality against African-Americans are also culpable for racially motivated violence in
the United States. Instead of smoothing over tensions created by contradictions between
American ideals and the realities of American political life during the 1960s, Mississippi
Burning called upon audiences to take responsibility for racial injustice. In so doing, the
film fit within the convention of documentaries that are constructed to draw attention to
social issues or problems.
By encouraging audiences to assume responsibility for racial injustices in the
South, the film’s conclusion suggested that memories of past injustice have implications
for the present. The film’s conclusion encouraged audiences to consider the film as a
social commentary about race relations during the 1960s and attested to Parker’s interest
in constructing a popular memory critical of prevailing race relations in the United States.
Moments before the film’s closing credits, the film focused on the headstone of the
unnamed black activist who was murdered which read, “1964-Not Forgotten.”
By
focusing on these words, the film suggested that audiences had a moral imperative to
remember the slain activists and take action on their behalf. The film’s visual cues and
resonances to stock footage of violence against blacks encouraged viewers to understand
the entire melodrama as a representation of the past. Cues that cast the film as historic
also attributed salience to the film’s final appeal to audiences to remember the slain
activist. Ostensibly, the memory constructed by the film also reflected upon incidents of
racism in the world beyond cinema.
Forgetting civil rights activism in Mississippi
Insofar as commercial media imperatives called for the depiction of whites in a
predominantly fictitious cop action drama, Mississippi Burning’s successful navigation of
competing demands delimited the film’s ability to project empowering images of
activism to audiences. Although several events depicted by the film bore semblance to
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the terrifying experiences of many blacks living in Mississippi during the late 1950s and
1960s, Mississippi Burning frequently departed from the record of activism constructed
by activists and scholars such as Cagin and Dray (1988), Marable (1984), and Mills
(1993). It also omitted information about key people who played a role in Mississippi’s
civil rights movement in 1964. The film never mentioned the names Chaney, Schwerner,
or Goodman; nor did it depict events surrounding the Mississippi Freedom Summer
Project that brought over a thousand black and white activists from the North to
Mississippi to protest the state’s racist policies. The film also excluded images of local
black citizens who challenged Mississippi’s racist policies despite threats that local
whites made to their lives and their families. Indeed, black activists brought the informant
who knew where the bodies of Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman were located to the
attention of the FBI (Cagin and Dray, 1988, pp. 336-370). Because the film told the story
surrounding the missing activists from the perspective of fictional FBI agents, Mississippi
Burning hindered audiences from recognizing how ordinary people have been a central
force for social change.
As the film deflated the role that activists played in finding the bodies of the
missing activists, it inflated the FBI’s role in securing justice for African-Americans
during the 1960s. Activists’ memoirs and academic histories of activism demonstrate
that the FBI was not as committed to furthering the goals of the civil rights movement as
the film suggests. Gitlin (1987) recounts how the FBI frequently looked on as state
police beat activists during the Freedom Rides (pp. 136-140). In contrast with the
memory constructed in Mississippi Burning, the documentary Eyes on the Prize (1987)
quoted federal officials and activists who recounted that civil rights activists frequently
asked for federal protection from abuse by local officials, but FBI Director Herbert
Hoover rebuffed them by insisting that the bureau wasn’t in charge of protecting
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individuals. Cagin and Dray’s (1988) history of events surrounding Freedom Summer
explains that John Proctor, who was in charge of investigating events in Neshoba County,
Mississippi, had an amicable relationship with Rainey and Price, and regarded Price as “a
nice guy who would do anything for you” (p. 324). By framing the FBI as central to
blacks’ ability to receive justice and civil rights in the South, the film ultimately
suggested that activism did not play a pivotal role in the struggle for racial justice in this
country, but the federal government’s commitment to it did. Ultimately, the film
indicated that ordinary people need not organize to challenge corruption and fight social
injustice; the system will find justice for them.
The film’s disregard for ordinary people as forces for social justice fit the
conventions of the cop action drama. Victims in such films provide a catalyst for the
protagonists’ moral outrage precisely because they have no direct relation to the assailant;
their anonymity marks them as hapless victims who had no control over their misfortune.
Mississippi Burning’s focus on FBI agents as central protagonists in a film about civil
rights resembled typical crime dramas, but it conflicted with the film’s status as a
representation of actual events. Thus, the conventions of the cop action drama undercut
the film’s ability to represent the history of the civil rights movement from the
perspective of those who actually struggled within the movement. By omitting images of
activists central to the process of social change for civil rights, the film represents a site
of popular amnesia about activism and protest in the United States.
The conventions of cop action dramas also curtailed the film’s ability to represent
injustices from the perspectives of African-Americans and thereby delimited its role as a
site of memory about racial injustice. By replacing images of black activists with images
of FBI officials, the film also undercut the film’s role as a site of counter-memory about
the state’s role within a liberal democracy. Unlike black activists who struggled for
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representation and justice from outside the legal system, the FBI agents in the film fought
for justice and equality within the terrain of those institutions that the film critiques.
Thus, the film’s construction of FBI agents as central heroes in the narrative about civil
rights restored the legitimacy of political and legal institutions that it initially exposed as
corrupt. Audiences are told that social injustices are not endemic to the political system;
rather, they are the outcome of isolated instances of corruption within an otherwise
healthy democratic political system. By creating a popular memory of the civil rights
movement as the federal government’s fight against one state, the film encouraged
cultural forgetting, not only of ordinary people’s struggles, but of people’s struggles
against a political system that has yet to fully represent them.
AMNESIA AS A SOURCE FOR INVENTION IN JOURNALISTIC MEMORY
Mississippi Burning’s status as a source of popular memory was reinforced by
secondary sources that attributed significance to the film’s social implications.
Journalists played a central role in legitimating the film as a site of historical information.
Despite the film’s disclaimer that it was a fictional account based on true events, many
reviewers recognized the film as a legitimate site for remembering the past (Higashi,
2001, p. 226). Several critics noted that Mississippi Burning was one among few films
that accurately depicted the brutality of the blacks and activists faced in Mississippi
during the 1960s. One of the first critics to review the film, Canby (1988) described the
film as “utterly authentic,” and as “one of the toughest, straightest, most effective fiction
films yet made about bigotry and racial violence” (p. C12). Canby also praised the film
for honoring “the steadfastness of the legions of people who once fought for social
change.” Although none of the other reviews examined here expressed the same
unwavering support for the film, most reports and reviews of the film shared Canby’s
praise for the film’s representation of Southern brutality against blacks during the 1960s.
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Carter (1988) declared that the film was “at its most honest” when it portrayed
“the raw brutality of Klan terrorism” (www.wsj.com/archives).
Many reports
emphasized that the film accurately depicted the violence and lynchings that blacks faced
at the hands of whites in Mississippi during the 1960s (Barnes,1989, 3C; Kaufman, 1989,
p. B1; King, 1989, sec. 2, p. 1; Lipper, p. 1F). For Rose (1989), Mississippi Burning
deserved special praise because it was the first to draw national attention to the violence
of the Klan in recent history. He told readers, “Until this movie came along, I could not
explain to friends in Miami just how scary it could be in Mississippi during the 1960s”
(p. 1C). Rose suggests that the film tapped into the reservoirs of individual and historic
memories of violence against blacks that had been previously unimaginable to people
who had not experienced racism in Mississippi during the 1960s.
By popularizing memories previously encapsulated within individual memory, the
film prompted journalists to fill in the details left unexplained by the film. Virtually all
of the reports and reviews of the film referenced Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman, and
explained their disappearance as an instance of racially motivated violence endemic to
Mississippi during the 1960s. Several reports also stated that their deaths mobilized
white America and the federal government to take an aggressive stand against racism and
violence against civil rights activists (Herbeck, 1989, online archives; Canby, 1989, sec.
2, p.1). By prompting some audience members to recall similar memories of injustice in
response to the film, Mississippi Burning provided an inventional resource for
mainstream news media to remember racial injustice and deliberate its relevance to
contemporary social relations.
In addition to elaborating the events surrounding the activists’ disappearance,
reporters and film critics recalled instances of violence against African-Americans that
were not depicted in the film. Douthat (1989) quoted Florence Mars who described how
105
she was forced out of business after she testified before the federal grand jury
investigating the murders of Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman (p. 47). Lipper (1989)
reported that when F.B.I. agents searched for the missing activists, they also found the
bodies of other black men they weren’t looking for, including a 14-year-old boy, never
identified, wearing a CORE T-shirt and two black men (sec. 2, p. 15). For one writer,
Peterman (1989), the film prompted a “flood of memories.” He included among them the
death of Medgar Evers in 1963, the Birmingham, Alabama church bombing in 1965, and
his own experiences of being harassed by whites when family members agreed to testify
against several white people in his community (p. 1D). These reviews demonstrate how
the film’s depiction of power relations was a site for counter-memory, not necessarily
because it represented the perspectives of activists, but because the images of violence in
the film presented a topos that prompted reviewers to address racial injustices from the
past. While the film resonated with the recollections of critics and former activists, it
propelled additional discourses about the racism into popular culture. As the following
section in this chapter demonstrates, such discourses did not always complement the
memories constructed by the film. Instead, many journalists indicated that the real
history of the civil rights movement was far different from the one Parker created.
Because Mississippi Burning encouraged both a popular memory of racism and a
forgetting of the individuals who fought against racial injustice, journalistic reviews of
the film offered both praise and condemnation of the film. In the month following its
release, Mississippi Burning generated criticism from national news media, former civil
rights activists, and the academy. Thereafter, reviewers also critiqued the film. Most
reviews and reports about the film noted that the film focused on the perspectives and
interests of whites even though it was purportedly about the struggles of blacks (Milloy,
1989, p. B03; Ringel, 1989, p. K01; Simon, 1989, online archives). Others complained
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that by focusing on whites, the film presented blacks solely as victims (Carr, 1989, p. 46;
Gabrenya, 1989, online archives; Will, 1989, p. 47). [See also Barnes, 1989, p. 3C;
Minor, 1989, sec. 1, p. 16]. Several reviewers concluded that the film was another
manifestation of racism in the United States. For Ringel (1989), the film represented
white man’s “hatred and fear of that which is Other” (p. K01). For Staples (1989), the
film was an example of “cinematic segregation.” Staples also described Parker’s defense
of the film, which was that the focus had to be on white heroes to appeal to society, as
“reminiscent of what a Montgomery, Alabama bus driver told Rosa Parks in 1955: Get up
and go to the back of the bus, that's just the way things are” (sec. 2, p. 1).
Reporter Marquand (1989) quoted former civil rights activists who objected to the
film’s representation of the movement. Judy Richards, a former member of SNCC, told
Marquand that she and fellow activists were “incensed at the film's image of powerless
blacks waiting to be saved by two white FBI heroes” (p. 11). Robert Moses, head of
SNCC in 1964 told Marquand that the film’s representation of blacks was reminiscent of
America’s historic racism. “‘We'd been working in Mississippi for years before 1964,
and America never saw us. Now again they don't see us. Blacks in the movie are a plot
device - a backdrop for the white heroes’” (p. 11). Reviewers suggested that the film
belied the experiences of African-Americans and civil rights activists just after the
moment the film gave representation to them. To compensate for the aspects of the civil
rights movement that were misrepresented or missing from the film, many reviewers
constructed histories alternative to the narrative told in Mississippi Burning.
In response to the film’s narrative that positioned the FBI as central to the civil
rights struggle, many newspaper critics and reporters provided their own short histories
of the civil rights movement. According to these histories, activists, not federal officials,
were primarily responsible for ending segregation and securing voting rights for African107
Americans. One report noted that blacks in Mississippi were far from being fearful
victims and fought racist policies (Barnes, 1989, p. 3C). Other reviewers mentioned black
activists including Fannie Lou Hamer (Italie, 1988, p. 5; Marquand, 1989, p. 11), Medgar
Evers (Italie. 1988, p. 5; Marquand, 1989, p. 11 ), and Bob Moses (Staples, 1989, sec. 2,
p. 1), who were central to the movement’s achievements. Journalists also emphasized
that it wasn’t lone individuals who made a difference in the movement; instead, the
sacrifices of “countless SNCC workers” (Marquand, 1989, p. 11), and “the bravery of
thousands of black Mississippians” (Carter, 1988, p. online archives) prompted civil
rights legislation and an end to formal segregation in the South. As Kaufman (1989)
eloquently stated, the collective efforts of ordinary people “provided the organizational
and emotional backbone of the movement” (p. B1). [See also Cohen, 1989, p. W09, and
Nossiter, 1989, p. C01]. As these reviews indicated, reviewers’ recognition of the film’s
misrepresentations of the civil rights movement invited critical reflection about the film
and about the events that the film purported to represent.
In addition to arguing that black people deserved stronger roles in the film, many
critics also complained that the film should not have heralded the FBI as heroes for the
civil rights movement. Reporters and reviewers frequently explained that the film’s
conclusion belied the real tactics that the FBI used to find the bodies of the missing
activists. As many reports noted, the bureau paid $30,000 to a former member of the Klu
Klux Klan who was willing to act as their informant (Barnes 1989, p. 3C; Canby, 1989,
sec. 2, p.1; and Carr 1989, p. 46; Kaufman, 1989, p. B1; Pollack, 1989, p. 6C; Staples,
1989, sec. 2, p. 1). Carter (1989) asserted that the bureau “most certainly did not solve
the murders in the manner depicted in the movie-by roughing up, threatening and
otherwise intimidating suspects and witnesses. Had it done so, its case would have been
thrown out of court” (p. W09).
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News reporters also quoted film critics and activists who argued that the FBI was
far from supportive of the civil rights movement. According to Marquand (1989),
members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, “chafed at
the ‘savior’ role of the FBI in the film” because they recalled that “a number of FBI
director J. Edgar Hoover's agents went along with the bigoted agenda of local police and,
in some cases, the Ku Klux Klan” (p. 11). Likewise, Italie (1988) quoted former civil
rights activists Myrlie Evers and Mary King who recalled that FBI agents primarily
harassed activists rather than express concern for them. King wrote in her memoirs of the
Mississippi Freedom Summer that:
Practically everyone working in the civil rights movement knew from firsthand
experience of the duplicity of the FBI. In many instances, FBI agents could be
seen watching a demonstration while fraternizing with sheriffs and local law
officers....It has now become commonly accepted that some of these agents were
themselves members of the Ku Klux Klan. (quoted in Italie, 1988, p. 5)
A review written by Staples (1989) similarly stated that the F.B.I. was “openly
hostile” to investigations surrounding civil rights deaths. According to Staples, there
were no black people in the bureau at the time of the activists’ disappearance (sec 2, p. 1).
Finally, Peterman (1989) challenged the film’s distinction between federal agents who
supposedly supported civil rights, and local officials who threatened blacks and activists.
She argued that FBI agents were known among African-Americans for refusing to listen
to their claims of racism. Peterman continued, “I remember two agents who came to my
family's home after my father complained to the U.S. Justice Department about violations
by the Macon County Board of Registrars. We opened the door, the agents walked in and
said: “What you niggers complaining about now?”(p. D1).
Secondary sources
highlighted how the film provided images of racial injustice that accorded with the
memories of activists and historians and then belied the experiences of activists who
struggled against Southern racism.
As they took note of this contradiction, these
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reviewers constructed counter-memories that challenged the memory of the civil rights
movement constructed by the film. By prompting critique and debate about the past, the
film created a space for the invention of counter-hegemonic messages about civil rights.
The film’s potential to incite controversy and prompt counter-hegemonic
messages in journalism texts was evinced most clearly in reviews that addressed the
implications of the film’s controversy for the present. Several reporters noted that racism
has not yet been eradicated from public life or from the federal government. According
to Peterman (1989), racially motivated violence has continued throughout the United
States. The only difference, she added, is that it’s “the 1980s instead of the 1960s” (p.
1D). Rose (1989) also elucidated the critical potential of commercial media in his essay
that described continued racial discrimination in the F.B.I. After Rose recounted the
story of an African-American FBI agent who was harassed by white colleagues, he noted
that “about 9 percent of the bureau's 9,500 agents are African-American or Hispanic. Of
the 59 field offices nationwide, only one, in Philadelphia, is headed by an AfricanAmerican. None is headed by a Hispanic” (p. 1C). Critics who drew parallels between
instances of racism omitted in the film and contemporary racial injustice illustrate the
social function of popular memory for contemporary audiences.
The production of memories of racism in Mississippi Burning engaged
commercial news media as a source of critical memory. As the film provided reviewers
with an opening to introduce counter-memories into commercial media, it also gave
reviewers a space to critique contemporary race relations in the United States. Marcuse
(1964) writes that “rememberance is a mode of dissociation from the given facts, a mode
of mediation which breaks, for short moments, the omnipresent power of the given facts”
(p. 98). Indeed, in a few instances, journalistic reviews engaged memories produced by
Mississippi Burning to disrupt the legitimacy of the American Dream myth typically
110
advanced by commercial media. Yoder (1989) praised the film for its potential to interest
younger audiences in issues surrounding the civil rights struggle. With this history, Yoder
believed people would then be “less tempted by the dangerous myth of national
innocence and goodness lately preached in high places” (p. 3B).
My analysis of Mississippi Burning as the offspring of melodrama and
documentary film complements news reviews and reports about Mississippi Burning that
regarded the film as both a successful entertainment film and as a source for generating
memories about violence against activists in the civil rights movement. The film’s
commercial success, in connection with reviews that deliberated about its role as a site of
memory about the civil rights movement reflect the film’s ability to navigate competing
demands of Hollywood market imperatives and Parker’s interest in representing social
injustices in recent United States history. Together, the film and the secondary sources
prompted by the film suggest that the film’s integration of features from documentary
and melodrama film enabled the film to become a part of popular memory; it created
dramatic tension necessary to captivate entertainment film-going audiences and it
established itself as a film about the past.
This analysis also suggests that both films and journalism coverage of films shape
the ways in which films become significant sites of popular memory. Journalists and
reviewers played a central role in establishing Mississippi Burning as a source of popular
memory. Reviews also revised the memory established in the film to reflect blacks’
experiences. Thus, these secondary sources constituted part of the popular memory that
the film evoked. The popular memories of civil rights activism in 1964 were constructed
intertextually, through the film that created memories of the past and through texts that
challenged and reframed the film’s memories. By challenging the film’s memories,
journalists were able to incorporate counter-memories into commercial media.
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For
newspaper readers, reviews might have been even more influential in the construction of
popular memories of Mississippi than the film itself.
Alternatively, the potential for these memories to invite criticism of the state or to
celebrate black activism was limited. Although journalistic reviews of the film provided
critical memories of American race relations, reviews were predominantly positive.
Critics thereby encouraged audiences to embrace the film’s representations of the civil
rights movement even as they condemned the film’s omissions of activists and blacks.
For audiences who paid scant attention to these reviews, such reviews may have
propelled the film’s popularity without drawing critical attention to the film’s
misrepresentation of civil rights activism.
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NOTES TO CHAPTER THREE
1
Several essays in Asen and Brouwer’s (2001) Counterpublics and the State
describe how social movements function as counterpublics.
See, for example,
Palczewski’s essay on the role of the Internet within social movements, and Cloud’s
essay on the implications of the 1998 Indonesian Revolution for social movement theory.
2
In 1982, a federal district court ruled that the police had violated Hampton and
Clark’s civil rights (Churchill, 2001, p. 107).
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Chapter Four
Melodrama and the scapegoat in Ghosts of Mississippi
The critical memories within reviews of Mississippi Burning did not
fundamentally challenge racism in Mississippi, but they did contribute to growing
political tensions about the state’s racist past. In response to such tensions, state officials
responded to political pressures to reopen cases against whites suspected of killing civil
rights activists during the 1950s and 1960s. The first of these cases was that against
Byron de La Beckwith for the murder of Medgar Evers in 1964. Beckwith’s conviction
in 1994 prompted the creation of the second major Hollywood film about civil rights:
Ghosts of Mississippi. In this chapter, I explain how Ghosts of Mississippi contributed to
the memories of civil rights in popular culture that were initially introduced by
Mississippi Burning.
Insofar as Mississippi Burning represents the offspring of melodrama and
documentary film genres, Ghosts of Mississippi is Mississippi Burning’s sibling.
Following Mississippi Burning’s lead, Ghosts of Mississippi achieved status as popular
memory by interweaving signifiers of realism into a melodramatic narrative. Visual
elements and secondary sources related to the film told readers to understand Ghosts of
Mississippi as a representation of historic events while the film’s narrative structure
provided a memory of civil rights in terms of good overcoming evil.
This film’s
narrative also mirrored Mississippi Burning by featuring whites as heroes in the struggle
for civil rights. While Mississippi Burning drew attention to traumatic memories of state
sanctioned violence against activists, Ghosts of Mississippi assuaged that memory.
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This narrative resonated within the patterns of messages that appeared across
coverage of Beckwith’s trial in three prominent national newspapers: The New York
Times, The Washington Post, and USA Today. Patterns across journalism coverage and
the film demonstrate how particular narratives become naturalized in popular culture. In
this regard, the narrative in Ghosts of Mississippi affirmed prevailing memory that left
racism in the past. Ghosts of Mississippi and news reviews of the film ascribed particular
meanings to Evers’ death and to Beckwith’s conviction.
These media sources
constructed a particular memory that suggested that racial injustice no longer plagued
Mississippi. As these sources left racism in Mississippi’s past, they made activism
irrelevant to the process of social change.
Although both films portrayed the history of civil rights in a narrative framework
espousing white superiority, they did not inform popular memory equally. Ghosts of
Mississippi generated less positive journalistic reception than its earlier counterpart. It
also generated fewer counter-memories from journalism reviews. Although reviewers
critiqued Ghosts’ partiality, they did not circulate the critical counter-memories that
Mississippi Burning elicited.
Ghosts of Mississippi’s fidelity to the historic and
journalistic record surrounding Beckwith’s conviction closed journalism criticisms of the
film even though the film ignored black activism as equally as Mississippi Burning.
Unlike its more successful sibling, Ghosts of Mississippi did not become a prominent
source of popular memory because the conventions of melodrama that it adopted did not
appeal to the expectations of conventional Hollywood filmgoers; consequently, this film
had less potential to invite criticism from film reviewers. I conclude that fidelity to
history in Ghosts of Mississippi provided a more limited opening for reviewers to attend
to the history of violence against civil rights activists, and thereby had less counterhegemonic potential than its earlier counterpart.
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THE INSTRUMENTAL ROLE OF POPULAR MEMORY
Legislative action in years following Mississippi Burning’s release indicates that
the controversy surrounding the 1988 film created an image problem for the state.
Indeed, the film may have had an instrumental influence on political life in Mississippi.
In the years immediately following Mississippi Burning’s release, politicians and activists
called for legal and legislative action to redress the injustices that the state perpetuated
against blacks during the 1960s. According to Nossiter (1989), Mississippi Burning
“helped stimulate a mood of collective introspection about the past” (p. 229). In 1988,
Ray Mabus hired the political relations firm Ogilvy and Mather to repair the state’s
reputation (Nossiter, 1989, p. C01). Nossiter (1989) also reports that Mississippi’s
tarnished image prompted state officials to integrate the history of the state’s racism into
its own political memory.
In June of 1989, Mississippi’s Secretary of State Dick
Molphus delivered the state’s first public tribute to Chaney, Schewerner, and Goodman
(p. 235). Black activists in the state also seized upon the state’s renewed attention to civil
rights memory in 1989 to influence state leaders to release the Sovereignty Commission
papers.
Sealed previously by the state legislature, the papers revealed how public officials
in Mississippi barred blacks from service on trials during the 1960s and kept men
suspected of killing blacks and activists from prosecution despite strong evidence against
them. With the reopening of the papers, former activists and family members of blacks
slain in the 1960s had a rationale for asking the state to reopen these cases. Black leaders
and civil rights organizations initially called upon state attorneys to reopen the case
against. Although the deaths of Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman prompted the state’s
reconsideration of cases against men considered responsible for the deaths of black
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activists, the first case to be successfully prosecuted was the case against Byron de la
Beckwith for the 1963 murder of NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers.
On June 12 1963, NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers was shot to death in front
of his home in Jackson, Mississippi. Nine days later, police arrested Beckwith, an
avowed white supremacist, for Evers’ murder. Although prosecutors created a strong
case against him, Beckwith was set free after two juries of white men could not reach a
unanimous verdict (Nossiter, 1989, unpaginated preface). Beckwith’s trials in 1964 were
examples among many cases in which all white juries failed to convict whites of
murdering blacks despite strong physical evidence against them. Following the release of
the Sovereignty Commission papers in 1989, the Jackson City Council asked the state to
reopen the case against Beckwith.
In 1994, thirty years after Evers’ death, a jury
comprised of white and black jurists convicted Beckwith. Beckwith’s conviction was
unprecedented; never before had so much time lapsed between a homicide and the
conviction of the person responsible for the crime. The trial against Beckwith is also
remarkable for the media attention it garnered.
Between 1989 and 2001, at least 376
articles in the nation’s leading newspapers featured Beckwith.
Just as Mississippi Burning prompted local political leaders and attorneys to
improve images of race relations in the state, Beckwith’s prosecution prompted the
construction of popular memories that suggested the state’s racist past had been
reformed. In 1996, Ghosts of Mississippi recalled state district attorney Bobby
DeLaughter’s efforts to bring Beckwith to trial and have a jury find him guilty of Evers’
death.
Created after the box-office success of Mississippi Burning and after the
successful prosecution of Beckwith, Ghosts of Mississippi spotlighted the state’s efforts
to build a case against Beckwith and have him convicted of Evers’ death. Journalistic
coverage and the film about Beckwith’s conviction helped to constitute the unresolved
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case of Evers’ death as a contemporary social injustice; media attention to Beckwith in
the 1990s also brought the racism embedded in Mississippi’s legal system during the
1960s into the national media spotlight. By engaging memories of Evers’ death as
evidence for a contemporary trial, both Beckwith’s conviction and commercial media
attention to it demonstrate how popular memories are inextricable from the contemporary
situations that evoke them.
THE TRIUMPH OF A CIVIL RIGHTS HERO IN GHOSTS OF MISSISSIPPI
The narrative of Ghosts of Mississippi evoked the conventions of melodrama to
construct a narrative about Beckwith’s prosecution that left racism (and activism) in the
past. The plot revolved around the valiant efforts of Hinds County Assistant District
Attorney, Bobby DeLaughter, to bring Beckwith to trial in the early 1990s. By framing
DeLaughter as a hero struggling against Mississippi’s racist past, the film centered
around a melodrama of good versus evil. According to the film, DeLaughter initially
resisted requests to bring Beckwith to trial because he believed little evidence remained
to prove Beckwith was Evers’ murderer. In addition to the lack of physical evidence
tying Beckwith to the crime, DeLaughter’s wife and parents objected to the state’s
interest in retrying the case. As the film accurately remembered, DeLaughter’s father-inlaw Russell Moore, who died before the case was revisited, was the judge who originally
presided over the court proceedings in the 1964 trials that failed to convict Beckwith.
Frequently, DeLaughter’s family articulated racist beliefs, including the idea that
integration had ruined their way of life. Despite these obstacles, De Laughter persisted in
building a case against Beckwith. This film followed DeLaughter’s efforts to attain
evidence against Beckwith, gain the trust of Evers’ widow, Myrlie, and convince a jury
who found Beckwith guilty in the film’s final scene.
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In contrast to the film’s heroic image of DeLaughter, the film depicted Beckwith
as a despicable character who spouted anti-Semitic, racist statements in almost every
scene that included him. When jurists announced Beckwith’s guilt, cheers resonated
throughout the court house and among the crowd outside. Those who objected to
Beckwith’s conviction were not visible in the film’s closing scene. Thus, this scene
suggested that Beckwith and his racist sentiments had been eradicated from Mississippi.
Indeed, as Myrlie Evers emerged from the courthouse with DeLaughter at her side, she
announced to the crowd, “This is a new day for Mississippi.” As this final scene
suggested, Beckwith’s conviction stood in metonymically for the value changes within
Mississippi’s social and political order.
Leaving racism to the past
Ghosts of Mississippi framed DeLaughter as a hero who expunged Beckwith from
Mississippi society in order to redeem the collective memory of race relations in
Mississippi. As Deming (1985) explains, melodramas operationalize good and evil as
real forces in the world (p. 6). She adds that melodramas represent the urge toward
achieving resacrilization through the personification of good heroes and evil villains (p.
6). This film tells audiences that, although racism may have marred memories of
Mississippi, recent efforts to seek justice for Mississippi’s most respected civil rights
activists (and cast racists out of Mississippi’s social order) have established a progressive
Mississippi for the 1990s.
Mississippi’s civic identity was figuratively redeemed through DeLaughter’s
personal transformation as well as through Beckwith’s conviction.
DeLaughter’s
conflicts with his family were central to the film’s narrative about the history of racism in
Mississippi. Because the racist ideology of DeLaughter’s wife was fundamentally at
odds with DeLaughter’s ideals, his relationship with her dissolved. As the case against
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Beckwith progressed in the film, DeLaughter met and eventually married another
woman, Peggy Lloyd, who applauded DeLaughter’s efforts to bring Beckwith to trial.
When DeLaughter began to doubt whether seeing the case to trial was worth the risk to
his family’s safety, Lloyd reminded him, “someday your children are going to be able to
tell their children that it was their daddy that put away Byron de la Beckwith.” Through
Lloyd’s conviction, DeLaughter was reassured that prosecuting Beckwith was “the right
thing” to do.
The narrative of Ghosts of Mississippi represented what Janice Hocker Rushing
and Thomas Frentz (1974) refer to as a “social values myth” in which the changes in the
values of a society are symbolically represented through the struggles of characters
featured in film (pp. 69-70). In the beginning of the film, DeLaughter was caught at a
crossroads, forced to choose between his convictions in furthering the cause of social
justice and his ties to his racist parents and wife. After he chose to pursue Beckwith’s
conviction, DeLaughter was able to build a new family. It is little coincidence that,
within the film’s narrative, DeLaughter’s new family grew stronger as evidence against
Beckwith mounted.
Ostensibly, DeLaughter represented Mississippi’s “new [white]
man.” Thus, the transformation of DeLaughter’s personal life metaphorically represented
a transformed Mississippi free from its racist, violent past.
Although Ghosts of Mississippi (hereafter referred to as Ghosts) followed the
conventions of melodrama film closely, it projected both literal and metaphoric messages
about the history of race relations in Mississippi. Unlike Mississippi Burning, Ghosts
used the real names of people and events surrounding Beckwith’s prosecution, and
corresponded closely to the history of the state’s efforts to hold Beckwith accountable for
Evers’ death. The film’s strong resonance to actual events challenged critics to find an
easy characterization of the film’s purpose. For example, Bernard (1996) characterized
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Ghosts as “a civil-rights history lesson in the guise of a whodunit or maybe vice versa”
(p. 61).
For audiences who had followed news media coverage of Beckwith’s
prosecution, the film might have been immediately recognized as a source of historical
information about the relationship between civil rights activists and the state between
1964 and 1994.
Melodrama in journalism
The myth of social values transformation also emerged in journalistic coverage of
Beckwith’s trial; thus, news coverage of Beckwith’s prosecution also helped to establish
the film as a source of historical information about race relations and the history of the
civil rights movement.
Collectively, The New York Times, USA Today, and The
Washington Post covered the trial in ninety-five articles. These articles described the
events leading up to Beckwith’s arrest in 1990, the arguments made by attorneys
defending and prosecuting Beckwith during his trial in 1994, and the Evers’ celebration
following Beckwith’s conviction.
As early as 1990, journalists acknowledged the
significance of the case for public memory. According to one reporter from the
Washington Post, Beckwith’s “case has hung unresolved in the collective memory of a
state where many attitudes about race have changed dramatically” (LaFraniere, 1990, p.
A1). Ostensibly, the memory of Beckwith’s previous trials and the murder of Medgar
Evers belied a Mississippi that no longer held racist sentiments or cultivated racial
inequity.
Newspaper coverage of the events that led to Beckwith’s conviction positioned
Beckwith’s conviction as a metonymy for Mississippi’s political and social
transformation. Although newspapers set Beckwith’s case in the context of Mississippi’s
violent and racist past, they featured Beckwith as central to that history. According to
several reports, Evers’ murder was one of the first killings of a well-known civil rights
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activist in Mississippi. (Dreifus, 1994, p. 69; La Franiere, 1990, p. A1; Smothers, 1994b,
p. A18; Mayfield, 1993, p. 38). His was also one of the first deaths to galvanize the civil
rights movement (Dreifus, 1994, p. 69, Parker, 1991, p. A1). Reporters frequently quoted
DeLaugher, who told them, "This single, cowardly act of the person responsible for
Medgar Evers's assassination has probably done more to hurt the state and the perception
of Mississippi than any other single act I can think of" (LaFraniere, 1990, p. A1).
