Screen Saviors: Hollywood Fictions of Whiteness

By Hernan Vera, Andrew Gordon, Andrew M. Gordon

Book Overview

Screen Saviors studies how the self of whites is imagined in Hollywood movies-by white directors featuring white protagonists interacting with people of another color. This collaboration by a sociologist and a film critic, using the new perspective of critical 'white studies, ' offers a bold and sweeping critique of almost a century's worth of American film, from Birth of Nation (1915) through Black Hawk Down (2001). Screen Saviors studies the way in which the social relations that we call 'race' are fictionalized and pictured in the movies. It argues that films are part of broader projects that lead us to ignore or deny the nature of the racial divide in which Americans live. Even as the images of racial and ethnic minorities change across the twentieth century, Hollywood keeps portraying the ideal white American self as good-looking, powerful, brave, cordial, kind, firm, and generous: a natural-born leader worthy of the loyalty of those of another color. The book invites readers to conduct their own analyses of films by showing how this can be done in over 50 Hollywood movies. Among these are some films about the Civil War-Birth of a Nation, Gone with the Wind, and Glory; some about white messiahs who rescue people of another color-Stargate, To Kill a Mockingbird, Mississippi Burning, Three Kings, and The Matrix; the three versions of Mutiny on the Bounty (1935, 1962, and 1984) and interracial romance-Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Forty years of Hollywood fantasies of interracial harmony, from The Defiant Ones and In the Heat of the Night through the Lethal Weapon series and Men in Black are examined. This work in the sociology of knowledge and cultural studies relates the movies of Hollywood to the large political agendas on race relation in the United States. Screen Saviors appeals to the general reader interested in the movies or in race and ethnicity as well as to students of communication, American studies, critical white studies, American film, cultural studies, and the sociology of race relations.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0847699471
• ISBN13: 9780847699476
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 7.1" x 10.0"

Customer Reviews

Incisive Minds at Work

This is a neat and smart piece of work on American film. The authors have done their homework, their discussions of seminal Sixties and Seventies films is outstanding. Once you've read about what they have to say about the "Lethal Weapon" series, you'll never look at it the same. Which is a good thing for modern film is a carrier of all kinds of ideas, some of them are obvious, some are subliminal and it helps to know how to recognize both. Obviously the authors have spent a lot of time thinking about certain kinds of films and their intellectual impact. Their style is accessible, and though the terms they tend to use come from the very specialized worlds of contemporary academia, one grows to understand not only why they are used, but what they really mean. I recommend this book for specialists who need to reify their own critical radar as well as for movie buffs anxious to broaden their understanding of the subtexts behind the films they have grown to love.