Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations (Routledge Classics) (9 page)

Most critical reviews of The Crying Game did not discuss race, and those that did suggested that the power of this film lies in its willingness to insist that race and gender finally do not matter: it’s what’s inside that counts. Yet this message is undermined by the fact that all the people who are subordinated to white power are black. Even though this film (like The Bodyguard) seduces by suggesting that it can be pleasurable to cross boundaries, to accept difference, it does not disrupt conventional representations of power, of subordination and domination. Black people allow white men to remake them in the film. And Dil’s transvestism appears to be less radical when she eagerly offers her womanly identity in order to satisfy Fergus without asking him for an explanation. Fergus’s actions are clearly paternalistic and patriarchal. Dil gives that Billie Holiday “hush now, don’t explain” kind of love that misogynist, sexist men have always longed for. She acts in complicity with Fergus’s appropriation of Jody.

Those of us who are charmed by her defiant, bold manner throughout the film are amazed when she suddenly turns into the traditional “little woman,” eager to do anything for her man. She is even willing to kill. Her aggression is conveniently targeted at the only “real” woman in the film, Jude, who happens to be white. When Dil assumes a maternal role with Fergus she shifts from the role of ’ho to that of mammy. But when Dil is lured to believe Fergus will be her caretaker, the roles are suddenly reversed. There is nothing radical about Dil’s positionality at the film’s end. As “black female” taking care of her white
man, she embodies a racist/sexist stereotype. As “little woman” nurturing and waiting for her man (let’s remember that girlfriend did not faithfully wait for Jody), she embodies a sexist stereotype.

Throughout much of The Crying Game, audiences have the opportunity to watch a film that disrupts many of our conventional notions about identity. The British soldier is black. His girlfriend turns out to be a transvestite. Fergus readily abandons his role as IRA freedom fighter (a group that is simplistically portrayed as only terrorist) to become your average working man. In the best sense, much of this film invites us to interrogate the limits of identity politics, showing us the way desire and feelings can disrupt fixed notions of who we are and what we stand for. Yet in the final scenes of the film, Fergus and Dil seem to be primarily concerned with inhabiting sexist gender roles. He reverts to the passive, silent, unemotional, “rational” white man, an identity he sought to escape in the film. And Dil, no longer bold or defiant, is black woman as sex object and nurturer. Suddenly heterosexism and the Dick-and-Jane lifestyle are evoked as ideals—so much for difference and ambiguity. Complex readings of identity are abandoned and everything is back in its place. No wonder, then, that mainstream viewers find this film so acceptable.

In a culture that systematically devalues black womanhood, that sees our presence as meaningful only to the extent that we serve others, it does not seem surprising that audiences would love a film that reinscribes us symbolically in this role. (I say symbolically because the fact that Dil is really a black man suggests that in the best of white supremacist, capitalist patriarchal, imperialist worlds the female presence is not needed.) It can be erased (no need for real black women to exist) or annihilated (let’s have the black man brutally murder the white woman, not because she is a fascist terrorist but because she is biologically woman). Because I considered Jude to be first and foremost a
fascist, I did not initially see her death as misogynist slaughter. Critically reconsidering the scene in which Jude is murdered, I realized that Dil’s rage is directed against her because Jude is biologically female. It cannot be solely that she used the appearance of femininity to entrap Jody, for Dil uses that same means of entrapment. Ultimately, despite magical transgressive moments, there is much in this film that is conservative, even reactionary. Crudely put, it suggests that transvestites hate and want to destroy “real” women; that straight white men want black mammies so badly they invent them; that white men are even willing to vomit up their homophobia and enter a relationship with a black man to get that down-home service only a black female can give; that real homosexual men are brutes who batter; and ultimately that the world would be a better, more peaceful place if we would all forget about articulating race, gender and sexual practice and just become white heterosexual couples who do not play around with changing roles or shifting identity. These reactionary messages correspond with all the conservative messages regarding difference in The Bodyguard.

Significantly, the similarities between the two films go unnoticed by those critics who rave about The Crying Game and who either trash or ignore The Bodyguard. Yet somehow it seems fitting that The Bodyguard would be critically rejected in white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. For despite its conventional plot, the representation of blackness in general, and black femaleness in particular, are far more radical than any image in The Crying Game. The conventional Hollywood placement of black females in the role of servants is disrupted. In fact, Rachel Marron is wealthy, and Frank Farmer is hired to serve her. However utopian this inversion, it does challenge stereotypical assumptions about race, class, and gender hierarchies. When Frank Farmer acts to fully protect the life of Marron (how many films do we see in the United States where black female life is deemed valuable, worth protecting?) he takes her home to his
white father who embraces her with patriarchal care. Again, this representation is a radical break with stereotypical racist norms. It cannot be mere coincidence that a film that makes significant breaks with racist and sexist norms via its representation of black womanhood should be trashed by critics even as another film which reinscribes racist and sexist representations should be extolled as more meaningful. Even though The Bodyguard conservatively suggests that interracial relationships are doomed, it remains a film that offers concrete meaningful interventions in the area of race and representation.

People who flocked to see The Bodyguard, some of whom saw it many times, cannot simply assume that all the individuals writing reviews were unaware of these interventions. Given the way black life and black womanhood are devalued, the critics may simply have felt that the radical moments in this film should be ignored lest they signal that Hollywood can change—that individuals can create important interventions. The mega-economic success of The Bodyguard called attention to the reality that producers, directors, and stars can use their power to make progressive changes in the area of representation, even if, as in the case of Costner, they do not acknowledge the value of these changes.

