Masculinity In The Interracial Buddy Film

Masculinity in the Interracial Buddy Film

Feature films function as a keeper of America’s collective conscience—a repository of fears, guilt, and hopes. “Buddy films” about men of different races depict a world where a peaceful balance is possible and conflicts can be resolved. Since the 1930s these films have presented various forms of masculinity, reflecting dominant mainstream social traditions, images of men and manhood within the culture. Interracial buddy films include such examples as the Silver Streak, 48 Hrs, Beverly Hills Cop, Lethal Weapon and The Shawshank Redemption. Many of these films have been made into franchises, furthering their cultural importance as filmic versions of interracial equality. This critical study analyzes the idealized interracial relationships, the heterosexual masculine roles within the films and the appearances of this kind of film in various genres. The book is arranged in six major chapters, each focusing upon a particular era in the development of the interracial buddy film. The book also examines the film sequel as a validation of the enduring significance of interracial interaction. The scope of the work is not limited to Caucasian/African-American pairings. Films with a myriad of racial and ethnic combinations are also analyzed, such as Tin Cup, Rush Hour, Shanghai Noon and Ocean’s Eleven.

American Book Publishing Record

American Anatomies

In this brilliantly combative study, Robyn Wiegman challenges contemporary clichés about race and gender, a formulation that is itself a cliché in need of questioning. As part of what she calls her "feminist disloyalty," she turns a critical, even skeptical, eye on current debates about multiculturalism and "difference" while simultaneously exposing the many ways in which white racial supremacy has been reconfigured since the institutional demise of segregation. Most of all, she examines the hypocrisy and contradictoriness of over a century of narratives that posit Anglo-Americans as heroic agents of racism's decline. Whether assessing Uncle Tom's Cabin, lynching, Leslie Fiedler's racialist mapping of the American novel, the Black Power movement of the 60s, 80s buddy films, or the novels of Richard Wright and Toni Morrison, Wiegman unflinchingly confronts the paradoxes of both racism and antiracist agendas, including those advanced from a feminist perspective. American Anatomies takes the long view: What epistemological frameworks allowed the West, from the Renaissance forward, to schematize racial and gender differences and to create social hierarchies based on these differences? How have those epistemological regimes changed--and not changed--over time? Where are we now? With painstaking care, political passion, and intellectual daring, Wiegman analyzes the biological and cultural bases of racial and gender bias in order to reinvigorate the discussion of identity politics. She concludes that, for very different reasons, identity proves to be dangerous to minority and majority alike.