The author of this article, Charlene Regester, compares directors D.W. Griffith and Oscar Micheaux, and the impact of each on American silent cinema. Through the examination of each director's films, the author provides examples of how American films in the silent era that portrayed racially-charged characters played an important role in race relations-visually empowering and disempowering both black and white constituencies. While films like Birth of a Nation promoted white supremacy and the separation of the races, writes Regester, Micheaux responded to the reductive myths ingrained in Griffith's prejudices, constructing instead nuanced and overtly revisionist accounts of the African American experience. Like author J. Ronald Green, Regester proposes that Micheaux raised taboo racial topics to present black subjectivity as complex and resist racially infused representations.

            This article's focus on character symbolism provides helpful information for my discussion of Body and Soul. It explores how Micheaux split Robeson's protagonist into two parts: Robeson as morally righteous Sylvester, and Robeson as the Reverend Isaiah, a fantasized figure who should represent morality, but actually signifies its antithesis. The evil reverend struggles to locate his righteous self through parishioner Martha Jane's mirror image. Martha Jane symbolizes the ability to assume moral position, and she associates Sylvester with the desired racialized definition of blackness, which counters the criminality of Rev. Jenkins. This use of Robeson for both the protagonist and the antagonist displays two important truths: there is an extremely thin line between good and evil, and the complexity of black subjectivity. Utilizing these symbols, Micheaux hoped to elevate blacks and guide them into a position of respect and high esteem, not just in the eyes white oppressors, but for themselves and the whole of the black community.

 

In his chapter of Black American Cinema, author and professor J. Ronald Green applies W.E.B. DuBois term "twoness" to Oscar Micheaux's film style. First, Green mentions Thomas Cripps's ground-breaking book on the history of race movies, Slow Fade to Black, how Cripps based his assessment on the cultural phenomenon of racial assimilation, and Cripps's referral to Black cinema as anti-assimilation. Within this book, says Green, Cripps recognized a debilitating dilemma for Black film in America, with which Cripps closely associated DuBois's concept of twoness of American racial codes: how Blacks face the possibility of two social identities at the same time, whose relations to each other are strained, but which each Black American must somehow resolve individually. Ultimately, Blacks have a need to retain their ethnicity in the face of assimilation, and Cripps viewed black cinema as a form of non-assimilation. Green then goes on to highlight how Micheaux's financial struggles to make films failed to explain his retention of early film techniques. The author believes Micheaux seemingly amateur, raw style contributed to his message of truth.

While Cripps accused Micheaux of imitating white films because of his harsh critiques of his own black community, Green opposes, arguing that Micheaux's depictions brought life and reality to film. In addition to his constructive criticisms, meant to provoke change in the black community, Micheaux rejects typical Hollywood style in order to display his non-assimilation. Micheaux's style shows retention of early film traits that critics (like Cripps) often label as amateurish, naïve artlessness. Simple, direct, and jagged, Micheaux meant for his films to counter aesthetically pleasing Hollywood dramas, like Griffith's Birth of a Nation, and symbolize truth. As Green illustrates, Micheaux's films suggested that the glossy illusionism of Hollywood films concealed the truth, a virtue that Hollywood failed to value. Just as the beautiful body of Rev. Jenkins in Body and Soul hid corruption, the polished appearance of Hollywood film constantly masked honesty.

 

Feminist author Bell Hooks discusses the works of Oscar Micheaux, and how they challenge conventional racist representations while still producing images that convey the complexities and feelings of blacks in a realistic manner. Bell Hooks explores the techniques used by Micheaux to not only mirror real life, but to also go beyond the realm of the ordinary. She explains Micheaux's utilization of melodrama, clarifying how his films work to transgress boundaries and offer perspectives on black experience unseen in any other cinematic practices. Micheaux's focus on both interracial sexual bondings and racialized sexual politics as they influenced the expressionism of desire in black heterosexual couples is also mentioned. Hooks then applies her thoughts to Micheaux's 1932 film Ten Minutes to Live, and considers how it problematizes the location of black heterosexual pleasure with a rigid social order, based on color, that makes the desired object the body most resembling whiteness. For my essay though, I will refer to Bell Hooks's interpretation of Micheaux as a black director.

