Forgeries of Memory and Meaning: Blacks and the Regimes of Race in American Theater and Film Before World War II

by Cedric J. Robinson

Cedric J. Robinson offers a new understanding of race in America through his analysis of theater and film of the early twentieth century. He argues that economic, political, and cultural forces present in the eras of silent film and the early "talkies" firmly entrenched limited representations of African Americans. Robinson's analysis marks a new way of approaching the intellectual, political, and media racism present in the beginnings of American narrative cinema.

Genres: History, Film, Theory, Nonfiction, Theatre, Race

456 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2007

About the author

Cedric Robinson was a professor in the Department of Black Studies and the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He headed the Department of Black Studies and the Department of Political Science and served as the Director of the Center for Black Studies Research.

Reviews

[i. · Rating 5 out of 5]

In what would be his final book project, Cedric Robinson takes a fine-grained analysis of early historical portrayals of Blacks in theater and film, examining the ways in which processes of racial mythmaking promulgated by popular media are inextricably tied to the key agents who benefit from the system of racial capitalism, the state and industry. Much like in Black Marxism, Robinson's historical overview is one of vast scope, and he situates the origins of the racial regimes of the United States in the racial regimes and projects of difference-making that dominated England before the "formal" origin of chattel slavery. This is just one of many interventions that Robinson makes into exposing the racial regime of the West, but more than anything, Robinson seeks to shine a light on the ordinary and extraordinary modes of resistance that Black performers were able to push for in the context of ever-more-violence regimes of racial mythmaking. Truly, this work contains more than I can describe in a few short sentences, and it is highly-recommended for anyone studying politics, race, gender, media, sex, history...pretty much everyone should read this book.

[Adryan Glasgow · Rating 5 out of 5]

While the writing style is a bit over-wrought, this is a highly readable history of how black characters were used in imperial propaganda. Far from dry, Robinson helps you see the people and personalities who fought on both sides of this particular culture war. So many of the black intellectuals he quotes from the first half of the 20th century could easily publish the same work today.

[Mtume Gant · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s a towering work of extensive research and I can say Robinson is doing a certified material study of the development of cinematic cultural production and how it aided the strengthening of the American project through the development of racial regimes. Robinson uses more sound analysis than say some of his studies on Marx because he is careful to not succumb to his biases rather than explain what happened and from there one can see the chicanery.

The artistic analysis isn’t as strong as I would have liked but this is more of the work of a historian than it is an analyzer of artistic practice. When he does engage in it it feels a bit thin as it’s not his strong suit, but he does get very strong how these creations mattered and how they mattered. How the effects reverberated and what drove them to be made.

My last quibble and this is really maybe why I think the book as a small flaw is that Robinson doesn’t truly prove his point on “resistance”. Frankly I’d rather him define it first because much of what he gave as examples read less as resistance and more as responding to the moment. I wish he had a stronger critique of resistance in the book. It would have forced him to connect to other image movements that eventually learned resistance through image required more militancy.

But this is an amazing book and if semiotic m history and politics is your bag, you kinda have to read it.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Robinson's claim is that "capitalism" controlled theatrical and filmic representations of blacks and reinforced a "new racial regime" from the late 19th century into the mid 30s. He works to find instances, though, where the regime was challenged--however fleetingly--by certain films and dramatists. A behemoth of a book that gets bogged down on regular occasions in the intricacies of its details and research and often takes curious side-tracks. More importantly, Robinson adheres to too-strict binaries ("capitalism" versus (I guess?) non-capitalist enterprises; resistant versus complacent media; "new" versus "old" racism) that results in a reading that somehow manages to feel too simple for all its in-depth research.