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The history of the race question in the movies of the Obama era.
Journal Title: PASSATO E PRESENTE 
Author/s: Stefano Luconi 
Year:  2017 Issue: 102 Language: Italian 
Pages:  19 Pg. 125-143 FullText PDF:  149 KB
DOI:  10.3280/PASS2017-102007
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Keywords: Slavery, Black freedom struggle, U.S. movies, Barack Obama

  1. D.F. Gore-J. Theoharis-K. Woodard, Introduction, in Idd. (eds.), Want to Start a Revolution? Radical Women in the Black Freedom Struggle, New York UP, New York 2009, p. 3.
  2. Sul film di Griffith cfr. R.W. Rydell-R. Kroes, Buffalo Bill Show. Il west selvaggio, l’Europa e l’americanizzazione del mondo, Donzelli, Roma 2006, pp. 162-76 (ed. or. Buffalo Bill in Bologna. The Americanization of the World, 1869-1922, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2005).
  3. Cfr. D. Remnick, The Bridge. The Life and Rise of Barack Obama, Knopf, New York 2010, p. 557 (trad. it. Obama. Una storia della nuova America, Feltrinelli, Milano 2010); E. Beltramini, L’America post-razziale. Razza, politica e religione dalla schiavitù a Obama, Einaudi, Torino 2010, pp. 193-205.
  4. Il principio della storicità dei fatti narrati quale criterio di selezione delle pellicole fa sì che non siano qui analizzati prodotti di esclusiva fiction, che pure hanno alimentato il dibattito sulla trasposizione della questione razziale nel cinema statunitense, come The Help (2011) di Tate Taylor e Django Unchained (2012) di Quentin Tarantino.
  5. Per il caso della schiavitù cfr. G. Turi, Schiavi in un mondo libero. Storia dell’emancipazione dall’età moderna a oggi, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2012, pp. 44-50.
  6. Cfr. D.J. Leab, From Sambo to Superspade. The Black Experience in Motion Pictures, Houghton Mifflin, Boston 1975, p. 263.
  7. Cfr. D.G. Izzo, Introduction, in Id. (ed.), Movies in the Age of Obama. The Era of Post-Racial and Neo-Racist Cinema, Rowan & Littlefield, Lanham (MD) 2015, p. IX.
  8. In questa categoria può essere collocato Southside with You (2016) di Richard Tanne, film sul primo appuntamento tra Barack Obama e la sua futura moglie Michelle Robinson nell’estate del 1989. Nell’unica concessione alla questione razziale, la coppia va al cinema a vedere Do the Right Thing (1989) di Spike Lee. La pellicola tratta delle tensioni razziali a Brooklyn e si conclude con la distruzione della pizzeria di un italoamericano da parte alcuni afroamericani dopo la che la polizia ha ucciso un giovane nero. Tanne avrebbe potuto far discutere Barack e Michelle sulla brutalità delle forze dell’ordine contro gli afroamericani e sulla contrapposizione tra la strategia nonviolenta di King e quella violenta di Malcolm X, che Lee richiama esplicitamente nel suo film. Ma il futuro presidente minimizza queste problematiche, ipotizzando che il pizzaiolo fosse assicurato e presentando l’assalto alla pizzeria come uno sfogo atto a prevenire violenze peggiori.
  9. Cfr. D.G. Izzo, Introduction cit., p. VII.
  10. B. Obama, Change We Can Believe In. Barack Obama’s Plan to Renew America’s Promise, Three Rivers, New York 2008.
  11. Cfr. Id., Sulla razza, Rizzoli, Milano 2008, p. 49.
  12. Per una ricostruzione del pestaggio di King e del suo impatto sull’opinione pubblica cfr. R.N. Jacobs, Race, Media and the Crisis of Civil Society. From Watts to Rodney King, Cambridge UP, New York 2000, pp. 81-112.
  13. Tra i registi qui considerati sono bianchi David W. Griffith, Richard Tanne, Steven Spielberg, Jeff Nichols, Theodore Melfi, Gary Ross, Jay Roach, Alan Parker e Rob Reiner; sono afroamericani Spike Lee, Lee Daniels, Steve McQueen, Ava DuVernay e Nate Parker.
  14. Cfr. P.H. Breen, The Land Shall Be Deluged in Blood. A New History of the Nat Turner Revolt, Oxford UP, New York 2016.
  15. Cfr. E. Burin, Slavery and the Peculiar Solution. A History of the American Colonization Society, UP of Florida, Gainesville 2008, p. 19.
  16. M. Murphy, Tribeca First-Timers: Nate Parker, «New York Times», 26 April 2014, p. C2.
  17. Cfr. D.S. Cecelski, The Fire of Freedom. Abraham Galloway and the Slaves’ Civil War, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 2012, p. 43.