Coverage prior to Beckwith’s conviction frequently characterized Beckwith and
the 1964 trials against him in pejorative language or implicated him in the shooting. For
example, a New York Times reporter described Beckwith as an “unregenerate hater”
(Goodman, 1994, p. C14), and a USA Today reporter stated that Beckwith’s
“grandfatherly … image falls apart as soon as he opens his mouth” (Howard, 1990, p.
3A). Although negative portrayals of Beckwith were not isolated to coverage of the
prosecutors’ arguments against him during the trial, prosecutors’ remarks provided some
of the most colorful denunciations of Beckwith. According to one report, DeLaughter
compared Beckwith to a snake when he told jurors, Beckwith’s “venom has come back to
poison him” (Booth, 1994, p. A1). By characterizing Beckwith as a hate-filled man, as
the obvious suspect in Evers’ death, and in the image of a serpent, which is an archetypal
symbol for evil, newspaper reports cast Beckwith as the villain centrally responsible for
Mississippi’s damaged reputation.
By describing Beckwith as a modern-day villain amidst instances that highlighted
institutional racism in the state’s legal and justice system, newspaper coverage of the
events that led to Beckwith’s conviction positioned Beckwith as a metonymy for racist
violence in Mississippi state history. Indeed, many reports acknowledged that the trial
was not only about Beckwith; it was about “the Mississippi of the 1960s” (Mayfield,
1992, p. 3A ). [See also Booth, 1994b, p. B1; and Smothers, 1994a, p. A12.] According
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to several newspaper articles, Beckwith’s conviction would not only undo a grave
injustice from the past; it would rhetorically purify Mississippi’s image. Individuals
quoted in several newspaper articles stated that Mississippi “was growing up,”
(Smothers, 1994b, p. A18) and had begun a “cleansing process” (Nichols & Howlett,
1992, p. A1). As Booth (1994a) reported, “The guilty verdict was seen by many here as a
sign that Mississippi …had moved far beyond the state-supported racism that almost tore
the country apart in the turbulent 1960s” (p. A1). George Smith told Washington Post
reporters, “reopening the case shows that, even though you’re black in Mississippi, our
system works” (Mayfield, 1993, p. 38).
Because Beckwith stood in for racism in
Mississippi history, his conviction indicated that racist sentiments no longer had a home
in Mississippi. Resonating with Myrlie Evers’ final speech at the end of Ghosts of
Mississippi, newspapers noted that, for many people, Beckwith’s conviction
demonstrated that racism in Mississippi had been left in the past.
Signifiers of realism in Ghosts of Mississippi
Ghosts of Mississippi’s strong resonance with journalism coverage constituted the
film as an extension of journalistic memory; as such, the film acquired legitimacy as a
source of historical knowledge that it might not have had in the absence of extensive
national newspaper attention to Beckwith’s trial. For film audiences with little prior
knowledge of Beckwith’s 1994 conviction, visual cues within the film itself also
suggested that the film was a source of historical information about race relations in
Mississippi. Indeed, the film opened with the caption, “this is a true story.” Following
this caption, the film’s opening scenes established the film within the context of the
history of slavery and the civil rights movement in the United States. As credits rolled, a
sequence of sepia toned images projected events and figures pivotal to the history of the
struggle for racial equality in the United States. The montage sequence provided images
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of violence against black protesters, including police dogs attacking protesters with clubs
and firehouses, of blacks registering to vote, and of black leaders and sports figures,
including Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and
Frederick Douglas.
By depicting events already popularized by mainstream media, these images
encouraged audiences to view the film as an extension of civil rights memory in popular
culture. Reviewers suggested that these documentary images provided some of the most
emotionally charged moments in the film. Maslin (1996) wrote that the film opened with
“rousing, majestic montage depicting landmarks of the civil rights struggle in America (p.
C14), and Hartl (1996) explained that the film’s most “affecting moments” included
a telecast of President Kennedy's literate, poised endorsement of the movement's
aims; the murder itself, which is handled with horrific straightforwardness; and
Barnett's court appearance, which speaks volumes about what a Southern
politician felt he could get away with in 1963. (p. F4)
By establishing Ghosts as a historical account, visual and narrative resonances to
journalistic coverage and the civil rights movement in the film imbued the story of
Beckwith’s conviction with social significance.
THE NARRATIVE SCAPEGOATING OF BYRON DE LA BECKWITH
By sharing the same melodramatic narrative of Beckwith’s conviction with
journalism coverage of the case from two years earlier, Ghosts encouraged audiences to
understand the film as a dramatic, non-fiction narrative with important social
implications. Ghosts and the news media framings of the trial suggested that Beckwith
stood for something larger than himself; according to these texts, he was the embodiment
of Mississippi’s violent and racist past. Likewise, the film and journalism coverage of
Beckwith’s trial framed DeLaughter as a hero that embodied Mississippi’s emerging
identity. Popular memory surrounding Beckwith’s conviction provided a melodrama
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whereby Mississippi was transformed by the state’s efforts to convict Beckwith and
embrace the goals of racial justice. By counterposing Beckwith and DeLaughter, both
the film and newspapers constructed a resacrilization of Mississippi’s racist past.
Because Beckwith represented the evils of Mississippi’s racist past, the climax to
narratives constructed in both the film and in journalistic coverage called for Beckwith’s
expulsion.
The narrative framing of Beckwith’s trial provided a scapegoat for Mississippi’s
history of violence against African-Americans and civil rights activists.
Such
scapegoating of Beckwith has implications for race relations and social injustice in the
United States during the 1990s, when these memories were constructed.
This film
promoted an understanding of racism as isolated to individuals and to states, and not to
systematic, structural inequities that persisted in the 1990s when the film appeared.
Although Beckwith was responsible for the death of Evers, he was not solely responsible
for the injustices done to African-Americans and civil rights workers during the 1960s.
As the history of the civil rights movement attests, Evers’ death was part of a larger
pattern of violence against blacks and civil rights activists used to intimidate those who
would challenge segregation and demoralize the movement. The predominant framing of
Beckwith as the cause for Mississippi’s tarnished reputation belied the continued poverty
and de facto segregation of black and white neighborhoods in Jackson and elsewhere in
the nation.1
Commercial media’s attention to Mississippi as the source of America’s violence
against African-Americans also scapegoated one state for racial inequities and state
sponsored brutality against African-Americans that has persisted across the United States
into the 1990s. In 1995, African-Americans were three times more likely to live in
poverty than whites (Vobejda, 1995, p. A1). During the early 1990s, as the case against
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Beckwith was growing, racial profiling was garnering news media attention as another
incarnation of racism within America’s justice system. News reports indicated that,
although African-Americans represented 12 percent of the population during the 1990s,
they made up almost three-fourths of all routine traffic stops (Rogers. 2000, p. 94),
comprised half of the nation’s prisoners (Thomas, 1995, p. A01), and were the most
frequent victims of police shootings (Thomas, 1995, p. A01).2
Images of violence
against African-Americans were not relegated to memories of the 1960s either. The
image of three white police officers beating Rodney King in 1991 bore resemblances to
images of police officers beating activists and blacks in Southern states during the civil
rights movement.
Parallels between images of blacks abused by the justice system in the 1960s and
the 1990s indicated that state authorities had not yet accorded equal status to blacks when
Beckwith was convicted. Thus, memories of Mississippi drew attention to systematic
racism in the United States that has persisted for decades. Conversely, popular memory
of Evers’ death and the struggles to prosecute Beckwith mirrored ongoing racial
injustices in the United States’ legal system. The narrative scapegoating of Beckwith in
popular memory symbolically designated racism to memory. Consequently, this popular
memory discouraged audiences from paying critical attention to contemporary instances
of racially motivated violence.
As the film relegated racism to memory, it also obscured memories of activists
such as Medgar Evers who fought against institutionalized racism during the 1960s.
Echoing lessons conveyed in Mississippi Burning, Ghosts suggested that collective
activism and protest was not central to understand the process of social and political
change in the United States. Indeed, Ghosts provided no images of the black activists
who were pivotal in bringing Beckwith to trial in 1994, and depicted Medgar Evers solely
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in the scene of his death. Thus, the film eschewed Evers’ efforts to report violence
perpetrated against blacks in Mississippi and organize civil rights activists. The climate
of social protest surrounding Evers’ death was equally obscured in the film. Audiences
with little knowledge about the history of the movement told by activists and many
historians may have concluded that the civil rights movement was fought by beneficent
white authority figures, not by ordinary black and white activists who worked
collectively for a common goal.
The popular memory surrounding Beckwith’s trial also has implications for
understanding popular memory. Parallels between journalistic and Hollywood portrayals
of Beckwith indicate that memories become popularized through the narrative patterns
that run across documentary, or journalistic texts, and dramatic, or entertainment media.
The omnipresence of the melodrama of the scapegoat and the social values
transformation myth that ran across these texts indicates that narratives are not exclusive
to fictional films or to individual texts, but constitute the broader frameworks in which
we understand our place in history. As narratives emerge through docudrama and in
journalistic framings, they may become naturalized. In the absence of competing
memories about the past, popular memories that emerge through news reports and film
may acquire presence as an authentic representation of the past, and obscure the
selectivity of the narrative’s frame.
Fidelity to history as the closing of journalism critique
Ghost’s authenticity was strongly affirmed by journalism coverage of Beckwith’s
conviction, but journalism coverage of the film itself posed a challenge to the film’s
history of events.
Mirroring news media criticism of Mississippi Burning, several
journalism reviews of Ghosts challenged discourses that left racism in the past and
activism for dead. Following after its older sibling, Ghosts encouraged audiences to
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recognize the film as a representation of historic reality and then belied the experiences of
former black activists by focusing on whites as central protagonists. USA Today reported
that syndicated radio program Hangin' N Hollywood derided the film as the “Most
Offensive Film of 1996” because it “misrepresent[ed] history and dishonors the memory”
of Medgar Evers (Ashley, 1996, p. 1D). Clark (1996) argued that the film’s failure to
represent the activist community and Evers’ importance to the movement was a
“debilitating factor throughout the film” (p. 13D), and Bernard (1996) lamented that the
film presented only a “sketchy idea” of what Evers accomplished” (p. 61).
Other
reviewers complained that the film focused “excessively” on white heroes (Maslin, 1996,
p. C14) and revealed the enduring racism within the Hollywood film industry (Ringel,
1996, p. 9P; Sterritt, 1996, p. 12). Wickham (1996) concluded that “Hollywood's dirty
little secret is that white filmmakers fear telling the story of a black historical figure or
event from a black perspective” (p. 13A).
Ebert (1996) quoted Godfrey Chesire’s review in Variety that highlighted the
film’s implications for audiences seeking to understand the history of the civil rights
movement. “‘When future generations turn to this era's movies for an account of the
struggles for racial justice in America, they'll learn the surprising lesson that such battles
were fought and won by square-jawed white guys.’” Ebert then explained that the film
was not about civil rights, but “white redemption” (p. 33NC). “Myrlie Evers functions as
a conscience who is usually off screen. Other black characters are found mostly in crowd
scenes. What we get, really, is self-congratulation: Whites may have been responsible for
segregation, but by golly, aren't we doing a wonderful job of making amends?” (Ebert,
1996, p. 33NC).
Reviews that called attention to the partiality of Ghosts’ narrative
demonstrated how texts that remain faithful to the historic record may also delimit
historical understanding about contentious and traumatic events in the recent past. By
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highlighting the film’s absence of strong black characters, these film reviews suggested
that hegemonic discourses may never be fully naturalized in popular memory. As they
call for additional memories that represent black activists’ efforts to achieve civil rights,
these reviews invited counter-memories of activism.
Reviews of Ghosts of Mississippi did not, however, produce many countermemories themselves. Mainstream media reception to the film suggests that Ghosts was
a more limited site of counter-memory about the 1960s than Burning. Unlike reviews of
Mississippi Burning, reviews of Ghosts stopped short of describing the role that black
activists and ordinary people played in fighting discrimination and in bringing Beckwith
to justice. Furthermore, critics writing for print journalism didn’t condemn Ghosts as
uniformly as they critiqued Mississippi Burning. Reviews suggest that the dearth of
criticism surrounding Ghosts may be explained by the film’s fidelity to events
surrounding Beckwith’s conviction.
Despite critiques of racism in the Hollywood film industry, reviewers frequently
described Ghosts as a true, or accurate representation of the white establishment’s
response to racism since 1964. Stack (1996) wrote that the film described events leading
to Beckwith’s conviction “with convincing details” (p. C3); Ebert (1996) stated that
events leading to his conviction were “remembered with fidelity” (p. NC33), and Ringel
(1996) concluded that the film represented “the true story of the very different choices
made by two white men in Mississippi” (p. 9P). These reviews demonstrate how the
film’s fidelity to historic events closed down spaces for critical reflection about the film’s
representation of the history of the civil rights movement.
Although Ghosts overlooked important people who advanced the cause of civil
rights, it did not misrepresent white individuals who played a role in prosecuting and
convicting Beckwith. The film depicted DeLaughter’s experience with careful fidelity to
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the available historic record. Consequently, the film did not garner the same focus of
criticism as Mississippi Burning had.
Considered in relationship to reviews of
Mississippi Burning that sought to reconstruct memories of civil rights to include black
activists’ experiences, these reviews of Ghosts suggest that the films that misrepresent the
record of activism may be more likely to promote counter-memories than films that
simply omit key figures in the historic record. Ostensibly, films that meet criteria for
historic accuracy do not compel critics to construct counter-memories.
Truth and drama in Ghosts of Mississippi
Paradoxically, reviewers suggested that the film’s limitation was not the film’s
failure to establish itself as a representation of actual events; the problem was that it did
so all too well. Most reviewers concluded that the film accurately depicted the trial, but
sacrificed drama for truth. Clark (1996) described the film as “shallow” and “dull”(p.
13D), Maslin (1996) characterized the film’s conclusion as “suspense free” (p. c14),
Sterritt (1996) wrote that the film was “more earnest” than “melodramatic” (p. 12), Hartl
(1996) declared the film “competent,” but “unexciting” (p. F4) and Ebert (1996)
concluded that the film’s moving story made for “uncompelling” film (p. 33NC). Both
Ebert and Hartl likened the film to a made-for-television docudrama. Hartl (1996)
elaborated his critique thusly. “Director Rob Reiner and screenwriter Lewis Colick get
the job done of telling the story - and that's all they do. The movie is never dull or
offensive, but it leaves you with an incomplete feeling. Surely there must be more to it
than this” (Hartl, 1996, p. F4). These reviewers indicated that Ghosts did not engage or
interest them; thus it did not meet the primary criteria for Hollywood film. Only two
reviewers, Bernard (1996, p. 61) and Howe (1996, p. N44) suggested that the film
represented a “satisfying” balance of drama and history. The majority of the mainstream
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journalistic reviews of Ghosts emphasized the topos of entertainment as the ultimate
criterion for Hollywood film; the topos of history and accuracy were incidental.
Differences between mainstream press reviews of Mississippi Burning and Ghosts
indicate that a docudrama’s ability to accurately represent oppressed groups is not an
ultimate criterion for evaluating a commercial film in popular culture; instead, a film’s
ability to entertain and engage mainstream audiences is. This criterion poses a challenge
to filmmakers interested in contributing to popular memory about social injustices that
are not easily attributed to evil individuals or manifested in discrete instances of
spectacular violence; to become popular, filmmakers must find ways to make films about
social problems interesting to audiences who primarily watch films for entertainment.
The focus on dramatic appeal over the injustices a film represents or the accuracy of a
film has implications for films’ ability to provide lessons about the past. Evaluative topoi
of dramatic appeal, in place of accuracy or social justice in reviews of films suggest that
films do not necessarily need to represent “truth” in order to gain salience as popular
memory. Nor do films need to represent subordinated groups in ways that accord with
their own memories of the past to gain status as a source of memory about social
injustice. As Ebert (1996) explained in his review of Ghosts of Mississippi,
Alan Parker’s Mississippi Burning (1988) was criticized for making white FBI
agents into heroes of the civil rights era when the real FBI was conspicuous by its
lack of enthusiasm for that assignment. But that film paid its way with great
performances and tremendously moving drama. Ghosts of Mississippi generates
nowhere near as much passion. It closes a chapter in history, but scarcely brings
it to life. (p. 33NC)
Ebert indicates that filmmakers’ adherence to fair portrayals of subordinated
groups is not necessarily a significant factor in a films’ ability to become part of popular
memory; instead, a compelling dramatic narrative, combined with some signifiers’ of the
film’s relevance to the past, may be a stronger determinant in films’ status as popular
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memory. In the absence of dramatic narrative, films about the past are less likely to
contribute to popular memory.
HEGEMONY AND COUNTER-HEGEMONY IN FILMS ABOUT CIVIL RIGHTS
Although Mississippi Burning contributed more powerfully to popular memory of
the civil rights movement than its younger sibling, patterns across these films constructed
social knowledge about civil rights activism and the process of social change in the
United States. Both Mississippi Burning and Ghosts taught audiences that social change
results from the government’s efforts to take legal actions against white supremacists and
members of the Klu Klux Klan. Audiences with little knowledge of the history of civil
rights activism would not have been able to discern from either film that activists were
primarily responsible for challenging institutionalized segregation and to making it
possible for blacks to vote in the South. By portraying subordinated members of society
as passive victims, these films reflected dominant political thought in the United States
that presumes state officials fairly represent their constituents within a representative
democracy and that the political and legal system is for holding officials accountable for
acts of social injustice.
Consequently, these films discouraged audiences from
understanding both the history of social oppression in the United States and the ways in
which such oppression may be resisted.
As these films disabled audiences from
understanding the history of civil rights activism from the past, they also prevent
audiences from making connections between social injustices from the past and
continued instances of institutionalized racism and state supported violence against
activists. By ignoring images of ordinary people acting as agents of social change, these
films leave the process of social change to the political system that stands to benefit from
maintaining the status quo.
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Distinctions between Ghost’s reception in mainstream press and Mississippi
Burning’s reception indicate that, in the absence of a compelling narrative framework,
films that purport to represent the past are not likely to become part of popular memory.
Just as different films don’t contribute equally to popular memory, different films don’t
equally invite critical reflection. By retaining fidelity to events from the past, Ghosts did
not prompt the counter-memories critical of prevailing race relations that Mississippi
Burning prompted. Ostensibly, docudramas that are caught in lies have more critical
potential than films that do not.
Based on my analysis of Mississippi Burning and Ghosts, I propose that for a
memory to become popular, it must produce tension between lived and cinematic
experience; the more popular a film is, the more pronounced the contradictions that
produce these tensions should be. The tensions that arise from this contradiction prompt
the inclusion of counter-memories into popular culture. The discrepancy between the
counter-memories that emerged in journalism reviews of Mississippi Burning and those
that emerged in Ghosts also indicates that the most empowering potential of popular film
may not lie in the films themselves, but in mainstream journalism reviews of them. Texts
responding to popular films have the potential to critically engage audiences in questions
about the role of the state and of activism; however, spaces for counter-memory may be
confined to non-fiction that have narrower audiences than dramatic films do. Thus, the
counter-hegemonic role of secondary sources is a double-edged sword. While popular
culture does not unilaterally produce hegemonic social relations, it does not go very far to
disrupt them.
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NOTES TO CHAPTER FOUR
1
Booth (1994) presents coverage unique among articles covering Beckwith that
explores the racial inequities that have persisted in Jackson into the 1990s.
2
In 1991, 33 of the 47 victims of Chicago police shootings were black. Likewise,
152 blacks in Indianapolis were shot by police, compared to 85 white victims (Thomas,
1995, p. A01).
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SECTION THREE
BLACK POWER IN POPULAR MEMORY
135
Introduction to Malcolm X and Panther
The civil rights movement achieved important but limited gains for AfricanAmericans. Although blacks won desegregation and formal voting rights in the South,
they continued to experience informal forms of racial discrimination, including economic
poverty, and ongoing police brutality. By working within mainstream political channels
to gain civil rights, moderate activists did not fully address endemic structural inequities
between black and white communities across the nation (Bush, 2003, p. 42). As they
came to ascendancy during the mid-1960s, the Black Power Movement offered a
structural critique of the economic and political system in the United States that provided
a framework for making sense of ongoing racial disparities.
Activists involved in the Black Power Movement provided an important
counterpart to the mainstream civil rights movement. This movement gave blacks a
deeper understanding of the causes of economic subordination in the United States. By
providing a critique of liberal capitalism, Black Power activists also provided a starting
point for ordinary people to develop strategies for attaining racial justice not yet achieved
through non-confrontational protest or appeals to the legislature. Specifically, the Black
Power Movement advocated economic and social self-sufficiency for blacks as a means
to end the subordinate status of brown and black people throughout the world. The
movement also called for self-defense and confrontational protest as a means to protect
subordinate groups from what they believed were racist and violent law enforcement
agencies in the United States. Amidst growing social unrest in black urban ghettos across
the country, Black Power advocates provided oppressed groups with a vision of a more
egalitarian society and with strategies for working toward that future in the present.
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Black Power activism advanced the aims of even moderate black activists. As
Haines (1988) and Bush (2002) explain, civil rights legislation may not have been passed
were it not for the threat that Black Power activists posed to the social order if formal
rights were denied to black people. Umoja (2001) and Bush (2002) note that few sources
in popular or institutional memory have attended to the perspectives of activists involved
in the Black Power Movement.1 By excluding the Black Power movement, the prevailing
memory of the civil rights movement in political memory discourages audiences from
understanding how members on the fringes of black activism advanced cause of the civil
rights movement for black communities across the country. For contemporary publics,
this memory is equally, if not more important, than the memory of civil rights activism.
Such memories may enable individuals to recognize the structural conditions that have
perpetuated social inequality and provide a foundation for the emergence of counterpublics to challenge the legitimacy of institutions that disable them.2
During the 1990s, Hollywood released two films that constructed memories of the
Black Power Movement for popular media audiences. In 1992, Spike Lee directed the
film, Malcolm X. Based on X’s 1965 autobiography, co-written by Alex Haley, the film
depicted Malcolm X as a courageous black leader who galvanized black communities
with his critique of racism embedded within white society. Three years later, filmmaker
Mario Van Peebles directed the film Panther to tell the story of one of the foremost Black
Power movement organizations, The Black Panther Party. Like Parker and Reiner, Lee
and Van Peebles envisioned their films as interventions in contemporary discourses about
racism and social injustice in the United States. Lee (1992) explained that he hoped
black people would feel “all fired up” and “get inspired” by Malcolm X because it
represented a faithful depiction of “what Black people in America have come through”
(p. 68). Mario Van Peebles told the press that he wanted to make the film to inspire and
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instruct the current generation of young blacks living in urban ghettos. He told reporters
that kids today “knew the negative stuff” about the Panthers and “thought Huey Newton
was a cookie." (Schaefer, 1995, p. O17). He added, “Few people know how they
empowered their neighborhood” (Graham, 1995, p. 3NC). Both filmmakers suggest that
they directed their films to tell a story about the Black Power movement that would give
a voice to the experiences of African-Americans activists that would enable a younger
generation of African-Americans to empower.
Malcolm X (1992) and Panther (1995) represented unique counterparts to films
about civil rights made between 1988 and 1996. As Section Two argues, the civil rights
films Mississippi Burning and Ghosts of Mississippi focused on white characters as
heroes for racial justice. By focusing on whites, these films illustrated how commercial
media predominantly construct ideological discourses that reaffirm the legitimacy of
prevailing social relations. In contrast, Malcolm X and Panther represented blacks as
agents of social change who advocated collective action as a means to achieve structural
economic change in the United States.
Malcolm X and Panther were able to reach Hollywood theatres in spite of market
pressures that resist narratives about black leaders.3
Indeed, Lee and Van Peebles
struggled against the mainstream Hollywood industry to fund their films. These films
and their reception in mainstream journalism illustrated the ways in which countermemories of groups most critical of social and economic relations have been selectively
included within popular memory. To the extent that such films became part of popular
memory, they also indicated how films about radical social movements from the recent
past may be adopted into popular memory.
Both Malcolm X and Panther challenged prevailing liberal ideology that held
faith in the social justice of the American political system. Although Malcolm X and
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Panther both challenged this faith, they did not do so equally.
Malcolm X framed the
story of the radical black leader within the myth of the American Dream while Panther
provided a much harsher condemnation of the United States’ political and economic
system.
Panther also presented the story of the Black Panther Party using
unconventional stylistic devices that blended signifiers of truth with signifiers of fiction.
The differences between these films explains contrasting reception from journalism
reviewers; mainstream film critics embraced Malcolm X but rejected Panther as a false
representation of the past.
Based on differences between journalistic reception between Malcolm X and
Panther, I conclude that oppositional counter-memories may be more likely to become
part of popular memory by appealing to narrative and stylistic convention. Counterhegemonic messages films that resonate with prevailing knowledge about historic reality
may be readily incorporated into popular memory because oppositional countermemories that are positioned within convention narrative frames and stylistic devices
soften the blow of political critique. Conversely, texts that do not appeal to prevailing
understandings about past events may be dismissed.
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NOTES TO SECTION THREE INTRODUCTION
1
Katsiaficas (2001) explains that Hollywood portrayals of the Panthers have
consistently hidden the ways that the BPP fundamentally broke with the legitimacy and
power of the established system (p. viii).
2
Memories of Black Power activism may teach subordinate groups that, current
social inequities are not the result of their own failings as a focus on the achievements of
civil rights movement would suggest, but are structurally conditioned by prevailing
economic, legal, and political practices. Likewise, memories of Black Power activism
may teach subordinate groups that confrontational, contentious acts of protest do not
hinder, but advance the cause of social justice in liberal democracies.
3
It is surprising that these films were able to generate media attention and reach
national theatres. As McChesney (2001) attests, commercial media benefit economically
from prevailing economic relations. Attention to white characters in earlier civil rights
films suggested that films about blacks were not lucrative for the industry. Ostensibly,
white audiences would not be interested in watching films primarily about blacks. If this
were true, certainly audiences would not have been interested in watching films about
influential black critics of white society.
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Chapter Five
Doxa and counter-memory in Malcolm X
Although both Malcolm X and Panther received media attention, the Hollywood
industry and entertainment press only embraced Malcolm X. Malcolm X featured counterhegemonic ideas within a conventional Hollywood narrative structure and visual style.
Based on my analysis of Malcolm X, I suggest that films about radical political figures
may be more likely to win acceptance into popular culture if their narrative and filmic
conventions meet the expectations of mainstream culture.1 Lee’s film told the story of
Malcolm X within the framework of the American Dream, thereby, it invited mainstream
film critics to incorporate the radical black leader into popular memory. Paradoxically,
the film’s conventional appeal also created space for the film to include countermemories into popular culture. By presenting the ideas and life of Malcolm X, the film
also raised questions about the legitimacy of the American Dream. Thus, the film broke
with established conventions even as it embraced them.
By grounding counter-
hegemonic messages within the familiar narrative structure of the American Dream myth,
Malcolm X invited journalism critics to incorporate counter-memories about Malcolm X,
the legacy of racism in the United States, and the rhetoric of history, within popular
culture.
This analysis of Malcolm X also reinforces a central claim in my dissertation that
the legitimacy of individual films as sources of knowledge about the past is established
intertextually, across the film and secondary sources that encourage audiences to attribute
historical relevance to the messages constructed by these films. Journalists and film
reviewers established the film as a legitimate source of information about the history of
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racism and black struggle in the United States. I conclude that the relationship between
a film’s representation of the past and the doxa of a culture is central to understand how
this film attained legitimacy as a source of popular memory. Malcolm X was framed
within prevailing ideology and within conventions of biopic film. In these ways, Lee’s
film mainstreamed Malcolm X, making his radical political philosophy palatable to
mainstream audiences and popular culture.
A POPULAR FILM ABOUT AN UNPOPULAR BLACK LEADER
Malcolm X represented a site of popular memory, in part, because the film had
widespread appeal. According to Hollywood industry criteria, Malcolm X was one of the
most successful films of Lee’s career. The film earned 9 million dollars in the box office
during its first week in theatres, and grossed 48 million dollars in the United States
(“Business data”). By comparison, other films of Lee’s career, Do the Right Thing
(1989) and Jungle Fever (1991) grossed 28 million and 32 million (respectively).
Arbiters of mainstream media applauded Malcolm X. In 1993, Denzel Washington was
nominated for an Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for best actor in a leading
role.
The MTV movie awards gave Denzel Washington the award for best male
performance in a film in 1992 and nominated Malcolm X for Best Movie that year
(“Awards”, 1992). These accolades indicate that Lee’s Malcolm X was well regarded
both by the motion picture industry and by some younger audiences Lee hoped to attract
to the film. Thus, it was able to meet an essential criterion for popular memory; insofar
as box office sales and national awards represent the taste of mainstream audiences, the
film was popular.
Mainstream journalism coverage and newspaper reviews of Malcolm X help to
explain the film’s commercial success despite the film’s attention to a previously
unheralded black leader. In addition to receiving accolades within the television and film
142
industry, Malcolm X received strong reviews from mainstream newspapers during the
first weeks of the film’s initial release. These reviews suggested that the film’s ability to
meet mainstream expectations for Hollywood drama advanced the film’s popularity.
Despite the film’ controversial subject matter, Malcolm X was one of Lee’s most
conventional films. In contrast with Lee’s earlier films that made explicit commentary
about contemporary race relations, this film followed the conventions of biographical
film, or biopic. Such films typically construct hagiographies that celebrate the efforts and
accomplishment of great leaders in history. Within this genre, dialogue, lighting, and
sound construct a linear narrative celebrating the life of an exalter leader or heroic figure.
Film critics Carr (1992) and Murray (1992) equated Malcolm X with earlier biopics
Lawrence of Arabia (1962), The Last Emperor (1987), and Gandhi (1982). Reviewers
indicated that the film’s conformity to Hollywood conventions for biographical films lent
credibility to the film in ways that Lee’s previous films had not done. Because this film
resonated with films already popular among reviewers and mainstream audiences, Lee’s
emulation of these successful biopics helped to establish the film’s credibility within
popular culture.
Reviewers also stated that the film not only met expectations for biopic film, but
represented exemplary artistic skill. For instance, Carr (1992) wrote that if other biofilms
won Academy Awards, then Malcolm X deserved to win “not only a few gold statuettes,
but the hearts of a nation” (p. 45). Critics with the highest regard for the film described it
as a “confident, superbly crafted picture” (Ringel, 1992, p. E1) and as “just short of a
masterwork” (Lipper 1992, p. 7B). Writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, Guthmann
(1992) concluded that Malcolm X was “clearly the movie of the year” (p. E1). Many
critics highlighted the technical features of Lee’s filmmaking as reason for applauding
Malcolm X. Reviewers commended Lee’s, “visuals and edgy editing,” (Murray, 1992, p.
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D8) “constantly expanding vision” (Gabrenya, 1992, p. 1F) and “exhilarating scenes”
(Howe, 1992, p. N44). In one extended description of Lee’s stylistic devices, Sterritt
(1992) lauded Lee’s, “rhythmic editing patterns” and noted that the use of color in the
film “enhances the moods of the story with an expressive color scheme that grows ever
more dark and monochromatic” (p. 14).
Reviewers who emphasized the aesthetic
achievements of the film, such as its artful cinematography, indicated that the film’s
popularity depended, at least in part, on the quality of its stylistic devices.
The ethos of the film’s director and lead actor also strengthened the popular
appeal of the film. Prior to making Malcolm X, Lee received acclaim and critical
attention for his edgy and socially conscious films including Do the Right Thing and
Jungle Fever. Denzel Washington’s acting performance also brought positive attention
to the film. Several reviewers suggested that Washington would be a front-runner for an
Oscar that year (Ebert, 1992, p. 3; Howe, 1992, p. N44; Guthman, 1992, p. E1). Film
critics described his acting in the film as “brilliant” (Connors, 1992, p. 1J),
“extraordinary” (Sterritt, 1992, p. 14), “magnificent” (Carr, 1992, p. 45), “splendid”
(Pollack, 1992, p. 3F), and “electrifying” (Lipper, 1992, p. C1). In an extended
description of Washington’s talent, Canby (1992) proclaimed that the actor, “has the
psychological heft, the intelligence and the reserve to give the film the dramatic
excitement that isn't always apparent in the screenplay” (p. C19). Reviews that hailed
Washington’s performance affirmed the film’s appeal to mainstream audiences. They
also attested to films’ reliance on celebrity to become part of popular culture. By the
time Malcolm X was released in theatres, Washington had acquired celebrity status.
