(Mis-)Representing The History Of Slavery On The Screen:Contemporary Hollywood Films And The United States’(Post-)Racial Politics

In2008, Democratic nominee Barack Obama won the U.S. presidential election and became the first non-white president in the nation’s history. His election, hence, marks a huge watershed in contemporary American racial politics. Particularly, in the realm of mass media, it has inspired a lot of discussions about race and racism, and has ignited a kind of "black" phenomenon. Hollywood, in recent years, has produced numerous films concerning black people and black history. African-American filmmakers, actors and actresses have also been increasingly involved in Hollywood’s commercial cinema, and have enjoyed more opportunities than ever before. It seems that Hollywood has got rid of its overt racism in the past, and has turned into a brand-new "post-racial" institution-where every African American, either on or off the screen, can go beyond race and achieve self-determination and self-fulfillment.Whereas the mainstream holds an optimistic view of this "Obama effect" on Hollywood, I suspect that, underneath this "black" phenomenon, there might be complex racial ideologies at work. Therefore, to examine the nature of contemporary Hollywood films about the blacks, this dissertation raises the following questions:(1) Is it a truthful representation of the African-American people and their history?(2) Is it truly an empowerment of the black community?(3) How to interpret and evaluate the relationship between Hollywood films and the U.S. post-racial politics? Focusing upon these questions, this dissertation has chosen two films-black director Steve McQueen’s12Years a Slave and white director Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained-as case studies. This research applies the image-critique approach, combining with the criticism of contemporary socio-political context, and analyzes the black heroes-both in relation to other black characters and to white characters-in the two films respectively, so as to scrutinize how post-racial Hollywood produces and re-produces the images of slaves and the relations of slavery on the screen.Theoretically, this dissertation employs the framework of black public intellect bell hooks, whose works have synthesized the interaction between mass media and African-American racial politics. On one hand, she sees filmic representation as a means of political power. According to her, filmic representation is a carrier of racist ideologies. It maintains the hegemony of white supremacy, and thus oppresses the African Americans and other racial minorities. On the other hand, hooks is also aware of the new changes of racial representation in the new era. She suggests that, after the sixties’ Civil Rights movement, with the emergence of inter-racial integration and intra-racial segregation, as well as the prevalence of liberalism in American culture, there is a new type of racism-i.e., the combination of racism and classism. As hooks argues, this new kind of post-racial racism is precisely the ideological superstructure behind contemporary Hollywood films about the blacks.Based upon this theoretical conceptualization, this dissertation proposes the following arguments. First, contemporary Hollywood films’representation of African-American images and the history of slavery is a failure. To a large extent, history is rewritten to comply with the post-racial taste of contemporary consumer audience. These films tend to tell the success stories of black elites who endorse the visions and values of middle-class politics, while denouncing-and even depreciating-the interest of the black masses who are under the dual oppression of racial and economic discrimination. In these films, the images of the black heroes are "whitened," and thus become the beneficiaries of the post-racial ideology. Second, contemporary Hollywood also fails to empower the African-American community. In these films, white supremacy is still the predominant political force; only it is less blatant and less straightforward. Fundamentally, these films do not shake institutional and structural racism, but have internalized what bell hooks calls the new racism. Third, contemporary Hollywood’s failure in its treatment of race is deeply rooted in its mode of production and consumption. The idea of post-racial politics, as a kind of hegemonic code, is imbedded in the structure of the Hollywood system, and thus is hard to be challenged. To conclude, contemporary Hollywood films are significantly influenced by the U.S. post-racial politics: although on the surface, it appears that Hollywood has entered into a new era of racial transcendence, in essence, Hollywood is still an ideological institution that submits itself to racism and racialism.