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Dramatic Dynamic Construction of the Other:

Racial Ideological Maintenance in Drama & Film


Race, in many ways, is simply the continual defining, or maintenance of stable
definitions, of the Other in relation to those who can be identified with the Self. In this light, we
can view race as simply an extension of family, tribe, neighborhood, into and beyond national
identity1. From its beginnings, racial ideology has served as a path to social stability, reinforcing
Durkheimian solidarit mcanique. Searching through the literary record it is easy to see this
expressed. Psycholinguistically, we can observe the interplay between various racial conceptions
through analyses of terms like and in Greek literature, or in the employment
and racial development of the word in Hebrew scriptures. We can read how Roman racial
comprehension grew out of cultural understanding of familial norms and patterns, in particular
the social structuring of the gens. However, we can also see how literature served to transform,
define, and maintain conceptions of what it meant to be a member (or non-member) of X race,
such as in Vergils highly successful attempt to solidify a link for the Romans to ancient myth
and the gods themselves out of the last vestiges of Hellenistic power. The examples of Greek and
Roman literature are particularly interesting as it was these cultures which bequeathed to us
another form of literature: drama. Grown out of the Greek , drama enables creation and
embodiment of characters by other humans for other humans. While this medium is no doubt far
less influential than it was, the act (and acting) goes on in the form of film and television.
Reading drama (both film and plays) as texts, we can observe how texts and textual

Foradiscussionanddefinitionoftheseterms,seeMessing(2009),pp.256263.

representation continue to define and maintain racial ideology, despite the supposed solidarit
organique of modern society.
Cognitive science has been an essential tool not only in explaining the dynamic processes
whereby the perception and faculties of the individual are used to make sense out of the chaos of
molecules and particles before her, but also in explaining that explanation (i.e. how language
develops, is organized at the conceptual and cognitive level, etc). The recognition of patterns and
the ignoring of some differences in form or shape and the magnification of others at the cognitive
level make humans aptly equipped to recognize and distinguish other humans based on any
number of physical characteristics, from the color of skin to the shape of a nose. Therefore, even
in a culture in which racial ideology is not defined or studied at any level, racial consciousness
still exists. For this reason, any interaction with textual representations of race will, by virtue
merely of the cognitive faculties human beings share, further define for each individual, or mass
of undifferentiated individuals, who is what and what that looks like, be it Athenian portrayal
of Spartan or Persian culture, or D. W. Griffiths construction of negro in the first full length
film, or Hwangs categorizations of Western and Eastern race. As soon as a Western man
comes into contact with the East and again being an Oriental, I could never be completely
a man.2 Hwangs play M. Butterfly constructs a binary view of race which becomes the lens
through which the consumer of the play is forced to see. Gallimard stands not simply for France,
but for the West, and his Butterfly for the East. The dynamic between Gallimard and Song, and
to a lesser extent between the other textual characterizations (Marc, Chin, etc) of Eastern and
Western Racial identities, forces the consumer to passively and unconsciously be shifted into a
possessing a new schema for race which is added (or replaces) those already possessed: the

Hwang,p.62.

world of race as it might be understood from a post-industrial colonialistic standpoint. The play,
however, is written in a Western language, and must be understood as intended for Western
audiences, and therefore designed to impose, or define, racial notions for Western audiences. On
the one hand, this might enable a spark of understanding for those consciously aware of the
plays purpose in exposing Western stereotypes. On the other hand, the very binarism employed
forces a Western consumer to continue to define the East as Other. The play then defeats itself in
actively maintaining, not destroying, racial ideology.
A multifactorial textual construction of race may be observed in the play Angels in
America. Here, the primary concern is not with race at all, but with other similar conceptions of
the Other: sexuality and gender. Yet race remains a factor, and not the least important, of the
play. How could it not? Rabbi Isidor Chemeltwitz (He speaks sonorously, with a heavey
Eastern European accent... she wasnot a person but a whole kind of person how we
struggled, and how we fought, for the family, for the Jewish home3 or Ultimately, what
defines us isnt race, but politics. Not like any European country where theres an
insurmountable fact of a kind of racial, or ethnic, monopoly, or monolith, like all Dutchmen, I
mean Dutch people, are well, Dutch, and the Jews of Europe were never Europeans4 The very
language Louis uses to deny racial ideology in America betrays its ubiquity. Equally interesting
is the Rabbis remark that Louis Grandmother was not a person but a whole kind of person. A
whole kind of person is a race. The multifactorial construction in Kushners play is due to the
embodiment of a number of different Others within one role (e.g. Jewish/Gay or Black/Gay),
which is of course what every Self is. The presentation of this, however, is somewhat rare. The

Kushner,p.16.

Kushner,p.96.

consumer of this play, by the very fact that the Other is presented in so many different ways in
the same role, cannot nail down an Other to identify against. This problem is compounded by
the very real and tragic human experiences of the characters, making identification against all
the more difficult. Whereas Wang puts racial glasses on the consumer, Kushner blinds him.
Without the definitive Other to typify, the maintenance is broken down, or at least temporarily
suspended. How can Gay mean Jewish and Black and ancient Anglo-Saxon ancestry all at once?
How can being Jewish mean being Gay? The roles of the Other, by merging and conglomeration,
restrain the capacity of the consumer to continue to construct the Other in a monotypifying
fashion. By presenting race as a category of Other alongside other such categories, all categories
are in a way destroyed.
The opposite effect is seen in Inglourious Basterds. Virtually every character is
completely subsumed by the embodiment of race. Brad Pitt is The John Wayne American. The
clever Nazi murderer is not ein Deutscher but der Deutsche. The consumer is never allowed to
forget for a moment the race of any character. Either by way of American or German accent, or
other ever present reminders, racial identity is unceasingly thrust into the consumer. In every
scene in which she is present, the young Jewish fugitive Shoshanna is either presented with a
Nazi, accenting her role as embodiment of race, or plotting revenge against Nazis, and doing the
same thing. The flirtatious and cinematic German actress cannot but ask, rhetorically, whether
any of the Americans can speak German, in line with the old joke one who can speak two
languages is bilingual, one who can speak three is trilingual, and one who can speak only one is
American. National identity in the film is racial identity. Lt. Aldo Raines character makes this
quite clear. The American can be nothing if not John Wayne. Once more textual representations

define for the consumer race and racial identity. Conceptual identity schemata already present
within the consumer are reinforced, perhaps subtly altered, but maintained.
It is clear, even from this short analysis of a tiny fractions of texts available to the present
English speaking consumer mass, that texts can today can be every bit as influential in
constructing and maintaining racial definitions as were oral and written traditions in the ancient
world. Cognitive processes make it all too easy for humans to characterize, divide, separate, and
merge other humans into conceptually simpler masses of I ams and I am nots. However, it is
far easier to observe discriminating factors like hair color or left-handedness than it is certain
racial characteristics. What is important in order to distinguish race, and thereby define it, must
be taught through mass mediation of oral, written, and cinematic texts. Nowhere is this truer than
in dramatization of the human experience, which allow textual embodiment of race to be
constructed for the consumer. By continuing to define race in texts, racial definition may be
maintained. By failing to define it, the identity of race, or the Other, may be broken down. This
ability, or role, of texts within any culture makes them a powerful and dangerous weapon. The
pen is mightier than the sword. The latter can kill the person. The former can define the
individual.

Works Cited
Hwang, D. H. (1986). M. Butterfly. New York: Dramatists Play Service, Inc.

Kushner, T. (1995). New York: Theatre Communications Group.


Messing, A. (2009). : An Outsiders Sociology of Self. Human Architecture 7(3),
155-172

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