Thus, the film’s popularity was established, in many ways, prior to the construction of the
film itself.
By appealing to audiences’ expectations for celebrity actors and for
Hollywood biopic film, Malcolm X established itself as a form of popular entertainment.
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MALCOLM X AS A REAFFIRMATION OF THE AMERICAN DREAM MYTH
The narrative framework of Malcolm X also propelled the film’s popularity. The
film presented Malcolm X’s story as one principally about overcoming obstacles to
achieve greatness. As such, Malcolm X represented an extension of the American Dream
myth.
Within this myth, class inequality is understood in terms of personal failure,
rather than as the consequence of structural limitations beyond their control. As Winn
(2003) writes, “the Dream assures Americans that no class system hampers their
advancement even though many Americans experience structural class limitations daily”
(p. 308). This myth is consonant with another popular American myth: the Horatio Alger
tale. According to the latter myth, all individuals might triumph over humble beginnings
(Weiss, 1969).
Several scholars have demonstrated that commercially successful
Hollywood films and other popular culture texts frequently present narratives that affirm
the American Dream. [See Cloud, 1996; Hoerl, 2002; McMullen and Solomon, 1994;
Winn 2000; and Winn, 2003, for examples.]
By repeating themes common to the
American Dream myth, Malcolm X established itself as a mainstream Hollywood film.
Paradoxically, Malcolm X refigured the American Dream myth to incorporate one
of its most ardent critics within it. This film told the story of Malcolm X’s emergence as
a prominent black activist by depicting Malcolm’s life story as a series of
transformations. Images in the film that depicted Malcolm’s early life foregrounded the
scene that shaped Malcolm’s development. By witnessing Malcolm through each stage of
his life, audiences were invited to understand Malcolm’s ascendancy as the consequence
of witnessing racial violence and experiencing economic injustice during his youth. The
first hour of the film juxtaposed images of Malcolm’s childhood in Michigan with his
memories as an exuberant adolescent in Boston, and perilous lifestyle as a hustler in
Harlem. Early scenes in the film suggested that Malcolm X, then Malcolm Little, learned
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about the relationship between violence and racism early in his life. The first scene
featured Klansmen who threatened Malcolm’s parents in the middle of the night until his
father emerged from his home with a gun in his hand. In subsequent scenes, the film
depicted his father’s death, presumably at the hands of Klan members.
Scenes of Malcolm’s youth also implicated social institutions and businesses for
oppressing blacks. According to the film, an insurance company declared his father’s
death a suicide and refused to provide compensate his mother. After a social worker, a
white woman, determined that his mother was unable to care for her children, Malcolm
and his eight siblings became wards of the state, and were parceled out to state homes
across Michigan. A following scene depicting Malcolm’s experience in elementary
school further portrayed discrimination embedded in the social structure of American life.
Although he was considered a very smart and popular student, Malcolm learned that his
opportunities were limited because he was black; when he told his instructor that he
wanted to be a lawyer someday, his teacher responded that this goal was not a realistic
goal for a black man. “You’re good with your hands, and people like you. Be a
carpenter.”
Scenes intermixed with depictions of Malcolm’s childhood portrayed Malcolm’s
later years as an adolescent living in Boston and Harlem. While he lived in these cities,
Malcolm went by the name of Red, after his red hair. One scene in the film featured
Malcolm’s first effort to straighten his hair through a painful process called “conking.”
This scene demonstrated the lengths Malcolm and other blacks would go to conform to
white society’s expectations. Other scenes of Malcolm’s life in Boston also featured
Malcolm’s acceptance of white society and desire to fit into it; Malcolm dated a white
woman, and wore garish zoot suits popularized by the swing-dance scene at that time.
These scenes suggest that Malcolm’s experiences with racism, and his desire to emulate
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the lifestyle of whiter, wealthier people, propelled Malcolm to a criminal lifestyle. After
Malcolm determined that his work as a railroad kitchen crewman was demeaning and did
not provide adequate income, Malcolm moved to Harlem and began running numbers for
a hustler named West Indian Archie, who led a gambling racket in New York. In these
scenes, Malcolm learned to carry a gun and became addicted to cocaine.
Following a dispute with West Indian Archie, Malcolm returned to Boston, where
he, his girlfriend, and best friend decided to rob the home of a wealthy white man. Police
quickly caught them and sent the men to prison for eight to ten years.
Malcolm
concluded that their real crime was not robbery (which usually results in much shorter
prison terms), “It was sleeping with white women.” As the film depicted Malcolm’s
transformation from a promising youth to a druggie and a hustler, it demonstrated ways
in which racist institutions and endemic poverty thwarted achievement for black men.
Malcolm’s words narrated the scene to explain that criminals like West Indian Archie
“were all victims of whitey’s social order” and forced into lives of crime and drug abuse.2
The scenes leading up to Malcolm’s conviction established a context for
audiences to understand the significance of Malcolm’s moral and spiritual
transformation. While he was in prison, Malcolm learned about the Nation of Islam, a
black Islamic organization founded by leader Elijah Muhammad. As he learned about the
history of black oppression through books and conversations with fellow inmate, Baines,
Malcolm became convinced of the inherent evil of white men and converted to Islam.
Malcolm gave up “white men’s” evils, among them pork, cigarettes, alcohol, and white
women. He also replaced the last name of Little with an X to symbolize his repudiation
of the name given to his family by whites who had enslaved them. Images of Malcolm’s
life in prison represented Malcolm’s transformation from a criminal eager to reap the
material lifestyle of white society to a devout Black Muslim eager to extricate his self
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from white American culture. After he was released from prison, he dedicated his life to
Allah and to “telling the truth to white devil to his face.”
The subsequent scenes in the film depicted Malcolm’s emergence as a spiritual
leader and political activist, as well as the evolution of his own beliefs about the sources
of black oppression in the United States. With Malcolm’s release from prison, the film
shifted its focus from the context of racial injustice and poverty that Malcolm witnessed
in his youth to his agency as an influential black leader. Once Elijah Muhammad
recognized Malcolm’s conviction and talent for public oratory, Muhammad made
Malcolm a Minister for the Nation of Islam.
Influenced by Malcolm’s growing
popularity, Elijah Muhammad gave Malcolm X the title of National Minister. Scenes
depicting Malcolm’s years as National Minister illustrated his rise in national prominence
and growing influence in the Nation of Islam during the early 1960s, a time period in
which he became a nationally recognized figure for his sharp condemnation of the
mainstream civil rights movement.
The depictions of Malcolm X that followed his years working for the Nation of
Islam portrayed Malcolm’s betrayal by the Nation of Islam and his assassination in 1965.
Upon hearing rumors that the Nation intended to oust Malcolm from the organization,
Malcolm formed a new organization, The Muslim Mosque Incorporated, and called for
organizations seeking to improve the lives of black people to work together. Soon after
he founded the organization, Malcolm took a holy pilgrimage to Mecca, traveled across
African and the Middle-East, and concluded from his visits that people of all races should
unite on the basis of divinely inspired love.
These scenes represented Malcolm’s final
transformation. Upon returning from his Hajj, he adopted the African name El-Hajj
Malik El-Shabazz and expanded his vision for black emancipation to include the
participation of whites concerned about social justice.
148
Scenes portraying Malcolm as Malik El-Shabazz illuminated the transformation
in Malcolm’s thinking about the causes of racism during the last months of his life.
Rather than understand racism as a white person’s disease, he concluded that Western
nations’ control over the world’s resources was a fundamental cause for blacks’
subordinate status in the United States. Thus, rather than calling for a separate black
nation, El-Shabazz called upon the United Nations to bring charges against the United
States government for human rights abuses against African-Americans. By depicting
Malcolm’s growing interest in establishing an international and interracial peace
movement in the final months of his life, the final scenes suggested that Malcolm X
might have been influential international figure for peace and justice had assassins not cut
his potential short.
The final scenes in the film illustrated Malcolm’s efforts to generate support for
his new vision in spite of impending threats to his life.
One scene depicted the
firebombing of Malcolm’s home by the hands of unknown assailants.
The film
predominantly indicated that members of the Nation of Islam conspired to end Malcolm’s
life, but it also hinted that this organization did not act alone. In a scene that portrayed a
phone conversation between Malcolm and members of his newly formed organization, a
close-up image of a rolling audio-tape illustrated that the phone conversation was being
recorded. Images of the tape resonated with an early scene during Malcolm’s visit to the
Middle-East in which Malcolm confronted two men who had been following him and
accused them of working with the CIA. Images of the tape and of white men following
Malcolm hinted that official, predominantly white federal authorities also sought to
silence Malcolm.
In the final moments of the film’s narrative, the film depicted
Malcolm’s assassination during one of his speeches to the black community at the
Audobon Ballroom in Harlem.
149
As the film depicted Malcolm’s life across a series of transformations, it
suggested that even the most disenfranchised individuals may become great leaders
through the use of their intellect and determination.
Even Malcolm’s assassination
reiterated themes consonant with the Horatio Alger narrative as his death represented his
courage to face the most of dire consequences in order to overcome challenges. Critics’
positive reviews of the film indicate that the film’s narrative framework contributed to its
popular appeal. Reviewers applauded the film’s resonance to myths about individual
success and overcoming obstacles.
Gabrenya (1992) characterized the film as a
“personal story of one man's self-redemption” (p. 1F) and Charles (1992), praised the
film as a “Horatio Alger tale” (p. 8E). Writing for The Chicago Sun-Times, Ebert (1992)
also used the themes of Horatio Alger to describe Malcolm X in the film. “He was a
strong role model who began on the streets, and through application of his intelligence,
will and courage, became someone who made a difference (p. 3). Many reviewers
indicated that this myth resonated powerfully in American popular culture. As Carr
(1992) wrote, Lee’s Malcolm X was “a wonderfully American movie about that most
American of pursuits - self-reinvention” (p. 45). Other reviewers indicated that the film’s
incorporation of Malcolm into the American Dream myth lent legitimacy to Malcolm X
as an important figure in American political history and to the civil rights movement.
Tucker (1992) explained that “the completeness of Malcolm's transformation from drugaddicted thug to ascetic is itself compelling (p. 7B), and Yearwood (1992) quoted
audience member John Slattery, who told him, “I'm in awe of how Malcolm was able to
go from being in the street life to being a civil rights leader” (p. 1A). Reviewers’ focus on
the film as an iteration of the American Dream myth suggested that the film’s appeal to
prevailing ideology lent legitimacy to Lee’s Malcolm X as a compelling film; they also
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indicated that the film’s narrative framework positioned audiences to embrace the radical
black leader as an exemplary model of individual determination and courage.
History and ideology in Malcolm X
Journalism coverage and newspaper reviews portrayed the film represented a real
or authentic portrayal of Malcolm X by characterizing Malcolm X as an educational
resource. This characterization was prompted by Lee, who told reporters during a press
conference that students should skip classes to attend his film on its opening day
“because they would see history that isn't taught in class” (Santiago, 1992, p. 7E). In the
week following the film’s opening, many newspapers conducted focus group interviews
with younger audience members to report on their reactions to the film (Futterman, 1992,
p. 1D; McCabe, 1992, p. A19; and Washington, 1992, p. 3D). By creating opportunities
for students to discuss the film with reporters, newspapers attributed salience to the film
as a source of historical information.
Other newspaper articles affirmed the film’s educational role by describing how
educators used the film to teach students about their own history. Lipper (1992) wrote
that “several New York City schools, including Lee's alma mater, Junior High School
113 in Brooklyn, sent groups of students to the movie opening day” (p. 7B), and
Wilkerson (1992) explained that teenagers in one teacher’s history class in Boston were
“spellbound” by the image of the Black Muslim leader (p. A1). Reporter Horwitz (1992)
suggested that students in Washington D.C. saw the film with their classes. One student,
Casey Coleman, told her class after seeing the film, “So much of what [Malcolm X is]
saying is the truth” (Horwitz, 1992, p. C1). Many reviews argued that the film deserved
strongest praise for providing audiences with an opportunity to learn about the life of
Malcolm X (Shakes, 1992, p. 2D; Yearwood, 1992, p. 1A).
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The film’s resonance with the American Dream myth provides a partial
explanation for journalists’ characterization of the film as a source of historical
information about Malcolm X. As a popular myth that has been maintained throughout
texts in popular culture, the American Dream has become common sense within liberal
capitalist democracies. Cloud (1996) argues that the American Dream myth reinforces the
ideological of liberal capitalism by making themes common to the myth appear natural or
inevitable.
By providing another iteration of this myth, Malcolm X tapped into a
powerful structure of consciousness. As it did so, the film lent further legitimacy to the
film as a common sense narrative about political and social life in recent United States’
history.
Audiences with little prior information about Malcolm X were invited to
understand the film as a representation of events from the past because it fit with themes
common to American political and popular culture. By appealing to doxa of 1990s
popular culture, the narrative of the American Dream myth conditioned audiences to
accept the narrative as a realistic portrayal of the political figure’s life story.
Restoring liberal hegemony in Malcolm X: Tragic consequences of isolated activism
By framing Malcolm’s autobiography within the American Dream myth, the film
positioned Malcolm X within mainstream political ideology.
Communication scholars
have attested to the ubiquity of the American Dream myth in popular texts in film (Winn,
2000; Winn 2003) and autobiography (Cloud, 1996). Cloud (1996) contends that the
myth smooths over ruptures in liberal ideology by suggesting that everyone can succeed
regardless of their race, gender, or class position. The American Dream myth in Lee’s
Malcolm X delimited the film’s ability to depict the more controversial aspects of
Malcolm’s life.
The film’s positioning of Malcolm X’s life story within the American Dream
myth also constrained the film’s ability to portray contentious collective activism as a
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strategy for empowering African-Americans. Although the film provided resources for
popular culture to draw attention to prevailing racism in the United States, it emphasized
the efforts of one persuasive individual for generating widespread interest in advancing
social change. For instance, the film framed the Nation of Islam’s growth and local
uprising in the community’s where Malcolm spoke as a consequence of Malcolm’s
intelligence and charisma. The film’s narrative framework thus presented Malcolm’s
leadership in black communities outside the context of the struggles within the civil
rights movement and in urban ghettos across the country where racial unrest was
fomenting.
In spite of the film’s representation of Malcolm’s political rhetoric, the
film’s focus on Malcolm’s will and determination obscured the social and economic
conditions that propelled his critique and compelled audiences to support him.
The film’s focus on the efforts of one individual also discouraged audiences from
recognizing how Malcolm X was part of a much broader movement for the
empowerment of blacks that grew in strength and numbers well into the late 1960s. By
ending the film with Malcolm X’s assassination, the film inhibited audiences from
understanding the process by which social change takes place. Social change results
from the process of consistent, collective agitation by multiple groups and individuals
over a prolonged period of time. Through watching this film, audiences with little prior
knowledge of the history of the Black Power movement might have concluded that the
movement perished with Malcolm’s own passing. Thus, the film didn’t prompt many
journalists to attend broadly to the value of agitation and protest for marginalized
communities. Such an emphasis would have seemed anathema to the film’s Horatio
Alger narrative.
In some ways, Malcolm X was already a more palatable figure than other Black
Power leaders for mainstream popular culture.
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Malcolm X penned most of his
autobiography during his years as the primary spokesperson for the Nation of Islam.
Groups advocating Black Nationalism including the Nation of Islam engage the rhetoric
of self help that is both liberating and limiting for subordinated social groups. The focus
on individual strength and will encourages economically and racially marginalized blacks
to assert themselves; however, Shawki (1990) argues that the language surrounding selfhelp within Black Nationalism also resonates with liberal capitalist ideology that
discourages people from recognizing structural inequities that make individual action a
less effective means for achieving social equality or justice. Thus, there is a strand of the
Horatio Alger narrative that weaves nicely into the narrative of empowerment within
Black Nationalist ideology.
The Horatio Alger story is indeed potentially disempowering for ordinary people.
The film told audiences that meaningful activism provides few personal rewards. While
scenes depicting Malcolm’s role within and departure from the Nation of Islam featured
blacks as agents of social change, they also highlighted the heroic sacrifices he and his
family made so that Malcolm could advance social justice for blacks. Several scenes in
the film indicated that Malcolm’s activism frequently kept him apart from his family.
When Betty told Malcolm of her distrust of the Nation of Islam’s commitment to
Malcolm, she reminded him of the precarious financial position the Nation had placed the
family in. Foreshadowing of the film’s conclusion, Betty noted that should anything ever
happen to Malcolm, the family would have few financial resources to live on.
The film’s conclusion compounded the disabling features of the film’s Horatio
Alger narrative. Although the film hinted at the FBI’s involvement in Malcolm X’s
assassination, it focused on the Nation of Islam as the central agent of Malcolm’s murder.
Thus, the film suggested that black people themselves pose the greatest danger to the
cause of black liberation. This focus on the Nation of Islam diverted attention from the
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concentrated, systematic efforts of the FBI to quiet prominent black leaders including
Malcolm X and Martin Luther King (Churchill & Vander Wall, 1990). By featuring
Malcolm’s death as the conclusion to the narrative about his tireless resolve to promote
social justice and structural social change, the film suggested that death is eminent for
those chose who would challenge the social and economic order. By framing activism in
terms of its ultimate demise, the film underscored the desirability of the established order;
at the least, it discouraged audiences from considering the possibility of engaging in any
concerted effort to challenge that order.
CHALLENGES TO LIBERAL HEGEMONY IN MALCOLM X AND JOURNALISM REVIEWS
Although Lee’s hagiographic approach to telling the story of Malcolm X
discouraged audiences from understanding Malcolm X within the history of contentious
collective black activism, it should not be regarded solely as a hegemonic neutralizing of
radical activism’s challenge to liberal capitalism. Paradoxically, several messages within
Malcolm X reframed prevailing doxa by embedding messages and images that
contradicted the American Dream myth within its narrative framework. The film’s
representations of racial injustice and of Malcolm’s political critique highlighted the
ways in which opportunities for blacks were systematically constrained.
Several scenes depicted Malcolm delivering speeches to large African-American
audiences in an effort to garner support for the Nation of Islam and, later, for the Muslim
Mosque Incorporated.
In these scenes, Malcolm X condemned racist features of
America’s culture and institutions including Christianity, telling audiences “White men
tell us to wait for the hereafter. Well, the hereafter is here and now!” He critiqued
economic relations, saying “You don’t have to beg white folks for a job…You’ll still end
up poor and without anything.” He also challenged the problem of school history by
asserting, “We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock. Plymouth Rock landed on us!” In these
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speeches, Malcolm X questioned the justice of United States policy and ideology, and
thereby reframed ideas central to the doxa of American political memory. As it
represented his speeches, Lee’s Malcolm X reframed this memory as well.
The portrayal of Malcolm’s political philosophy and strategies for empowering
blacks challenged the ideology propelled by the American Dream myth. During an
extended scene in which Malcolm spoke to a large crowd attending a Nation of Islam
convention, Malcolm lambasted the moderate civil rights movement for failing to address
the needs of the average black person, and suggested that race relations were headed
toward incendiary disaster.
There’s going to be a racial explosion. And a racial explosion is more dangerous
than an atomic explosion. There’s going to be an explosion because black people
are dissatisfied. They’re dissatisfied not only with the white man, but with these
Uncle Tom Negro leaders that are trying to pose as spokesmen for you and I.
Malcolm concluded this scene by calling for complete separation between blacks
and whites. “Let the black man have his own house. Let the black man have his own
house and his own property….This thing, this explosion, is gonna bring down his
house…If [the white man] doesn’t do something about it, it’s gonna explode any day
now.”
In these scenes, the film painted some picture, albeit in broad strokes, of
Malcolm’s political philosophy and influence that had been both controversial and
pivotal to the trajectory of African-American struggle during the mid-1960s. In these
moments, Malcolm X publicly broke with predominant leaders in the civil rights
movement who believed the American political system could be reformed and
encouraged blacks to renounce white society in order to achieve their own autonomy and
freedom from oppression. Although it emerged within the framework of the American
Dream myth, the film presented Malcolm’s public speeches that raised questions about
the legitimacy of the Dream itself.
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Iterations of Malcolm’s criticisms of the social order in Lee’s film demonstrated
how Lee’s film broke with established conventions of Hollywood cinema even as it
embraced them. Malcolm X also presented documentary images of violence against
blacks that belied the prevailing myth of national progress toward racial equality and
social justice. Images taken from stock footage of police violence against blacks and
civil rights protesters provided visual evidence supporting Malcolm X’s charge that nonconfrontational protest was counterproductive to blacks’ efforts to achieve social justice.
In one scene depicting Malcolm speaking to a large crowd, the film cut back and forth
between images of Malcolm and stock news footage of civil rights protests from the
1950s and 1960s. Footage depicted Martin Luther King’s arrest and police dogs and fire
hoses police deployed to repress civil rights protesters in Birmingham, Alabama. The
film also depicted Malcolm watching this footage on television in his hotel. According to
the film, Malcolm X began to argue forcefully against the policy of nonviolence after he
witnessed these images. As stock footage of police violence against black protesters in
Birmingham appeared on screen, Malcolm’s words, spoken by Washington, thundered in
the background:
The black people in this country have been victims of violence at the hands of the
American white man for 400 years. 400 years! 400 years and we thought that by
following those ignorant Negro preachers that it was God-like to turn the other
cheek to brute who is brutalizing us.
The sequence of images of police brutality against blacks ended with Malcolm’s
conclusion: “to love the enemy is not intelligent. We have the right to defend ourselves.”
Images of civil rights protest from the 1950s and 1960s drew national attention to
the violence that non-confrontational black activists faced in the south. Newspaper film
critic Murray (1992) noted that images of Klansmen burning down Malcolm’s home
represented “visions lifted from the nation’s collective unconscious” (p. D8). Thus,
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many audiences who witnessed previous broadcast news coverage of civil rights protests
in Birmingham, Alabama were likely to recall these images as actual instances of
political repression against blacks. These images positioned Malcolm’s beliefs as
responses to experiences of injustices that have been naturalized by journalistic media.
By featuring these images, the film used familiar images to introduce controversial
material into popular memory of Malcolm X.
Opening and closing scenes in the film also prompted nonfiction journalism texts
to incorporate counter-memories of race relations within the film’s conventional narrative
framework. During the opening credits to the film, images of four police officers beating
Rodney King in 1991 appeared on the screen. Washington’s voice speaking Malcolm’s
words to a cheering crowd accompanied these images.
His words directly challenged
assumptions underlying the American Dream myth: “I charge the white man with being
the greatest murderer on earth,” Malcolm’s voice narrates scenes of King’s beating.
“Everywhere that he has gone, [the white man] has created destruction...You are the
victim of America….We’ve never seen democracy. All we’ve seen is hypocrisy…We
don’t see the American Dream. All we see is the American nightmare” (Malcolm X,
1964, p. 26).
Images of police officers beating Rodney King in 1991 in the context of a film
about Malcolm’s political philosophy and assassination suggested that targeted violence
against blacks by state authorities has been a persistent problem in the United States.
These images appeared regularly in national television news coverage in 1991. Thus,
these images framed the story of Malcolm X as a lesson for understanding and
responding to race relations during the 1990s, when the film was first released. In this
regard, images of the Rodney King’s beating served as a visual analogy that connected
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past and present struggles for racial justice, and lent salience to the film as a site of
political critique.
By appearing alongside Malcolm’s critique of “the American nightmare,” footage
of King’s beating encouraged audiences to understand Malcolm X’s criticisms of the
state as relevant to contemporary instances of racial injustice in the United States. These
images also provided a rationale for Malcolm’s disavowal of nonviolent protest that
contemporary black audiences could relate to. The film’s use of contemporary images of
violence against blacks within a film narrating one person’s self-transformation points to
the ways in which film joined Malcolm’s rhetoric with more contemporary events to
challenge dominant ideology.
Indeed, these images provided vivid support for
Malcolm’s conclusion that blacks were not living the American Dream, but were
experiencing “the American nightmare” instead.
The role of video footage within Malcolm X suggested that common sense
understandings of social life are shaped by a myriad of images in popular culture.
Malcolm X appealed to prevailing understandings about race relations in the United
States by reflecting both the familiar ideology and everyday images in non-fiction media
that challenged that ideology. The closing scenes in the film also established Malcolm X
as an important figure for empowering racial minorities in the present. In the film’s final
scene, a contemporary Nelson Mandela repeated Malcolm’s words to a classroom of
children: “We declare our right on this earth to be a human being, to be given the full
rights of a human being, to be respected as a human being, in this society, on this earth, in
this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.” Following
his words, the screen provided close up images of a series of boys of African-American,
Middle-eastern, and Asian origin stand up and declare boldly, “I am Malcolm X.”
Images of boys of diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds universalized the problem of
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racial injustice, and extended the issue more globally. The image of Nelson Mandela in
particular encouraged audiences to identify with the challenges South Africa in the
aftermath of apartheid.
These scenes further established the film as a call for
contemporary society to embrace the memory of Malcolm X and to apply his philosophy
to current racial problems across the globe.
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Mandela was embraced by political
moderates in the United States as a central figure in ending apartheid government in
South African. Thus, he has become an icon for global democracy and social justice. By
showing Mandela repeating Malcolm’s famous call to give racial minority groups equal
status “by any means necessary”, this film incorporated Malcolm into the history of black
leaders who have been heralded by mainstream, white society. Conversely, this closing
scene framed the strategy of confrontational black protest as just action within a liberal
democracy. By framing Malcolm within the context of figures and myths resonant with
dominant political values, Lee’s film mainstreamed Malcolm. But it did not mainstream
his beliefs. Instead, I argue that the film’s use of conventional narrative and popular
figures such as Mandela made Malcolm’s radical political philosophy more acceptable
for mainstream commercial media.
In addition to providing counter-hegemonic messages about race relations, Lee’s
film provided counter-memories of activism and dissent. Scenes within the film also
challenged the individualist messages of the American Dream myth by portraying
collective protest as an avenue for African-American empowerment. One pivotal scene
depicting Malcolm X’s role in the Nation of Islam demonstrated how blacks might
provide a unified front to challenge white-led state oppression. In this scene, leaders in
the Nation of Islam learned that one of their members, Brother Johnson, had been brutally
beaten by police and taken into custody. Within minutes, Malcolm X assembled a large
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group of Muslim men, each wearing black suits and ties, and led them in an orderly
march to police headquarters. Once Malcolm gained permission to look in on Brother
Johnson, he demanded that Johnson be taken to a hospital. As the men marched in
solemn procession to the hospital, local Harlem residents noticed them, and began to
follow behind them. After they arrived at the hospital, the stoic Muslim men stood on
the sidewalk between police officers guarding the hospital and a throng of local black
citizens standing behind them. Harlem residents raised their fists in the air and chanted,
“We want justice.”
When the police captain approached Malcolm and told him to move people along,
Malcolm told him, “We’re of Islam with disciplined men. They haven’t broken any
laws…yet.” Then the officer inquired, “What about them?” pointing to the mob behind
Malcolm. Malcolm responded, “That’s your headache Captain. But if Brother Johnson
dies, I pity you.” Malcolm turned to look at the crowd as its calls for justice rose in
volume.
Malcolm’s lips smirked slightly, suggesting his satisfaction with the
community’s response to the march. After a doctor emerged from the hospital to report
that Johnson will live, the crowd dispersed.
Images of black protest in this scene illustrated Malcolm X’s claim that black
communities would demand structural social and economic change in the United States if
racially motivate violence and oppression continued unabated.
Both the scene and
Malcolm’s political philosophy characterized contentious collective protest as a positive
force for social justice, and contradicted the American Dream myth’s faith in
individualism and faith in law and order as a social good. Film critic Howe (1992)
described this scene as” particularly stirring” (p. 44). Likewise, reporter Santiago (1992)
observed that the audience he watched the film with applauded loudly during this scene
(p. 7E). These reviewers demonstrated the image of mass protest was pivotal to the
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film’s depiction of Malcolm X as an important figure in black history.
They also
indicated that this scene was well received by audiences even though it depicted ideas
that contradicted the film’s prevailing narrative.
Journalistic counter-memories about Malcolm X
The film’s narrative framework and use of stock footage positioned audiences to
embrace the radical black leader and gave the film the appearance of “truth” as a
legitimate representation of the past. By grounding unfamiliar ideas within the familiar
narrative structure of the American Dream myth, Malcolm X opened space for
mainstream journalism media to legitimate Malcolm in popular memory and integrate his
ideas into popular culture. By establishing the memory of Malcolm X within the doxa of
liberal capitalism, Lee’s Malcolm X invited journalists and mainstream press to attend to
the film. Journalism reports and newspaper reviews of the film characterized the film as
an alternative to prevailing memory about Malcolm X and race relations in the United
States. These reviews exemplified how the film created room for counter-memories
within the landscape of popular memory. Newspaper film critic Guthmann (1992) wrote,
“the film dealt with an ideology and world view” that had never been “explored in a
mainstream Hollywood film” (p. E1).
In the week following the film’s opening,
journalists covered audiences’ reactions to the film in several cities. Journalists’ attention
to ordinary filmgoers and students who praised the film suggests that the film’s counterhegemonic messages were not lost on audience members either.
Many newspapers reported that younger audiences understood the film as an
educational resource about ideas not taught in their classrooms.
Thus, the film’s
educational role was a central topos in news reviews and reports about the film. Kent
MacLean described the film to Chicago Tribune reporter Yearwood (1992) as “a real
education” (p. 1A). Several other students told reporters that they didn’t know who
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Malcolm X was or what he stood for prior to watching the film (Lipper, 1992,p. C1;
Murray and Yandel, 1992, p. C1; Washington 1992, p. 3D). One high school student,
Sarah Paetsch told a reporter for Cleveland’s Plain Dealer, “It seems like Malcolm X is a
taboo subject at school,” and concluded that his influence was more “far reaching” than
she had realized (Washington, 1992, p. 3D). Another high school student, Terrell, told
reporter Futterman (1992) that he considered skipping class to see the film, and
concluded that Malcolm X was important because “it's something that really makes you
think” (p. 1D). These quotations suggested that Lee’s film prompted audiences with little
knowledge of Malcolm X to think and talk about his influence in the history of AfricanAmerican struggle in the United States.
Newspaper film critic Hartl (1992) also
characterized Malcolm X as a significant source of memory about the black leader:
[Malcolm X] presents American history from the perspective of disenfranchised
African Americans. But it accomplishes something that's never really been done
on film before. For many Americans, especially those who are too young to have
been exposed to Malcolm X's ideas when he was alive, the movie will be an
education if not a revelation. (p. C1)
By recognizing the film as a source of information about a history rarely popularized my
mainstream media or in classrooms, Hartl also pointed out that Lee’s film brought
counter-memories of subordinated blacks to the attention of young film-going audiences.
Journalistic attention to the film suggested that the film positioned audiences to
embrace the radical black leader. Several students told reporters that Malcolm X’s
autobiography deserved particular attention among black communities. These students
suggested that Malcolm X was an important figure in black history, but that most blacks
had little understanding of his role in African-American political struggle. One high
school student told reporter Santiago (1992) that Malcolm X was “someone that black
people should know about” (1992, p. 7E). Another student declared to reporters Murray
and Yandel (1992) that “[t]he positive side of black people is worth a day off from
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school” (p. C1). Quotations from the film’s audience members suggested that schools
provide few empowering messages about blacks, and described the film as an important
contribution to the history taught in classrooms. Quotations from journalism reviewers
and reports framed the film within the topos of education, a theme common to liberal
ideology, and to popular doxa as well. In this way, reviews positioned Malcolm within
popular memory. These reviews and reports also extended that memory.
In addition to praising the film as an alternative source of information about the
past, journalistic coverage demonstrated that Lee’s Malcolm X opened spaces for
journalists to promote positive memories of Malcolm X and advance criticisms of
enduring racism in the United States. Newspaper coverage of audience reception to
Malcolm X featured audience members who revised their previous conceptions about the
African-American leader. Futterman (1992) quoted one student, Jason, who told him,
“I'll admit that before I saw this movie, the only things I thought about Malcolm X were
all negative. I thought he fought racism with racism. This movie cleared up a lot of
misconceptions for me” (p. 1D). Other individuals quoted by news reporters suggested
that Malcolm X was a positive role model for blacks. Yearwood (1992) quoted on
audience member, MacLean, who explained that (p. 1A) that he “grew up thinking
Malcolm X was a violent man, but the movie showed me that Malcolm X was about selfdefense, not violence.” Reporter Washington (1992) indicated that the Malcolm was a
valuable role model for whites as well.
According to Tuck, one of the students
Washington quoted, uninformed people might mistake Malcolm for an “angry black man
who hated whites.” But Tuck demurred: “He believed in everybody's rights” (p. 3D).
