{"id":47046,"date":"2016-05-21T00:59:18","date_gmt":"2016-05-21T00:59:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=47046"},"modified":"2016-12-27T18:41:56","modified_gmt":"2016-12-27T18:41:56","slug":"cinematic-identity-anatomy-of-a-problem-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=47046","title":{"rendered":"Cinematic Identity: Anatomy of a Problem Film"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cinematic Identity: Anatomy of a Problem Film<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

University of Minnesota Press<\/a>
\n2007
\n200 pages
\n24 b&w photos, 5 1\/2 x 8 1\/2
\nPaper ISBN 978-0-8166-3412-5
\nCloth ISBN 978-0-8166-3411-8<\/p>\n

Cindy Patton<\/strong><\/a>, Canada Research Chair in Community Culture and Health
\nSimon Fraser University, British Columbia, Canada<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Though largely forgotten today, the 1949 film Pinky<\/em><\/a> had a significant impact on the world of cinema. Directed by Elia Kazan<\/a>, the film was a box office success despite dealing with the era\u2019s most taboo subjects\u2014miscegenation<\/a> and racial passing<\/a>\u2014and garnered an Academy Award <\/a>nomination for its African American star, Ethel Waters<\/a>. It was also historically important: when a Texas<\/a> movie theater owner showing the film was arrested for violating local censorship laws, his case went to the U.S. Supreme Court<\/a>, which ruled the censorship ordinance unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

In Cinematic Identity<\/em>, Cindy Patton takes Pinky<\/em> as a starting point to meditate on the critical reception of this and other \u201cproblem films\u201d of the period and to explore the larger issues they raise about race, gender, and sexuality. Films like Pinky<\/em>, Patton contends, helped lay the groundwork for a shift in popular understanding of social identity that was essential to white America\u2019s ability to accept the legitimacy of the civil rights movement.<\/p>\n

The production of these films, beginning with Gentleman\u2019s Agreement<\/em><\/a> in 1947, coincided with the arrival of the Method school of acting<\/a> in Hollywood, which demanded that performers inhabit their characters\u2019 lives. Patton historicizes these twin developments, demonstrating how they paralleled, reflected, and helped popularize the emerging concept of the liberal citizen in postwar America, and in doing so illustrates how the reception of projected identities offers new perspectives on contemporary identity politics, from feminism to the gay rights movement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cinematic Identity: Anatomy of a Problem Film University of Minnesota Press 2007 200 pages 24 b&w photos, 5 1\/2 x 8 1\/2 Paper ISBN 978-0-8166-3412-5 Cloth ISBN 978-0-8166-3411-8 Cindy Patton, Canada Research Chair in Community Culture and Health Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, Canada Though largely forgotten today, the 1949 film Pinky had a significant […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,8413,8,17,6462,20],"tags":[23820,31,341],"class_list":["post-47046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-communications","category-media-archive","category-monographs","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-cindy-patton","tag-pinky","tag-university-of-minnesota-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47046"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47047,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47046\/revisions\/47047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}