Black hands and white hearts: Italian immigrants as ‘urban racial types’ in early American film culture

Urban History ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 375-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
GIORGIO BERTELLINI
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Film Culture ◽  
Early American ◽  
The People ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Jacob Riis ◽  
Italian Immigrants ◽  
Gangster Films ◽  
White Ethnics

Through the concept of ‘character’ or ‘urban racial type’, traversing literature, science and metropolitan life, Bertellini reconsiders early American cinema's colour-based biracialism epitomized by D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915). In the New York-based film industry race also emerged from the city's dense intermingling of ‘white ethnics’ and broader shifts in epistemological emphasis – from inheritance to the environment. If Italian immigrants were racialized as innately violent in early gangster films, after 1915 heartbreaking melodramas of destitution and misfortunes adopted instead a combination of still othering and universal characterizations.Half the people in ‘the Bend’ are christened Pasquale…When the police do not know the name of an escaped murderer, they guess at Pasquale and send the name out on alarm; in nine cases out of ten it fits. Jacob Riis, 1890I like to play the Italian because his costume, his mannerisms, his gestures, and his unlikeness to the everyday people of the street make him stand out as a romantic and picturesque person. Actor and director George Beban, 1921

scholarly journals From the event to the everyday: distributor-driven film festivals

2020 ◽  
pp. 1329878X2093847
Author(s):  
Stuart Richards ◽  
Lauren Carroll Harris
Keyword(s):  
Film Industry ◽  
Interesting Case ◽  
Film Festival ◽  
Film Festivals ◽  
Film Culture ◽  
European North ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Important Field ◽  
Primary Focus

Film festival research is an important field within screen and cultural studies, with festivals mainly theorised as a cinephile phenomenon occurring in European/North American contexts. Though cinephilia is indeed a major aspect of film festivals, adopting cinephilia as a primary focus for festival research obscures, and cannot explain, other motivations for running festivals, as well as how festivals fit into other trends in the film industry and film culture today. As researchers and film critics working in Australia, we have observed trends in festival culture that do not fit the dominant cinephilic framework. Principal among these trends is the emergence of Palace Cinemas, an arthouse cinema chain, and Palace Films, its distribution arm, as the curator and presenter of its own chain of film festivals. This essay presents an interesting case study that considers Palace Cinemas in relation to dominant understandings of the film festival. These film festivals do not exclusively fit either of Mark Peranson’s ideal models of festivals – audiences festivals or business festivals – but rather between these two positions. These distributor-driven film festivals, such as those run by Palace, greatly diminish any association with festival time, defined by Janet Harbord as a key feature of festivals.

Early American Theatre from the Revolution to Thomas Jefferson: Into the Hands of the People. By Heather S. Nathans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003; pp. 246. $70 cloth.

2004 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 290-292
Author(s):  
Jared Brown
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Thomas Jefferson ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
American Theatre ◽  
Early American ◽  
The People ◽  
Early American Theatre ◽  
The Revolution

Heather S. Nathans's well-documented study, covering the colonial theatre, the theatre of the revolution, and postrevolutionary theatre to shortly after 1800, focuses on Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. She argues convincingly that the theatre of the time was significantly affected by social, political, and financial matters, therefore located in a social, political, and financial context Nathans calls “crucial” (5).

Universal Values and Muslim Democracy

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Anwar Ibrahim
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
World Today ◽  
The People ◽  
The World ◽  
Universal Values ◽  
Human Desire ◽  
Dignified Life

This study deals with Universal Values and Muslim Democracy. This essay draws upon speeches that he gave at the New York Democ- racy Forum in December 2005 and the Assembly of the World Movement for Democracy in Istanbul in April 2006. The emergence of Muslim democracies is something significant and worthy of our attention. Yet with the clear exceptions of Indonesia and Turkey, the Muslim world today is a place where autocracies and dictatorships of various shades and degrees continue their parasitic hold on the people, gnawing away at their newfound freedoms. It concludes that the human desire to be free and to lead a dignified life is universal. So is the abhorrence of despotism and oppression. These are passions that motivate not only Muslims but people from all civilizations.

The Mainstreaming of Postmodernism: A Status Report on the "New" Scholarship in CanadaPARACHUTE: ART CONTEMPORAINI CONTEMPORARY ART.STRUGGLES WITH THE IMAGE. Philip Monk. Toronto: YYZ Books, 1989.A POETICS OF POSTMODERNISM: HISTORY, THEORY AND FICTION. Linda Hutcheon. London and New York: Routledge, 1988.THE CANADIAN POSTMODERN: A STUDY OF CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH-CANADIAN FICTION. Linda Hutcheon. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1988.FUTURE INDICATIVE: LITERARY THEORY AND CANADIAN LITERATURE. Ed. John Moss. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1987.GYNOCRITICS: FEMINIST APPROACHES TO WRITING BY CANADIAN AND QUEBECOISE WOMEN. Ed. Barbara Godard. Toronto: ECW Press, 1987.A MAZING SPACE: WRITING CANADIAN WOMEN WRITING. Ed. Shirley Neuman and Smaro Kamboureli. Edmonton: Longspoon and NeWest, 1986.FEMINIST RESEARCH: PROSPECT AND RETROSPECT. Ed. Peta Tancred-Sheriff. Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988.THE EVERYDAY WORLD AS PROBLEMATIC: A FEMINIST SOCIOLOGY. Dorothy Smith. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987.THE POSTMODERN SCENE: EXCREMENTAL CULTURE AND HYPER-AESTHETICS. Arthur Kroker and David Cook. Montreal: New World Perspectives, 1985.CANADIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL THEORY.BODY INVADERS: PANIC SEX IN AMERICA. Ed. Arthur Kroker and Mari-louise Kroker. Montreal: New World Perspectives, 1987.

1989 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 146-173
Author(s):  
Gaile McGregor
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New World ◽  
Status Report ◽  
University Of Toronto ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Feminist Sociology ◽  
Dorothy Smith ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Research Prospect ◽  
English Canadian

Political Community in Revolutionary Pennsylvania, 1774-1800

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Owen
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Early American ◽  
The People ◽  
Governmental Institutions ◽  
Popular Mobilization

Political Community in Revolutionary Pennsylvania challenges the ways we understand popular sovereignty in the American Revolution, demonstrating how ordinary citizens wielded significant political power. Previous histories place undue focus on either elite political thought or class analysis; on the contrary, citizens cared most about the establishment of a representative, publicly legitimate political process. Popular activism constrained leaders, creating a system through which governmental actions were made more representative of the will of the community. This book analyzes developments in Pennsylvania from 1774, and the passage of the Intolerable Acts, through to 1800 and the election of Thomas Jefferson. It examines the animating philosophy of the Pennsylvania state constitution of 1776, a “radical manifesto” espousing a vision of popular sovereignty in which government was devolved from the people only where necessary. The legitimacy of governmental institutions rested on their demonstration that they operated through popular consent, expressed in a variety of forms of popular mobilization. This book examines how early Americans interacted with the power structures shaping the world in which they lived, recasting the nature of the American Revolution and illuminating the origins of modern American political practice. It investigates how political mobilization operated inside and outside formal channels of government. Mechanisms of popular mobilization helped a diverse population mediate with governmental institutions, providing the foundation of early American power. Histories that ignore this relationship miss one of the most significant founding characteristics of the United States—the importance of popular politics and democratic practice in the establishment of American government.

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