Ethnic Notions (review)

Film Reviews Ethnic Notions. Producer: Marlon Riggs. 1986. Color, 56 mins. Distributor: California Newsreel, 630 Natoma Street, San Francisco, CA 94103, (415) 621-6196. Available in all video formats; transcripts available $4.00. Ethnic stereotyping has been a mainstay of American popular culture since the country's founding. Stereotypical images have appeared in many forms and formats-books, magazines, newspapers, popular arts, advertising and even children's literature and games-thereby rather insidiously working their way into the nation's consciousness. It is this body of material which provides the grist for Ethnic Notions, a video production from California Newsreel. Despite the generic nature of the title, the film actually focuses on stereotypes of a single ethnic group, featuring the images of Black Americans exclusively. The narrator, actress Esther Rolle, justifies the film's focus at the outset, maintaining that of all ethnic characterizations, those of Black Americans have been the most enduring. While other ethnic groups, such as Asian Americans, may question this premise, the focus on one ethnic group does allow the filmmakers to examine in some depth the debilitating and dehumanizing nature of long-term stereotyping. The result is a visually powerful and sometimes chilling documentary analyzing the intent and effects ofexaggeration and distortion over time. The filmmakers have taken a basically chronological approach to their subject, stressing four historical periods, the antebellum era, reconstruction, World War I and the post-war period. The stereotypical images are grouped accordingly, with commentary provided by six scholars, principally from the University of California, a performing artist, and Jan Faulkner, whose collection inspired the film's creation. Throughout the production, stereotypical images are juxtaposed to great effect with documentary photographs and film clips. Thus, for example, representations of the carefree and irresponsible Sambo, content in his enslaved condition, are contrasted with period images of slaves whose scars speak of anything but contentment. Advertising images of the lovable and subservient plantation Mammy strikingly contrast with a pre-Civil War portrait of a slave woman 44 with her young white charge. Chilling photographs of lynchings early in this century appear in the context of Reconstructionist images of Blacks as barbaric savages, film clips from Birth of a Nation, and animal-like depictions of Black children as pickaninnies. Perhaps one of the film's most effective and memorable contrasts of this type interweaves Martin Luther King's familiar "I have a dream" with a Hollywood film clip of Ethel Waters performing the song "Why Darkies Never Dream." The filmmakers also make limited use of live performance and dramatized monologue in the production, the most memorable being actor/choreographer Leni Sloane's portrayal of actor and singer Bert Williams. Although poignant, this component seems less effective when compared with the wealth ofprimary materials presented elsewhere, including films and recordings ofWilliams himself. Greatest strength, however, lies in underscoring that while the most infamous stereotypes are gone, their legacies are still powerfully with us. Today, both Black and white Americans still can recognize and describe the most dehumanizing of these old images and in fact may even identify some truth in the distortion. Indeed, the most insidious legacy may be that the image may define behavior, rather than the reverse. As scholar Barbara Christian convincingly concludes, one of the best ways of maintaining a system of oppression may be through psychological control. Such control is weakened, however, when the system can be exposed. Ethnic Notions works well in this regard and would serve as a useful video component in the classroom. It should be noted, however, that the film only hints at the way Blacks are portrayed in American popular culture today. The subject is of key significance and suggests an important topic for follow-up discussion and student research, perhaps surveying contemporary media for present-day images. Ethnic Notions provides a valuable overview of the subtle, and not so subtle dangers of ethnic stereotyping and can be used effectively to increase student awareness and sensitivity in this regard. In this age of mass media it is increasingly important that students neither tolerate nor blithely ignore anything that limits their perception. James F. Turk Director ofEducation The Balch Institutefor Ethnic Studies Philadelphia, PA 45 ...