            Like many other present-day Micheaux scholars, Bell Hooks defends Micheaux's intentions for creating seemingly racist films. Her evaluation of Micheaux in terms of melodrama proves useful for understanding his method. Micheaux melodrama depends on grand gestures, broad moral themes with narratives of coincidence, reverses and sudden happy endings organized around a rigid opposition between good and evil, the characters represent forces rather than people, and the style throws doubt on the adequacy of speech to express the complexities of passion. These characteristics of melodrama are valuable for my argument because they deal with general concepts of human life, not black or white life. Broad moral themes and the balance of good versus evil have surfaced repeatedly in film and literature because they are part of the basic human condition. Body and Soul provides a perfect example of Micheaux's melodrama style.

 

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In her article, University of Southern California Professor of English, Susan McCabe, discusses the 1930 avant-garde film Borderline, and actor Paul Robeson's role in the film. McCabe explores the "dissecting gaze" of director Kenneth Macpherson-- his focus black, masculine bodies and racial fantasies. The article explains that Borderline demonstrates how the crisis of masculinity is also a racial crisis, and how the film invokes the femme fatale as both a smokescreen for racial anxieties and as an index for how sexuality impinges upon race. McCabe also illustrates how the filmmaker utilized Paul Robeson in an attempt to dismantle the myth of black masculinity as predatory, and instead portrayed the white male's projection of desire upon the black body. Despite her admiration of Borderline, McCabe acknowledges the film's serious limitations in its representation of race: how it objectifies Paul Robeson and associates him with the femme fatale. This essay establishes how Borderline fits into Robeson's career, the outside influences on the film, the film as the avant-garde answer to Birth of a Nation, and an analysis of significant scenes that render Robeson as both the bearer of disavowed desires and as capable of reconstructing cultural borderlines.

            Although this article concentrates on Borderline, McCabe mentions important details about Body and Soul in her description of Paul Robeson's career. In Body and Soul, Robeson played both the evil minister Isaiah Jenkins and his noble counter-part, his brother Sylvester. As McCabe suggests, Micheaux chose Robeson to play both roles for a very important reason: to present the body and soul as separate, split entities, yet, in tenuous union through Robeson. This idea has become most prevalent in modern discourse, which situates the "black body" and "white soul" as polarized. I will argue against this modernist discourse, proposing that Micheaux proposed no difference between black and white in Body and Soul, and that the moral dilemma faced by Rev. Jenkins embodies the struggle of all mankind.

 

Citation:

Musser, Charles. "To Redream the Dreams of White Playwrights: Reappropriation and Resistance in Oscar Micheaux's Body and Soul" Yale Journal of Criticism 12.2 (1999): 321-356.

Content and Relevance of Work:

Professor of Film Studies at Yale University, Charles Musser, attempts to reevaluate Oscar Micheaux's Body and Soul after its misinterpretation by various scholars over the years. In order to counteract scholars' misreading of the film, Musser describes the "problems" of Micheaux's stylistics: his intertwining of flashbacks with dreams in Body and Soul, and how this destabilizes the status of the represented event. Musser refuses to blame Micheaux's unfortunate economic circumstances and his lack of funding for his individualistic approach to film. This article also mentions how Micheaux adapted the story behind Body and Soul from three plays by white playwrights: Bagby Stephens's Roseanne and Eugene O'Neill's two race plays The Emperor Jones and All God's Chillun' Got Wings. The content of each of these plays is discussed, along with actor Paul Robeson's involvement in all four productions, and Micheaux's supposed exploitation of Robeson. Musser analyzes Micheaux's strategy for reworking these plays into his own complex narrative, and the film's critical reception at the time of its release and today.

            As mentioned before, this article examines Micheaux's use of flashback in Body and Soul. These flashbacks subvert the significance of the particular occurring event in order to achieve a higher goal. According to Musser, Micheaux thought that dream and reality had a similar structure lacking coherence or a logical pattern of cause and effect, a standpoint with which I disagree. If Micheaux truly felt cause and effect did not exist in life, he would not have created Body and Soul. The entire purpose of making this film was to notify the black community of its major flaws, which is the cause, and provoke his black audience to fix these issues, which is the effect. This effort is symbolized in Martha Jane's character, who must hear and believe her daughter's confession of Rev. Jenkins rape in order to face reality. Blacks must hear Micheaux's message to facilitate change in American society.  

