[On July
8th, 1947, something happened
in Roswell, New Mexico. It was probably just a
weather balloon (or like a really big condor), but ever since a
not-insignificant community of Americans have believed that an alien landed
there and was covered up by the US government. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy
Roswell and other cultural representations of aliens in America, leading up to
a special weekend post on one of the most famous and influential such
representations ever, The X-Files!]
On a quote we would do well to collectively think about, and a film that
would help us do so.
As I’ve written about elsewhere, one of the difficulties of teaching courses in Ethnic American Literature is the tendency to reduce authors to representatives of
overly broad ethnic categories: African American, Native American, Asian American,
and so on. That tendency is of course in no way specific to classrooms or
academia—most of our collective conversations about race and ethnicity depend
quite precisely on our use of such categories, on the idea that everyone within
them shares certain fundamental similarities. But even leaving aside the many
distinct nations/heritages included in those categories, such use ignores the
fact that, as scholars David Goldstein and Aubrey Thacker note
in the introduction to their wonderful edited collection Complicating
Constructions: Race, Ethnicity, and Hybridity in American Texts (2007), sociologists have long argued that “diversity
within categories far exceeds diversity between categories.”
Unfortunately, I can think of few works of mainstream popular culture that
work to present such intra-category diversity—if anything, those works that are
centrally interested in complicating our narratives of race and ethnicity tend
to do so by challenging our sense of the relationships between, not those within, the different categories (I’m thinking
of films like Crash and Do the Right Thing, for example). Ironically, it seems to me that Tyler Perry’s
films, made by an African American filmmaker and
featuring largely African American casts, are more interested in presenting the
diversity of identities and experiences within that one community—but the irony
is that Perry’s films attract a predominantly African American audience, which
means that such messages might not get to other audiences that could benefit
from them as well. All of which is to say that I believe there’s a significant
opening for broadly accessible films, or other pop culture texts, that focus on
diversity and identity within different American communities—and I’d like to
nominate one here: John Sayles’ The Brother from Another Planet (1984).
In Sayles’ film, an alien (Joe Morton) who happens to look African American
crashes his spaceship in New York City; as he wanders through Harlem trying to
get his bearings and survive (all while chased by a couple of special agents
out to capture and investigate him), he interacts with many different members
of the African American community (as well as other ethnicities and
communities). Because the alien cannot speak, those encounters are largely driven
by the assumptions and attitudes of the other people, which certainly allows
the film to depict the role that such attitudes (and the stereotypes and
definitions that come with them) play in society. But Sayles’ cross-section of
Harlem and African American life is just as noteworthy for its complex and
multi-faceted humanity; it shouldn’t be worth pointing out when a non-African
American filmmaker or artist creates such a representation of the diversity
within that community, but, well, I believe it is. There would be lots of ways
to think more collectively and successfully about all the diversity within each
American category, but Sayles’ film is certainly one unique, funny, and
effective means through which to start doing so.
Next
AlienStudying tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other representations of aliens (in America or otherwise) you’d
highlight?
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