Despite flaws, both The Crying Game and The Bodyguard are daring works that evoke much about issues of race and gender, about difference and identity. Unfortunately, both films resolve the tensions of difference, of shifting roles and identity, by affirming the status quo. Both suggest that otherness can be the place where white folks—in both cases white men—work through their troubled identity, their longings for transcendence. In this way they perpetuate white cultural imperialism and colonialism. Though compelling in those moments when they celebrate the possibility of accepting difference, learning from and growing through shifting locations, perspectives, and identities, these films ultimately seduce and betray.

5
CENSORSHIP FROM LEFT AND RIGHT

Recently, the Canadian government refused to allow my book Black Looks: Race and Representation into Canada. Copies were being shipped to a radical bookstore. They were held as “hate” literature. It seemed ironic that this book, which opens with a chapter urging everyone to learn to “love blackness,” would be accused of encouraging racial hatred. I doubt that anyone at the Canadian border read this book: the target for repression and censorship was the radical bookstore, not me. After a barrage of protests, the government released the books suggesting that they were held simply because there had been a misunderstanding about their content. Despite the fact that the books were released, it was another message sent to remind radical bookstores—particularly those that sell feminist, lesbian, and/or overtly sexual literature— that the state is watching them and ready to censor.

Canadian readers of all races and ethnicities were horrified by the seizure of Black Looks. Politically, censorship has been a major location where those with radical politics are attacked both in
Canada and the United States. All around the United States books by African American authors have been among those selected for censorship in grade schools and public libraries. These cases often go unnoticed by a larger public and by African Americans in general. To many folks, they seem like isolated incidents instigated by the Far Right.

More than the censoring of books, the issue of whether the work of individual African American rap musicians should be censored has been the catalyst compelling many black folks to consider issues of censorship. Conservatives in black communities are as motivated to censor as are their counterparts in other communities. Support for censorship in black communities is rarely noticed when mass media highlights this issue. The lack of coverage does not mean that support for censorship is not growing among black people. Yet few, if any, black leaders call attention to the dangers to progressive political work when censorship is condoned.

Black academics and intellectuals have not made many public statements about censorship, with the exception of the testimony of Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., in the court case involving the black male musicians 2 Live Crew. His support of their right to free speech was viewed by many black folks less as a radical stance on the issue of censorship and more as a case of patriarchal black male bonding. This was a pity, since the uproar over this case presented an opportunity for diverse black communities to engage in public debate about censorship.

Censorship is a troubled issue for black folks. Bourgeois class values often shape overall public opinion across class in black life, so that almost everyone is taught to value discretion and secret-keeping. When those values are coupled with diverse expressions of religious conservatism, a cultural environment that embraces censorship can thrive. Black support of censorship seems strongest when the issue is public exposure of flaws, wrongdoing, or mistakes by black political figures. Ralph
Abernathy’s choice to offer information about Martin Luther King that might have altered public perception of King’s life, information concerning sexuality, was viewed by most black folks across class as a breach of etiquette, an invasion of the private by the public. Ultimately, it was seen solely as an act of aggression and not as useful information that offers a more complex portrait of King’s identity. A similar response greeted Bruce Perry’s biography of Malcolm X. Ironically, the publishers feared that there would be major backlash against the book when in fact, it was disregarded, for the most part not read, seen as another attempt to discredit a powerful black male leader. In both these cases, had many black folks the power to censor these works, to keep them from seeing the light of day, these books would not be in existence.

Active in black liberation struggle and in feminist movement, I am disturbed by the willingness of more conservative thinkers in these two movements to embrace censorship as an acceptable means of social control. The political core of any movement for freedom in the society has to have the political imperative to protect free speech. Time and again, radicals have seen that censorship is used to silence progressive voices rather than those who take the conservative stand that free speech must be suppressed in specific instances. Progressive activists must work politically to protect free speech, to oppose censorship. These issues are most publicly highlighted in black civil rights struggle and feminist movement, in struggles over representations of vulgarity, sexuality, and pornography. Yet some of the reticence on the part of individuals in both groups to the vehement opposition of censorship reflects the deep investment in regulatory silencing that has, dangerously, come to be an accepted aspect of both black liberation struggle and feminist movement. This covert silencing of dissenting voices and opinions undermines free speech and strengthens the forces of censorship within and outside radical movements.

In the early years of contemporary feminist movement, solidarity between women was often equated with the formation of “safe” spaces where groups of presumably like-minded women could come together, sharing ideas and experiences without fear of silencing or rigorous challenges. Groups sometimes disintegrated when the speaking of diverse opinions led to contestation, confrontation, and out-and-out conflict. It was common for individual dissenting voices to be silenced by the collective demand for harmony. Those voices were at times punished by exclusion and ostracization. Before it became politically acceptable to discuss issues of race and racism within feminist circles, I was one of those “undesirable” dissenting voices. Always a devout advocate of feminist politics, I was, and am, also constantly interrogating, and if need be, harsh in my critique. I learned powerful lessons from hanging in there, continuing to engage in feminist movement even when that involvement was not welcomed. Significantly, I learned that any progressive political movement grows and matures only to the degree that it passionately welcomes and encourages, in theory and practice, diversity of opinion, new ideas, critical exchange, and dissent.

This remains true for feminist movement; it is not less true for black liberation struggle. In the heyday of civil rights struggle, black power movement folks were often “excommunicated” if they did not simply support the party line. This was also the case in white male-dominated “left” political circles. Censorship of dissenting voices in progressive circles often goes unnoticed. Radical groups are often so small that it is easy to punish folks using tactics that may not be apparent to those outside the group. Usually, repression is enforced by powerful members of the group threatening punishment, the most common being some form of ostracization or excommunication. This may take the form of no longer including an individual’s thoughts or writing in relevant discussions, especially publication, or excluding individuals from important meetings and conferences. And in some
cases it may take the form of a consistent, behind-the-scenes effort to cast doubt verbally on their credibility.