 

Citation:

Green, Ronald J. "Oscar Micheaux's Interrogation of Caricature as Entertainment." Film Quarterly 51.3 (1998): 16-31.

Content and Relevance of Work:

J. Ronald Green's article addresses the issue of Black stereotypes and caricatures displayed in the entertainment industry. Green believes that pervasive, ethnic images blocked any autonomous effort put forth by African American entertainers to provide a realistic model of African American citizenship. Since nothing could be accomplished until that problem was resolved, Oscar Micheaux made this issue a top priority. Then, the author highlights important milestones of Micheaux's career, his childhood, and the financial hurdles he was forced to overcome. Green focuses on the success of D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation: the stereotypes and setbacks it provided for African Americans, and the motivation it provided Micheaux to remove these caricatures. Micheaux, Green argues, recreates these caricatures for the purpose of criticizing them, and explains how dialects provide a framework in relation to his ethnic criticisms.

Overall, Green's defends Micheaux's use of caricatures, saying it draws attention to what is wrong in the Black community, so that Blacks can repair the problem in what Green calls a "search and destroy" mission on Micheaux's part. Since this text suggests that Micheaux goes beyond positive images to function within the race as a starting cure, Micheaux held high expectations for the future of black and white race relations. If the black community were to answer his call, and repair its problems, blacks could finally command respect from whites. As a result, the change Micheaux attempts to provoke could spark an end to most of the mistreatment and racism projected by whites upon blacks. Unlike author Charlene Regester's article titled "The Misreading and Rereading of Oscar Micheaux," Green's article does not discuss Body and Soul's relevance a larger audience (i.e. not just a black audience).

 

 

Citation:

Regester, Charlene. "The Misreading and Rereading of African American Filmmaker Oscar Micheaux: A Critical Review of Micheaux Scholarship" Film History 7.4 (1995): 426-449.

Content and Relevance of Work:

In this article, author and editor Charlene Regester defends Micheaux's intentions for making such controversial films, implying that the public misreads and misinterprets his work. Regester counters quotes from other Micheaux scholars, such as Gary Null and Donald Bogle, to argue her opinion that Micheaux presented valuable lessons to the Black community in each of his films. The article advises the re-examination of Micheaux's films. This text investigates how the critical profile of Micheaux has been constructed by researchers and scholars, how this profile has changed overtime (each decade from before the seventies to the nineties), and how it continues to evolve. Although many Micheaux scholars believe his films lacked ethnic truth and only reflected the outlooks of the black bourgeoisie, Regester claims Micheaux felt that whites and blacks were on an equal level: just as affluent, educated, cultured, and well-mannered. Lastly, Regester confronts the difficulty of studying African American filmmakers by the same standards as those used for critiquing white American filmmakers without taking into consideration the unique obstacles that complicated the African American filmmaking efforts.

According to Regester, Micheaux ignored the supposed burden of representing the blacks in only a favorable light because if his desire to better the African American community. Cripps says, in his quote within the article, this need to accurately depict black life is an exposé of social conditions relevant only to "Negro circles," and that Rev. Jenkins is an allegorical black figure who symbolizes the overall struggle of blacks: whether to fill the role of prim bourgeois, and risk losing black culture, or to become a criminal and hustler. Regester states, though, that through Micheaux's description of this rare side of black life to the general public, audiences (both black and white) found similarities to one another. Micheaux's focus on the dichotomy of good and evil pertains to a struggle of all mankind, not simply that of the black race. This particular aspect of Body and Soul that Regester identifies will be at the center of my essay.

 

In his essay, Professor of Cinema Studies at City University of New York, David A. Gerstner compares the styles and editing techniques of the black father of cinema, Oscar Micheaux, with those of the whit father of cinema, D.W. Griffith. Despite their similarities, like laying new creative groundwork for cinema, or the use of melodramatic devices to heighten both spectator response and the spectacle unfolding onscreen, Gerstner quickly establishes a crucial disparity between these two "fathers" of film: Micheaux and Griffith's similar use of temporally ambiguous parallel editing must be traced along a different set of cultural and aesthetic paths. Gerstner examines the classical Hollywood cinema, to which Griffith attributed greatly, mode of production, largely considered to be an illusory and cohesive filmic representation of time and space. Gerstner goes on to describe Griffith's works and use of parallel editing. Then, Gerstener discusses Micheaux's approach to film, and the similarities of Micheaux and Griffith's parallel editing. The essay highlights the "affect cut:" how directors, especially Micheaux, reorganize time and space within their films for a more powerful affect upon the audiences. Finally, Gerstner explains the projections of black manhood in Micheaux's Within Our Gates.

