American Cinema and the Southern Imaginary

Contents

Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction: The Southern Imaginary 1 Deborah E. Barker and Kathryn McKee I. Rereading the Hollywood South The Celluloid War before The Birth: Race and History in Early American Film 27 Robert Jackson Mammy’s “Mules” and the Rules of Marriage in Gone with the Wind 52 Riché Richardson Bodies and Expectations: Chain Gang Discipline 79 Leigh Anne Duck The Postwar Cinematic South: Realism and the Politics of Liberal Consensus 104 Chris Cagle A “Professional Southerner” in the Hollywood Studio System: Lamar Trotti at Work, 1925–1952 122 Matthew H. Bernstein II. Viewing the Civil Rights South Black Passing and White Pluralism: Imitation of Life in the Civil Rights Struggle 151 Ryan DeRosa viii Contents Remembering Birmingham Sunday: Spike Lee’s 4 Little Girls 179 Valerie Smith Exploitation Movies and the Freedom Struggle of the 1960s 194 Sharon Monteith III. Crossing Borders Mapping out a Postsouthern Cinema: Three Contemporary Films 219 Jay Watson The Native Screen: American Indians in Contemporary Southern Film 253 Melanie R. Benson The City That Déjà Vu Forgot: Memory, Mapping, and the Americanization of New Orleans 277 Briallen Hopper Humid Time: Independent Film, Gay Sexualities, and Southernscapes 293 R. Bruce Brasell Papa Legba and the Liminal Spaces of the Blues: Roots Music in Deep South Film 317 Christopher J. Smith Revamping the South: Thoughts on Labor, Relationality, and Southern Representation 336 Tara McPherson Contributors 353 Index 357 ...