In Erenberg’s book,
Swingin’the Dream:
Big Band Jazz and the Rebirth of American Culture, he explained that
both African Americans and White Americans had the same end goals for life.
They wished to have “freedom,” “hope,” and “participation,” but the experience
that the two groups had were actually very different. African Americans, in
their attempt to reach these goals, created bands and played a new form of
music to try and gain respect and authority. Unfortunately, things didn’t
exactly turn out exactly as expected and, as the author tried to explain in an
optimistic manner, African Americans actually never got the respect, the
publicity, or even the financial means to continue playing their music for long.
I learned from this book that African Americans were really
treated poorly in the time period that Noir film portrays. As a result, the
films produced tended to show unfavorable treatment of the African American
people, which is rather unfortunate, but accurate. Along with that, the music
played in the clubs in these films were usually jazz, which is ironic due to
the lack of publicity these musicians would usually get in the time that they
were originally played. As interesting of a genre as Noir is, the fact that the
accuracy of the times had to portray such discriminatory treatment of African
Americans in the cities is rather unfortunate.
I, too, was surprised to see that more or less the depictions of African Americans are true to their treatment in society at the time. I was expecting it to be an act of the directors to overtly display racial stereotypes--although they did to an extent through use of dark lighting with African Americans to signal an impending crime--like many other films which uses the institution of cinema to add to raicla stereotypes. Whites treated other races terribly in the 1940's and practically did not allow them the opportunity to be viewed as equal. One thing that I question is why the directors of these noir films did not take an action to oppose the stereotypes and use film to portray African Americans in a positive "light' sense they so masterfully uses lighting and color hues in their film. It is apparent they were aware of the stereotypes in society, and only furthered them instead of reversing them in the name of equality. What a difficult time in American society it must have been for non-white races.
ReplyDeleteI feel as though the lighting and depictions of African Americans was not only negative, but further pushed stereotypes to viewers. Specifically, the scenes of the bars where the jazz bands played are always depicted a bit sketchy. By that I mean, the dark, claustrophobic, and smoke filled room always looks very unwelcoming. It gives me the sense that you can only go there if you know someone, and if you don't you were looking for trouble. By exhibiting the music bars like this, the noir films probably instilled more fear into viewers regarding bars where jazz was played by African Americans.
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