Since the advent of the film industry, the portrayal of the black individual has primarily been dictated by the desires of white filmmakers and audiences-starting in the early 1900s with the cinematic introduction of the tom, coon, tragic mulatto, mammy and the brutal buck, and stretching on through the 20s, 30s and 40s with the representation of blacks as jesters, servants, and entertainers, respectively. Each depiction of the black individual was “colored” by an underlying agenda-usually dealing with efforts to reestablish white superiority or assuage white guilt over the licentious history of slavery in the United States. In this paper, I plan to identify and address the ways in which the manipulation of black masculinity, whether through the use of hyper-sexualization or hypo-sexualization, in two of the most famous films in the history of the film industry-the first full-length feature, D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915), and the first “talkie,” Alan Crosland’s The Jazz Singer (1927)-was used to reassert a sense of white masculinity and to promote the white power structure.
According to Guerrero, Griffith’s representation of blacks in The Birth of a Nation drew upon the prevalent psychological need for both southern and northern whites to “suppress the expansion of black civil rights and political power” developed during the period of Reconstruction, and played up the “potent sexual paranoia blackness and difference generated in the minds of racists” (Guerrero 12). Particularly vulnerable was the psyche of the southern white male, who had lost his traditional role as family provider when he lost his slaves, and consequently both his livelihood and his masculinity (12). As Guerrero writes:
The insecurity and economic turmoil rampant throughout the postbellum (sic) South had undermined the white southern male’s role as provider for his family; thus he sought to inflate his depreciated sense of manhood by taking up the honorific task of protecting White Womanhood against the newly constructed specter of the “brute Negro” (12).
D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation was the first film to introduce a solution to the problem of the emasculation of white males that white audiences could wrap their arms around: the mythical “brutal black buck” figure. Described by Bogle as “big, baadddd (sic) niggers, over-sexed and savage, violent and frenzied as they lust for white flesh,” the two best examples of the black buck figure in Birth of a Nation are Gus, a lustful renegade, and the mulatto Silas Lynch (Bogle 11-12). Over-sexing characters like Lynch and Gus serves to visually connect what Gubar terms “the Africanist persona”-literally the appearance of black skin tone, here provided by the burnt cork worn by the white actors-with a brutal, animalistic sexuality in an effort to stress the apparent danger savage black masculinity posed to the purity of white femininity (Gubar 54). As Bogle points out, both Gus and Lynch are depicted throughout the film as animalistic psychopaths, “[O]ne always panting and salivating, the other forever stiffening his body as if the mere presence of a white woman… could bring him to sexual climax” (Bogle 14).
The two scenes from Birth of a Nation that best illustrate this feared black lust for whites include the “Gus chase” scene, in which Gus clumsily pursues Flora Cameron through the woods after she turns down what Gaines terms an “awkward [marriage] proposal,” and the interaction between Silas Lynch and Elsie Stoneman (Gaines 239). The “Gus chase” scene depicts Gus stalking Flora as shots rapidly cut back and forth between her spontaneous, joyful wanderings and Gus’ “prowling chase”-the result of Walter Long’s interpretation of his instructions to “run doubled-over with a sort of ‘animalistic scuttle'” and to gargle with hydrogen peroxide in order to produce foaming at the mouth (Gubar 58). As Gaines points out, the extreme “better dead than raped” implications of Flora Cameron’s tragic death, the result of a suicidal leap from an isolated precipice, provides the most tangible connection between the uncontrollable overbearing nature of black male “sexual monsters” and the inevitably violent implications for white women (Gaines 239). Crosscut with the “rape scene” is that in which Elsie Stoneman, seeking a pardon for the Cameron family from the Lt. Governor Silas Lynch, is instead subjected to “the lewd indignities of his lust” (Gubar 61). According to Bogle:
[W]hen Lillian Gish, the frailest, purest of all screen heroines, was attacked by the character Lynch-when he put his big black arms around this pale blond beauty-audiences literally panicked (Bogle 14).
While the audience watches Elsie Stoneman, locked in Lynch’s office, pounding on the door, swooning and fainting, a title card explains that “Lynch, drunk with wine and power, orders his henchmen to hurry preparations for a forced marriage” (Gubar 61). Here we see the uncontrollable nature of black masculinity in Lynch’s desperate attempt to forcefully take Elsie as his wife and make her his “Queen” in the “Black Empire” he intends to build (61).
But how does the creation of this black buck figure, embodied in Gus and Lynch, solve the problem of white male emasculation? According to Guerrero, the use of this brutish figure allows for the re-authentication of white masculinity by providing him “the honorific task of protecting White Womanhood against the newly constructed specter of the ‘brute Negro'” (Guerrero 12). By introducing audiences to the brutal black buck, Griffith presented the white male with an opportunity to regain his lost masculinity-to take up the symbolic sword, or the literal noose, and smite the savage dark threat to the purity of white femininity, thus re-proving his ability to provide for and protect his family. As Guerrero points out, The Birth of a Nation was also the birth of “the stereotype deployed by the [Ku Klux] Klan’s racist thugs to justify their terror, murder, and repression against black[s] and crusade to reestablish the white power structure upset by the Civil War (12).
