Mandingo

If you are going to study the history of race and film in America, you are going to have to get up close and personal with Mandingo--I taught it in a seminar a couple of years ago and will return to it again in Spring 2010. Onion's AV Club riff on the film is worth re-reading.

This particular scene, wherein a plantation wife, Susan George as Blanche Maxwell, metes out punishment to a slave, Ellen (Brenda Sykes) who has consorted with her white husband, Perry King as Hammond Maxwell, is excruciating to watch but essential to ponder!

Raquel Welch, Planet 9 and More: The Ethnic American Body in Science Fiction Cinema

I wonder if Mandingo was a work of science fiction--perhaps the whole experiment of human slavery is an episode of the same; predatory exploitation of subjected populations (i.e., ironically, populations that have been objectified) always bring with them some legitimizing argument of justification: deeming groups of folks inferior is one of the tropic (trope + ic) moves of science--from Lindbergh with his eugenics fantasies to Dobbs with his fear of "Mexican" leprosy, the sciences have always been there (and not in a small way) to buttress the pangs of hate that throb within the dark soul of homo sapiens.

There are no shortages of ethnic bodies when it comes to the history of science fiction film. From Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C. to William Allen Young in District 9, this fruitful cinematic terrain in bestrewn with talented and not-so-talented actors. On the left and right, some classic images from the internet of Raquel Tejada, aka Raquel Welch.

Of course, the most important film in this genre is John Sayles Brother from Another Planet. Joe Morton is brilliant in the titular lead role:



...More on this to come after I re-screen District 9 later this week.

Memín Pinguin

Another item I should have included in the final, "director's cut" of Tex[t]-Mex and had to omit because I found out about it too late (the book was in galleys as the controversy raged with mainstream journalists and blogonauts alike), concerns the contentious history of the very popular (in Mexico, and elsewhere) comic book hero to my right, Memín Pínguin, Afro-Mexican extraordinaire. A staple like Archie, Betty & Veronica, Little Audrey, Richie Rich, and Baby Huey (a guilty pleasure) for Mexican comic book heroes, Pínguin came to be known more widely when the Mexican government, then under the capable hands of ex-Coca Cola executive and Ronald Reaganesque politico, Vicente Fox, issued a series of stamps commemorating this redoubtable child.

What's fascinating about Memín Pínguin comics is not, in this author's view, the racist, auntjemimaesque stereotype said figure broadcasts to lascivious eyes everywhere--though indeed that is reason to pursue greater critical enquiry into his origins and popularity. More important however for our purposes and for ethnic studies work in general is the transnational perpective that a study of this Mexican boy forces on would-be semiotic/political commentators. The boy is African and Mexican, heroic and offensive, popular and embarrassing, human and facsimile--he's a comic book character after all. To be forced to speak of Memín Pínguin is to be forced to speak at once of visuo-cultural historiographies that span Africa, North and South America, just for starters.

Various journalists (some, in Spanish, and quite nostalgic), comic book fans, internet reference tools, and African American bloggers have weighed in thoughtfully on the controversy and origins of this character.

If I to have the chance to revise Tex[t]-Mex for a 2nd edition, I have a sneaking suspicion that Memín Pínguin will have a cameo role; in particular in that part of the introduction where, in attempting to gloss the intricacies of race in U.S. mass culture, I grapple with 19nth century anthropology, blaxploitation films, and the movie Mandingo in an attempt to blend the visual history of African American and Latino semiotic malevolence.

And now for something completely similar, yet another chapter in the history of American exotic racialized/hypersexualized cinematic "african" "entertainment"...KARAMOJA

Welcome to the weirdness that is Karamoja, one of the films I have been researching as I complete the Mandingo chapter in Eyegiene.

image source

wikipedia brief gloss

kroger babb, "cineaste"...

from wikipedia:

Kroger Babb Howard W. "Kroger" Babb (December 30, 1906 – January 28, 1980) was an American film and television producer and showman. His marketing techniques were similar to a travelling salesman's, with roots in the medicine-show tradition. Self-described as "America's Fearless Young Showman,"[2] he is best known for his presentation of the 1945 exploitation film Mom and Dad, which was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 2005. Babb was involved in the production and marketing of many films and television shows, promoting each according to his favorite marketing motto: "You gotta tell 'em to sell 'em."[3] His films ranged from sex education–style dramas to "documentaries" on foreign cultures, intended to titillate audiences rather than to educate them, maximizing profits via marketing gimmicks.

Calling All Semioticians of Race, Ethnic Studies, and African American Studies

Though decidedly unsafe for work, the archives at wrongsideoftheart are decidedly useful for cultural studies mavens working on issues of race and representation; I am presently revising my Mandingo (1975) chapter for Eyegiene: Permutations of Subjectivity in the Televisual Age of Sex and Race and must have spent hours perusing the site's s/cinematic delights. Here's a brief bit of the chapter.