These quotes suggested that the film’s portrayal of Malcolm cleared up audience
members’ previous “misconceptions” about Malcolm X. As Murray and Yandel (1992)
quoted Robert
Hill, an instructor at Kennesaw State College, “There are a lot of
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misconceptions about the man floating around, that he hated white people all of his life
and was always violent….This film makes a point of showing all sides of Malcolm. We
all should know him” (Murray and Yandel, 1992, p. C1). By evoking both the American
Dream myth and images of King’s beating, Malcolm X positioned audiences to accept
more controversial aspects of Malcolm’s leadership as salient and valuable to the history
of African-American struggle. By suggesting that Malcolm X had a legitimate place in
popular culture, the film and newspaper reviews and coverage of the film opened some
space for additional memories counter to prevailing ideology to become part of prevailing
doxa as well. By featuring these statements in coverage of the film’s reception, reporters
helped to constitute the film as a site for introducing counter-hegemonic messages into
mainstream newspapers.
Many critics noted that representations of Malcolm X constructed by mainstream
media during Malcolm’s lifetime provided simplistic depictions of him; thus they praised
the film for providing a more complex portrait of the black leader. Chisholm (1992)
wrote that the film offered a “welcome multidimensional portrait of a gifted man” that
reframed “the simplistic way in which the idea of Malcolm has been absorbed into mass
culture” (p. E4). Mirroring Chisholm’s remarks, Billingsly (1992) declared that Malcolm
X had painted “a fuller, truer portrait of Malcolm” than he had “ever seen portrayed in the
popular media” (Harrison et. al, 1992, p. 1F). Billingsly (1992) added, “The press tried
to portray Malcolm X as violent, though they could point to no violence that he had
committed” (p. 1F). Carr (1992) identified the role of the film as a source of countermemory that forced revision within popular memory most succinctly. He concluded that
Malcolm X “will be that much harder to distort now that this film exists” (p. 45). These
critics indicated that the counter memories supplied permanently altered the landscape of
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popular memory. Presumably, the film’s authentic representation of Malcolm’s life in
the film shadowed earlier portrayals that provided a partial view of his character.
Newspaper coverage of the film also suggested that Malcolm X not only created a
space for positive memories of Malcolm X to become part of popular culture, but
prompted some audiences to think critically about history and memory. According to
several reporters, the film called for critical reflection of institutions that had distorted
Malcolm’s memory.
Quoted by the New York Times, social studies teacher Grace
compared students’ reactions to the film to “being introduced to ice cream for the first
time.” He added, “the first thing [students] want to know is, ‘Why wasn't I told about
him, and how could you let him be killed?’” (Wilkerson, 1992, p. A1). Grace’s response
suggests that the film prompted some students to question the legitimacy of prevailing
authorities that ignored Malcolm X. The St. Louis Dispatch also quoted an audience
member who suggested that the film exposed the underlying racism within America’s
educational system.
The only way I see it is to burn up all our old history books because our old
history books show the black man … the brown man being a slave. Like he didn't
invent anything. All of this wasn't made by the white man, and yet when you look
at history books, that's all you see. (Futterman: 1992, p. 1D)
Newspaper quotations such as the above suggest that the counter-memories evoked in the
film opened a space for mainstream media to give a voice to individuals critically of
prevailing race relations.
Indeed, several film critics suggested that the film created opportunities for
audiences to think about endemic problems of racism within the United States. Guthmann
(1992) described the film as “a jumping-off point to a larger discussion of racism,
violence and American politics” (p. E1) and Hartl (1992) characterized the film’s
depiction of the American penal system as a “a powerful examination of the stultifying
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pervasiveness of white culture in the United States (p. C1). Other reviewers remarked
explicitly on the film’s counter-hegemonic status.
Gabrenya (1992) concluded that
Malcolm X was one of the first films to “embrace a clear point of view that challenges the
traditional values of white-dominated American society” (p. 1F).
Complementing
Gabrenya’s assertion, Guthmann (1992) also argued that Malcolm X represented “a
blatantly political film informing us, without equivocation, that something is radically,
pitifully wrong with the United States of America” (p. E1). Newspaper reviews and
reports pointed to the ways in which counter-memories supplied by the film transformed
popular discourses about contemporary race relations. Presumably, racism could no
longer be consigned to the past now that Malcolm X brought it back to the present.
Journalists’ coverage of audience responses to the film indicated that the film’s
use of video footage of the police beating Rodney King helped to establish the film as a
commentary on contemporary race relations.
Observing Lee’s use of the footage,
reviewer Guthmann (1992) concluded, “The message is clear: The racism and injustice
Malcolm X spoke of are still with us” (p. E2). Lipper (1992) wrote, “Lee attempts to link
the past with the present, noting how far blacks still have to go to achieve racial equality
(p. 7B). Hartl (1992) also recognized the parallels established in the film between race
relations during the 1960s and the 1990s. “As Lee makes clear in the opening credits,
which include video clips of the Rodney King beating, his despairing view of oppression
by whites is anything but dated” (p. C1). Reviewing the film for St. Petersburg Times,
Peterman (1992) explained that Malcolm X’s critique of the police state applied to both
Rodney King’s beating and to the murder of Malice Green in Detroit.
Peterman
concluded that it would take little to convince black audiences that they were “living in a
police state” (p. 1D). Reviewers suggested that images that joined Malcolm’s past with
footage of Rodney King’s beating created continuity between Malcolm’s experiences
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with racism and race relations in the 1990s. By linking Malcolm’s experience with
Rodney King’s, Malcolm X prompted journalists to acknowledge state repression of
blacks as systemic and enduring within America’s political system.
By establishing continuity between Malcolm’s life experiences and racism in the
present, the film invited many black audience members to recognize Malcolm’s struggles
as their own. Thus, contemporary racism was another central topos that emerged in
coverage of the film. Ms. McRath told Atlanta Journal and Constitution reporters, “It
nearly brought me to tears at the end. Malcolm X went through most of the trials and
tribulations that [black people] have experienced” (Murray and Yandel, 1992, p. C1).
Tuck Woo compared his enthusiasm with the film to white students at his school who
refused to see it and concluded, “It's very racist at my school,” (Washington, 1992, p.
3D). The film also created an opening for reporters and film critics to recognize racial
injustices from Malcolm’s lifetime within a broader history of racism in the United
States.
One student, Traci, told reporters, "There's still racism in America….The
[African-American] race has little to show for its 400 years in this country” (Washington,
1992, p. 3D). Press attention to the film suggested that this film constituted Malcolm’s
story within a broader narrative of black struggle. As Murray (1992) wrote in his review
of the film, “Malcolm X reminds us that some stories have brutal, bloody endings. And
that some have yet to be concluded” (p. D8). Murray’s review suggests that the memory
provided by Malcolm X was not only a narrative about racism; it was also a call to action.
Some audiences indicate that they were inspired by Malcolm X’s appeals for
blacks to empower themselves and their communities. Student Terrell told reporter
Futterman (1992) that he believed Malcolm would want blacks to “do something
constructive” to improve their communities (p. 1D).
Willie Howard told reporters
Murray and Yandel (1992) that the film gave him “the greatest lesson of his life.”
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Howard added, “I learned you have to tell the truth and fight for what you believe in no
matter what comes at you. I almost cried" (Murray and Yandel 1992, p. C1). In his
interview wit Gabrenya (1992), Freeman concluded,
Malcolm X provides an opportunity for us to make a conscious decision to take up
our burden to rededicate ourselves to the ideals of empowerment and selfdetermination, to reaffirm our belief in self, and to recommit ourselves to the
struggle for human rights. (p. 1F)
By taking up Malcolm’s call to fight for justice and empowerment, Freeman, Howard,
and Terrell suggest that the conclusion to America’s struggle for justice lies with
contemporary media audiences. Newspapers that acknowledged the counter-hegemonic
messages of the film point to the film’s role as a force for inspiring social change.
Malcolm’s critique of racism and his call for social justice encouraged these audience
members to envision alternatives for the future. By constructing popular memories of
racial injustices past and present, Malcolm X also inspired their imagination for a more
hopeful future.
CONVENTION AS A FORCE FOR IMAGINATION IN POPULAR FILM
By presenting images of injustice that had been forgotten in popular culture, the
film invited new ideas to enter into other spaces in popular culture. The film’s narrative
framework was central to the film’s counter-hegemonic potential because this framework
enabled the film to resonate with culturally powerful belief systems and established the
film’s status as a source of popular memory. My analysis of Malcolm X and journalism
coverage of the film suggests that counter-memories may be inextricable from dominant
ideology in popular memory. On the one hand, Lee’s Malcolm X evoked dominant
memories of the American Dream to popularize memories of Malcolm X. On the other
hand, the film’s hegemonic framing of Malcolm X in terms of the American Dream myth
curtailed the extent to which counter-memories of activism could become part of popular
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culture. Given the predominant framing of the Black Power Movement as deviant and
violent in mainstream news media, it is likely that many mainstream audiences would not
have been receptive to a less conventional narrative about Malcolm X. Yet, mainstream
press celebrated Lee’s film.
Lee’s use of established conventions and ideology of
mainstream culture popularized memories of Malcolm X. They also invited journalists to
address Malcolm’s political critique of race relations in the United States, and
acknowledge the value of political protest and activism.
My analysis also indicates that popular memories balance the liberatory impulses
of imagination with the conservative tendencies of convention. The film’s conventional
approach to telling the story of Malcolm X limited the extent to which journalistic media
attend to Malcolm’s critique of the state. By positioning Malcolm X within the American
Dream myth, the film backgrounded systemic features of economic and social life that
limit advancement opportunities for marginalized groups. The film’s biopic framework
and focus on individual heroism also foreshortened the film’s potential to act as a force
for imagining collective agitation as a force for social change. These conclusions suggest
that popular culture may never be an expansive site of counter-memory because it
ultimately reinforces the ideology of the liberal capitalist system that gave rise to the
commercial media industry itself.
Alternatively, this analysis of journalistic memories of Malcolm X indicates that
popular memories open spaces for commercial media to recognize social injustices and
revision a just and equitable future. These may not be large spaces. Indeed, they might
not be big enough to inspire the emergence of counter-publics engaged in collective
activism. But they do create a wedge for the construction of new landscapes of memory
that revision the past.
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Mainstream, commercial films may have greater potential to integrate new
attitudes and beliefs into popular memory than do radical, counter-hegemonic films.
Memory fragments of a radical past may resonate broadly in popular culture when they
are counted in the framework and images of the established present. Marcuse (1964)
writes that the past may provide motive power in the struggle for changing the world.
For Marcuse, memories are resources of the imagination, or forces for revisioning social
relations. Through the rememberance of things past, the omnipresent power of the given
facts may be open to critical interrogation (p. 98).
Marcuse also insists that “the
oppressive rule of the established language” may only be broken by the “subverting use
of traditional material” (pp. 79-80). I would also argue that the converse is true; history
itself requires the use of materials of the present in order to become credible and relevant
to contemporary publics. The popular memory of Malcolm X constructed by Lee’s film
and journalism reviews suggests that rememberance of injustices from the past may
indeed reawaken political understanding and inspire political critique in the present, but
they can only do so within the confines of prevailing doxa.
Therefore, popular texts
might do well to embrace conventions nurtured by prevailing doxa so that it may tear
down the dominant ideology embedded within it.
This analysis of Malcolm X also reinforces a central claim in my dissertation, that
the legitimacy of individual films as sources of knowledge about the past is established
intertextually, across the films themselves, and through secondary sources that encourage
audiences to attribute historical relevance to the messages constructed by these films.
The relationship between a film’s representation of the past and the dominant ideology,
or doxa of a culture, is central to understand how films attain legitimacy as sources of
popular memory.
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Although films that resonate with prevailing knowledge about historic reality may
be readily incorporated into popular memory, films that challenge prevailing
understandings about past events may be dismissed. In my next chapter, I explore
another film, Mario Van Peebles’ Panther (1995), which also depicted radical black
activists who struggled for social and political empowerment within their communities.
My analysis of Panther and journalism attention to it illustrates how films that fail to
embrace dominant ideology might provide alternative understandings of the past, but
have limited potential to incorporate counter-memories into popular culture.
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NOTES TO CHAPTER FIVE
1
Winn (2001) notes that the film portrayed Malcolm X as a less radical, less
volatile figure than other histories of the radical activist have presented (p. 463). Winn
concludes that this portrayal was the outcome of compromises made between filmmakers
and the Hollywood film industry that enabled Malcolm X to challenge Hollywood’s racist
ideological legacy and remain a viable commercial movie (p. 463). My chapter extends
Winn’s observations by attending to the rhetorical features of Lee’s Malcolm X that
enabled the film to integrate new attitudes about racism and radical black activism into
popular memory.
2
Winn (2001) makes a similar argument about Lee’s Malcolm X (p. 459).
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Chapter Six
Truth and ideology in Mario Van Peebles’ Panther
Mario Van Peebles’ film Panther shared many features in common with Lee’s
Malcolm X. Both filmmakers sought to create empowering images of African-Americans
who struggled for racial justice in the 1960s, and featured black activists who called for
economic restructuring of society; likewise, both struggled up against a Hollywood
entertainment industry that insisted that films about blacks were not lucrative, and found
additional support for their films from black artists within the entertainment and film
community.
Although both films defied the industry by bringing their films to
mainstream theatres, Panther did not achieve the box office success or industry accolades
that Malcolm X received. Thus, Panther was not able to integrate counter-hegemonic
messages about black activism into popular culture as forcefully as Malcolm X. I argue
that Panther’s limitations stemmed, at least in part, from its unconventional narrative
format. Van Peebles based his script on a novel that incorporated a fictional narrative into
the film’s history of the Black Panther Party. Concomitantly, the film joined conventions
of the blaxploitation film genre with conventions of documentary film.
Panther’s
limitations also resulted from the film’s controversial representations of black activism
during the 1960s. Indeed, Panther suggested that white police and the FBI used illegal
measures, including drug tracking, to undermine the movement’s success toward the end
of the decade.
In response to the film’s blending of fictional and historical events about the
Panthers, news media critics castigated the film as a “false history.” The distinction
between truth and fiction functioned rhetorically in journalism reviews of Panther by
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delegitimating the memories of the Black Panther Party constructed by the film. I argue
that both the film’s representation of the Panthers and news reviews of the film delimited
the extent to which the film’s images of the BPP could become part of popular memory.
Because the film adopted a narrative and visual style that challenged both popular
conceptions of what constitutes a credible narrative and good cinema, reviewers refused
to accept Panther as a legitimate representation of the past.
I also conclude that
secondary sources reinforced prevailing ideology in light of challenges that Panther
posed to them by suggesting that the entire film should be read as a fiction.
A CONTROVERSIAL FILM ABOUT A RADICAL MOVEMENT
The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense emerged in Oakland, California in
1966. Over the next several years, party members took up arms to defend themselves
against police brutality, created programs that cared for impoverished African-Americans
in their communities, and sought dramatic restructuring of economic and political power
in the United States. By 1969, the Black Panther Party had established chapters in almost
every state in the United States and in several foreign countries. Although the Panthers
successfully organized large numbers of African-Americans throughout the United
States, the movement fell into decline in the early-1970s. Scholars and journalists have
attributed the Black Panther Party’s demise to infighting within the movement and to the
FBI’s efforts to destroy it. Between 1968 and 1971, the FBI’s COINTELPRO (Counterintelligence Program) resulted in frequent arrests of Black Panther Party members, raids
of party offices, and the deaths of at least 29 party members. As Churchill (2001) and
Foner (1970) demonstrate, many of these arrests were made on dubious charges that
could not be substantiated in court. Likewise, party office raids were often based on false
pretenses. In 1969, Chicago police shot and killed party leader Fred Hampton and his
colleague Mark Clark. Although police officers claimed they shot in self-defense, a
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Federal Grand Jury concluded that charges were false and that Hampton and Clark had
been shot in their sleep (Foner, 1970, p. xxvi).1
Despite the remarkable history of the Panther’s emergence and demise, popular
media have paid scant attention to the movement.
Recognizing the dearth of public
knowledge about the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (referred to as the BPP
throughout the rest of this paper), film director Mario Van Peebles made the movie
Panther based on a novel written by his father Melvin Van Peebles.
In contrast to
previous films about civil rights activism and the Black Power Movement, Mario Van
Peebles refused to compromise with Hollywood executives to make his film.
Van
Peebles told reporters covering the film’s release that he and his father refused to submit
to the industry’s requests to feature a white actor and explained that he wasn’t willing to
compromise the film’s message to receive a larger budget for the film:
If we were negotiating now, I’m sure [Hollywood producers] would say, ‘Make
one of the lead Panthers white, and get Brad Pitt to star in the film.’ But I thought
about what my dad said, which is that history goes back to the winner, and you’re
surely not winning if you’re not telling your own history. So we held off until we
could make the film our way.” (Kim, 1995, p. 3NC)
According to his own statements, Van Peebles created Panther to pose a direct challenge
to the Hollywood industry’s penchant for representing the interests of white and affluent
audiences who make films profitable.2 Indeed, Panther posed a defiant challenge to the
Hollywood film industry. The film flouted convention. Both its narrative style and edgy
editing techniques rebelled against Hollywood norms for historical film.
PANTHER AS AN HISTORICAL BLAXPLOITATION DOCUDRAMA
The film’s narrative represented a cross breed of docudrama and blaxploitation
film genres. As a docudrama, the film featured several events from the history of
Oakland’s Black Panther Party. Montage sequences in the film drew attention to the
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Panthers’ free breakfast program for community children, sickle-cell anemia testing for
blacks, and community meetings to raise awareness of racism and oppression in the
United States. Scenes in this film also featured FBI Director Herbert Hoover’s efforts to
discredit and destroy the movement; during the film, Hoover characterized Panthers as
criminals in the news media and organized FBI efforts to terrorize BPP members and
officers. The film spotlighted violent confrontations between BPP members and state
officials. Key moments in the film highlight Huey Newton’s October 28, 1967 arrest for
killing a police officer, police assaults on BPP offices in cities across the country between
1968 and 1969, and the April 6, 1968 confrontation between Panthers and Oakland police
officers that ended in the shooting death of eighteen year old BPP member Bobby
Hutton.
Scenes in the film equally highlighted the BPP’s resistance to state-sanctioned
repression against blacks. These included the April 1, 1967 BPP-led protest of the
shooting death of Denzil Dowell at a police station in Richmond, CA, the May 2, 1967
BPP march into the California state capitol in Sacramento, and the February 17, 1968
rally at the Alameda County Courthouse to free Huey Newton from prison. As the film
recalled, Stokely Carmichael, leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee,
called for Huey’s release “by any means necessary.” The film also depicted Newton’s
acquittal after the prosecution failed to collect evidence against him. These scenes
ultimately portrayed the BPP as a volatile movement that sought freedom from racial
injustice and economic empowerment for black people.
Panther’s narrative blended documentary films’ emphasis on representing events
from the past with blaxploitation films’ emphasis on black empowerment from repressive
forces of a white dominated society. Blaxploitation films are small budget action films
that flourished during the early to mid-1970s (Briggs, 2003; Poniewozik, 2002). These
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films featured black protagonists as criminal heroes who fought against white law
enforcement officials. A critique of racial politics, or of racial biases inherent within
prevailing power structures, underlies the narratives within these genres (Briggs, 2003).
It is perhaps unsurprising that Mario van Peebles film echoed several features of the
blaxploitation film genre. Poniewozik (2002) credits Melvin van Peebles, Mario van
Peebles’s father, for creating the first blaxploitation film, Sweet Sweetback’s BaadAssss
Song (1971) (p. 62). Indeed, this genre was entirely appropriate for a film about the
Black Panther Party. Themes in blaxploitation films resonate with political critiques
central to activists within the Black Power Movement. As Poniewozik concludes, the
film genre “owed its world view to militant black groups like the Black Panthers” (p. 62).
According to Poniewozik, Melvin Van Peebles 1971 film “stunned audiences” by
showing a “strong black man who fought…and tangled with white cops, yet didn’t get
killed for it by the end of the movie” (p. 62). McKissack (1997) suggests that this genre
was constituted by the first series of films that primarily featured black actors and put
blacks in powerful roles.
Panther reverberated themes central to the blaxploitation genre by featuring the
Panthers’ use of armed self defense struggle to resist local white police and FBI agents
who brutalized local blacks. Black resistance to repressive white authorities resonated
with both the blaxploitation genre and with actual events from the history of the Black
Panther Party; however, other narrative elements in the film did not resonate equally with
both filmic genres. As Panther blended documentary and blaxploitation film genres, it
incorporated fictional events within a broader historical narrative. Initially, the film
intertwined historical reality and fiction by telling the history of the Black Panther Party’s
emergence in Oakland, California, through the film’s fictional main character, Judge.
Judge, played by Kadeem Hardison, represented a student attending college on a GI
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scholarship who was compelled by the Panther’s call for community self empowerment
and self defense against a violent Oakland Police force. After he decided to join the Black
Panther Party, Huey Newton (played by Marcus Chong) took him aside and asked him to
mislead the Oakland Police Force by surreptitiously acting as a Party infiltrator. Much of
the film’s drama revolved around Judge’s relationship with Detective Baker, who asked
Judge to set the Panthers up for robbery, and Judge’s relationship with BPP member,
Tyrone, who suspected Judge was working for the police.
This narrative framework fit well with the blaxploitation genre’s depictions of
blacks struggling to find justice within a corrupt political system. It also resembled many
of the tactics that FBI agents used during the 1960s to infiltrate the Black Panther Party.
Indeed, the blaxploitation genre itself can be considered a site of counter-memory about
radical black activism. The genre’s resonance to actual events from the history of state
repression against activists demonstrates how fictional forms themselves are rooted in
counter-memories of injustices that have been disregarded by predominant political and
institutional memory (Lipsitz, 1990, p. xiii). I would argue, however, that the film’s
narrative framework disabled the film from incorporating the memory of political
repression into popular memory. As a counter-memory that has been repressed in popular
culture, this narrative itself was at odds with popular memory established by other texts.
As a following section in this chapter explains, the film’s use of fictional characters to tell
the story of political repression against the Panthers discouraged audiences from
understanding the narrative’s resonance to historical events.
Although many scenes accurately depicted public statements and official
decisions made by the FBI against the Panthers, the film’s conclusion portrayed a lessaccepted theory about the Panthers’ demise. The film suggested that when Hoover
realized the BPP would continue to grow in spite his efforts to disable it, he urged FBI
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agents to collude with the Mafia to bring cheap cocaine and heroin into black urban
ghettos. The final scenes of the film depicted fictional characters Alma, Tyrone, and
Judge destroying a warehouse filled with drugs. When Tyrone was shot by a drug-dealer,
he heroically convinced Alma and Judge to leave the warehouse without him. The film’s
final image focused on Tyrone, who lit the warehouse on fire as police riddled his body
with bullets. In the film’s final minute, Judge’s voice was heard reading the following
words that appeared on screen: “In 1970, there were 300,000 addicts in the United States.
Yesterday there were 3 million. The way I see it, the struggle continues. This film is
dedicated to all of the Black Panthers who gave their lives in the struggle.” The film’s
closing scene reinforced Panthe’sr counter-hegemonic role. Unlike most films valorizing
the law and order system, including civil rights films, Panther directed blame for
endemic poverty and drug use in black inner-cities on federal and state authorities.
According to Panther, the rise in drug use among African-Americans was a consequence
of the state’s efforts to shut down collective activism and community development
among the black urban poor. The FBI’s use of illegal tactics to destroy the movement is
well documented in government and historical texts, but there is no direct evidence that
the FBI worked with the Mafia to bring narcotics into Oakland.
Thus, the film’s
narrative highlighted illegal and brutal FBI tactics that actually did occur as well as those
that did not.
Several reviewers noted that the film’s final scene, as well as the scene of Bobby
Hutton’s death, resembled scenes from Van Peebles’ earlier films, New Jack City, and
Posse (Kehr, 1995, p. 37; Maslin, 1995, p. C18; Murray, 1995, p. 7B; Ross, 1995, p. 16).
These scenes featured violent, armed struggles between competing factions.
The
nighttime settings for these scenes provided visually spectacular images; the darkness of
night sharply contrasted with the brightness of explosions and broken glass shining in the
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moonlight. Dramatic images of buildings being destroyed and bodies being wounded by
gunfire were intensified by dramatic orchestral music. Scenes that shared visual cues
from Van Peebles’ fictional films made it difficult for audiences to distinguish fictional
narratives from real events in the history of the BPP.
Audiences who did not identify
with the black protagonists of blaxploitation films might have indicted the Panther’s
actions as criminal, rather than blaming the political and economic system for reinforcing
racism. The film’s narrative coherence with the blaxploitation genre may have inhibited
audiences from reading it as a site of collective memory about a social movement that
sought to eradicate racial and economic injustices against African-Americans.
Particularly for audiences with little knowledge of COINTELPRO’s illegal tactics against
activist organizations during the late 1960s, the entire film could be read as an
implausible and sensational story.
ENTANGLING ARCHIVAL AND FICTIONAL FILM IN PANTHER
In addition to using narrative techniques that combined a fictional story with
historical events in BPP history, Van Peebles used visual and aural techniques that
simultaneously drew attention to and troubled the distinction between documentary and
entertainment film. Panther interspersed black and white film with color film to depict
actual, recreated, and fictional events. Simultaneously, this film integrated the voices of
actual BPP activists as commentary for the recreated and fictional events portrayed in the
film. Several montage sequences in the movie interspersed different images in color film
with images in black and white film. The movie began by presenting black and white
footage of speeches delivered by civil rights leaders Martin Luther King and Malcolm X
and of white police officers beating African-Americans. Because black and white film
typically represents vintage recordings of events that took place before the invention of
color film, scenes shot in black and white suggest that the movie included actual footage
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of BPP activism from the 1960s. Nichols (1991) explains that documentaries require
both the viewers’ prior knowledge and textual cues to distinguish documentary film from
fictional narrative discourse that pertains to the historical world (p. 24). Audiences
recognize that documentaries pertain to the historical world, in contrast to fictional films
that make no claims about a real or objective past, because they have developed skills of
comprehension that help them recognize historical figures and events that occurred for
reasons beyond the recordings of them.
The montage sequences that opened the movie in black and white film provided
audiences with visual cues for the film’s authenticity. Because black and white film
typically signals that the footage is a vintage recording of an event from the past, the film
prompted audiences to recognize the film’s resonance with an historical world that exists
outside filmic experience. Viewers with even limited television exposure are likely to
have seen images Martin Luther King and Malcolm X from earlier broadcasts, so the
images of these civil rights figures lent further credibility to the film as a source of
memory about the past. By providing ostensibly authentic images of civil rights activism
and racial injustice, these documentary-type images suggested that Panther should be
read as a text that addresses the historic record of African-Americans struggles for justice
and frames the Black Power Movement as an extension of civil rights activism.
Panther’s black and white footage of both real and recreated events in BPP
history appeared intermittently between color footage.
Initially, scenes in color
corresponded with the film’s fictional narrative about Judge. The scene following the
movie’s introduction to Seale and Newton depicted Judge in color. As Judge witnessed a
car accident at the intersection in front of his house, Judge’s voice told audiences, “I
guess you could say for me, the Black Panther Party started in my mom’s front yard.” By
contrasting black and white images of actors portraying Newton and Seale with color
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images of Judge’s experience with the movement, Panther visually distinguished
fictional narrative from a documentary history.
The film’s use of film blurred this distinction as the movie’s narrative also
blended fictional with historical narratives about the Panthers. Although black and white
footage of events from the civil rights movement ostensibly represented an authentic
representation of the movement’s history in the initial scenes in the film, the author’s
intermittent use of black and white film and color film conflated footage from the 1960s
with scenes recreated by Van Peebles. For example, images of Martin Luther King and
Malcolm X followed black and white footage of actors Marcus Chong and Courtney B.
Vance portraying Huey Netwon and Bobby Seale (respectively) as Judge’s voice
described how Newton and Seale started the movement. Judge told audiences, “What
became the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense really started with two guys, Bobby
Seale and Huey Newton, ‘Defend Yourselves.’” Because black and white film was a
visual cue representing realism in the initial scenes of the film, the appearance of Chong
and Vance in black and white film blurred the distinction between real images and
reconstructions of BPP activism.
The distinction between documentary history and the fictional narrative also
became hazy as the film continued. Several montage sequences in the film provided
images of BPP activism and FBI repression against the Panthers from documentary and
recreated images. Black and white footage of African-Americans picketing a business
for its unequal employment practices intermingled with black and white images of actor
Wesley Jonathan, portraying BPP member Bobby Hutton as he taught young children
about community empowerment. These scenes were also interspersed with color images
of actors representing Panther party members painting a mural that reads, “All Power to
the People.”
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As the film progressed, color film and black and white film collapsed the
distinctions between documentary and fiction film that the first scenes initially
established. During a montage sequence that transposed images of FBI attacks on BPP
offices with images of the BPP’s growth in membership, black and white images of
activists in line formation were interspersed with color images of party offices being
besieged with gunfire and bombs. Words at the bottom of the screen during scenes
depicting FBI attacks on Panther offices highlighted the cities, “Seattle”, “Des Moines”,
“Denver”, “Los Angeles”, “Chicago”, “New York”, “Newark”, and “Little Rock”.
Following conventions of documentary film, these captions suggested that these
bombings depicted real events in BPP history. While captions marked the images of
besieged Panther offices as a representation of real events, these images appeared in
color. Because color film depicted the narrative revolving around the fictional Judge
until this montage sequence appeared, the film’s use of color film in this sequence
reminded audiences that the images were indeed, representations. In other scenes, black
and white film and color film appeared arbitrarily. Both black and white and color film
depicted the Panther’s demonstration at the California State legislature on May 2, 1967.
Likewise, color film and black and white film portrayed the riots that occurred
throughout urban centers in the United States after Martin Luther King was assassinated
on April 4, 1968. As images of the same events appeared in both color and black and
white film, Van Peebles scrambled the visual cues that had initially distinguished
documentary from fictional footage in the film and blurred categories of archival footage,
recreated events, and fictional narratives that audiences might have used to identify the
film as either a historical or fictional film.
Aural cues that entangled actual footage of the BPP with dramatizations
constructed by Van Peebles enhanced visual cues that conflated archival footage with
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recreated footage of BPP history. During the montage sequence that featured FBI attacks
on BPP offices, the voice of Kathleen Cleaver described the “pattern of harassment”
against the party. For a moment, a documentary film image of Cleaver spoke to the
audience from a microphone.
Seconds later, actor Bokeem Woodbine portraying
fictional character, Tyrone, appeared on screen as his voice urged members to embrace
their African heritage.
Following this scene, recreated footage of FBI members
exchanging gunfire with BPP members accompany Tyrone’s voice.
Then, scenes
depicting FBI raids on Panther offices were interrupted by an archival photograph of Fred
Hampton.
As the final images of police officers chasing Panther Party members
completed the montage sequence, Hampton’s voice concluded, “Stand up against the
pigs. That’s what the Panthers are doing.” Because actors from the film appeared in both
black and white and in color, viewers could not use visual cures of film color to
distinguish documentary from recreated footage of the Panther Party. Because these
voiceovers came from audio clips of activists speaking during the 1960s and from actors
portraying fictional activists in 1995, it was hard to distinguish “real” from “fictional”
portrayals of BPP activists. The voices of real BPP activists that corresponded to images
of actors playing fictional Panther Party members, and, conversely, voices of fictional
characters that corresponded to recreated scenes of actual events from BPP history
conflated real with recreated images in BPP history. Likewise, the combination of these
aural and visual techniques collapsed recreated events with fictional ones. Visually and
aurally, Van Peebles radically denaturalized the signifiers that give films meaning as
historic reality; the scrambling of cues suggested that historic truths are, to some extent,
fiction, and that all fictions have at their core a basis in historic reality.
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DISTINGUISHING FACT AND FICTION IN JOURNALISM REVIEWS OF PANTHER
Telling lies or empowering the oppressed?
News reviews indicated that the blurred boundaries between fictional and
historical narratives in the film constrained the film’s potential to challenge prevailing
assumptions about the Panthers. The co-mingling of fictional and actual events from BPP
history provided fodder, if not a catalyst, for mainstream media condemnation of the film.
Near the date of the film’s release on May 3, 1995, Panther was met with much
opposition. Most notably, ex-Panther Bobby Seale and David Horowitz, leader of the
conservative Center for the Study of Popular Culture, condemned the movie. While
Seale complained that the movie portrayed Panthers as “thugs,”3 Horowitz opined that
the film ignored atrocities committed by BPP members and depicted the FBI as working
closely with the Mafia to destroy the Panthers.4 In April, a month before the film’s
release, David Horowitz placed full page advertisements in Variety and Hollywood
Reporter that castigated the movie for its misrepresentation of the BPP (Fine, 1995, p.