Gerstner's views are useful for my essay because his assessment can further my argument concerning Micheaux's individualistic style as a rejection of Griffith's popular Hollywood methods. Gerstner clarifies Micheaux's use of flashbacks for temporal vagueness, describing them as components that saturate the filmic present with the weight of the traumatic past. Micheaux wanted his audience to be unsure of shifts in space and time to emphasize the magnitude of this burden of the past on his characters. In order to fully relate to the story, Micheaux thought viewer must experience the trouble and stress of the burden as much as the characters in the film.

 

Citation:

Musser, Charles. "To Redream the Dreams of White Playwrights: Reappropriation and Resistance in Oscar Micheaux's Body and Soul" Yale Journal of Criticism 12.2 (1999): 321-356.

 

 

J. Ronald Green's article addresses the issue of Black stereotypes and caricatures displayed in the entertainment industry. Green believes that pervasive, ethnic images blocked any autonomous effort put forth by African American entertainers to provide a realistic model of African American citizenship. Since nothing could be accomplished until that problem was resolved, Oscar Micheaux made this issue a top priority. Then, the author highlights important milestones of Micheaux's career, his childhood, and the financial hurdles he was forced to overcome. Green focuses on the success of D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation: the stereotypes and setbacks it provided for African Americans, and the motivation it provided Micheaux to remove these caricatures. Micheaux, Green argues, recreates these caricatures for the purpose of criticizing them, and explains how dialects provide a framework in relation to his ethnic criticisms.

Overall, Green's defends Micheaux's use of caricatures, saying it draws attention to what is wrong in the Black community, so that Blacks can repair the problem in what Green calls a "search and destroy" mission on Micheaux's part. Since this text suggests that Micheaux goes beyond positive images to function within the race as a starting cure, Micheaux held high expectations for the future of black and white race relations. If the black community were to answer his call, and repair its problems, blacks could finally command respect from whites. As a result, the change Micheaux attempts to provoke could spark an end to most of the mistreatment and racism projected by whites upon blacks. Unlike author Charlene Regester's article titled "The Misreading and Rereading of Oscar Micheaux," Green's article does not discuss Body and Soul's relevance a larger audience (i.e. not just a black audience).

 

Citation:

 

Green, Ronald J. "Oscar Micheaux's Interrogation of Caricature as Entertainment." Film Quarterly 51.3 (1998): 16-31.

 

Citation:

Regester, Charlene. "The Misreading and Rereading of African American Filmmaker Oscar Micheaux: A Critical Review of Micheaux Scholarship" Film History 7.4 (1995): 426-449.

In this article, author and editor Charlene Regester defends Micheaux's intentions for making such controversial films, implying that the public misreads and misinterprets his work. Regester counters quotes from other Micheaux scholars, such as Gary Null and Donald Bogle, to argue her opinion that Micheaux presented valuable lessons to the Black community in each of his films. The article advises the re-examination of Micheaux's films. This text investigates how the critical profile of Micheaux has been constructed by researchers and scholars, how this profile has changed overtime (each decade from before the seventies to the nineties), and how it continues to evolve. Although many Micheaux scholars believe his films lacked ethnic truth and only reflected the outlooks of the black bourgeoisie, Regester claims Micheaux felt that whites and blacks were on an equal level: just as affluent, educated, cultured, and well-mannered. Lastly, Regester confronts the difficulty of studying African American filmmakers by the same standards as those used for critiquing white American filmmakers without taking into consideration the unique obstacles that complicated the African American filmmaking efforts.

According to Regester, Micheaux ignored the supposed burden of representing the blacks in only a favorable light because if his desire to better the African American community. Cripps says, in his quote within the article, this need to accurately depict black life is an exposé of social conditions relevant only to "Negro circles," and that Rev. Jenkins is an allegorical black figure who symbolizes the overall struggle of blacks: whether to fill the role of prim bourgeois, and risk losing black culture, or to become a criminal and hustler. Regester states, though, that through Micheaux's description of this rare side of black life to the general public, audiences (both black and white) found similarities to one another. Micheaux's focus on the dichotomy of good and evil pertains to a struggle of all mankind, not simply that of the black race. This particular aspect of Body and Soul that Regester identifies will be at the center of my essay.