  18. Cfr. B. Watson, Freedom Summer. The Savage Season that Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy, Viking, New York 2010, pp. 63-65, 77-79, 82-83, 205-11; D.W. Aldridge III, Becoming American. The African American Quest for Civil Rights, 1861-1976, Harlan Davidson, Wheeling (IL) 2011, pp. 274-79.
  19. Cfr. H. Bourgeois, Hollywood and the Civil Rights Movement. The Case of Mississippi Burning, «Howard Journal of Communication», 4 (1992), nn. 1-2, pp. 157-63.
  20. S. Northup, with D. Wilson, Twelve Years a Slave. Narrative of Solomon Northup, Miller, Orton & Mulligan, New York 1855, pp. 325-33 (trad. it. 12 anni schiavo. La straordinaria storia vera di Solomon Northup, Newton Compton, Milano 2014).
  21. A.C. Guelzo, Redeeming the Great Emancipator, Harvard UP, Cambridge (MA) 2016.
  22. Cfr. V. Harding, There Is a River. The Black Struggle for Freedom in America, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Boston 1981, in part. pp. 230-35; J.M. McPherson, The Negro’s Civil War. How American Blacks Felt and Acted during the War for the Union, Ballantine, New York 1991.
  23. J. Oakes, The Radical and the Republican. Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics, Norton, New York 2007.
  24. Cfr. E. Keckley, Behind the Scenes, or Thirty Years as a Slave, and Four Years in the White House, Carleton, New York 1868, pp. 114-16.
  25. V.E. Byrun, The Free State of Jones. Mississippi’s Longest Civil War, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 2001, p. 7 (trad. it. Free State of Jones. La vera storia, Piemme, Milano 2016).
  26. S. Webb-R.W. Nelson, Selma, Lord, Selma. Girlhood Memories of the Civil-Rights Days, University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa 1980, p. 86; T. Branch, At Canaan’s Edge. America in the King Years, 1965-68, Simon & Schuster, New York 2006, pp. 29, 47-48; G. May, Bending Toward Justice. The Voting Rights Act and the Transformation of American Democracy, Basic Books, New York 2013, p. 82.
  27. M. Waldman, The Fight to Vote, Simon & Schuster, New York 2016, p. 147.
  28. N. Kolz, Judgement Days. Lyndon B. Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Laws That Changed America, Houghton Mifflin, Boston 2005, pp. 250-314; N. Venturini, La strada per Selma. La mobilitazione afroamericana e il Voting Rights Act del 1965, FrancoAngeli, Milano 2015, in part. pp. 32-38.
  29. R.L. Riley, The Presidency and the Politics of Racial Inequality. Nation-Keeping from 1835 to 1965, Columbia UP, New York 1999.
  30. L’unico figlio di Eugene Allen, Charles, combatté nella guerra del Vietnam, mentre suo padre era il maggiordomo di Johnson. Cfr. W. Haygood, The Butler. A Witness to History, Simon & Schuster, New York 2013, pp. 7, 13 (trad. it The Butler. Un maggiordomo alla Casa Bianca, Newton Compton, Roma 2013).
  31. Cfr. I.N. Laurent, Commentary on Loving v. Virginia, in K.M. Stanchi-L.L. Berger-B.J. Crawford (eds.), Feminist Judgements. Rewritten Opinions of the United States Supreme Court, Cambridge UP, New York 2016, p. 116.
  32. P. Newback, Virginia Hasn’t Always Been for Lovers. Interracial Marriage Bans and the Case of Richard and Mildred Loving, Southern Illinois UP, Carbondale 2004, p. 1.
  33. S. Benussi, Le donne afroamericane negli Stati Uniti. La lunga lotta per i diritti civili, FrancoAngeli, Milano 2007; N. Venturini, Con gli occhi fissi alla meta. Il movimento afroamericano per i diritti civili, 1940-1965, FrancoAngeli, Milano 2010, pp. 257-324.
  34. J. Calmes, $20 Billing: Tubman Is In, Jackson Is Out, «New York Times», 21 April 2016, p. A1.
  35. S.B. Oates, The Fires of Jubilee. Nat Turner’s Fierce Rebellion, Harper & Row, New York 1975; K. Lampley, A Theological Account of Nat Turner. Christianity, Violence, and Theology, Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2013.
  36. T. Matthews, «No One Ever Asks, What a Man’s Role in the Revolution Is»: Gender and the Politics of the Black Panther Party, 1966-1971, in C.E. Jones (ed.), The Black Panther Party (Reconsidered), Black Classic, Baltimore (MD) 1998, pp. 267-304.