1D; Sherman, 1995, p. 011). After Horowitz castigated the film in Hollywood industry
journals, mainstream newspapers began draw negative attention to the film as well.
Many reports that featured criticisms of the film evoked the topos of truth as a
criterion for judgment. Several newspapers, including the Washington Post and USA
Today, featured Horowitz’s and Seale’s condemnations against Panther. Horowitz’ and
Seale’s complaints against the film emerged again during the second week of May as Van
Peebles responded to criticism. In these reports, Horowitz condemned the film as a “twohour lie” (Carroll, 1995, p. 31; Charles, 1995, p. 29; Graham, 1995, p. 63; Lieby, 1995, p.
G01; Sherman, 1995, p. 011; Turner, 1995, p. 11; Vincent, 1995, p. E1). Likewise,
reports cited Bobby Seale who denounced the film as “bootleg fiction” and announced
that he signed a deal with Warner Brothers to write a more accurate screenplay about the
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Panthers (“Black Panthers,” 1995, p. O17; Carroll, 1995, p. 31; Graham, 1995, p. 63;
Howe, 1995, p. N49; James, 1995, sec. 2, p. 1; Lieby, 1995, p. G01; Sherman, 1995, p.
O11; Turner, 1995, p. 11; Vincent, 1995, p. E1).
News reports covering the controversy surrounding Panther frequently
counterposed Horowitz’ and Seale’s condemnations of the film against Van Peebles’
defense of his film. According to many reports, Van Peebles lauded the film as a means
of educating a predominantly complaisant and marginalized audience of “young black
kids about their history” (Turner, 1995, p. 11).5 Marcus Chong, who played the role of
Newton in the film, also told reporters that the film would provide “an education that's
different from the one they're getting at colonized school systems” (Jones, 1995, p. Y05).
Both Van Peebles and Chong claimed that Panther represented an important counternarrative to the black history taught in most schools. The Chicago Sun-Times quotes Van
Peebles thusly:
[E]ducation is used to socialize the oppressed to the oppressor's point of view.
One of the things we dealt with in this film is that most people had only heard
what the media said about the Panthers -- that they were scary, militant guys with
guns who were very angry at everything and everyone. Very few people knew
that the Panthers had breakfast programs for children or that they helped
implement sickle cell anemia programs for the poor. In school, you learn about
slavery, but you don't learn about empowerment. (Kim, 1995, p. 3NC)
For Van Peebles, the film’s educational value rested in its ability to encourage black to
stand up for themselves collectively. In contrast to critics’ central topos of truth as
criteria for evaluating the film, Van Peebles articulated a topos of empowerment. He told
the press, “I hope that young people will come to this movie and see what happens when
they work to empower their communities” (Turner, 1995, p. 11). Likewise, USA Today
reported that Van Peebles wanted to “remind people of a forgotten group of aggressive
proponents of black power” who believed in “all power to the people” (Fine, 1995, p.
1D). Melvin Van Peebles echoed his son during an interview on NPR. He told reporters
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that the movie was more than a history lesson, because “history can tell a lot of
stories…This history lesson also encourages the young people to be active” (Dowell,
1995, Lexis-Nexis transcript).
The topos of education to empower young black
audiences in Van Peebles’ press releases bore similarities to the topos of education in
coverage surrounding Malcolm X.
Paradoxically, this topos was not reflected in
newspaper reviews or coverage of Panther.
Few reviews of the film shared the Van Peebleses’ arguments favoring the film.
Instead, most reviews reiterated Horowitz’ and Seale’s central topos of truth to condemn
Panther. When the film was released to theatres on May 3, 1995, a wave of negative
reviews appeared in newspapers across the country. Several of these critics denounced
Panther for privileging the perspectives of BPP members in the film. As Persall (1995)
wrote, this focus created a “biased” representation of the Black Panther Party (p. 7).
Writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, Stack (1995) told readers that Van Peebles
movie reflected his “heedless pursuit to define black heroes -- and demonize whites” (p.
E1). Reviewers also condemned the film’s portrayal of the FBI and its Director Herbert
Hoover as an “outlandish cartoon” (Carroll, 1995, p. 31) and as “one dimensional” (Fine,
1995, p. 1D). In their critiques, reviews predominantly featured the film’s portrayal of
the FBI in collusion with the Mafia against the Panthers. Reports characterized this plot
as “a particularly big leap” (Lieby, 1995, p. G01), “far-fetched” (Carroll, 1995, p. 31),
“outrageous” (Persall, 1995, p. 7), “wildly irresponsible” (Charles, 1995, p. 31), “wild
speculation” (Ross, 1995, p. 16), “deeply paranoid” (Barnes, 1995, p.3E), and “crazily
narrow” (James, 1995, sec. 2, p. 1).
Likewise, CNN coverage of the controversy
surrounding Panther quoted Horowitz when he described the plot as a “fantastic stretch.”
Only one review suggested that the plot was “not so farfetched” (Jones, 1995, p. Y05).
Instead, many reports concluded that the film presented a “simplistic” (Fine, May 3,
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1995, p. 1D; Denerstein, 1995, p. 11D), “burlesque” (Murray, 1995, p. 7B), and “onenote” (Maslin, 1995, p. C18) approach to understanding history.
These reviews
suggested that the film’s plot was illegitimate and unacceptable for public audiences
interested in understanding the history of the BPP.
Distinguishing art and history
A presumed distinction between art and history was central to these critiques.
Thus, a third topos which privileged this distinction played a central in reviewers’
condemnations of the film. According to many critics, Panther presented an illegitimate
portrayal of BPP history because it combined elements of both fact and fiction.
Denerstein (1995) wrote that Van Peebles “choice of fictional character Judge” as the
film’s major protagonist was a “major problem” (p. 11D); Kehr (1995) described the
movie as a “confounding jumble of accepted fact, fictional invention and wild
speculation” (p. 37); and Maslin (1995) characterized the film as a “fact-warping history
lesson” (p. C18). Fine (1995) complained that Van Peebles tried to “pass off his story as
history” even though it blended “fiction with fact” (p. 1D). Murray (1995) likewise
complained that Panther’s “facts start drowning in movie cliché” (p. 7B).
These reviews insisted that strong borders should separate emotion from fact,
interpretation from history, and drama from accuracy. One reporter covering the debate
between Horowitz and Van Peebles characterized Panther as a “glossy amalgam of fact
and fiction” (Leiby, 1995, p. G01). Reporter Leiby (1995) also told Washington Post
readers that Panther should not be sold as “a historically inspired work” (p. G01). Leiby
and several other reporters suggested that the presence of fictional narrative in Panther
negated the film’s messages about the history of the BPP. Gilbert (1995) warned readers
that Panther’s “oversimplified, fiction-drenched account” was “definitely not a
documentary” (p. 33).
Strickler (1995) charged that Panther was “more intent on
189
building a conspiracy theory than in presenting history” (p. 3E) and Howe (1995)
described Panther as a “fictionalized account” that is “more emotional than
dispassionately dogged about the facts” (p. N49). Howe concluded that the film was not
without some merit: “If historical accuracy is ignored, the movie's absorbing stuff, a
rousing blend of drama, creative interpretation and likable performances” (p. N49). For
these writers, documentary and fictional narrative must remain separate; fiction,
ostensibly distinct from historical facts, contaminates everything in its presence.
Because Panther incorporated fictitious elements in its portrayal of the BPP, these
reviewers concluded that Panther conveyed an illegitimate perspective of racial discord
in the 1960s. As they divorced fiction from fact, these reviews presumed the universal
authority of history and eschewed the notion that all representations of the past are
inevitably incomplete and limited by the scope of the individuals who construct them.
Only one reviewer, Persall (1995), acknowledged that particular interpretations of the
past may not speak for the perspectives of everyone implicated within them. “Nothing is
more elusive or subjective than truth, but Panther, like JFK, has the blindside courage to
ask: Whose truth is it, anyway?” (p. 2B).
In contrast to Persall, critics who condemned the fictitious elements in the film
suggested that audiences would not learn the real history of the BPP by watching the
film. Gilbert (1995) concluded that Panther “does not succeed at moving us any closer to
the truth” (p. 33). Commentary provided by some of the film’s harshest critics indicated
that the film generated a storm of controversy, not because the film had limited
educational value, but because the film might have persuaded audiences to perceive the
film as a true history of the BPP.
190
Agitprop: reality or ideology?
A notion that Panther constituted “agitprop,” or agitational propaganda, emerged
as another topos within reviews that criticized the film. Several critics who insisted on
the centrality of “facts” and the illegitimacy of “fiction” presumed that young audiences
were likely to be manipulated by the film. While several reviewers based their judgments
of Panther on their own understandings of the history of the BPP, they did not assume
that audiences were able to make similar assessments. Kempley (1995) wrote that “the
trouble” with the film was that, “the movie itself comes with no disclaimer” that it is “not
a documentary but a dramatization” (p. C01). Ross (1995) expressed particular concern
for young audiences who might be easily manipulated by the film. “The sad part, of
course, is that modern young moviegoers – most of whom weren’t born when the
Panthers arose – will not know how much of this yarn is pure invention” (p. N49).
For other reviewers, the film was particularly damaging for its potential to
influence African-Americans who might identify with the film’s protagonists. Working
from the presumption that the film represented an illegitimate portrayal of the BPP,
several of the film’s harshest critics lambasted the film as propaganda or “agitprop” for
radical black activists. Howe (1995) said the movie made “absorbing, agitprop
entertainment” (p. N49), and Ross (1995) stated that the movie was “wrapped in rhetoric,
agitprop, and outlandish accusations” (p. 16).
Such agitational propaganda, some
reviewers suggested, might threaten American democracy.
Carroll (1995) likened
scenes in the movie to the “propagandizing and sloganeering … that once characterized
Soviet socialist realism” (p. 31). According to Kamiya (1995) the movie was reminiscent
of “nothing so much as a World War II propaganda film” (Gilliam, 1995, p. B01).
Reviews that compared the film to propaganda for presumably non-democratic nationalist
interests suggest that the film might provoke a new generation of radical black activists.
191
Following his critique of the film, Carroll (1995) asked ominously, “Could a Black
Panther Party arise again?” (p. 31). Likewise, Vincent (1995) quoted Horowitz, who
noted that the film “portrays the Panthers as idealists and all the police as Nazis. It’s an
incitement to inner-city blacks” (p. E1). Reviewers who anticipated that the film would
incite inner-city blacks conveyed some recognition that experiences for AfricanAmericans in this country are not the same for wealthier, whiter Americans. These
reviews suggested that black audiences might be encouraged to identify with the AfricanAmericans in the film and may therefore challenge their own relationship with the state.
Indeed, the topos of truth, agitprop, and the borders critics articulated to separate
fact from fiction lent support to critics who argued that perspectives about the past from
marginalized groups represent a false sense of history. Critics who insisted on the
centrality of “the facts” and the illegitimacy of “fiction” relied upon the presence of a
transcendent and universal truth that all audiences must be able to grasp in order to
understand the implications of Panther’s narrative.
Despite scholarship exposing
journalistic notions of objectivity as a myth, Panther’s reviewers featured notions of
objective truth as the crux of their critique.6 The topos of truth and the distinction
between fact and fiction drawn throughout these reviews affirm Fiske’s (1987)
observations that appeals to truth and realism often blunt social critiques presented by
popular media. When texts present a critical, or left-wing view of social life, Fiske,
explains, they are condemned by the mainstream press as unrealistic (p. 34).
By
characterizing radical perspectives as false, critics draw attention away from the
viewpoints of subordinate groups.
Appeals to the topos of truth, and to the distinction between fiction and fact
redirected attention from racism and social inequity toward questions of ostensibly
objective concerns.
These reviews simultaneously condemned the film’s fictional
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elements and warned readers that the movie might provoke African-Americans to protest
the impoverished conditions of the cities in which they lived. Together, these messages
told audiences that movements against racism in this country may be the result of
audiences easily duped by dramatic fiction disguised as history.
Celebrating film as art, not fiction
The majority of the film’s defenders did not disagree that the film was a dramatic
fiction; instead, they rebutted critics by suggesting that the film should be valued for its
artistic merits.7 Kempley (1995) noted that Van Peebles was as “entitled to his vision -no matter how selective or factually skewed -- as any other artist” (p. C01). James (1995)
wrote, “By their very existence [controversial films such as Panther] can prod viewers to
think about movies, to challenge the film makers' theories, to judge them the way they
would judge any serious work of art that blends fact and imagination” (sec. 2, p. 1). To
protest the film on the basis of historical inaccuracy, she wrote, is to ask filmmakers “to
exercise a scary self-censorship and to create less daring art” (sec. 2, p.1). By focusing
on the inherent value of artistic creation, reviewers such as Kempley and James suggested
that history and art may be separate, but both have an important social function.
By responding to critics on the basis of the topos of art and on its presumed
distinction from fact, the film’s defenders privileged the criteria that critics identified as a
means to denounce the film. Reviewers who characterized Panther as an artistic creation
expressed support for the film; however, they also discouraged audiences from
considering the film’s representation of the BPP as a legitimate portrayal and political
analysis of important events in the movement’s history. Several writers emphasized that
although fiction should be distinguished from fact, filmmakers are not scholars. Millar
(1995) argued that the film succeeds, despite its biased perspective of the Panthers,
because “the Van Peebleses are neither journalists nor historians” (p. 12). Howe (1995)
193
suggested that the film’s misrepresentations should be overlooked because “Sorting fact
from fiction is a thorny thing -- unless you're something of a social historian” (p. N49).
In his coverage of the controversy surrounding Panther, Graham (1995) emphasized that
filmmakers “have neither the desire nor the aptitude to portray the truth” (p. 63). He
extensively quoted former Panther and scholar Kathleen Cleaver, who told him, "I'm not
convinced that dramatic films are the place for historical accuracy, …A movie is a
movie; a movie is not history….History is presented by scholars, and I don't think anyone
will say Hollywood is a hotbed of scholars” (p. 63).
As they framed the debate about the film’s merits around the role of art and
freedom of expression, reviewers who defended the film as a work of art neutralized the
critique of Panther as a politically charged film. Several of the films’ defenders further
undermined the film’s potential to draw attention to racial injustice in the United States
by insisting that individual films have little, if any, consequence for audiences who watch
them. Stack (1995) wrote that movies are supposed to be “outlandish.” He concluded, “If
the old phrase ‘it's only a movie’ weren't so widely accepted, folks would have torn down
the big screen long ago” (p. E1). These reviewers suggested that readers should not be
alarmed by the film’s negative representation of the FBI and positive portrayal of the
BPP; after all, they suggested, Panther was just a movie.
These reviews indicated that the film’s critics were reactionaries; Panther, they
argued, was not likely to inspire disaffected youth to engage in political critique and
activism. As James (1995) told readers in the title of her review of Panther, controversial
films are “not schoolbooks” (sec. 2, p. 1). By supporting the film as a work of art,
favorable reviews of Panther suggested that the controversy surrounding the film should
not be about whether Panther was agitprop or edutainment, but about whether it deserves
to be treated according to the values of freedom of expression. Thus, the film’s role as a
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legitimate source for understanding the BPP’s struggle for racial justice and
empowerment was never fully considered.
By guiding the perspectives of people who read or watched these reviews,
journalistic coverage of Panther influenced the film’s distribution. Reviewing the film
for home video watchers, Sherman (1995) noted that Seale’s public denunciation of the
film damaged the film’s reputation; thus, Panther flopped.” (p. 011).
If Seale’s
denunciation inhibited the film’s marketability, film critics’ overwhelmingly negative
reviews of the film may also have hindered distributors’ from keeping the film in
theatres. Indeed, Panther showed in theatres for only a few weeks; few video stores
currently carry copies of the film.8
CHALLENGES FOR A CRITICAL MEMORY OF SOCIAL PROTEST
Panther’s narrative was not entirely implausible; historians’ and activists’
accounts provide numerous accounts of FBI efforts to suppress the movement, often
using illegal tactics to do so (Churchill and Vander Wall, 1990). However, rather than
understand the film’s narrative as a plausible account, the film was rejected as an outright
“lie.” Journalism reviews did not accord legitimacy to Panther in popular culture because
it neither conformed to established ideology nor to mainstream film conventions. It
needed to conform to at least one of these expectations to gain a foothold in popular
memory. The film was the narrative equivalent to the Black Power Movement’s political
critique of the social, economic, and political order. As mainstream civil rights leaders
rejected the Black Power Movement’s critique of the political order, mainstream media
critics dismissed Panther.
Reviewers’ rejection of oppositional discourse as fiction
demonstrates that the film was not able to attain a position within the prevailing doxa of
popular culture. Journalistic reception to Panther suggests that unfamiliar discourses
about the past face a particular challenge; in order to become part of popular memory,
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they must associate them with what is already known or commonly understood. This
film and journalism critiques of it demonstrate how films that don’t appeal to prevailing
doxa of liberal capitalism are marginalized in popular culture. Consequently, they don’t
prompt the construction of additional memories about the Black Panther Party or about
racism in urban neighborhoods during the 1960s.
By negating the film’s legitimacy as a source of memory about the Panthers,
journalistic reviews and news coverage of the controversy surrounding Panther
discouraged audiences from recognizing the film’s accurate representations of racial and
economic inequality in the United States. Even Panther’s defenders eschewed the film’s
counter-hegemonic potential by conceding critics’ charges that the film portrayed an
inaccurate and implausible account of the BPP. Critics very rarely acknowledged the
film’s historically accurate portrayals of police repression against the Panthers.9 None of
the film’s defenders brought attention to the film’s representation of FBI attacks on the
BPP or to the ways in which state police and FBI agents represented in the film had reallife counterparts who infiltrated the BPP to spread distrust and encourage violence from
within the party (Churchill, 2001, pp. 89-98). These omissions discouraged audiences
from recognizing the coercive powers of state agencies that have repressed minorities and
activists who challenged the economic and government institutions that have oppressed
them.
Missing from most reviews was any recognition of the economic and social
oppression against blacks that has persisted into the 2000s.
While these reviews
expressed dismay over the film’s portrayal of race relations, they ignored how many
African-Americans who were portrayed in the film or who watched the film have
struggled to overcome impoverished conditions and have been abused and berated by the
predominantly white police force in this country. In 1995, the year Panther was released
196
to theaters, several cities witnessed the deaths of unarmed African-Americans by police
officers.11 State convictions of people arrested on drug-related charges also reflect
continued racist practices within United States law enforcement agencies. Although the
FBI may not have colluded with the Mafia to bring drugs into urban ghettos, AfricanAmericans are four times more likely than whites to face prison terms for using narcotics
(Davidson, 1999, p. 42; Freedman, 1998, p. 35-38; “Study,” 2003, p. 8). Come black
audiences might have found a ring of “truth” to the idea that drug-control policies in the
United States are a sign of racial discrimination. By projecting images that resonated
with the experiences of many subordinated groups, this film might have had a useful
solidifying function for counter-publics rarely represented in mainstream media.
Counter-memories provided by the film told audiences already critical of prevailing
social and economic relations that efforts to win social change might best be won through
collective organizing and community activism.
For more mainstream audiences, especially those attentive to national news
media, newspaper reviews may have discouraged audiences from considering the realities
of social injustice depicted by the film that prompted the Black Panther Party to organize
for social justice. By forcing borders between “truth” and “fiction” in Panther, these
reviews discouraged audiences from recognizing how considerations of truth and justice
are shaped by individuals’ social, political, and economic experiences.
Thus, these
reviewers obscured the reality of oppression against African-Americans as they decried
the film for misrepresenting “the facts.”
Although the mainstream press ignored the contributions Panther made to
understanding race relations in recent United States history, Panther’s failure to become
part of popular memory cannot be laid entirely at the feet of news media critics. The
film’s unconventional editing and narrative discouraged mainstream reviewers from
197
understanding the film as a source of historical information.
By incorporating a
sensational narrative in the midst of a film that purported to educate audiences about a
radical social movement organization rarely represented by mainstream media, Panther
lost credibility among credulous audience members who had little understanding of or
experience with injustice in the United States. Thus, Van Peebles’ enmeshing of fictional
narrative with actual events in BPP history ultimately aided critics who sought to
discredit either or both the film and the Panthers. Furthermore, the film’s fictional
elements disabled the film’s advocates from justifying the film’s merits as a legitimate
site for collectively remembering the role of the BPP in American history or for valuing
the ideals that the party stood for.
Ultimately, the film’s counter-memories of BPP activism did not generate
collective consciousness of systematic repression in the United States because it could
not gain a foothold in commercial media. It failed to intervene in our popular memory
because the film’s intermingling of documentary and fictional elements in the film and
journalistic borders separating fact from fiction delimited the film’s legitimacy as a
historical narrative. As Ebert (1995) noted, Van Peebles never provided evidence that the
FBI flooded Oakland with drugs (p. 45). Ebert aptly concluded that Panther’s narrative:
does a disservice to young people who want to understand what really
happened…At the end of the film, we are informed, ‘Before the Panthers were
crushed, they had succeeded in establishing chapters in almost every state.’
There's the real story -- how they did it, who they were, how they were crushed.
That's the movie still to be made. (p. 45)
As Ebert implied, counter-memories of the Panthers are still needed to intervene
in the prevailing memory of oppression and activism in the United States. There is much
that we can learn from the history of the BPP. By studying the emergence of the BPP, we
can gain insight into the ways that social movement organizations blossom in the midst of
trenchant opposition. Explorations of BPP history can also illuminate the factors that
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disrupt or destroy activists’ efforts to achieve social change and greater social equality.
State repression against the Panthers should be central to that history. The FBI’s
orchestrated assault on the BPP attests to the illusory nature of free expression and open
dissent in this nation; when the BPP posed a real threat to the established political order
in the United States, that order orchestrated a concerted effort to demoralize and disable
the movement.
For scholars and activists interested in promoting social justice and awareness
about political repression, cogent arguments that address social injustices from the past
may provide useful topoi for public deliberation.
These arguments should raise
awareness about those injustices that have yet to be fully understood in America’s
national consciousness. But these arguments also face a tough challenge. What is
advanced as truth about the past is a struggle between groups in ideological space. In
order for memories of the past to foster public deliberation and social critique, publics
must be able to determine which of the memories constructed in popular culture are
faithful the historical record of events accounted for by activists and scholars, and which
are not. Lipsitz (1990) argues that the accumulation of available evidence about the past
may make it possible to form judgments about power relations in particular societies. He
writes:
Only by recognizing the collective legacy of accumulated human actions and
ideas can we judge the claims to truth and justice of any one story. We may never
succeed in finding out all that has happened in history, but events matter and
describing them as accurately as possible (although never with certain finality)
can, at the very least, show us whose foot has been on whose neck. (p. 214)
Multiple perspectives surrounding particular historical moments draw attention to
competing claims about the past and may help individuals arrive at a collective
understanding about the factors that structure oppressive social conditions. Particular
truth claims at the stasis of fact are arguable and compelling arguments for particular
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claims can be made to help form collective judgments about social injustices from the
past. The weight of evidence from government documents, video footage, and activists
accounts demonstrating that the FBI shot and killed unarmed Panther party members and
used undercover agents to gain illegal access to the Panthers’ homes provides evidence
for the FBI’s use of force would have provided a more powerful indictment of the FBI
than images of the FBI colluding with the mafia, a narrative for which there is little
evidence in the historic record.
Arguments about the past in popular culture face an additional challenge because
oppositional narratives require more than fidelity to history to become part of popular
memory. Malcolm X was able to insert counter-memories into popular culture, whereas
Panther was not, by cloaking them within a broader hegemonic framework. To combat
tendencies to assume the universality of certain truth claims, counter-memories must
incorporate the perspectives of marginalized groups into the doxastic narratives that
inform society. These are the narratives most readily embraced by dominant media.
Counter-memories of radical social movements may never be wholeheartedly embraced
by popular culture, but fragments of those memories may become part of popular culture
when they are embedded within formally hegemonic texts.
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NOTES TO CHAPTER SIX
1
In 1982, a federal district court ruled that the police had violated Hampton and
Clark’s civil rights (Churchill, 2001, p. 107).
2
Van Peebles also told reporters regarding Hollywood produces, "They still want
to see the 'New-Jack-in-the-Hood' or something like a 'Bad Boys' where we can poke fun
at ourselves. That's sellable. It's abundantly clear to me that if Hollywood makes several
Vietnam films that don't make money, no one will say white films aren't making money"
(Turner, May 15, 1994, p. 11).
3
See “Black Panthers,” 1995, p. O17; Carroll, 1995, p. 31; Graham, 1995, p. 63;
James, 1995, sec. 2, p. 1; Howe, 1995, p. N49; Lieby, 1995, p. G01; Sherman, 1995, p.
O11; Turner, 1995, p. 11; Vincent, 1995, p. E1.
4
See Carroll, 1995, p. 31; Charles, 1995, p. 29, Fine, 1995, p. 1D; Graham, 1995,
p. 63; Lieby, 1995, p. G01; Sherman, 1995, p. 011; Turner, 1995, p. 11; Vincent, 1995, p.
E1.
5
See also Dowell, 1995, Lexis-Nexis transcript; Fine, 1995, p. 1D; and Vincent,
1995, p. E1 for references to Van Peebles remarks on the educational role of the film.
6
As Navasky (2002) states, “no sophisticated student of the press believes that
objective journalism is possible.
The best one can hope for is fairness, balance,
neutrality, detachment” (p. xv). Critical scholars extend the critique of the ideal of
objectivity further by arguing that the notion of objectivity itself is ideological insofar as
it obscures the way that news coverage predominantly reflects the core interests of
national political elites (Gitlin, 1980) and corporations (McChesney, 1999).
7
Only one reviewer praised Panther’s representations of African-Americans’
experiences. In her film review for The Washington Post, Gilliam (1995) congratulated
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the film for representing the perspectives of African-Americans. “It is rare and good to
see blacks defining themselves, their histories and identities in feature films. There are
too few men like Melvin and Mario Van Peebles telling the historical tales of African
Americans today” (p. B01).
8
As of 2004, no video rental store in Austin, Texas, carries the film. These stores
include the national chains Blockbuster and Hollywood video and five independent video
stores.
9
A few reviewers did mention violence that the police and the FBI directed at
African-Americans during the late 1960s. Ross (1995) notes that police felt “free” to
abuse poor blacks (p. 16). Baron (1995) mentions that Hoover’s COINTELPRO tactics
were illegal (p. L38). Ebert (1995) tells readers that the Panthers came to an end, in part,
because of FBI harassment (p. 45). Kehr (1995) refers to “the wealth of well-documented
outrages directed by the government against the Panther” including the assassinations of
Fred Hampton and Mark Clark (p. 37).
10
In 1991, 33 of the 47 victims of Chicago police shootings were black. Likewise,
152 blacks in Indianapolis were shot by police, compared to 85 white victims (Thomas,
1995, p. A01).
11
In 1995, five Pittsburgh police officers pinned Jonny Gammage to the ground
and suffocated him to death after they pulled him over on a routine traffic stop (Thomas,
1995, p. A1). That same year, in Lexington, Kentucky and in New York City, unarmed
black men Antonio Sullivan and Lawrence Meyers were shot to death while they were
being arrested (Walsh, 1995, p. A18; MacFarquhar, 1995, p. B1).
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SECTION FOUR
REMEMBERING WHITE RADICALS IN DOCUMENTARY FILM
203
Chapter Seven
The rhetoric of objectivity in Berkeley in the Sixties and The Weather
Underground
The path of the student movements of the 1960s closely followed the trajectory of
the civil rights movement. Indeed, the free speech movement emerged out of white
students’ participation in the civil rights struggle. Following their participation in the
Freedom Rights and Mississippi Freedom summer, many students began to critique
institutions for acts of justice and brutality.
Consequently, students throughout the
United States began to organize for greater freedom of expression on college campuses
and for a voice in the decision-making processes of their universities. As the decade
progressed, students’ shifted their efforts to have decision-making authority from
university policy toward military escalation in Vietnam.
Student-sponsored parade
marches mobilized tens of thousands of protesters in 1965. The following year, the draft
resistance movement gained momentum across the country.
In spite of the anti-war movements’ energies, the war in Vietnam continued to
escalate.
Continued United States investment in the war fomented many students’
growing feelings of alienation and dissatisfaction with the American political, economic,
and social system.
Following activists within the Black Power movement, antiwar
activists began to challenge the economic and political order in the United States.
Toward the end of the decade, the antiwar movement fractured, and more radical strands
of the movement that sought dramatic structural change using confrontational or
destructive strategies came to the fore of the antiwar movement. Although the movement
did not achieve immediate success in putting an end to the war, it is likely that the
antiwar movement did drive a wedge into the war effort.
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The antiwar movement made it increasingly difficult for the Johnson and Nixon
administrations to justify further incursions into Vietnam. Public visibility of antiwar
activism discouraged President Johnson from sending additional ground troops to
Vietnam during the end of his term, and influenced his decision to resign as President.
Johnson’s response to ongoing dissent against the war points to what can be
accomplished through sustained, organized protest. Indeed, student activists gained a
greater voice in the affairs of their universities, and made it difficult for national
governments to justify the war on the basis of its popular support at home.
Historians and activists’ memories of dissent indicate that sustained critique and
protest may open democratic spaces to individuals with little political power of their own.
Thus, recollections of white student activism implications for public life at present; by
recalling activism from the past, individuals may be encouraged to seek political change
through activism in their own communities. Memories of activism may also teach us that
confrontational strategies are outcomes of a political system that is itself violent. These
representations of the past may then encourage media audiences to question the justness
of the political system that currently maligns and punishes dissent.
Between 1990 and 2003, two documentaries provided memories of student
activism that had the potential to invite greater criticism and dissent in political and social
life. These documentaries recounted events from two of the most visible student activist
groups formed during the 1960s in the United States: the Berkeley Free Speech
Movement and the Weather Underground. In 1990, director Mark Kitchell made the
documentary, Berkeley in the Sixties to recount the history of activism on the Berkeley
campus of the California State University. This film told the story of Berkeley activism
from the perspectives of activists involved in free speech and antiwar movements.
Thirteen years following the release of Berkeley in the Sixties, directors Sam Green and
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Bill Siegel released the documentary, The Weather Underground. This film remembered
the Weather Underground’s evolution following its departure from the more mainstream
student organization, Students for a Democratic Society. Mirroring the filmic style of
Berkeley in the Sixties, The Weather Underground also recalled the history of the
movement from the perspectives of activists within the student left.
Berkeley and Weather circulated through independent theatres and film festivals
across the country to critical acclaim.1 These films received high praise from the
Hollywood film industry, independent film audiences, and mainstream journalism film
critics. Berkeley in the Sixties won the Distinguished Documentary Achievement Award
(Charles, 1990, p. 12CN), the U.S. Film Festival Audience Award (“Critics’ Picks,”
1990, p. G7) the best documentary award by the National Society of Film Critics, and
was nominated for an Academy Award in 1990 (“Berkeley” 1991, July 16).
The
Academy of Motion Pictures also nominated The Weather Underground for best
documentary in 2003.
The Weather Underground also received an award for
documentary feature at the San Francisco International Film Festival (Guthmann, 2003,
p. D2) and tied for Seattle’s First Person Singular Documentary Award (MacDonald,
2003, p. E1).
Film critics writing for mainstream newspapers across the country applauded
these films as well. Writing for The Seattle Times, film critic Hartl (1990b) chose
Berkeley in the Sixties as “the year’s best documentary” (p. D8).
Reviews of The
Weather Underground described this film as “solid journalism” (Levy), “terrifically
smart and solid” (Mitchell, 2003, p. 24), and a “fine history lesson” (Ringel-Gillespie,
2003, p. 15E). Thus, these reviews lent legitimacy to films that shined sympathetic
spotlights on student activists who had been vilified by the mainstream press when they
were active.
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These films and their reception in mainstream journalism media challenge a set of
conclusions established by scholarship in critical media studies. The first conclusion is
that successful films predominantly reinforce the ideology of the dominant social order.
This conclusion suggests that tight parameters constrict what ideas can be put forth by a
successful film. By recalling 1960s activism from the perspective of former activists,
both Berkeley in the Sixties (hereafter referred to as Berkeley) and The Weather
Underground (hereafter referred to as Underground) advanced positions sympathetic to
the cause of activists who sought to restructure that system. Thus, they represented
counter-memories that have the potential to intervene in the prevailing doxa about the
meanings of citizenship, patriotism, and war in the United States. This study of these
films indicates what form films must take to make such interventions, as well as what
social conditions must be in place in order for them to do so.