 

The authors, filmmaker Pearl Bowser and professor Louise Spence, explore Oscar Micheaux's silent drama, Body and Soul (1925), in relation to some of the critical discourses of the past. After the release of Birth of a Nation in 1915, many middle-class Black-Americans desired for assimilation and acceptance into typical White-American culture. Creating films that reflected his personal experiences and observations, Micheaux focused on realistic representations and important issues of the race-conscious Black community, rather than positive images. The texts describes how many members of the Black community felt Micheaux placed too much emphasis on the oppressed, causing social embarrassment, and accused him of disloyalty.  The authors use the considerations and critiques of Body and Soul and other early works to examine some of the competing cultural value judgments that inflected the politics of racial identity and pursuit of racial unity throughout the period between the Great War and the Great Depression.

            The aspects of Body and Soul discussed in this article address how Micheaux exposed stereotypes in order to convey a message to his Black audience. Bowser and Spence consider how Micheaux challenged the authority of the minister within the Black church congregations with his main character, malevolent preacher Isaiah T. Jenkins. The parishioners support the minister, despite his violent and murderous ways, with their unquestioning faith. The article points out that, while the minister's power goes unsupervised, the church-goers "blind faith" endorses the minister's corruption. The guise of the ministry enables the con artist to hone and deploy his deceptions. Just as Rev. Jenkins hides behind the body of the church (the congregation), blacks hide behind the burden of representation: since blacks represent the minority, and all people are defined by race, they feel as though every move made will affect others' perceptions of the black race. Therefore, blacks wish to conceal or ignore the flaws within their own community. Although African Americans expect artistic voices to "represent" blacks only in a good light, or to be art of protest in civil rights and race relations, "representation" is not art. Art is about truth, which Micheaux realizes, and truth is always a burden on the truth-teller. Willing to accept this burden, Micheaux uses film as a call to the black community, a message pinpointing important issues that he felt must be fixed.   

Citation:

 

Bowser, Pearl and Louis Spence. "Oscar Micheaux's Body and Soul and the Burden of Representation" Cinema Journal 39.3 (2000): 3-29.

 

For my annotated bibliography, I focused on Oscar Micheaux's melodrama Body and Soul. Since the time of its release in 1925, Body and Soul has received much undeserved criticism for either its "poor" quality, or its negative imagery of black characters, which Micheaux presented as a prototype for change within the black community. Although Micheaux geared the film towards black audiences, the themes of body versus soul, material versus spiritual, and, overall, good versus evil pertain to people of all races. Can those other than blacks learn a valuable lesson from Body and Soul?

In his book about Micheaux, author J. Ronald Green first discusses each of Micheaux's films chronologically, in terms of its own traits and concerns. The one recurring theme throughout the book is each film's relationship to Micheaux's overriding goal of class advancement and his desire for the formation of a coherent, successful middle-class film style to accomplish his goal. First, Green distinguishes between race and class, race being a historically constructed category and class being constantly determined by race. Green then describes Micheaux's vision of upward class mobility, or "uplift," in relation to the plots and characters' class position of fifteen of his films. The criteria for class positioning and Micheaux's standards for class membership follow. Lastly, Green interprets Micheaux's positive and negative images in relation to race. After that chapter, Green documents the early life and complete career of Micheaux, including his own class status.

            With Body and Soul, says Green, it is not race that is the issue, it is class. Although the main character, Martha Jane, lacks the traits of a middle-class woman, viewers know she is a good character because she is constantly working to provide a middle class life for her daughter, Isabelle. Reverend Jenkins threatens the outcome/fate of Isabelle with his dishonesty and exploitation of the parishioners in the church. Body and Soul provides a parable illustrating the foolishness of placing one's entire faith in the promise of otherworldly glory. Although this lesson pertains more to the blacks because of their strong sense of religion, it also crosses racial borders. To allow one person so much power, which they can abuse freely, rings true for people of all races. The conflict between body and soul, material and spiritual, good and evil, is one every person must overcome.