Check, Double Check, Triple Check, etc.

Ok, so, I figured I'd approach this week's reading and film separately. I'm sure there's overlap between the two, but I leave that to class discussion.

I have to say that, before this class, I was almost completely unaware of the racism towards Irish immigrants. And, hey, I've got plenty of Irish roots. I should have been a redhead (like lots of others in both sides of my family). The extended quote on page 104 of the longshore were especially poinant to me. I remember studying the post civil war South, the stories of poor whites hatred for black folks. I remember thinking that socio-economic class has to trump color, that the poor whites and the poor blacks should have realized that they had so much more in common than they had in differences. Their day-to-day lives certainly matched more closely than poor whites did with middle class or upper class whites. I guess that's why I really loved that quote - "Let's go after the white bastards." That's what I'd wanted my ancestors to say.

I think that Lott has plenty of points that are simple and ring true. The working class did take the rhetoric of equality seriously. Whites impersonating blacks did bring blackness toward the main stream. Capitalistic societies do manufacture the popular. I just don't think there's much to argue with Lott's assertions.

Now for the ol' Amos N' Andy tagteam.

The comedy itself, for the average viewer who hasn't been trained to view critically, seems fairly traditional. The "dumb" guy paired up with the "smart" guy is evident even today with SNL's Will Ferrel and Chris Katan in A Night at the Roxbury. The "dumb" guy ends up being smart. The "smart" guy is actually just a showoff who's not especially useful for anything.
Here, Andy is our Dandy. He puts on airs, pretends he's important, that he has more power as "the boss" than Amos. But, we quickly see that he just shys away from work and cowers before anyone with any real importance in the community, like the Kingfish. Amos is caricatured as the Jim Crow; he misses his ole massa in de south. He wears patchwork clothes, does what he's told, stutters into the phone, is, seamingly, easily duped by Andy. But, we see quickly that Andy is duped by others in the community (10% ring a bell?). And, Amos ends up being the one with the smarts and ability to execute a plan to bring about the happy ending of the story. Go Amos.

Anywho, there's the setup; so, I'll just breeze through a few things I noticed about the film.

Animal cruelty wasn't shown, as the child abuse of The Jazz Singer wasn't shown. I guess it tells us abit about the cultural moment of the film, what was exceptable to be seen even when beating your child was still considered a cultural norm.

The montage in Harlem was telling and had quite a different tone than the one we find inside the taxi office. There was an element of truth in the montage that was evidently lacking in the blackfaced pair. And, it seemed intentional. The young boys shining shoes, playing baseball in the grassy alley, the mother carrying the baby all rang true to life, to a real life.
The office of the taxi company is altogether differnent and sticks out in the Harlem backdrop as different. The letters of the sign were backgrounds. The language inside seemed forced and unreal. It's interesting to me that Amos and Andy are situated within Harlem when they seemed an obvious juxtaposition. In Harlem, it was easy to see they were just caricatures.

I also noticed, I guess as a writer, the convenience of plot. Amos and Andy just happened to run into the man's son who they "worked" for in the south. Oh, and he was akindly master. The blackfaced duo got quite choked up when they hear about his death and remember how he "raised" them, and wouldn't shared his last loaf of bread. quite convenient.
They go well out of their way to catch Richard? before he gets on the train. He never calls on them as he said he would do. What do they get for their trouble? A piece of the cake, literally. I did notice, however vague the reference to "working" for the old master, as slaves, as hired help, that the white folks in the movie did seem to talk to them as equal humans, as though even the characters were aware it was simply the black face mask talking and not a black man.

Harlem is talked about as the bad part of town, a place to be extra cautious in, a place not safe for a white man to go after dark.

There were obvious and nicely detailed differences between the poor world of the blacks and the upper middle class world of the whites. It seemed even the images themselves reflected this. The white world is glossy, opaque, uplifting. Harlem is dark and dirty; rain falls there. You must shield yourself against it.

And, of course, Duke Ellington and cotton club orchestra. One would have never know if you didn't read the credits. There are no close ups of Ellington. He remains seated with his back to the audience through the rather short interludes where the orchestra plays a simple love song that only the way Richard can tell the girl his feels. And the girl is just a girl, not important enough for me to even remember her name. I remember more about her mother who was much less important to the plot.

Oh, well, see you all tomorrow.