Mainstream journalism broke from typical journalism routines by characterizing
these films in positive frames. Berkeley and Underground appeared in theatres on the
heels of the first and second Persian Gulf Wars. Over the past two decades, several
media scholars have argued that persistent patterns in news frames reaffirm prevailing
ideology, particularly during times of war or political upheaval (Gitlin, 1980; Hall et. al,
1978; Reese and Buckalew, 1995; Watkins, 2001). Particularly relevant to my study is
Gitlin’s (1980) work that demonstrates that news media coverage of student activism in
1965 disparaged movements and characterized demonstrators as deviant (p. 27-28).
More recently, Berlant (1997) has noted that mainstream media have framed protest as
both silly and dangerous (p. 186).
In the aftermath of September 11, the Bush
administration has equated dissent with terrorism. Clearly, the contemporary political
climate remains hostile to public protest.
Contemporary coverage of warfare and
political dissent in the United States has remained remarkably consistent with coverage
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from previous decades (see Jensen, 1992). While favorable reviews of these films may
be a reaction to a political climate hostile to activism and dissent, this reaction does not
reflect mainstream media’s tendency to buttress official political positions in times of
national crisis and war. Why, then, did mainstream journalists embrace documentary
films about left-leaning social movements?
In this section, I argue that the formal structure of these films was pivotal to these
films’ welcome reception by the mainstream press.
Documentary filmmakers
constructed popular memories of student and anti-Vietnam War activism using talkinghead interviews and archival footage.
While talking-head interviews provided the
primary verbal explanations for the trajectory activism took from the 1960s through the
early 1970s, archival stock footage of activism from the 1960s contributed to the meaning
of 1960s activism by providing visual evidence for the interviewees’ accounts. These
stylistic devices functioned as objectivity codes that established these films as legitimate
representations of the past; multiple talking-head interviews provided a false sense of
balance in the film, and stock footage of student antiwar protests from the 1960s signified
that events featured in the film bore an indexical relationship to the past.
The
accumulation of activists’ stories in conjunction with visual footage of activism films
framed student activism as an important and legitimate form of political engagement and
encouraged arbiters of mainstream media to create a space for counter-memories of
radical activism within popular culture. I conclude that formal structure of documentary
films plays a central role, perhaps more than the content of the film, in the construction of
a film’s legitimacy within popular culture. By procuring credibility to these films,
filmmakers may then be able to legitimate radical activism in popular memory.
Alternatively, I also argue in this chapter that the presence of objectivity codes
may have limitations for how counter-memories become part of popular memory. In the
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absence of a stated thesis or central claim, film reviewers of Berkeley and Underground
were able to select particular images and interviews from documentary material to derive
a conclusion that fits within their previously established ideological framework.
Although journalism reviews praised Berkeley and Underground as objective accounts of
activism, these reviews featured individuals and images that disparaged protesters as
irrationally violent and left activism to the past. These reviews suggest that the counterhegemonic potential of a documentary is blunted when more popular, mainstream media
appropriate documentary material for commercial media. Participatory documentaries
about controversial ideas create spaces for popular memories of protest, but they don’t
necessarily imbue these spaces with critical potential.
CODES OF OBJECTIVITY IN PARTICIPATORY DOCUMENTARIES
Berkeley and Underground engaged stylistic conventions particular to what
Nichols (1991) terms participatory documentary. In a participatory documentary,
filmmakers use talking-head interviews and visual footage to construct the film’s
meaning. Nichols (2001) writes that through this documentary form, the “voice of the
filmmaker emerges from the weave of contributing voices and the material brought in to
support what they say” (p. 121). By focusing on interviews with eyewitnesses to events,
filmmakers avoid expositional documentary conventions, such as voice-over narration,
that make explicit claims on the past. Instead, conventions of the talking-head interview
and archival film footage make filmmakers appear entirely removed from the film’s
content. Participatory documentary is well suited to documentaries about controversial
subjects, such as the history of revolutionary movements in the United States. By
obscuring the appearance of partiality, these films encouraged audiences to perceive that
they are able to generate objective understanding about 1960s activism for themselves.
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Newspaper reviews suggest that the film’s participatory conventions constituted
Berkeley and Underground as valuable resources for understanding 1960s protests.
According to reviewers, interviews and archival footage provided important insights to
understand the history of activism from the 1960s. In response to Berkeley in the Sixties,
Szilagyi (1990) wrote that the interviews were “invaluable to understanding events
shown on the archival footage” (p. F1), and Gilbert (1991) commented that the interviews
gave “balance to the craziness to the footage” (p. 66). Reviewing Underground, Salm
(2003) noted that the interviews allowed filmmakers to “wring insight” from the
confusion of the 1960s (p. 20). These quotes indicated that talking head interviews and
archival footage merit additional attention as stylistic devices that attributed meaning and
value to these films.
In the following sections of this chapter, I describe each of these documentaries
separately to explain how objectivity codes functioned to give meaning to student
activism. Dow (2004) argues that “codes of objectivity” in television documentaries give
the impression that speaker’s portrayal of events is “a commonsensical description of
what the viewer has seen or is about to see” (p. 59-60). As I explain, the appearance of
balance and archival footage established the credibility of these films despite the
controversial central ideas that these films elicited. Objectivity codes in Berkeley and
Underground that presented the film as “balanced” included competing messages that
cast activism as both laudable and reproachable. The presentation of “balance” elicited in
these documentaries has played a central role in journalistic practice. Hallin (1994)
writes that journalists situate most events as either part of legitimate controversy, as
deviant, or as consensually agreed upon. Most frequently, journalists situate events
within the sphere of legitimate controversy. Within this sphere, “journalists strive to
achieve objectivity and balance, and coverage of issues that are easily framed in
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point/counterpoint terms” (Watkins, 2001, p. 92). The point/counterpoint framework for
talking head interviews and images in Berkeley and Underground constructed memories
about student and antiwar activism as legitimate controversy.
Following this section, I describe mainstream newspaper reviews of each film
more fully. In contrast to the film’s construction of events within the sphere of legitimate
controversy, reviews framed activism within the sphere of deviance.
According to
Hallin (1994), the sphere of deviance frames persons and events viewed by journalists as
outside the boundaries of normative behavior. Watkins (2001) explains that “in cases like
these, individuals or events become newsworthy precisely because they can be portrayed
as violating the taken-for-granted values and beliefs of society in some important way”
(p. 92). As I argue in the latter section of this chapter, newspaper reviews framed these
films selectively to position these documentaries within the prevailing ideology of
mainstream politics under liberal capitalism.
PROTEST AND POLITICAL EMPOWERMENT IN BERKELEY
Verbal evidence of activism and repression on campus
In Berkeley in the Sixties, voice-over narration, talking-head interviews, and
archival footage collaborated to present student activism as a powerful force for social
change that dissolved toward the end of the decade due to repressive power of the state
and to poor organization and planning within the movement. The first part of the film,
entitled “Confronting the University,” recounted how student movements prompted
social and political changes through collective protest when mainstream political
institutions did not function democratically themselves. Narrator and former Berkeley
activist Susan Griffin frequently spoke over archival images of 1960s protesters. Early in
the film, she explained that the civil rights movement was the basis for much of the
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ensuing activism at Berkeley between 1963 and 1964. Students participated in sit-in
demonstrations at the Sheraton Palace Hotel to encourage hotels in the bay area to open
jobs for African-Americans. Following the arrests and convictions of several student
protesters, the entire hotel industry agreed to hire minority individuals in all levels of
employment. Interviewee Jackie Goldberg told filmmakers that protesters won more than
they had expected. “It was the first major victory of anything I’d been involved in.”
Goldberg added that the victory “really pumped [activists] up to believe that [they] really
could have an effect on history.”
After the Sheraton hotel strikes, local businesses put pressure on the university
administration at Berkeley to put a halt on political activism on campus. During the fall
of 1964, the administration declared that student groups could no longer disseminate
political literature on campus.
The Free Speech Movement emerged as a result of
campus efforts to stifle dissent. Goldberg explained that university restrictions on free
speech “united everyone,” including Youth for Goldwater and the Young Socialist
Alliance, around the struggle for political expression on campus. Rounds of conflict
between students and campus administrators ensued. During one demonstration, students
refused to let police officers arrest student Jack Weinberg for continuing to advocate
political causes on campus. Fellow students surrounded the police car and used as a
speaking platform for two days. Interviewees described this moment as one of the first
instances of participatory democracy among students who had previously only theorized
democracy in their classes.
Months later, students from diverse organizations and backgrounds participated in
a sit-in demonstration at Sproul Hall to protest the administration’s expulsion of eight
students for initiating civil disobedience. Interviewees attested to the political awakening
that these protests inspired. Jentri Anders described the sit-in at Sproul Hall as the first
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time she was willing to get arrested in defense of students. John Gage noted that the
administration’s response to the protesters represented his first experience with people
“who would lie to maintain their positions of power.” Professor John Searle echoed
Gage’s remarks, noting that the administration at Berkeley aroused students’ ire because
the “administration would not tell the truth.” According to the documentary, students’
early victories influenced the beginnings of the antiwar movement. In her voice over
commentary, Griffin stated, “Victory in our struggle for civil rights and free speech made
us confident that we could change the course of history. Then we learned about Vietnam
and stopping the war became our consuming cause.”
The second part of the film, entitled “Confronting America,” recounted events
surrounding the emergence of the counter-culture and the antiwar movement at Berkeley.
Anders explained that the counter-culture an outgrowth of free speech and anti-war
movement that taught students that “the culture was sick.” She then added that she had
believed “one way to change it is to life it differently. Instead of trying to change the
structure in a confrontational way, you just drop out and live it in the way you think it
ought to be lived.” Interviews in this second part of the film demonstrated Berkeley’s
equivocation about the movement’s success during its more militant years. Several
interviewees argued that poor planning within the movement undermined the
movement’s goals; alternatively, other interviewees asserted that the movement’s
energies communicated widespread unease about the war to government officials.
Interviewees also recounted their efforts to stop the draft in Oakland during 1967. Ruth
Rosen described her feelings of optimism generated by early successes in the movement;
after the Oakland city council set up barricades to shut off a protest march through the
city, greater numbers of people lined up to protest the war. The next week, Oakland
conceded and allowed the parade. Rosen asserted that the event taught her that “if enough
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people went out against the war we could end it.” By featuring Rosen, Berkeley fostered
the idea that state repression can be defeated through sustained mass protest.
In contrast with Rosen’s interview, other interviewees featured in the film
expressed frustration over the war’s escalation in spite of their protests. Suzie Orman
concluded that her efforts to influence draftees not to get on the trains to join the war in
Oakland didn’t make “one bit of difference”; Frank Bardacke felt “impotent” because
“the war was being escalated all the time”; Weinberg stated that activists “didn’t really
have the weight in society to stop the war”; and John Gage emphasized that activists “lost
the idea” that they could be victorious. According to Gage, the student left disregarded
the rest of the political community and sealed its public demise.
Following these
interviews, voice-over narration from Griffin explained that as the war escalated, protests
turned to riots in Oakland, and the Left began to fracture and dissolve. Former activists
featured in this sequence of interviews indicated that antiwar movement was largely
ineffective; however, the final interview in this sequence suggested otherwise. Jack
Weinberg recounted that, “Hoover told LBJ he couldn’t guarantee domestic tranquility if
LBJ asked for a million more troops.” Weinberg concluded that the power of the antiwar
movement was that it “put limits on America’s ability to wage the war in Vietnam.”
Within this section, the film suggested that the movement posed a challenge to a war that
they believed was unjust, and that movement began to unravel as a result of its
withdrawal from rest of political system.
The third part of Berkeley, entitled “Confronting History” portrayed Berkeley
activism toward the end of the decade. Film clips and interviews in this section featured
the repressive power of the state to explain the movement’s disillusion and activists’
increasing turn to confrontation as a strategy for undermining the war effort. According
to the film, political repression of antiwar activism demonstrations in Chicago during the
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Democratic National Convention in 1968, of demonstrations at People’s Park in Berkeley
in 1969, and of peaceful dissent on the Berkeley campus in 1969 marked the end of the
movement. The film suggests that these events put a lie to belief that individuals have
control over their lives. John Gage explained that police beatings of activists in Chicago
taught him that “there was a side of American politics that was vicious and violent.”
According to the film, events in Chicago and in Berkeley during the last years of the
1960s taught activists that the prevailing authorities would not tolerate challenges to the
political system. Confrontational dissent would be mowed over.
The bull-dozing of activism occurred most literally at People’s Park. During the
spring of 1969, students and members of the counter-culture took over unused land
owned by the university and turned it into a park. Ruth Rosen described the park as the
embodiment of a utopian vision of communal living. “If we had control over out own
lives, this is what it would look like.” By contrast, Professor John Searle argued that
people involved in making People’s Park reflected a very “cynical” view of politics.
“Students knew that it would erupt in confrontation.”
Weeks later, the university
administration took the park over, dug up the land, and made preparations to build on the
property. Searle added “You can’t beat something with nothing. If you’re going to fight
this kind of long cultural battle, you’re going to lose if you don’t have a coherent,
articulate well worked out vision of what you’re going to do.”
Searle’s interview
suggested that students were bound to fail at the end of the 1960s because they never
developed a clear articulate vision or conception of how they would achieve their goals.
Although Searle held students responsible for the decline of activism within the
student Left, the film did not hold students entirely accountable for activism’s downfall.
The film’s depiction of events at People’s Park suggested that activism’s demise at
Berkeley was principally the consequence of political repression that had become
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increasingly intense as the decade progressed.
The final event described in the film
highlighted how state violence against protesters marked the final death knell for dissent
on campus. Months after campus officials destroyed People’s Park, students gathered for
a peaceful protest of university policies on the Berkeley campus.
Campus police
responded by refusing to let the congregation disperse from the center of campus until
after helicopters dropped teargas into the contained crowd.
Jentri Anders remembered
telling her friend as they witnessed events on campus that day. “I think it’s all over. I
don’t think we can stay here anymore.” Then she told the camera, “And a year later we
were all gone.”
Final moments in the film reminded audiences of the legacy of Berkeley activism
during the 1970s. Weinberg declared that “American society was profoundly changed by
movements in the 1960s.” Voice over commentary from Griffin followed his statement.
We continue to explore the potential for change and as we watch activists for
human rights and democracy around the world challenge the powers that be, we
know that each generation has the potential to create social change and that no
generation can do it alone.
These final moments of the film suggested that a commitment of a group of people can
alter the course of political events through collective action and dissent. The film’s focus
on both activists as empowered agents for social justice and the state as an agent of
repression and violence against activists reverberated throughout the film. The film
created a memory that established ordinary people as central agents for democracy
against a potentially repressive government that served the interests of capital rather than
the people they purport to represent. These themes about the power of protest and on the
repressive power of the state challenged the prevailing ideology of liberal democracy, for
they suggested that ordinary people, not the political system, were the driving force for
positive social change in the United States.
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Visual evidence of activism and the myth of photographic realism
Journalism reviews suggest that the film’s use of archival footage helped
audiences make sense of the verbal accounts provided by former activists. Several film
critics praised the film’s presentation of archival footage (See Gilbert, 1990; Kempley,
1990; Mahar, 1990; Smith, 1991; Sterritt, 1990a; and Stone, 1990). In his review,
Movshovitz (1990) wrote that “the genius” Berkeley in the Sixties was that it was “on
film” (p. F). Movshovitz added, “Kitchell combed the film archives and found images
that show both the events and the spirit that drove them” (p. 6F). The film’s use of
archival footage partially explains the disjuncture between positive journalistic reviews of
Berkeley in the Sixties and previously established patterns of negative framings of dissent
within journalism coverage. Even during footage of the talking-head interviews, speakers
were filmed sitting in front of larger-than-life sized photographs of their younger selves
at protest events during the 1960s. By positioning speakers next to images of themselves
when they were students at Berkeley, the documentary lent added authority to the
interviewees by visually asserting their own role in the movements of the 1960s.
Archival video footage of activism at Berkeley also provided evidence for
interviewee’s assertions. This video footage provided two different kinds of proof for
activists’ claims. On the one hand, visual images lent credibility activists’ statements as
sources of historical information about the past.
Footage of protesters attested to
student’s unity and commitment to the causes of civil rights, free speech, and an end to
the war in Vietnam. Likewise, footage of confrontations between police and students
provided visual proof of state supported repression against peaceful activists and of
students’ disdain and, in some cases, desire to clash with state authorities. Clips included
images of the Sheraton Palace Hotel sit-in protests, the free speech demonstrations at
Berkeley, the sit-in protest in Sproul Hall, Stop the Draft demonstrations in Oakland,
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clashes between police and demonstrators in Chicago during the Democratic National
Convention, and marches commemorating People’s Park after the administration took it
over.
Images of violence against activists functioned as visual proof for the
documentary's central argument about the relationship between systematic power and
activists' turn toward confrontation as the decade progressed.
The myth of photographic naturalness explains how stock footage of 1960s
activism provided “proof” of events described by former activists. The persuasive role of
visual imagery in film rests on the assumption that the images are not only
representations of events, but actual copies of events that once existed outside filmic
construction. Sontag (1973) writes that something we hear about, but doubt, seems
proven when we’re shown a photograph (p. 17). In her discussion of photographic
images of Afghan women in the wake of September 11, Cloud (2004) argues that
photographs are rhetorical constructions that mask their framing strategies, such as the
photographer’s selection, editing, use of light, arrangement of subjects, by the appearance
of having captured reality (p. 289). Documentary films share photography’s appearance
of having captured reality, perhaps to a greater extent because footage captures moving
images.
Rosteck (1994) observes, documentaries are “ceded a measure of assent”
because viewers “are potentially disarmed by the documentary’s claim to be a natural
representation of fact” (p. 18).
Images in Berkeley functioned persuasively by
encouraging audiences to read the film as an objective representation of the past. As
Dow (2004) notes, objectivity codes themselves are rhetorical stances taken by
filmmakers, not evidence of a film’s unmediated correspondence with actuality. By
naturalizing the film’s content, objectivity codes obscure a film’s partiality.
Within Berkeley, objectivity codes also provided emotional proof, or pathos
within the film.
Reviewers suggested that archival footage in the documentary
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encouraged audiences to experience events as if they had experienced them directly.
Kempley (1990) noted that the archival footage connected audiences with “the turbulence
that pitted the establishment…against the counterculture” (p. B2); Sterritt (1990) wrote
that the movie clips brought the Berkeley activism “convincingly to life” (p. 11); and
Mahar (1990) stated that footage brought activism from the 1960s “back to life vividly,
exultantly, tragically and ultimately sadly” (p. O1). As these reviews indicated, footage
of Berkeley activism presented protest as inspired, comical, and tragic in ways that
interviewees did not.
During the first part of the film, black and white footage of hundreds of students
surrounding a police car while individuals stood on top of the car to argue for free
speech. The film’s final scene also presented black and white footage of an expansive
protest rally. A sea of black and white faces glittered in the foreground and background
as voices sang, “We shall overcome” in unison. Images of People’s Park invited
audiences to celebrate the collective efforts of the park’s creators. In contrast to black
and white images that comprised the rest of the film’s archival footage, images of
People’s Park were colorful. They included scenes of people laughing and smiling as
they passed sod around and rolled it through the park, and stood over a large pot of stew
that, presumably, they were about to share together. These scenes of collective action
communicated feelings of exuberance that activists such as Rosen described. They also
illustrated the magnitude of student activism during the 1960s and depicted students as
passionate and committed to a cause greater than themselves.
Although archival footage promoted the film’s credibility, it did not always
promote activism itself. Archival footage illustrated both interviewees’ assertions that
activism promoted social change and other interviewees’ assertions that activists were
horribly misguided near the end of the decade. Thus, these images encouraged audiences
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to hold competing and contradictory perspectives of activists: as laudable and appalling,
serious and a joke. During several scenes, the film presented archival footage that
illustrated the counter-culture’s rejection of mainstream society. In an extended montage
sequence depicting young people dancing at a music festival, the film featured women
dancing in jerky movements wearing psychedelic clothing.
Other archival footage
depicted a reporter in short hair and a suit querying a young man with shoulder length
hair who was playing a sweet potato as an instrument. In the next scene, the same
reporter asked Alan Ginsburg how his demonstration would stop the war in Vietnam.
Ginsburg responded by taking out a little chime and chanting to the camera.
In contrast to verbal messages that praised the role of the counter-culture for
living life in healthier ways than the dominant culture, images of the counter-culture
encouraged audiences not to take this aspect of the movement very seriously. Thus, these
images provided visual refutation of interviewees’ verbal assertions that attested to the
importance of the movement.
Images of the counter-culture looking ridiculous to
mainstream culture converge with mainstream news coverage of activism. In this aspect,
archival images functioned hegemonically even as verbal messages challenge established
hegemony.
Toward the middle of the film, images reflected the verbal equivocation about the
causes for the movement’s demise. Many images supported hegemonic understandings
of protest as unruly and violent. Footage of riots in Oakland highlighted the belligerence
of students frustrated with the city’s refusal to allow parade marches through the town.
Archival footage of students throwing rocks at police officers, setting off firehouses, and
overturning cars reinforced Gage’s complaint that the students had abandoned the very
people they once sought to influence.
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Alternatively, other images encouraged audiences to question the legitimacy of
the political order of the 1960s. Footage of police beatings of demonstrators at the
Democratic National Convention in 1968 provided visual evidence for the “arbitrary
exercise of authority” that Mayor Daley brought to bear in Chicago. Toward the end of
the film, images depicted the National Guard beating students as they struggled to flee
campus after helicopters dropped tear gas on them.
By illustrating the campus
administration’s excessive use of violence to silence protest on campus, these scenes
encouraged audiences to feel outraged. Archival footage of confrontations between the
college administration at Berkeley and the counter-culture over ownership of People’s
Park also called for an emotional response from audiences. Following colorful footage of
the park’s creation, black and white footage depicted tillers and bulldozers digging up the
grass as the National Guard came onto campus in armored vehicles and full riot gear.
These images called upon audiences to share activists’ sadness over the demise of the
park and of the movement that created it, and thereby encouraged audience members to
identify with activists even as earlier images encouraged audiences to dismiss them.
Competing images of activists elucidate the role of convention of “balance” in
nonfiction media. These images of activists met journalistic standards for balance by
providing multiple visual perspectives for understanding activism at Berkeley, even if
they did not depict a diverse range of images commensurate with the range of activities
and perspectives about activism at Berkeley at that time. In her description of objectivity
codes in television documentary, Dow (2004) writes that commentary by at least two
persons with different points of view provide evidence for the perspective privileged by
the film. Thus, objectivity codes give controversial social and political movements some
degree of legitimacy in mainstream culture.2
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I argue that “balance” is an objectivity code in documentary film present not only
in the depiction of individuals who disagree with one another, but in the selection of film
footage for documentary film as well.
Archival footage functioned as codes of
objectivity by presenting the film as a “balanced” presentation of views about Berkeley
activism.
Archival footage of 1960s activism in Berkeley contributed to popular
memories of activism that audiences could see and hear; thus, they offered forms of
visual and audio proof more vivid than the explanations and descriptions activists offered
themselves. The formal presentation of “balance” functioned ideologically in Berkeley
by obscuring the partiality of textual reconstructions of antiwar and student activism
during the 1960s. In this way, visual images and songs enhanced the film’s credibility
and contributed to the memory of activism.
THE LEGITIMACY OF RADICALISM IN THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND
Visual images and talking head interviews functioned to obscure the partiality of
the memories constructed in The Weather Underground as well. The structure of The
Underground featured similar codes of objectivity that appeared in Berkeley in the
Sixties.
In Weather, talking-head interviews with former activists provided verbal
descriptions of the Weather Underground’s history while archival footage of newscasts
about the Vietnam War provided visual evidence of the social context that led to the
organization’s decision to go underground. Filmmakers arranged and selected archival
footage in ways that simultaneously lent sympathy to the perspectives of former Weather
activists and established the film’s credibility.
Interviews and archives functioned
together to make The Weather Underground palatable for mainstream audiences.
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Talking-heads redefine “violence”
The Weather Underground invited audiences to understand radical activism as an
understandable response to an unjust war and to state supported repression of activists at
home. Film critic Rosen (2003) suggests that this thesis was not lost on reviewers.
Rosen wrote, “If Weather Underground has a theme, it is that given the times it was not
unreasonable for some impassioned activists to want to 'bring the war home,' according
to a militant slogan of the day” (p. F20). Talking-head interviews with seven former
Weather activists constituted the primary spoken explanations for what these activists did
during the 1960s and why they believed attacks on government buildings were necessary
to end the war in Vietnam. Mark Rudd, the first former activist featured in the film,
explained that the knowledge that the United States “was murdering millions of people”
was more than students could handle. The film pointed to news coverage of death tolls
and the United States’ use of Napalm on villagers in Vietnam that shocked and angered
activists. Following his remarks, other activists explained that they believed no amount
of protest or public argument would put an end to the war. Flanagan exclaimed, “The
marches on Washington were up to 500,000 to a million, and those weren’t really
slowing down the United States’ effort!” Bill Ayers then stated, “Our sense was that we
had to do whatever we had to do to stop the war.” As Weather activists saw it, the United
States government and those who identified with it were bound up in an unjust brutal
war, and they were responsible for ending it.
Weather activists also saw the war in Vietnam as an outcome of the liberal
capitalist system that required the brutal repression of dissent in order to maintain its
political hegemony. Providing evidence for the inherent violence of the United States’
political system, former activists pointed to state supported brutality against protesters at
the Pentagon and at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. They also
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highlighted the FBI’s murder of Black Panther Party activist Fred Hampton in 1969.
Laura Whitehorn concluded, “He inspired people tremendously and I believe that’s why
he had to be killed by the United States. They knew that he was one of those people who
could be a leader on a very important and profound and wide level and they set out to kill
him and they did it.” Frustrated by the limitations of the current antiwar effort and by
repression of pacifist and confrontational protesters alike, The Weather Underground
began to doubt the utility of public dissent that had few material consequences. Stock
footage of a Weather Underground press conference featured Bernardine Dohrn, who
declared, “There’s no way to be committed to nonviolence in the middle of the most
violence society that history has ever created.” Naomi Jaffe similarly told filmmakers,
“We felt that doing nothing in a period of repressive violence is itself a form of
violence.” These activists concluded that the structures of power in the United States had
to be overthrown to undo imperialism worldwide.
Former Weather activists also noted that revolutionary movements in countries
throughout the world propelled them to seek fundamental economic and political change
in the United States. Jaffe explained, “If you look back at it and see a bunch of crazy
young people roaming around trying to tell people that the revolution is coming, it seems
totally insane, but it fit into a period of revolution in the whole world.” Revolutionary
struggles in Japan, Portuguese Angola, China, France, Mexico, Cuba, Vietnam, and the
Congo suggested to activists that a revolution from capitalism was eminent. Ayers noted
that toward the end of the decade, Weather activists wanted to put “something more
humane than the capitalist system into place.” Thus, they decided to lead the struggle to
undo capitalist imperialism in the United States. In the face of continued deaths in
Vietnam, the beatings and deaths of activists at home, and knowledge of revolutionary
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struggles worldwide, Weather activists sought to disrupt the violence inherent to the
United States’ political system by engaging in acts of destruction themselves.
In an effort to propel revolutionary action, Weather activists made plans to bomb
buildings of strategic importance to the United States government. During one effort, a
bomb accidentally exploded, killing three activists, Terry Robbins, Ted Gold, and Diana
Oughton in a home on West 11th Street in New York City.
After the townhouse
explosion in 1970, Weather activists decided to go underground; they concealed their
identities, cut ties with friends and family members, and made plans to build a
revolutionary movement.
One of two non-Weather activists featured in the film,
Professor and former SDS activist Todd Gitlin criticized the movement’s strategies:
They were ready to be mass murderers…they came to this conclusion...that was
come to by all the great killers, whether Hitler or Stalin or Mao –that they have a
grand project for the transformation and purification of the world and in the face
of that project ordinary life is dispensable.
Former FBI agent Don Strickland noted that the FBI became alarmed by the movement
after the townhouse explosion; the bomb told them that clearly, the Weather
Underground “intended to kill people.”
The rest of the film suggested that the strategies of the movement were more
destructive than violent. During the second half of the film, voice-over commentary
described the series of bombings that Weather took responsibility for between 1970 and
1977.
Contradicting Gitlin and Strickland, former Weather activist David Gilbert
emphasized that Weather never sought to kill anyone; instead, they targeted specific
buildings and provided warnings in ample time for occupants to evacuate them.
According to the film, the Weather Underground took credit for at least 14 bombings
across the country.
In their first action, Weather bombed government buildings in
Sacramento and San Francisco in defense of the shooting death of George Jackson as the
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San Quentin prison.3 In one high profile action, they helped LSD advocate Timothy
Leary escape from a California prison. These clips provided material that highlighted
both Weather actions and the human rights abuses that prompted them. Other material
also counter-posed Weather tactics with rights violations of the state. Through interviews
with Dohrn and Kathleen Cleaver, the film also revealed COINTELPRO’s illegal efforts
to undermine and spread distrust within the movements. Thus, rather than focus on the
movement as violent, The Weather Underground indicated that Weather acted in
response to a whole system of violence that had only escalated during years of passive
dissent.
The film’s conclusion provided multi-vocal attitudes from former activists about
the role of the movement for advancing social justice.
Near the end of the film,
filmmakers returned attention to former Weather activists who explained why they
decided to reemerge during the early 1980s after spending nearly a decade underground.
Several activists articulated regret for Weather’s activities. Flanagan told filmmakers, “If
you think you have the moral high ground, you can do some very dreadful things. You
can do some things that are completely unconscionable. … I think the Vietnam War
made us all a little crazy. That’s the only way I can explain it.” Other former Weather
activists told the filmmakers that they continued to believe radical movements for social
change are worthwhile and important. In her closing remarks on the film, Naomi Jaffe
explained why she would rejoin the movement if she had the chance to today.
It was a precious, precious opportunity, and I think we came close. I think that
the world came close to seeing those major changes and I think that makes a
difference in terms of the ability of movements of change to emerge in the future.
The fact that there’s a history of resistance, there’s a history of white people’s
participation in resistance I think makes a difference to the ability of that kind of
resistance to emerge again. I think it already has.
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For Jaffe, involvement in the movement was part of a much broader history of
political activism in which white people have struggled for social justice.
Laura
Whitehorn echoed Jaffe’s faith that the struggle for justice would continue. “I still have
hope….People never stop struggling and never stop waiting for the moment when they
can change the things that make their lives unlivable.” Whitehorn’s comments suggest
that current struggles for social change represent a continuation of historic efforts of
ordinary people to improve the conditions of their lives. Thus, Whitehorn’s remarks
contextualized the story of the Weather Underground for contemporary circumstances.
For those who want to see themselves as part of history, faith in the continuation of social
struggle also invited audiences to become engaged in the struggle themselves.
These interviews played an important role in the film because they positioned
activists most vilified in contemporary media in a predominantly positive light. In his
review of the film, Strickler (2003b) noted that the former activists interviewed in the
film “come off as intelligent people who loved their country and felt that what they were
doing was for the greater good.” Strickler then asserted, “Even if you vehemently
disagree with their politics of violence, it's hard to come away disliking them” (p. 16E).
By depicting activists as reasonable, intelligent, and compassionate, the documentary
invited audiences to empathize with activists’ experiences and take activists’ radicalism
seriously.
Filmmakers framed Weather’s actions as deliberate strategies for ending the
United States’ violence against Vietnam when less destructive alternatives seemed futile.
Interviews with activists reframed what it means to act violently within a liberal capitalist
democracy. Mark Rudd noted that the movement failed because most people did not
understand the social role of violence in the same way that Weather activists did.
“Americans are taught again and again from a very early age that the only violence, that
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all violence which is not sanctioned by the government is either criminal or mentally ill,
so our violence was categorized as that: criminal and mentally ill. Violence didn’t work.”
According to Rudd, the movement’s failure was not the direct result of the movement’s
strategies, but the consequence of the movement’s failure to break through prevailing
doxa. Although testimonial accounts from Weather activists did not wholeheartedly
celebrate the movement’s strategies, they consistently condemned the United States
political system for waging war and terrorizing dissenters to serve the interests of the
capitalist class. As they gave a voice to perspectives of radical activists predominantly
shut out of mainstream media, Underground posed a challenge to established doxa and to
liberal capitalist ideology.
The filmic construction of false balance
Mainstream media reviews of Underground did not register this challenge.