Alan Crosland’s The Jazz Singer, released in 1927, also uses the black male to reassert white masculinity and promote the white power structure. Rather than hyper-sexualizing blackness in order to provide the white male with the means to reassert his white masculinity as Griffith does in The Birth of a Nation, Crosland’s The Jazz Singer instead reasserts white masculinity by hypo-sexualizing, or emasculating, the black male. As Gubar writes, “The leering, lusty, blackfaced Gus… and Lynch must be trampled under the crusading hooves of [the] Clansmen,” while the “meek and mild” blackfaced Jack Robin, down on one knee with arms wide, appears childlike and submissive, posing little threat to and ultimately re-proving the masculinity of the white male (Gubar 66).
Several factors come into play with regard to the emasculation of Jack Robin the “black man,” depicted by Al Jolson in burnt cork. First, the cinematic rhyme drawn between the crying, twelve-year-old momma’s boy Jakie Rabinowitz-shown tearfully running away from his home and mother after a final beating at the hands of his father-and the older Jack Robin, who tearfully embraces his mother before performing the mother-focused song “Mammy” in blackface, subtly creates a connection between blackness and the childlike qualities of a young boy (70). The second factor contributing to the emasculation of the black male in The Jazz Singer is the feminization of the blackfaced Jolson. As Gubar writes:
Jolson in burnt cork is “a-comin” to the smiles of his “Mother O’Mine” or his “Mammy.” His outstretched arms, his pleading on bended knee, his passionate declaration of loyalty and love, his whitened and widened mouth, his effort to gain the approval of his mother and girlfriend: All these unman as effectively as hypermasculinization (sic) and castration do in Griffith’s film (70-71).
This feminization is illustrated by Jack Robin’s propensity for crying virtually every time he is seen wearing burnt cork in the film. In addition, Jack Robin first dons the blackface mask, as Gubar notes, when he is most emotional and seems most in need of parental approval, “narcissistically watching himself being surveyed… and anxious about his professional aspirations,” rendering him boyish and feminine, rather than manly, in the eyes of the audience (68). This synchronization visually connects for the audience blackness and childlike emotion, helping to illustrate the emasculated nature of the black male.
While Jolson’s blackface performance in The Jazz Singer emasculates Jack Robin the black man, it also reaffirms the masculinity and social prowess of the white Jack Robin. As Mullin asserts in her article, “Optic White: Blackness and the Production of Whiteness,” the child/woman/black portrayed by Jolson in blackface stands in dependent/inferior relation to and augments the “controlled, repressed, rational, ambitious white male” (Mullin 83). By visually associating the infantilization of Jack Robin with the literal act of wearing blackface, all of those characteristics of masculinity not attributed to the black male are subsequently attributed to the white male. “Jolson’s white character (his ‘normal’ role),” writes Mullin, ”
Also contributing to the masculinity of the white Jack Robin is the apparent success of his performance, illustrated by the approval radiating from Mary as she watches from the wings and Mama Rabinowitz’s beaming face nestled comfortably among those of the other applauding audience members, which emphasizes Jack Robin’s position as a successful white male adult (71). In addition, Robin’s white masculinity is also affirmed by the successful establishment of a romantic relationship with Mary Dale and the assumption of his father’s role as cantor in the Jewish synagogue, as these developments emphasize Jack Robin’s potential as a strong father and husband figure.
While the films The Birth of a Nation and The Jazz Singer are famous for numerous reasons, including of course the controversy surrounding the overtly racist portrayal of black individuals in The Birth of a Nation and the advent of new cinematic technologies such as color tinting and the synchronized sound first presented in The Jazz Singer, it is also important to note their significance in contributing to the ongoing movement to re-masculinize the white male at the expense of the black male in the early film industry. Whether hyper-masculinizing blacks by over-sexing them, or emasculating them by hypo-sexualizing, or infantilizing and feminizing them, it is clear that the black individual-and the black male in particular-was seen not as a developed human character, but merely as a cinematic tool, used to enhance underlying agendas in much the same way as lighting or mise-en-scène.
References
Bogle, Donald. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, & Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group, Inc., 2004.
Gaines, Jane M. Fire and Desire: Mixed-Race Movies in the Silent Era. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001.
Gubar, Susan. 2 Spirit Murder at the Movies: Blackface Lynchings” in Racechange: White Skin, Black Face in American Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Guerrero, Ed. Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993.
Mullin, Harryette. “Optic White: Blackness and the Production of Whiteness.” Diacritics 24.3 (1994): 71-89.
