Whiteness Richard Dyer uses cinema to support the representation of white verses black. The films we are to study are Jezebel, Simba, Night of the Living dead and The battle of Algiers. These four different films embody the characteristics required for analysis. They show the defiance of the white female who lives through her coloured help because she is trapped and comes to accept the rules and society required of her in society - the sorrow of white rule and the black response to it. ( the book called The Help by Kathryn Stockett comes to mind here which was recently made into a film).
The makers of these films used black heroes to encourage the white people to see whiteness as a culture they belong to. Dryer discusses the whiteness in the mind of a white person and relates to each other as (British middle class ugly etc). The purpose of these films was to recognise and to change the way in which we create otherness (i.e. you black me o.k.) To realise that it is wrong to marginalise because of colour.
Night of the Living Dead
This was a 1968 film directed by George Romero. The plot follows Ben, Barbra and five other trapped in a rural farmhouse. While the house is attacked by reanimated corpses known as ghouls. The lead role was played by an unknown stage actor Duana Jones, he depicted the role Ben as a comparatively calm and resourceful negro. Which in 1968 was potentially controversial as at that time it was not typical for a African American to be the hero of a film when the rest of the cast were white.
Social commentators saw the casting as significant - but Romero said that Jones "simply gave the best audition. While Romero (director) denies he hired Duane Jones because he was black, film reviewer Mark Deming notes that "the grim fate to Duane - the sole heroic figure and only African American had added resonance with the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X still fresh in the minds for Americans. Stein adds "In the first ever subversive horror movie the resourceful black hero survives the zombies only to be killed by the redneck posse". Romero confessed that the film was designed to reflect the tensions of the time. (1968).
This is similar to Baraka's play The Dutchman where the male protagonist is thrown off the train by the white passengers after being stabbed here again the coloured man is surrounded by white people and is powerless to defend himself. What is happening is wrong and no one is fixing it with present methods - to try something else by getting to the problem and stop killing each other. Dyer concluded that he has no answers for us. He would like more discussion, discourse and deliberation to get to the bottom of it. What is left is further deliberation and questions for all colour,race and creed is 'What Now' we all know something is wrong but no one is providing us with any answers!!!
Jezebel
This Film tells of a headstrong woman ( young southern belle) who was used to having her own way and everything done for her by her coloured maid. Whose actions cost her the man she loves. In this film colour or creed do not come into it. This time it is a woman trying to overpower the man and not succeeding.
This film was said by some to be on a par with Gone With The Wind but without the Yankees. Instead the enemy is yellow fever and greed. It takes place in the 1850s in New Orleans although there are references to the abolitionists and the prospect of war the story takes part pre-war. It focuses on the southern lifestyle of the period and the life and times of a very spirited woman Julia Marsden (known as Jezebel).
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