Although the film provided extensive verbal accounts that suggested radical activism
itself was an understandable response to political repression and war, many reviewers
praised the film for presenting a history of the Weather Underground that did not
advocate a particular position about the movement’s mission or actions. Reviewers
described the film as “even handed” (Denerstein, 2003, p. 1D; Weiskind, 2004, p. T36);
“balanced” (Strauss, 2003, p. 6); and “even-keeled” (Strickler, 2003a, p. 16E).
Reviewers also commended the film for providing both positive and negative aspects of
the movement. Burr (2003) noted that Green and Siegel were “sympathetic to the group's
ideals and properly critical of the results” (p. C5). Several reviews asserted that the film
neither condemned nor romanticized the Weather Underground (Booth & Persall, 2004,
p. 16W; Matthews, 2003, p. 42). Others emphasized that the film both revealed the
movement’s heroism and foolishness (“Film capsules”, 2004, p. T36; Lundegaard, 2003,
p. H21) as well as the movement’s hopes and arrogance (Kennedy, 2003, p. F08). These
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reviews seem out of step with the film’s implicit support for the cause of radical activism
evinced in the film’s interviews and archival footage.
Given that the film provided evidence for a claim about the legitimacy of Weather
activism, I argue that reviewers’ characterization of the film as balanced, reasonable, and
objective is not a product of the film’s content. Instead, I argue that it is a product of the
film’s stylistic devices. The presentation of balance functioned as one objectivity code
that lent legitimacy to the film. Strickler (2003a) indicated that the perspectives of the
interviewees themselves presented objective reflections of the past; he noted that while
some interviewees used the film to “rationalize” and “rally” interviewees Bernadette
Dohrn, Bill Ayers and Mark Rudd, took an “analytical approach, at times almost
assuming a third-person perspective as they look back on the turmoil of their earlier
lives” (p. 16 E). Strickler points to the ways in which the contrasting perspectives of the
interviewees who themselves were the subjects of the film represented an objectivity
code. Thus, he suggests that the presentation of balance or multiple points of view in a
film may function to legitimate the film as a legitimate representation of reality.
Although activists themselves did not provide univocal perspectives, they did
share several premises about the role of dissent and activism that challenges prevailing
liberal ideology.
Former SDS activist and Professor Todd Gitlin, the most vocal
opponent of the Weather Underground, attributed the dissolution of the student left to the
Weather Underground’s violent actions; as a former activist himself, however, even
Gitlin did not dismiss activism and protest as legitimate means of political engagement in
a democracy. Only FBI Ted Strickland dismissed protest outright. The dissonance
between reviews that characterized the film as a balanced and the film’s perspective
indicates that the presentation of contrasting ideas within the rhetorical framework of the
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film, not within the framework of the prevailing ideology outside of the film, constituted
the film as an objective representation of the past among mainstream critics.
Authorizing dissent in public memories of television news
In addition to talking head interviews, archival black and white footage of student
protest and war casualties in Vietnam constituted central sources of evidence for the
film’s contention that radical activism is an understandable response to the political
pressures of the 1960s. Underground’s footage switched back and forth between vintage
newsreel footage of war casualties in Vietnam and political protest at home, and
contemporary footage of former Weather activists explaining their reaction to these
events. More powerful than the interviews of former activists, archival footage from the
1960s and early 1970s lent legitimacy to the film as a credible source of information
about the past.
Visual images in these films simultaneously established identification with
activists and legitimated film as having a direct indexical relationship with the historical
world. As was the case for Berkeley, images from stock footage in Underground lent
credibility to activists’ verbal messages through the presumption of photographs’ realism.
Archival footage in Underground predominantly came from newscasts from the 1960s.
Because these newscasts wove recognizable images and figures into the documentary,
they gleaned legitimacy for the film from popular memory as much as they did from the
authority of the image. Grainy emulsion and blurry images in several segments of the
film cued audiences to the film’s adoption of archival broadcast news footage. Pauley
(1999) explains that the appearance this film quality, common to WWII films, helped to
establish audience expectations with the documentary film genre when it emerged;
consequently, American audiences began to recognize blurry, grainy images of direct
cinema documentaries for authentic recordings of “real life” events (pp. 124-125). In
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addition to using blurry, grainy film, Underground also demonstrated that this archival
footage represented “news” by providing clips of national recognized television news
reporters, including a young Walter Cronkite reporting the number of dead soldiers in
Vietnam, and a young Peter Jennings announcing Weather’s bombing of Gulf Oil’s
headquarters in protest of Gulf Oil’s actions in Angola.
These news archives lent credibility to Underground by evoking memories, not
only of the Vietnam War, but also of the broadcast news coverage of the war. Even
though the film itself did not conform to the conventions of television broadcast
journalism, the memory of the television broadcast news genre legitimized Underground
as a depiction of reality. As Nichols (1991) writes, “attaching a particular text to a
traditional mode of representation and to the discursive authority of that tradition may
well strengthen its claims, lending to these claims the weight of previously established
legitimacy” (p. 34). As images of news coverage reminded audiences of the nightly
newscasts that brought images of Vietnam atrocities to them, these clips carried with
them the legitimacy of the broadcast television news genre. Hammond (1981) suggests
that newscasts emerged as a particular programming category because they accorded
status to television as a source of truth.
Hammond also suggests that television news networks also made use of the
ostensible veracity of images depicted in television news documentaries to improve the
credibility of network television following the Van Doren quiz show scandal of 1957.
Truth-telling, via TV documentaries, was used to overcome widespread
disgruntlement about question-rigging and quiz participants pretending they were
honestly struggling to get correct answers when, all the time, having been
previously coached, they knew the answers. In the process, the networks
discovered they could make money broadcasting the truth. (Hammond, 1981, p.
14)
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Collective memory of the emergence of broadcast television following the quiz show
scandal helped to attribute salience to the social injustices that riveted Weather
Underground activists during the 1960s.
Broadcast coverage of current events emerged as sources of legitimacy for
television networks at roughly the same time as broadcast coverage drew attention to the
examination of topics including civil rights and the Vietnam War. Underground received
residual legitimacy as a source of historical information from stock footage of news
reports about events related to public dissent of the Vietnam War. Audiences with a
memory of coverage, either from watching coverage directly or from watching same
archival footage from previous documentaries, were encouraged to view the documentary
as an extension of earlier archival work. By attaching images of state led violence in
Vietnam and in the United States to popular memories of journalism, Underground
framed these images as significant cultural memories. Iconic images in the film include
that of a Vietcong soldier shot in the head at point blank range by an American soldier
and footage of a young girl accidentally burned by Napalm.
Several film critics recognized these images. Ringel-Gillespie (2003) reminded
readers that, “These pictures of anti-war protesters overflowing our cities' streets and the
carnage of Vietnam were the stuff the nightly news was made of” (p. 15E). Other
reviewers described these images as evidence of the film’s ability to capture the
emotional intensity of the Vietnam War experience. Sherman (2003) explained to Boston
Herald readers that the film evoked the intensity of the Vietnam War experience by
featuring “some of the most famous images of the Vietnam War, including the burned
girl running naked from her bombed village” (p. E12). Mitchell (2003), who described
the film as “terrifically smart and solid” also recognized that the documentary was
“packed with some of the most powerful images of violence of the period, like a bound
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Vietnamese being shot in the head at point-blank range and the bloody bed of the Black
Panther Fred Hampton after he was killed” (p. E7). These reviewers point to the
rhetorical effect of iconic images in popular culture. Hariman and Lucaites (2003) argue
that images, including the 1972 image of naked Vietnamese girl burned by napalm,
become iconic through their appropriation and reproduction in popular culture. As icons,
these images represent powerful signifiers for a whole host of memories and meanings
about the past, and imbue these memories with ideological significance. As these scholars
explain, the meaning of any iconic image shifts according to the new contexts in which it
is reproduced. My analysis suggests that iconic images may function rhetorically for the
larger texts in which they appear. Underground borrowed from legitimacy iconic images
about the Vietnam War, and enfolded them into a broader set of images of Vietnam War
atrocities and political repression of dissent in the United States.
By appearing in
combination with a host of images and narratives about political repression and the
Vietnam War, these familiar images imbued Underground with iconic significance.
Other images that looked similar to iconic images of atrocity lent further support
to activists’ claims that the United States government committed atrocity for imperialist
aims. An early segment in the film featured the image of a Vietnamese woman sitting on
the ground with her hands tied behind her back. The film initially focused on the image
of the solemn faced woman staring toward the camera. Seconds later, the film replayed
the image, but highlighted the image of a soldier standing behind her kicking her in the
head with his knee. While this image appeared and reappeared, former Weather activist
Naomi Jaffe told audiences that she was outraged by these instances of brutality, and that
she believed that, as a wealthy, white citizen of the United States, she was partially
responsible for ending these atrocities.
As Jaffe suggests, activists experienced the
trauma of Vietnam, not just because they had witnessing brutality, but also because they
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recognized the United States’ responsibility for these traumatic actions. Through the
presentation of archival footage of brutality against activists and Vietnamese people,
audiences were encouraged to make the same recognition.
Archival footage positioned audiences to identify with activists’ experiences by
foregrounding gruesome images of violence on the homefront as well. The film’s
depiction of Fred Hampton’s death at the hands of Chicago police created a sense of
immediacy to the problem of state repression against activism. As the film explained,
police shot Fred Hampton and a colleague (Mark Clark) in his home at 4:00 in the
morning on December 4, 1969.4 Police reported that Hampton and his colleague were
killed in crossfire, but strong evidence indicated that both men were sleeping at the time
they were shot. The film provided archival footage of a tour of Hampton’s home on the
day after he was shot to death.
As the film walked audiences through the house,
Bernardine Dohrn described her own experience when she took the tour herself. When
Dohrn noted a door ridden with bullets, camera footage foregrounded the bullet holes
surrounding the walls and door leading to Newton’s bedroom.
Dozens of sticks
protruded from the holes marking the trajectory and multitude of bullets directed toward
the men in their beds. Following this image, the camera moved to focus on Hampton’s
blood soaked bed. As the camera focused on this image, Dohrn described the blood as it
ran down the floor. In this moment, audiences were instructed to witness the scene as
Dohrn remembered it. Thus, the film’s archival footage provided visual representation to
activists’ recollections. Because icons of documentary journalism urged audiences to
experience these images as authentic, or transparent representations of reality, archival
news footage also suggested that audiences saw the events in the same way that former
activists saw them. As activists’ reflections’ about state brutality overlapped with the
film’s footage of the Vietnam War, the film invited audiences to identify with the
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activists through the shared experiences of witnessing state supported atrocities against
marginalized groups. Concomitantly, the film evoked activists’ horror of identification
with the United States and invited audiences to share activists’ moral outrage at the
system in which audiences and activists alike are ostensibly identified.
The final moments of the film powerfully illustrated this point. The film depicted
Weather Underground leader, Mark Rudd, who told the camera that he regretted
Weather’s destructive approach to end the war. But then he stated, “I think that part of
the Weatherman phenomenon that was right was our understanding of what the position
of the United States is in the world.” At this moment the film cut away from Rudd to
archival footage of bombs falling from United States military planes onto a village in
Vietnam. After showing the image of an airplane dropping bombs, the camera positioned
the audience from the perspective inside the airplane, watching billows of smoke and fire
burst up as the bombs strike village huts below. Rudd’s voice narrated these images
thusly: “It was this knowledge that we just couldn’t handle. It was too big. We didn’t
know what to do.” By watching these images alongside Rudd’s testimonial, Rudd’s
horror of identification became the audience’s horror as well.
Archival footage of the war and atrocities at home encouraged audiences to
understand the Weather Underground’s actions as an understandable response to their
feelings of rage and frustration.
As film critic Hornaday (2003) wrote for The
Washington Post, “Images of the Vietnam War and the violent suppression of protests at
home [help] the filmmakers make a case for one activists’ contention that the
Weathermen were taking what they saw as the only conscientious action against an
immoral society” (p. C05). Writing for the Houston Chronicle, Strauss (2003) concluded
that the film was “uniquely reasonable” and stated that the “ghastly archival footage from
Vietnam [made] it evident why so many Americans were radicalized against that war” (p.
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6). Another reviewer wrote, “The filmmakers never slant their powerful documentary one
way or the other. They don’t need to. These images (many of which are disturbing shots
of Vietnam War carnage and stateside killings) and words of inner perspective do the
persuading for them” (Ratliff, 2003, p. 8H).5 These reviewers suggested that the archival
images in the film spoke for themselves. Ostensibly, reviewers gleaned meaning
primarily from the images on the screen, leaving the words of activists themselves
superfluous.
By presenting itself as a self-evident recording of history, and as a
sympathetic look at a revolutionary social movement, Underground drew attention to
contradictions between American ideology and the lived experiences of political
repression in the United States. In this way, Underground established the film’s potential
as a source of critical memory about the role of the state in liberal capitalist democracies.
Memories of dissent against the Vietnam War in Underground invited critical
reflection about United States foreign policy and prompted reviewers to attend to
contemporary United States’ policies toward dissent. Several reviewers noted that the
film, appearing in the midst of President George H.W. Bush’s announcements of the
United States’ war in Iraq, was especially timely (Hornaday, 2003, p. C05; Kennedy,
2003, p. F08; Meyer et al., 2003, p. D5; Sherman, 2003, p. E12). Other reviewers drew
parallels between anti-Vietnam War protest and anti-Iraq War protest. Meyer et al.(2003)
wrote that the image of Nixon deriding peace marchers was “eerily similar to President
Bush’s dismissal of anti-war rallies” (p. D5). Levy (2003) remarked that the film has
piercing echoes for another time -- ours -- in which young activists find themselves trying
to express their outrage at an administration waging war and pursuing policies to which
they take strong exception” (p. 24). Reviewing the film when it was released on DVD,
Booth and Persall (2004), and Weiskind (2004) suggested that the film also invited
criticisms of President Bush’s foreign policy. Booth and Persall wrote, “If the war in Iraq
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is indeed a quagmire like Vietnam, this Academy Award-nominated documentary may be
a preview of what's coming at home.” They concluded that the film offered, “blasts from
the past that echo louder with each casualty report from Iraq” (p. 16W). Weiskind wrote
that, the “movie's real value comes in considering the issues in today's context, when
America is again fighting what many consider a questionable war that engenders
vociferous, albeit mostly peaceful, protest (p. C2). By associating Vietnam War protests
with contemporary protests, these reviewers suggested that the film’s critique of United
States foreign policy can extend to the present. Thus, they framed the film as an analogy
for understanding contemporary political injustices, and gave activism a place in the
living political and public life.
Although memories of Vietnam War protests in the film prompted reviewers to
associate memories of United States intervention in Vietnam with contemporary social
injustices, I do not wholeheartedly applaud this film as a resource for present day
struggles.
This film did not provide a counter-memory adequate to the needs of
contemporary public life in the United States. Activists speaking in the film suggest that
United States’ imperialism has consequences for more contemporary struggles, but they
don’t point to them explicitly.
The film’s conclusion invited audiences to quietly
reflection and revel in uncertainty. As Rudd explained in the film’s final moments, “In a
way, I still don’t know what to do with this knowledge. I don’t know what needs to be
done now. It’s still eating away at me just as it did thirty years ago.” Rudd’s quote
points to what is most powerful, yet enervating about the counter-memories constructed
in The Weather Underground. The film never provided audiences with an understanding
of what might be done to achieve social justice and resist imperialism.
Although the film offered a powerful critique of economic and political power
relations in the United States, this film did not provide a critical memory that would have
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invited not only reflection but resources for taking action in the present. The film
prompted one reviewer to compare events “that capture your imagination” with events
like the Vietnam War that “pummel”, “curdle” and “darken” the imagination (Kennedy,
2003, p. F08). This reviewer suggested that the film was less a source of invention or for
imagining social change than it was a mode of leaving activism and movements for social
change in the past. Rudd’s quote at the end of Underground mirrored the competing
verbal and visual messages in Berkeley that were ambivalent about the role of activism
for challenging imperialism in the United States. Such equivocation demonstrates how
these films’ formal structure functioned hegemonically.
Both films’ presentation of multiple points of view enabled film critics writing for
mainstream newspapers to pick and choose elements that most supported prevailing
ideology. Competing messages in these films created a space in mainstream press for
reviewers to simultaneously applaud these films and dismiss the activists featured within
them.
Most of the images and statements by former activists encouraged audiences to
understand even radical activism as an understandable response to the ongoing war and to
political repression at home, but not all images supported this idea. Some images and
interviews supported counter-arguments that decried movement activism as ill-conceived
and poorly executed.
REFRAMING DISSENT AS DEVIANCE IN JOURNALISM REVIEWS
Film critics writing for mainstream newspapers magnified the messages in these
films that characterized activists as deviant. Four common topoi appear in news reviews
of both Berkeley and Underground. These topoi emphasized 1: historical actors as
absurd or insane; 2: activists as inherently violent or destructive, 3: activists as the
foremost agents of activism’s demise, and 4: former activists as presently re-integrated
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into mainstream culture. Collectively, these topoi dismissed public dissent as a foolish
and hazardous vestige of the past.
Newspaper frames of activism as absurd, violent, and inept
Reviewers of Berkeley frequently focused on moments in the film that featured
seemingly ridiculous or bizarre features of movement activism and the counter-culture.
One reviewer noted “Tim Leary’s ramblings and the absurd arguments between hippies
and straight people” about marijuana use (Movshovitz, 1990, p. 6F). Another reviewer
cited former activists who described their fellow protesters as delusional (“Berkeley,”
1991, p. 3F). Instances in newspapers focused on the unusual behavior of counter-culture
activists outside of the contexts and explanations that former activists provided for them.
Thus, they made the emergence of the counter-culture appear more ridiculous than they
appeared in the contexts of interviewee’s explanations for them in the films.
By
decontextualizing the counter-culture, reviewers discredited protesters and framed their
interests outside of the problems of political injustice that motivated most activists.
Images of comical moments in the history of Berkeley activism most frequently
appeared in reviewers’ descriptions of former Black Panther Party leader Bobby Seale
and then Governor Reagan. Although Seale appeared briefly in a short interview on the
film, five reviewers cited him as a central activist represented in the film. Seale told
filmmakers that the Panthers bought the Mao’s “Red Book” in Chinatown shops for 20
cents a pieces and sold them for a dollar on the Berkeley campus (Du Pre, 1990, p. W8;
Millar, 1991, p. 1). Two of these reviews framed Seale as devious and criminal. Sachs
(1990) referred to the Panther’s selling of the book as a “scheme” (p. 46). Du Pre (1990)
noted that Seale “confessed” that the Panthers never read the book themselves, as though
not having read it was a criminal act itself (p. W8). Other reviewers suggested that even
Seale regarded the student left as naïve. According to critics, Seale was “amused” by the
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young white radicals’ efforts to embrace the Panthers and their books (“Berkeley, 1991,
p. 3F ; Howe, 1990, p. N45). Through their descriptions of Seale’s reflection on the
white activist movement, reviewers suggested that even black revolutionary activists did
not take white student radicals seriously. Reviews’ descriptions of Seale’s role in the film
attests to reviewers’ selectivity and decontextualization of events depicted in the film. By
making Seale a focus in the absence of attention to former Berkeley activists, reviews
obscured Berkeley’s film’s framing of activists that depicted them as knowledgeable and
compassionate
Reviews equally obscured the repressive force against activists exercised by the
Berkeley administration and Governor Reagan. In three instances, reviewers pointed to
state supported violence of police and university authorities. Sachs (1990) referenced
“images of police dragging students down stairs, across concrete, and into vans,” (p. 47);
Mahar (1990) noted that Reagan’s “massive retaliation” was a factor in the demise of the
movement by the end of the 1960s (p. 01); and Howe (1990) noted that one of the film’s
highlights was the image of Governor Reagan’s troops surrounding “a peaceful rally
while a helicopter bomb[ed] the crowd with nausea gas (p. N45). In all other reviews,
critics ignored Berkeley’s framing of state officials as instigators of repression and
violence against activists. Instead, reviews amplified the “1960s-as-ridiculous” theme by
depicting administrators and Governor Reagan as comically rigid and stodgy. Stone
(1990) mentioned that Alameda County District Attorney Ed Meese complained about a
student dance “‘contrary to our standards of human behavior’” (p. E3); Sachs (1990)
noted that Reagan “sneered” at the sinful effects of psychedelia (p. 47); and Howe (1990)
wrote that Reagan condemned a student film that displayed “naked torsos” (p. N45).
These instances in newspaper coverage framed Reagan as a moralist who was out of
touch with the cultural shifts of the youth movement. Images of Reagan’s moralism were
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trivial compared to the other scenes in the film that demonstrated how Reagan endorsed
the use of repressive violence to silence activism.6 Indeed, much of the film was woven
together by recurrent messages about Reagan’s efforts to silence campus dissent
throughout the 1960s. Reviewers’ omission of this theme demonstrates how reviewers
selected material from the film without identifying or supporting the film’s overriding
narrative. Instead of understanding the state’s response to activism as abhorrent, or even
troubling, readers were encouraged to remember Reagan with some of the same
amusement in which they were encouraged to recall the 1960s counter-culture.
While reviews of Berkeley framed both activists and state leaders as comical,
reviews of Underground framed activists as insane.
Rosen (2003) wrote that
Underground “makes one think about the links between political zealotry and mental
illness” (p. F20). Other reviewers suggested that the political crisis at home and in
Vietnam drove student activists mad. In a tongue in cheek question, Salm (2003) asked,
“What cultural eddies so befuddled [Weather Underground activists] that they came to
believe that, rather than playing out the paranoid fantasies of a few dozen like-minded
souls, they were the vanguard of a nationwide movement?” (p. 20). La Salle (2003)
described activists’ efforts to prompt revolutionary movement in the United States as
“delusional” (La Salle, 2003, p. D5). Kennedy (2003) and Salm (2003) cited Flanagan,
who told filmmakers, “I think the Vietnam War made us all a little crazy. That's the only
way I can explain it” (p. F08 in Kennedy; p. 20 in Salm). In contrast to the majority of
interviewees in the film who explained recurrent patterns of racial and economic injustice
at the hands of the state economic and political system in the United States, these reviews
depicted activism as irrational acts outside the bounds of legitimate political action.
Reviewers of both films delegitimized activism further by describing protesters as
agents of violence and mayhem. In his description of archival footage of Berkeley, Carey
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(1990) described students as “increasingly more violent” over the course of the 1960s and
noted that students clashed “violently with police” during Stop the Draft Week (p. 10).
Another critic of Berkeley, Mahar (1990) framed activists as aggressors and police as
defensive respondents: “Anti-war protests turned to anti-draft riots, and police responses
escalated….The violence of confrontation grew.…The Panthers armed themselves, and
then California Gov. Ronald Reagan expanded control measures” (p. 01). Reviews of
Underground frequently framed activists as violent aggressors as well. Levy (2003)
noted that the movement set off bombs in banks and military installations (p. 24); and
Salm (2003) described Weather activists as “outlaws dedicated to violent revolution” (p.
20).
Levy and Salm were not entirely off base.
Weather Underground activists
attested to their use of bombs to destroy government buildings, and they advocated
violence publicly as a means to overthrow capitalism. However, these reviews make no
distinction between acts of destruction against government property and violence against
human beings. La Salle (2003) conflated the two in his article when he wrote that
Weather Underground activists “believed, for a time, that they had the right to commit
acts of violence against innocent American citizens” (p. D5). Other reviews featured
statements by former SDS member Todd Gitlin who was interviewed as the central critic
of the Weathermen in the film. As film critics noted, Gitlin described Weather’s plans as
“essentially mass murder” (Ebert, 2003, p. 36; Levy, 2003, p. 24), and likened movement
activists to Hitler, Stalin, and Mao (Howe, 2003, p. T33). No reviews mentioned that
activists made efforts to ensure that no people were ever harmed in their attacks. Nor do
these reviews mention that Weather actions never seriously injured or killed anyone
outside of the movement itself. By characterizing activists as violent and ignoring these
films’ depictions of violent police and state authorities, these reviews framed activists as
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catalysts for conflict and advocates of genocide.
The topos of protester violence
encouraged newspaper readers to not only disregard the movement’s strategies, but reject
it outright.
Reviews of Berkeley and Underground also framed activists as ultimately
responsible for the decline in social movement protests 1968 and 1980. Mahar (1990) and
Smith (1991) indicated that protesters’ lack of vision ultimately ended social movement
activism. Mahar (1990) explained the movement’s decline thusly: “At the end [of the
decade] there were conflicting agendas. There was no coherent goal or method of
accomplishing things. The movements opposed things they couldn't affect but had no
reasonable system to replace the one they protested” (p. 01). Smith (1991) wrote, “The
film maker remains fairly honest in assessing what went wrong -- namely, the
movement's own lack of direction, a fatal shortcoming that allowed things to spin out of
control” ( p. 5C).
In other newspaper reviews, quotes of interviewees in Berkeley and Weather
critical of activists appeared advances the narrative of the movement’s self-inflicted
demise. Two reviewers, Szilagyi (1990) and Sachs (1990), referenced interviewees
featured in the film to bolster assertions that confrontational strategies destroyed the
movement. Szilagyi (1990) wrote that the interviews were “quite candid in discussing
the failures of the movement. Participants relate how it fell apart because it evolved from
an idealistic effort to change society to a pure protest movement, which needed constant
confrontation to survive” (p. F1). Sachs (1990) twice quoted Professor John Searle, the
interviewee most critical of confrontational protest strategies at Berkeley.
First, he
identified Searle as “one of the witnesses” who viewed the creation of People’s Park as
“a cynical act in forcing a confrontation with authorities.” Later, he identified Searle by
name. “Berkeley professor John Searle comments on the ‘kooks and nuts’ attracted by the
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promise of drugs, sex and maybe a little harmless violence on the side.” Sachs concluded
with his own commentary. “Anyone who went to college during the '60s, or has followed
the career of Jerry Rubin, knows the protest ranks included people who were aboard for
little more than self-gratification” (p. 47). Reviews such as Sach’s and Szilagyi’s prompt
the conclusion that activists were incapable of effective leadership and organization.
Thus, they distorted the film’s framing of the Berkeley movement by amplifying the
movement’s critics and minimizing the movement’s conclusions. Indeed, Sachs cloaked
his frequent use of Berkeley’s most prominent critic by not identifying him one of his
references to him. Such distortions fit within the larger patterns by which journalism
reviewers framed these films. Recurrent topoi that characterized activists as comical or
insane, violent, or as agents of their own destruction magnified activists’ shortcomings
and ignored the state’s abuses of power. Certainly, movement leaders’ poor planning and
lack of foresight contributed to the movement’s decline; however, state supported
repression against protesters also weakened movement activism.
By ignoring state
supported violence against mostly non-confrontational activists, journalism reviews
provided a partial representation of the history of events surrounding new left activism
presented in these films.
Leaving activism to the children of the past
Characterizations of activists as comical, insane, violent, and destructive diverged
from the films’ talking-head interviews that depicted activists as reasonable.
Several
newspaper reviews made these themes made commensurable with films’ depiction of
interviewees through a fourth theme that appeared across reviews of these films that
described dissent in terms of youthful indiscretion.
Reviewers of Berkeley and
Underground frequently characterized the rise in student and antiwar activism as the
consequence of youthful naiveté gone sour.
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Kempley (1990) described Berkeley as a
film about “a nonviolent army of youth” with “a halcyon vision” and characterized
activists as “the kids who grew up on Tinker Bell and believed that they could change the
world, that any dream -- desegregation, an end to war -- could come true if they only
marched on Washington” (p. B2).
Critics similarly characterized Weather activists as
idealistic and tempermental adolescents. Howe described the student left as “youths” who
experienced both “terrible follies” and “short lived glories” (p. T33); Levy (2003) noted
that “the idealism of youth…evolved into impassioned anger” (p. 24); and RingelGillespie (2003) told readers that the nation was so “confused,” and “flooded with
curdled idealism” that “a generation of college students” became convinced that “taking
protests to the streets was somehow credible” (p. 15E).
activists as vulnerable victims of the era.
Ringel-Gillespie portrayed
Reviews that characterized activists as
adolescents implied that activists were too inexperienced to know better, and responded
with emotion rather than intellect. Through this theme, reviewers contained activism in
the 1960s without dismissing activists interviewed in the film.
Depictions of interviewees as older as and smarter than their former activist selves
corresponded to descriptions of activists as youths.
Several articles described
interviewees as “middle-aged” (Booth & Pearsall, 2004, p. 16W; Carter, 2003, p. 15E;
Ringel-Gillespie, 2003, p. 15E). Many suggested that, with age, interviewees had also
become more thoughtful than they had been when they were activists (Kempley, 1990, p.
B2; Weiskind, 2004, p. C2). For instance, Jacobs (1990) wrote that former activists
reflected on the movement at Berkeley with “considerably more self-awareness than they
possessed a quarter-century ago” (p. L24). In another example, Howe (2003) wrote that
Weathermen and other contemporaries interviewed in the film could “appreciate the
bittersweet vision of hindsight” (p. T33). Critics’ framings of activists indicated that with
age, former activists abandoned public protest.
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Other reviewers took the topos of former-activists-as-beyond-protest as step
further by characterizing them as part of the political and social order. Reviewing
Berkeley, Movshovitz (1990) contrasted the “self-indulgent” shots of hippies in People’s
Park with the “conventional” image of Barry Melton” (p. 6F). A review for the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch (1991) noted that one former activism “is now president of the Los
Angeles School Board,” and that Melton “is now a lawyer” (“A forceful look”, 1991, p.
3F). Writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, critics Meyer, LaSalle, and Guthman
(2003) asserted that “Dohrn …could be mistaken for a congresswoman” (p. D5). These
reviews suggested that activists have been reintegrated into the political system that they
once struggled against. Carey (1991) emphasized this point in his review of Berkeley
when he wrote that “most of Kitchell's subjects are white, admittedly privileged and
curiously closed off from the myriad of problems of today” (p. 10).
Pearson (2004)
made the point most bluntly when she described former activists as “part of the so-called
establishment today” (p. 32D). These reviews encouraged readers to disregard public
protests as youthful antics; ostensibly, activists grew up and gave up childish politics for
careers that don’t challenge the predominant political and economic system.
Other
instances in newspaper reviews characterized activists as “white children of privilege”
(Weiskind, 2004, p. C2); as “upper-class white kids” (Howe, 2003, p. T33) and as
children with “bourgeois roots” (Meyer, LaSalle & Guthmann, 2003, p. D5); these
instances further delegitimized protest by suggesting that, indeed, young activists never
did pose a threat to the established order.
Many reviews of Underground also suggested that former activists interviewed in
the film deeply regretted their involvement in radical protest movements. Only two
newspaper reviews mentioned former activists who expressed pride in the movement’s
goals (See Howe, 2003, p. T33; Mitchell, 2003, p. E77). By contrast, nine reviews
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suggested that former activists disparaged their involvement in the movement (Burr,
2003, p. C5; Hornaday, 2003, p. C05; Matthews, 2003, p. 42; Mitchell, 2003, p. E7;
Sherman, 2003, p. E12).
Quotes from activists who critiqued the Underground’s
perspectives and strategies bolstered the claim that activists had reevaluated movement
activities in their adulthood.
Matthews’ (2003) review featured Rudd, who told
filmmakers, “it is dangerous…to act out violently from a sense of moral superiority” (p.
42). Other reviewers quoted Brian Flanagan, who had stated, “When you feel you have
right on your side, you can do some pretty horrific things,” (Rosen, 2003, p. F20;
Weiskind, 2004, p. C2), and who had concluded that “the moral high ground is a
dangerous position to take” (Burr, 2003, p C5). By suggesting that former activists have
abandoned protest for more conventional political practices, these reviews implied that
activism no longer holds value or relevance for those who protested during the 1960s.8
These reviews overlooked narratives about how collective activism furthered
causes for civil rights and social justice. They also ignored the ways in which political
authorities disrupted and silenced student protest, and often used coercive and illegal
measures to do so. This narrative is not limited to the 1960s. As Zinn’s (1995) A
People’s History of the United States demonstrates, collective protest and dissent has
been a democratizing force in this nation since its inception. With almost equal force, the
state has sought to quell efforts to equalize the distribution of wealth and power in this
country. By minimizing instances of state-sponsored violence and repression in the
history of 1960s activism, these reviews discouraged readers from understanding that
political leaders, as representatives of economic elites also go outside bounds of norms of
what constitutes legitimate political action in a liberal democracy and engage in horrific
acts themselves.