  37. T.C. Parramore, Covenant in Jerusalem, in K.S. Greenberg (ed.), Nat Turner. A Slave Rebellion in History and Memory, Oxford UP, New York 2003, p. 71.
  38. S. Camp, Closer to Freedom. Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 2004.
  39. S. Wendt, The Roots of Black Power? Armed Resistance and the Radicalization of the Civil Rights Movement, in P.E. Joseph (ed.), The Black Power Movement. Rethinking the Civil Rights-Black Power Era, Routledge, New York 2006, pp. 161-62.
  40. S. Northup, with D. Wilson, Twelve Years a Slave cit., p. 72.
  41. Cfr. ad es. W. Craft, Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom, or, the Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery, William Tweedie, London 1860, p. 21.
  42. S. Northup, with D. Wilson, Twelve Years a Slave cit., p. 189.
  43. Per il rilievo dell’attivismo femminile, pur nella frammentarietà di una ricostruzione attraverso una successione di profili biografici, cfr. N. Venturini, La strada per Selma cit., pp. 137-38, 150-51, 155-56, 166-77, 184-87.
  44. Cfr. T.A. Nance, Hearing the Missing Voice, «Journal of Black Studies», 26 (1996), n. 5, pp. 543-59.
  45. M.L. Shetterly, Hidden Figures. The Untold Story of the African American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race, Harper Collins, New York 2016, p. 171.
  46. Ivi, p. 197.
  47. Cfr. A. Fairclough, Segregation and Civil Rights: African American Freedom Struggle in the Twentieth Century, in M. Stokes (ed.), The State of U.S. History, Berg, New York 2000, in part. pp. 155-56.
  48. J.T. Paterson, Bown v. Board of Education. A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy, Oxford UP, New York 2001, pp. 80-82; K. O’Reilly, Nixon’s Piano. Presidents and Racial Politics from Washington to Clinton, Free Press, New York 1995, pp. 248-50; N. Bryant, The Bystander. John F. Kennedy and the Struggle for Black Equality, Basic Books, New York 2006.
  49. P.E. Joseph, The Black Power Movement. A State of the Field, «Journal of American History», 96 (2009), n. 3, pp. 751-76.
  50. Cfr. ad es. K. O’Reilly, «Racial Matters». The Fbi’s Secret File on Black America, 1960-1972, Free Press, New York 1989, pp. 293-353.
  51. D.F. Allmendinger Jr., Nat Turner and the Rising in Southampton County, Johns Hopkins UP, Baltimore (MD) 2014, pp. 68-83.
  52. Cfr. K.-Y. Taylor, From #blacklivesmatter to Black Liberation, Haymarket Books, Chicago 2016, pp. 135-52; National Urban League, The State of Black America, 2016, National Urban League, New York 2016.
  53. C. Anderson, White Rage. The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide, Bloomsbury, New York 2016, pp. 1-4, 159-61.
  54. T.-N. Coates, Between the World and Me, Spiegel & Grau, New York 2015 (trad. it. Tra me e il mondo, Codice, Torino 2016).
  55. B. Mueller-A. Baker, Two Officers, Ambushed, Are Killed in Brooklyn, «New York Times», 21 December 2014, pp. A1, A12; P. McGee et al., Five Officers Killed in Dallas Ambush, «International New York Times», 9-10 July 2016, pp. 1, 5; M. McPhate, 3 Officers Killed in Attack on the Police in Louisiana, ivi, 8 July 2016, pp. 1, 4.
  56. E. Bordin-A. Scacchi, Reimagining Slave Heroes. An Interview with Kenya Cage, in Eadd. (eds.), Transatlantic Memories of Slavery. Reimagining the Past, Changing the Future, Cambria Press, Amherst (NY) 2015, p. 243.
  57. K.M. Stampp, The Peculiar Institution. Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South, Knopf, New York 1956, p. 178. La percentuale di sociopatici e psicopatici tra i proprietari statunitensi di schiavi è stata stimata tra il 2% e il 4%: cfr. V. Gay, On the Pleasure of Owing Persons. The Hidden Face of American Slavery, International Psychoanalytic Books, Astoria (NY) 2016, p. XI.
  58. H. Vera-A.M. Gordon, Screen Saviors. Hollywood Fictions of Whiteness, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham (MD) 2003, pp. 54-55, 63-64.
  59. E.S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black. How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul, Crown, New York 2016.

Stefano Luconi, The history of the race question in the movies of the Obama era. in "PASSATO E PRESENTE" 102/2017, pp. 125-143, DOI:10.3280/PASS2017-102007

   

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