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Chapter 5 White Narratives, Black Allegories Cinema, taken generically, signifies in a de-differentiated manner. No other ​ form of cultural representation—not painting, nor literature nor music nor ​ even television—can signify quite as figurally as can cinema.​  Scott Lash, Sociology of Postmodernism Like the American western, SF film has played a significant part in affirming a myriad of myths and constructing historical relationships that are, at the least, uncritical and, at worst, revisionist falsehoods. For decades, film westerns presented intrepid white settlers as righteously taming the Wild West by vanquishing bands of hostile Indians, instead of presenting the push westward as a violent imposition upon the indigenous population. The western reimagined domestic imperialism as the establishment of civilization for the greater good. Such cinematic narratives affirmed the myth of American frontierism and served to smooth over the cultural chauvinisms of westward expansionism. Although the western has declined in production and popularity, many features of the genre are signified in SF film. The gunslingers of the Old West who passed through town after town have become the space cowboys of the future who journey from planet to planet, the boundlessness of outer space has replaced the panoramic vistas of the open range, and space aliens that zap humans into ashes have substituted for the image of hostile Indians attacking white settlers. The high-noon showdowns, the solitary sheriffs, and the patriotic jingoism common in the American western are found in SF films like Westworld (1973), Outland (1981), Independence Day (1996), and Armageddon (1998). Despite the similarity between westerns and SF films, however, the latter genre is not limited to reimagin- 124 Black Space ing the American western within a SF motif. On the contrary, SF cinema articulates a broad range of meanings, frequently expresses multiple messages, and fulfills various gratifications that bear only the slightest resemblance to the one intended. Planet of the Apes is an excellent example of an SF film that articulates multiple political and cultural subtexts beyond its intended message. The narrative presents an American astronaut far into the future who lands on an Earth-like planet populated with talking apes. Although Planet of the Apes makes a clear anti–nuclear war statement, signaled by the film’s surprise twist at the end, the film is a favorite of white supremacist organizations as an allegory for the future of American race relations if whites fail to band together to protect their interests.1 Of course the writers and directors of the Planet of the Apes film franchise did not intend for their films to resonate with such extreme hate groups. But as the seminal media theorist Stuart Hall has argued, intentionality does not restrict the meaning of a film nor is the message of a film passively consumed by the audience. Instead a film’s meaning is open for interpretation along three axes: a preferred reading , a negotiated reading, and an oppositional reading.2 Some viewers accept the dominant message(s) of a film, others accept some and reject some aspects of the preferred meaning promoted in a film, and still others may totally reject the preferred meaning, even going so far as to “read against the grain” of the film. Consequently, from an audience-centered perspective, the racial meaning of any SF film is up for grabs. Take, for example, Francois Truffaut’s SF film interpretation of Ray Bradbury ’s novel Fahrenheit 451 (1966). The film is a well-established social critique of oppressive governments, but its ending has ideological implications that resonate with significant elements of the African American experience. The central character, Guy Montag (Oskar Werner), lives in a future where books are illegal and “firemen” start fires in order to burn books. The film’s focus on books as a forbidden possession invokes issues associated with American slavery and the struggle of enslaved and post-enslavement blacks to have access to education. The ending of Fahrenheit 451 is particularly evocative of the homespun African American folk wisdom that stressed the importance of “book learning,” or education, as the only possession, once acquired, that white racism could not take away from a black person. The importance of “book learning” as a tool of liberation is underscored when Guy Montag flees to the countryside and finds other escapees living on the outskirts of the city. They are a community in which each person adopts a book for complete memorization and later shares that book through oral recitation with another similarly committed person who will memorize...

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