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Stylistic devices within Berkeley and Underground legitimated memories of
radical activism and left-wing social movements for mainstream media audiences by
creating false representations of balance. Paradoxically, journalistic reviews of these
films praised the “balance” constructed in these films, and then destabilized the film’s
construction by framing activists as crazy, violent, inept, and adolescent. In his analysis
of newspaper coverage of the Million Man March in 1995, Watkins (2001) observed that
the creators of protest movements may “behave in ways that demand the media
spotlight,” but “they have very little power over how intense the spotlight will shine or
what it will selectively illuminate (p. 99; see also Gitlin, 1980). The same can be said of
filmmakers who have depicted protest movements.
Codes of objectivity allowed critics to read the films selectively and thereby
enabled critics to emphasize frameworks more acceptable to mainstream audiences.
Through this routine framing of activism in journalism reviews of Berkeley and
Underground, newspaper critics pushed radical activism outside of the sphere of
legitimate controversy, and repositioned new left social movements within the sphere of
deviance typical of predominant news patterns about activism. Although films conferred
legitimacy on activists, reviewers selectively illuminated features of the film that made
them look crazy, violent, and self-destructive. In this way, critics repositioned activists
with in the sphere of deviance and returned the state to the sphere of consensus. What
looked at first like a break in the patterns of news framings of dissent actually reiterated
of framings typical of mainstream journalism.
STRUGGLES FOR POPULAR MEMORY AND DISSENT AFTER 1980
The contrasting meanings and values attributed to student New Left activism in
Berkeley in the Sixties and The Weather Underground and their reviews attest to the
struggles for hegemony that take place within the terrain of popular memory. These
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documentaries posed challenges to common understandings about the role of antiwar
protest.
Berkeley and Weather activists’ critiques of imperialism, war, and state
repression of dissent invited critique of the United States’ role in the Middle-East during
Persian Gulf Wars I and II and challenged political discourses about the role of protest
during the invasions of Iraq. By lending credibility to activists’ critiques of imperialism
and the state, these activists also challenged the moral authority of current political
administrations and the interests that they served. In the months following the first
United States attack on Iraq, President George H. Bush Sr. declared the end of “the
Vietnam Syndrome” and of dissent.
Likewise, during the second attack, President
George H. W. Bush equated dissent with terrorism. Berkeley and Underground provided
counter-memories that restored legitimacy to public protest, and suggested that activism,
although bruised and bloodied, was not completely out of breath.
For audiences who observed the films’ resonance with contemporary political
discourses and problems, these films might have served to raise consciousness about the
role of activism and of the state’s repression of dissent during times of war and political
crisis. Thus, these films might have helped promulgate antiwar dissent in the early 1990s
and 2003, when these films appeared in theatres and on public television. [See Bowers,
Ochs, and Jensen (1993) for a discussion of the role of promulgation in social
movements.] For audiences already critical of United States’ foreign policy and the
state’s use of force to repress dissent, these films might also have served a role in the
solidification of the antiwar movement. That is, these films might have encouraged wary
activists to continue organizing and demonstrating against the war by placing
contemporary activism within a broader history of anti-war activism in which ordinary
people have challenged and delimited United States’ aggression overseas. Newspaper
critics also served a counter-hegemonic function by giving these films positive reviews.
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By giving strong reviews to these films, newspaper critics expanded these films’
circulation and gave them a place, albeit marginal given independent films’ market,
within the terrain of popular memories of white student activism during the 1960s.
Conversely, reviews of these films blunted these films’ critical potential for
mainstream newspaper audiences by relegating activism to the past. Newspaper reviews
placed these films within dominant popular memories that reaffirmed prevailing
hegemony. For readers who watched the films, reviews guided them toward a particular
reading of the films out of balance with the films’ central arguments. By focusing on
activists in typical journalistic frame of deviance, reviews resolved the contradiction
between the films’ positive reception by the industry and in film festivals and political
discourses that dismissed 1960s activism. For readers who did not see the film, these
reviews discouraged audiences from considering activism as an empowering form of
political participation, and encouraged people to share prevailing political understandings
of dissent as inherently anti-democratic. Since newspapers circulate more broadly than
independent films, these reviews placed a dark pall over activism into the new
millennium.
In this chapter, I suggest that the struggle for memory is also a struggle for
legitimacy. To be understood within the terrain of popular memory, texts must be
recognized as historically relevant.
This analysis of documentary constructions of
student and antiwar activists explains how this understanding is established rhetorically.
My commentary regarding news reviews of these films also demonstrates how a film’s
construction of its own historical credibility is essential, but it does not guarantee its role
in popular memory. The weight of previous memory in popular culture carries with it its
own rhetorical force, and has strength to frame counter-memories in ways that reaffirm
hegemonic political and economic relations.
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The question that remains now is how counter-memories might be able to shift the
rhetorical weight of prevailing popular memory. In a foreward to a collection of essays
written by former 1960s activists from Texas, Jesse Jackson (1992) asserts that the “The
mainstream press wants us to remember those for whom the issues of the ‘60s were little
more than to act out their youthful rebellion....It is axiomatic that the power structure’s
first line of defense is to keep issues from becoming part of the public agenda” (p. x).
Jackson adds that “to keep issues from the consciousness of the public is to win the battle
before it’s been fought” (p. x). As Jackson and this essay attest, the struggle for artists
and activists today is to construct counter-memories that can resist hegemonic narratives
that frame activism as mere memory that might best be forgotten.
Such narratives must recall the state’s capacity for repression. These narratives
must also focus on activists who have continued to struggle in response to, and in spite
of, the terror visited upon activism. Jackson concludes that “Those who would challenge
that power structure must first force issues on the table of public debate. To that extent,
the ‘60s were a rousing success” (p. x). It is the memory of these successes that must
integrated into public consciousness. By focusing on the promises of the movement, we
may disabuse memories of activism’s self-inflicted demise and create ground for countermemories.
In order to establish new memories, activists and filmmakers must find ways to
incorporate these memories into a form that is accessible to popular media audiences and
journalists. Although the ideas of objectivity and truth are powerful rhetorical devices to
establish the legitimacy of particular memories about activism, codes that establish the
legitimacy of memories as “objective” sources might not be the most effective for
circulating counter-memories into popular culture. Objectivity itself is not a reflection of
the real world, but a rhetorical stance taken by filmmakers and journalists; thus, the
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appearance of objectivity in any text does not guarantee that a full range of images and
messages about the past will be included. Rather than rely upon codes of objectivity and
balance, I suggest that the future of activism in popular culture might depend upon the
ways that counter-hegemonic messages respond to the formal and ideological
expectations of popular culture.
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NOTES TO CHAPTER SEVEN
1
Between 1990 and 1991, independent movie theatres and college campuses
showed Berkeley in the Sixties film in over 70 cities (Klein, 1990, p. 12LI). Months after
its release, the film also aired on the PBS program “Point of View” (“Berkeley” 1991,
July 18, p. 12). Although estimated numbers are not available for theatres that showed
The Weather Underground, Rosen (2003) writes that the film earned some $500,000 in
theatrical release (p. F20). The Weather Underground also aired on April 2004 on the
PBS series, “Independent Lens” (Walker, 2004, p. 1).
2
Dow (2004) argues that the voice of God narration style is most conventional
code of realism and objectivity that gives the impression that speaker’s portrayal of
events is a commonsensical description of what the viewer has seen or is about to see” (p.
59). I argue that, the voice of God narration style no longer constitutes an objectivity
code persuasive for integrating controversial ideas into popular culture.
Instead,
commentary by two persons as evidence for claims that remain implicit within the film
itself more persuasive to legitimate film as objective.
3
Other bombings mentioned in the film included the National Guard headquarters
in May of 1970 in response to the Kent State killings; New York City police headquarters
in June 9, 1970 in response to police repression; the Presidio Army Base in San Francisco
in July 16, 1970 to mark the 11th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution; the Queens
Courthouse in October 8 1970 in solidarity with New York prison revolts; the Harvard
Center for International Affairs in October 8, 1970 to protest the war in Vietnam; the
New York Department of Corrections on September 17, 1971 to protest the killing of 29
inmates at Attica State Penitentiary; the United States Capitol in February 28, 1971 to
protest the invasion of Laos; the 103rd Police Precinct on May 18, 1973 in response to
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the police killing of a 10-year-old black youth; ITT headquarters on September 28, 1973
in response to a United States-backed coup in Chile; the Department of Health,
Education, and Welfare in San Francisco on March 6, 1974 to protest the forced
sterilization of poor women; the Office of the California Attorney General on May 31,
1974 in response to the killing of 6 members of the Symbionese Liberation Army; Gulf
Oil’s Pittsburgh headquarters on June 17, 1974 to protest its policies in Angola; the State
Department on January 28, 1975 in response to military escalation in Vietnam; and
Banco de Ponce in New York on June 16, 1975 in solidarity with striking Puerto Rican
cement workers.
4
The film does not mention the name of the other Panther member, Mark Clark,
who was shot with Hampton.
5
Other reviewers made similar, but less eloquent statements about the role of
stock footage in the film. Carter (2003) noted that the clips of footage from the 1960s
“help viewers unfamiliar with the period understand how the Weathermen received as
much consideration as they did. (p. 3E).
6
In one scene not mentioned by any reviewers, Reagan berated university faculty
at Berkeley for encouraging students to believe that they deserved decision-making
authority on campus. During another scene, voice-over narrator Griffin explained that
Reagan won reelection as governor on an anti-activism platform. Later, the film noted
that Reagan was instrumental in bringing the National Guard onto campus to silence
dissent. Throughout the film, messages pointed to Reagan as a key force of political
repression of dissent. Reviewers’ omission of this theme that weaved the narrative of the
trajectory of the Berkeley movement together demonstrates how reviewers selected
material from the film without identifying or supporting the film’s overriding narrative.
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7
Mitchell (2003) noted that women in the movement were “still full of hope” (p.
E7). In an extended description on Jaffe’s position on activism, Mitchell wrote, “Ms.
Jaffe admits that she'd do it again if she could be smarter about it. That mixture of
optimism and toughness was what started the Weathermen, and it still has a place in Ms.
Jaffe's heart. It's also the spirit of The Weather Underground (Mitchell, 2003, p. E7).
Howe (2003) noted that activists including Bernardine Dohrn, Josh Ayers, David Gilbert,
and Naomi Jaffe are “still passionate and unapologetic” about their years in the Weather
Underground (p. T33).
8
Newspaper film critic Carey (1991) explicitly stated that former activists are no
longer interested in dissent when he wrote that most former activists interviews for
Berkeley “feel they've done their good deed, not just for the day but for a lifetime (p. 10).
Burr (2003) also suggested that activism is irrelevant w hen he noted that most people
had forgotten The Weather Underground. He described such forgetting as “testimony to
the way history swallows idealism, digests it, and moves on” (Burr, 2003, p.C5).
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Conclusion: Activism and memory in the new millennium
Paul Loeb (1994) writes that the students who went to college between 1987 and
1993 came of age “under the sway of political, cultural, and economic currents that
convinced citizens in general to seek personal well-being over a common social good” (p.
3). Thus, Loeb explains student withdrawal from political participation and social
activism as “the fruit of a cultural climate in which students learned to mistrust peers who
take on causes that go on their personal lives” (p. 3). Loeb’s observations accord with
my own experiences as a child of 1960s-era protesters and as a college student during the
mid-1990s. Although I participated in protest events that took place on the campus
where I attended school, I felt continually frustrated by the myriad of students who
approached me with suspicion for questioning university politics and corporate practices.
I also felt frustrated that those incredulous students seemed to greatly outnumber my
activist colleagues. To be honest, I didn’t behave as the great activist I thought I would
be when I entered college. “Why,” I asked myself, “should I take time away from my
own scholarship, dedicate myself to a cause that only a handful of my friends seemed to
believe in, and make myself the object of criticism among my peers?” And even now
sometimes, I am somewhat resigned to activism’s demise.
As I have theorized the role that contemporary film and journalism have played in
creating meaning about activism, I have sought rekindle activists’ voices, including my
own. It is my hope, that by contributing memories of activism to the study of rhetoric, I
might also provide counter-memories that remind readers of the possibilities and
limitations of collective protest and participatory democracy. Under the current political
climate, we can ill afford to accept the death of activism without a fight.
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At present, United States’ political culture is witnessing unprecedented threats to
civil liberties and political dissent. Consider the following cases:
1.
In response to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on
September 11, 2001, the Federal Government passed the Patriot Act. Section 215
of this act expands the FBI’s ability to search booksellers’ and librarians’ records
with out a reasonable belief that the target of investigation may have committed a
crime. Nor do investigators need to inform individuals whose records are being
searched (McPhee, 2004).
2.
In July of 2003, a federal prosecutor invoked an 1872 law to file charges
against Greenpeace activists who boarded a container ship and unfurled a banner
that criticized President Bush. This 19th century law was initially enacted to
prohibit bar owners from soliciting sailors at sea, and hasn’t been invoked for the
past one hundred years.
If the federal prosecutors win the case against the
activists, federal officials will gain the rights to review all of the activist
organizations’ records (“Protesters wary,” 2003).
3. On February 9, 2004, a federal judge ordered Drake University officials to
relinquish records about a gathering of antiwar activists. This was the first time
any university had been subpoenaed for records of student protesters. Although
activists broke no laws, the court demanded that the university provide the names
of students who participated in protest activities (Foley, 2004).
These incursions into civil liberties show signs of an increasingly chilly climate
for contentious collective activism. Indeed, these are precarious times for activists and
citizens seeking to hold public officials accountable to the publics they purportedly
represent. Other instances of activism over the past five years mirror state-sanctioned
brutality against protesters that 1960s activists’ often witnessed. During the November
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30, 1999 protests against the International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization
in Seattle, Washington, police beat back protesters with pepper spray, ballistic batons,
and rubber-coated bullets.
Although a handful of protesters engaged in destructive
actions against local businesses, most of the individuals harmed by police were
nonviolent activists or bystanders (Redden, 2001, p. 140).
Likewise, thousands of
nonviolent demonstrators protesting the meeting of the International Monetary Fund in
Washington, D.C., on April 16, 2000, were tear-gassed, pepper-sprayed, and/or beaten
with police batons (Ehrenreich, 2001/2000, p. 99). More recently, police used rubber
bullets, tear gas, and beatings to corral and prepress activists protesting the Free Trade
Area of the Americas in Miami, Florida, in November of 2003. If contemporary student
attitudes and popular media aren’t repressing activism, prevailing political authorities are.
And with activism goes our ability to hold these leaders accountable to us.
Popular memories of activism have particular salience to contemporary civic life
given these current threats to civil liberties and social movements. As Benjamin (1968)
writes, “to articulate the past historically…means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes
up at a moment of danger” (p. 255). Memories of protest may alert us to the dangers that
publics are facing today. Furthermore, how we are encouraged to remember 1960s
activism may guide how we respond to the current onslaught against civil liberties and
social protest. Recently, critics of government surveillance of activists’ records have
recalled memories of the past to highlight the threats that civil liberties are facing today.
Mark Smith, a lobbyist for the Washington-based American Association of University
Professors, told the Associated Press that the federal subpoena handed to Drake
University brought “back fears of the ‘red squads’ of the 1950s and campus clampdowns
on Vietnam War protesters” (Foley, 2004). Smith’s memory reminds us of the role that
violence and repression has played in the history of social movement activism and
258
recognizes the state’s role in fomenting conflict in the Sixties. But Smith’s memory is
one that few contemporary college students share. Loeb (1994) notes that students today
have “a distorted image of Vietnam-era protest movements,” whose legacy, he adds,
“continues to overshadow American campus politics” (p. 2). As Loeb suggests, our
cultural memory has played a significant role in shaping how students today think of their
own political role.
Popular memories of activism matter, then, because they convey lessons about the
role of activism in public life. Representations of the past that teach students how
ordinary citizens have been able to change their societies also teach them how they too
may be able to improve social conditions in their own lives. As one student told Loeb
during an interview, “I want to be active, but I don’t see stuff in the media that gives me
any idea what to do. Because I don’t , this adds to my feeling of powerlessness…I feel
concerned and I know people can do things, but nobody’s ever taught me how to get
involved” (p. 73). I believe that this dissertation is important because recent films about
1960s activism and journalistic attention to them provide contradictory messages that
make it difficult for audiences such as Loeb’s students to understand what they should
do.
COMMEMORATING THE DEATH OF ACTIVISM IN POPULAR FILM
On the one hand, popular memories of activism in these films invited audiences to
celebrate public protest as an important force for challenging social injustices. In
Chapters Three through Seven, I explain how recent films about 1960s activism shined a
sympathetic spotlight on activism and social movement protest. These films provided
models of heroic self-sacrifice. Even in Mississippi Burning and Ghosts of Mississippi,
the films least attentive to the memories of activists, main protagonists privileged the
political positions held by moderate civil rights activists during the 1960s. More radical
259
films Malcolm X and Panther depicted radical activists committed to improving their
communities and to establishing self-sufficiency to break from an oppressive social
system that marginalized them. Berkeley in the Sixties and The Weather Underground
provided critical memories about the history of activism by presenting activism from the
voices of some of the decade’s most radical white activists. By presenting audiences
with reasons for many activists’ increasing radicalism toward the end of the decade, these
films encouraged audiences to sympathize with dissenters who have been predominantly
disparaged in mainstream journalism. These films gave dignity to activists and encourage
audiences to understand radical activists, not as instigators of violence, but as victims of
violence who found the strength to fight back.
On the other hand, the memories about activism constructed in these films did not
encourage audiences to believe activism might be an effective strategy for responding to
contemporary social problems. While these films invited audiences to develop a deeper
and more sympathetic understanding of radical activism, they also told audiences that
such activism is doomed. All of the narratives of 1960s activism examined for this
dissertation told a story of activism’s demise.
In some ways, this pattern is a
consequence of framings of activism in terms of a particular decade.
The
characterization of a movement in terms of a decade complements the narrative form
itself which calls for an introduction, building climax, and conclusion.
Seeking to
represent or understand any aspect of history in terms of the decade in which it took place
calls for understanding movement history in terms of its beginning, middle, and end.
This narrative framework belies the ways in which most movements in the United States
have evolved and continued to respond to different exigencies and goals across decades.
Indeed, current activist efforts indicate that activism itself has not died completely even
though it has received far less media attention than it had during the 1960s. The narrative
260
framing of activism within a particular decade also sets movements up for failure because
few organizations that challenge the status quo achieve demarcated points of victory.
After all, movements that succeed become part of the prevailing political and economic
order and dissolve.
Although the narrative framings of these films set the movements up for failure,
the message of activism’s decline was also established directly in scenes within each of
these films that depicted activism in the throes of death, both literally and figuratively.
Dramatic scenes pivotal to the plot development of each docudrama about black protest
presented activists getting shot to death by members of the white political establishment.
The opening scene in Mississippi Burning depicted a local police officer shooting
Mississippi Freedom Summer activists on an otherwise deserted country road; Ghosts of
Mississippi depicted Byron de la Beckwith’s shooting of Medgar Evers at Evers’ home;
Malcolm X depicted three mysterious black men shooting Malcolm X at the National
Audobon ballroom; and Panther depicted several police officers shooting Bobby Hutton,
and (at the end of the film) shooting fictitious character Tyrone at a warehouse. These
scenes were central to establishing these films’ emotional appeal, but they did not lend
their appeal to social movement protest.
Notably, images of activists in films about early civil rights memory, Mississippi
Burning and Ghosts of Mississippi, only appeared in the moments of their shooting deaths
as background for events that followed. In Mississippi Burning, the deaths of three
activists at the hands of local whites in Neshoba County provided the motivation for FBI
agents Ward and Anderson to pursue local police vehemently. In Ghosts of Mississippi,
the memory of Medgar Evers’ death in front of his children motivated De Laugher to
pursue Beckwith’s prosecution with equal passion. By featuring white authority figures
as the central figures in the movement for civil rights, these films suggested that getting
261
killed was ordinary activists’ greatest contribution to the project of civil rights. Thus,
these films did not present the role of living activism in the history of the civil rights
movement, nor did they indicate that activism lived after the 1960s.
While films about the early civil rights movement began by depicting the deaths
of civil rights activists, films about the Black Power Movement concluded with images of
the shooting deaths of black activists. The story about the rise of Black Nationalism in
Malcolm X concluded with the tragic shooting death of Malcolm X at the behest of
Nation of Islam leadership and (in some likelihood) the FBI. As I explain in Chapter
Five, the conclusion to Malcolm X indicated that movements for the empowerment of
black people in the United States ended with Malcolm.
Likewise, the narrative of
Panther suggested that FBI agents effectively killed the Black Panther Party when they
brought drugs into the inner cities. The image of Tyrone’s body being riddled with
gunfire as he stood in front of the burning warehouse metaphorically stood in for the
martyrdom of the Black Panther Party.
Judge’s closing remarks that described the
infusion of drugs into black culture indicated that the party made this sacrifice for
nothing. Although the construction of Panther discouraged mainstream critics from
accepting this narrative as a “true” historical representation, Panther’s resonance with
other films that featured activists’ demise further relegated activism to the past.
When films did not depict activists in their deaths, they frequently featured
images of activists as demoralized and defeated by the end of the decade. These films
provided stories in which heroic leaders suffer extraordinary physical and material
consequences for protesting segregation, violence against blacks, economic injustice, and
the Vietnam War. In Berkeley in the Sixties, student activists demonstrated tirelessly for
days in an effort to win free speech rights on campus. According to Malcolm X and The
Weather Underground, protesters who sought fundamental political and economic
262
change in the United States suffered the consequences of activism most acutely.
Malcolm X highlighted how Malcolm’s devotion to the Nation of Islam kept him away
from his family for long periods of time, and left the family destitute at the time of his
death. By title alone, The Weather Underground positioned radical activism in an unseen
realm, beneath the world of mainstream civilization. As the documentary suggested,
Weather activists cut ties with all friends and family members who were not committed
to the goals of fundamental political and economic change in the United States.
Members of the Weather Underground sacrificed their families, their identities, and
material comforts to challenge injustice. Patterns across these films indicate that activism
requires tremendous self-sacrifice, tireless effort, and isolation from loved ones.
Other patterns also suggest that rewards for such sacrifices are few and far
between, if they exist at all. Docudramas about activism rarely depicted activism as a
pleasurable activity. They gave little or no representation to the feelings of joy that many
activists have attributed to collective protest and to building solidarity with others in a
movement for social change. Documentaries about the student left presented activists in
a somewhat more positive light. Former activists interviewed for Berkeley in the Sixties
and The Weather Underground expressed greater optimism about the future of activism
and explained their feelings of euphoria when they realized that, through collective
protest, they had the potential to effect changes in their campuses and their communities.
But these films equally projected images of activists who felt defeated by continued state
violence against them and against people in Vietnam. Images of the My Lai Massacre, of
police beating activists in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention, and of
the National Guard tearing up People’s Park attested to the state’s defeat of activism
toward the end of the decade. These documentaries shared with Panther depictions of
FBI-led suppression against Black Panther Party activists. Although the films remained
263
sympathetic to activists’ goals, messages of state supported violence against activists in
films about late 1960s social movements suggested that movements gained little by
collectively agitating for an end to the war and greater autonomy for black and counterculture movements. Indeed, they indicated that they never really posed a threat to the
prevailing political and economic system. These films framed activism as a futile and
tragic endeavor. Thus, the predominant message constructed across these films is that
social movements earn respect, even if they win few rewards, only after participants in
those movements experience suffer pain and loss. Collectively, these films also indicated
that while activists’ causes might be noble, they have little power create fundamental
changes in the structure of the United States. Thus, they leave the question of how
ordinary people may attain political agency unanswered. Such films aren’t likely to
inspire audiences to engage in social movement activism even if they are convinced that
the cause of activism itself is just.
Earlier in this dissertation I describe films as sites of
popular memory. My discussion here characterizes films as graveyards of activism; they
function as sites where audience members are called upon to mourn activism’s death.
A truly democratic society needs living memories of activism to break through
prevailing doxa that, as one reviewer of The Weather Underground puts it, “curdles” and
“darkens” the imagination (Kennedy, 2003, p. F08). Such memories should embrace the
ideals of collective participation in the decision-making processes of society and expose
the contradictions of liberalism that deny this opportunity to ordinary people. Memories
of activists, living, breathing, in solidarity with large numbers of people, with a vision for
the future, and with an understanding of how that future might be attained might inspire
hope and generate enthusiasm for what people can do collectively in the face of
challenging obstacles.
264
THE DEATH OF ACTIVISM IN THE ACADEMY (AND HOW TO RESUSCITATE IT)
More than memories of living activists, the cause of a democratic and just society
needs living activists who exist outside of popular memory and off screen. Coinciding
with the filmic construction of activism’s demise over the past two decades, scholarly
literature on New Social Movement theory has increasingly turned to sites of popular
culture as spaces for social movement activism in the present. Preeminent New Social
Movement scholar Melucci (1996) argues that creative, cultural work to establish group
identities is a preeminent form of collective action in the information age because it
challenges the codes upon which people and institutions operate. In the discipline of
rhetoric, De Luca (1999) writes that subaltern counterpublics prominently participate in
public opinion formation by engaging the televisual public sphere. For DeLuca, staging
spectacles and challenging and transforming discourses of modern society constitutes the
primary work of contemporary social movements. DeLuca’s model of contemporary
social organization parallel’s Warner’s (2002) model of contemporary publics as
constituted through the circulation of discourse. New Social Movements theory offers a
perspective that heralds the production and circulation of discourses about activism, as do
I. Unlike New Social Movement theorists, my interest in activism does not stop at the
representation of images of dissent.
As I argue in my introduction to this dissertation, images of activism in popular
media provide important resources for ordinary people to derive meaning about the role
of activism in a democracy, but they are inadequate substitutes for the work of real bodies
that is required for social movements to effect substantive political changes and achieve
social justice in contemporary political life. Images of activism in popular memory are
only one aspect of social movement organizing necessary to bring about social change.
Memories of protest may serve to promulgate the ideas and mission of emerging
265
counterpublics, but additional work to solidify movement support, to mobilize activists,
and confront institutional leaders must be done in spheres outside of popular culture.
Tarrow (1998) points to the imperatives of instrumental collective action for the process
of social change. He insists that the struggle for resources between people with unequal
resources of power should remain a central issue in understanding the formation and
success of social movement activism (p. 3). Because it is one of few ways that people
with few resources of their own can effect democratic political change, movements must
keep the process of disrupting the everyday workings of power through contentious
dissent in the forefront of their activities (p. 3-7). In the discipline of rhetorical studies,
Cloud (2001) reinforces this point. For Cloud, the politics of recognition emphasized in
New Social Movements theory denies possibilities for economic redistribution of power
in the contemporary era and is resigned to the construction of identities as the best that
can be achieved in the current historical moment (pp. 243-246).
I worry that the
emphasis on media images of dissent in the place of organized collective efforts outside
of popular culture will diminish people’s capacity to mobilize against structural and
material inequities. The lessons that I take from instrumental approaches to the study of
social movements, and from the history of social movement activism itself, is that the
popular should not be mistaken for the public or publics; nor should films be mistaken for
social movements.
THE COUNTER-HEGEMONIC POTENTIAL OF POPULAR MEMORY
Films should be recognized instead for how they cultivate meaning about the role
that contentious collective action may play in the process of social change. Patterns
across films resonate with prevailing critical scholarship that suggests that films
themselves may not ever be good sources for advancing ideas that challenge the political
order.
The most popular films are usually those films that resonate with prevailing
266
ideologies. Films that circulate less broadly, including documentaries and independent
film, often provide ideas that challenge prevailing ideology but aren’t popularized more
broadly in popular culture. My analysis of these films and their journalism reviews
indicates that, although popular Hollywood films do not pose challenges to prevailing
ideology themselves, some of them do prompt debate and deliberation within journalism
media. This is where I think films’ greatest counter-hegemonic potential lies.
The contradictory messages across films and journalism reviews of them elucidate
popular culture’s position as site of struggle over cultural meaning.
Some rhetorical
strategies incorporate counter-memories into popular culture while others shut down
spaces for counter-memory. My observations of Ghosts of Mississippi, Berkeley in the
Sixties, and The Weather Underground and journalism reviews of these films indicate
that films that establish themselves as “truths,” have limited counter-hegemonic potential.
These films mask their partiality by appealing to prevailing doxa, by appealing to stylistic
convention, or both. The conventional docudrama Ghosts of Mississippi attained status
as history by being faithful to events from the past and by constructing a narrative that
resonated with mainstream ideology. The documentaries Berkeley in the Sixties and The
Weather Underground attained status as legitimate representations of the past even
though they advanced arguments that indicted liberal capitalism, by using codes of
objectivity that created the impression that the films were balanced representations of
“real-life” events. Because these films had achieved status as “true” representations of
the past, they didn’t provoke the kind of controversy that the films Mississippi Burning
and Malcolm X received. Nor did they encourage journalists to reiterate or expand upon
the memories of activism constructed in the films.
Conversely, my observations of the film Panther and the journalism coverage it
received suggest that oppositional films that offer a strong challenge to prevailing
267
ideology may also close down potential for debate and deliberation in popular culture.
Even though both Mississippi Burning and Panther provided representations of the past
that either contradicted the historic record or could not be verified by that record, only
Panther received negative press as a “false” representation of the past. Mainstream
journalism responses to Panther indicate counter-hegemonic texts caught in lies provoke
backlash, and cast all of the film’s messages (including those that have fidelity to the
historic record) as false. This contradiction indicates that reviewers hold ideologically
challenging films to standards which films that conform to prevailing doxa are never
held. When a film challenges prevailing ideology, filmic conventions, and commonsense
distinctions between truth and fiction, it loses credibility; consequently, the film’s claims
to history are denied.
I conclude that films that seek to incorporate counter-memories into popular
culture must meet mainstream expectations for film but must also carry contradictory
messages that prompt debate and deliberation from secondary sources. Films such as
Missisippi Burning and Malcolm X gained legitimacy by conforming to prevailing doxa.
Thus, I argue that they were more likely to become part of popular memory because they
cued less suspicion from mainstream film critics. While they appealed to conventional
understandings about film and to prevailing ideologies about race and class mobility, they
also offered contradictions, both stylistically and ideologically. Mississippi Burning
blended cues of cop action drama and documentary realism to tell an untrue story about
civil rights while Malcolm X incorporated radical events from the history of black
activism into an ideologically conservative narrative frame.
Critics’ favorable reviews of Malcolm X suggest that texts outside the bounds of
convention must establish themselves as true to have critical potential.
Counter-
memories are tough cuts of meat that are hard to swallow for audiences who are
268
immersed in ideologically dominant messages. Because events in the historical record of
the Black Power movement fundamentally challenge prevailing doxa, this history itself is
likely to promote debate and deliberation. Consequently, this history must be framed
within conventional understanding; counter-memories are easier to digest when they are
covered in a familiar sauce.
The contradictory rhetorical messages in both of these films created opportunities
for mainstream journalism sources (that have traditionally marginalized movement
activism to spheres of deviance) to introduce counter-memories of activism to popular
culture. Based on these observations, I conclude that films’ relationship to historical
truth plays an important role in their ability to intervene in contemporary doxa of social
protest. Films with messages that have already gained some ground in popular culture
may prompt the circulation of more controversial counter-memories by telling lies. Films
with messages that fundamentally challenge dominant ideology and narrative convention
may do so by telling truths.
Mississippi Burning and Malcolm X provided a catalyst for critical memories to
circulate in popular culture. News media coverage responding to Mississippi Burning
and Malcolm X noted the similarities between events that propelled activism in the past
and contemporary circumstances and fused memories of 1960s activism with
contemporary people’s struggles for political empowerment and social justice. Although
they did not breathe life into social movements today, they did remind critics and
reviewers that movements still have a pulse.
As scholars who are invested in the
possibilities for deliberating and dissenting publics, these are the films we should love to
hate.
269
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Vita
Kristen Elizabeth Hoerl was born in Denver, Colorado, on August 21, 1975, the
daughter of Lesley Ann McCollom and Donald Martin Hoerl. After completing her work
at Skyline High School, Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1993, she completed one year of study at
the University of Oregon in Eugene. She received two Bachelor of Arts degrees at the
Pennsylvania State University in University Park in December 1997. In August 2000,
she received her Master of Arts degree at The University of Texas at Austin, and entered
the doctoral program at the same institution.
During her work in the doctoral program, the author taught several courses in the
Department of Communication Studies and the Division of Rhetoric and Composition at
The University of Texas at Austin. Her scholarship appears in an article in the Southern
Communication Journal and in proceedings from the 2004 Conference of the Rhetoric
Society of America. In August of 2005, the author will join faculty at Auburn University,
in Auburn, Alabama, in the Department of Communication and Journalism.
Permanent Address: 1200 Barton Hills Dr., #348
Austin, Texas 78704
This dissertation was typed by the author.
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