Communities of Memory, Entanglements, and Claims of the Past on the Present: Reading Race Trauma through The Green Mile
2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 27; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/15295030903551017
ISSN1529-5036
AutoresA. Susan Owen, Peter Ehrenhaus,
Tópico(s)Italian Fascism and Post-war Society
ResumoAbstract This essay examines published reviews of Frank Darabont's 1999 film, The Green Mile, as a lens for reading the legacies of American race trauma upon contemporary sensibilities. Close analysis reveals three communities of memory, each defined through a distinct relationship to slavery, Jim Crow, and white supremacy. Through a close analysis of the relationship between each community's readings of the film and preferred meanings anchored in the film's semiotic structure, we locate the key interpretive strategy used by each of these communities: One strategy is structured through melancholia and guilt for the sins of white supremacy; another is structured through mourning and moving beyond victimization; and a third is structured through the "negative sublimity" of transcendent Christian salvation. We then explicate historic and ideological entanglements among these three communities of memory. Points of intersection reveal internal contradictions that call for critical self-reflexive conversation within each community, and resources for communities to live productively with each other in relation to the past. Keywords: MemoryCommunities of MemoryRace trauma The Green Mile Visual rhetoric Acknowledgements The authors express their appreciation to Bruce Gronbeck for his comments on an earlier draft. Notes 1. The elderly Paul Edgecomb is played by character actor Dabs Greer. 2. As viewers learn late in the film narrative, the benevolent white prison guards fulfill John Coffey's "last request" to see a "flicker show." Coffey watches the elegant Rogers and Astaire dance and sing the Cole Porter lyrics, "Heaven, I'm in heaven," while he is visually framed from below, with the rays of light from the film projector radiating from behind his head. Coffey, entranced and ethereal, remarks: "Why, they's angels. Angels, just like up in heaven." 3. By this point in his career, Hanks had established his screen persona as an accessible and unthreatening "everyman" through films such as Philadelphia (1993), Forrest Gump (1994), Apollo 13 (1995), and Saving Private Ryan (1998). 4. Although The Green Mile was not as successful as Darabont's previous prison film, The Shawshank Redemption, it was nominated for several honors and won the Political Film Society's Human Rights award. 5. Pope's commentary was reprinted in at least three other African-American newspapers: Detroit's The Michigan Chronicle (Pope, 2000b Pope , H.D. 2000b , March 29 . National Bar Association speaks on reassessing the death penalty . Michigan Chronicle , 63 , A7 . [Google Scholar]), The New York Beacon (Pope, 2000d Pope , H.D. 2000d , April 5 . Wrongfully accused: Reassessing the death penalty . New York Beacon , 7 , 13 . [Google Scholar]), and The Philadelphia Tribune (Pope, 2000c Pope , H.D. 2000c , March 31 . Innocent people being executed on death row . Philadelphia Tribune , 116 , 7A . [Google Scholar]). 6. See Hill (2000 Hill , L. 2000 , February 9 . Black like us [Review of the film The Green Mile] . The Globe and Mail . Retrieved from http://www.lexisnexis.com [Google Scholar]), K. Williams (2000 Williams , K. 2000 , January 12 . "The Green Mile": "This movie shouldn't be shown in prisons" [Review of the film The Green Mile] . The New York Beacon , 7 , 32 . [Google Scholar]), and "Hanks' Oscar-winning talent" in La Voz (1999 Hanks' Oscar-wining talent not enough to bring original drama to Stephen King's " . 1999 The Green Mile" [Review of the film The Green Mile] , December 15 . La Voz . Retrieved from http://proquest.umi.com [Google Scholar]). 7. Throughout this essay we will use the phrase "interpretive community" when discussion centers upon reading practices, and "community of memory" when discussion centers upon the resources from which specific readings arise. 8. Butler's re-reading of Freud's "Mourning and Melancholia" (1989) has been helpful to our understanding of key conceptual terms. See Butler's (2004 Butler, J. 2004. Precarious life: The powers of mourning and violence, New York, NY: Verso. [Google Scholar]) Precarious life: The powers of mourning and violence. We thank Peter Campbell for recommending this source. 9. Jasinski notes that its traditional and narrower meaning concerns real or feigned doubts about a rhetor's (or a text's) ability to respond adequately to a rhetorical situation, as in the phrase, "Words fail me …". 10. Cited in Watts (2005, p. 192). 11. Yet another example of the compulsive search for the absent divinity is the cultural phenomenon of sightings of the Virgin Mary in the irregularity of surfaces and colors of potentially all physical objects. 12. Mitchell's objection to the film is that it falls into the category of prison films about black male characters. He wonders why black masculine leadership can only be imagined from within the walls of institutional incarceration. 13. Others remark on Coffey's characterization as "infantile" (Aleva, 2000), "noble savage" (Ansen, 2000; Hill, 2000 Hill , L. 2000 , February 9 . Black like us [Review of the film The Green Mile] . The Globe and Mail . Retrieved from http://www.lexisnexis.com [Google Scholar], p. A15), "dull witted" (Hill, 2000 Hill , L. 2000 , February 9 . Black like us [Review of the film The Green Mile] . The Globe and Mail . Retrieved from http://www.lexisnexis.com [Google Scholar], p. A15), and "simple" (Klawans, 2000, p. 35). 14. The techniques through which these preferred structures are constructed include characterization contrasts, cinematic suture, and visual composition. A detailed discussion of film technique is beyond the scope of this essay. 15. We have taken some liberties with Sturken's concept, here. She defines technologies of memory as "objects, images, and representations … through which memories are shared, produced, and given meaning" (p. 9). Her point is that memories do not "reside" in objects; rather, rhetors actively produce memories which may or may not be organized around or through objects. We see the resonances of the suffering servant and the appropriated Christ icon as productive technologies of memory. 16. See Gordon (2003, pp. 101–123) for a detailed treatment. 17. See Hughes (1932 Hughes, L. 1932. Scottsboro limited: Four poems and a play in verse, New York, NY: Golden Stair Press. [Google Scholar]). 18. Other white artists producing images of a black Christ, in relation to themes of the anti-lynching campaign, include Julius Bloch ("The Lynching," 1932), and Bernard Brussel-Smith ("Lynching," 1939). See Apel (2004). For a written treatment of a black Christ and black lynching victim, see DuBois' (1969) essay, "Jesus Christ in Texas," originally published in 1911 in The Crisis as "Jesus Christ in Georgia." This essay was later re-titled and published in 1920 in DuBois' Darkwater: Voices from within the veil. The opening line of the 1920 version, "It was in Waco, Texas," alludes to the 1916 lynching of Jesse Washington in Waco. Additional informationNotes on contributorsA. Susan OwenA. Susan Owen, Department of Communication Studies, University of Puget Sound, 1500 N. Warner, Tacoma, WA 98416, USAPeter EhrenhausPeter Ehrenhaus, Department of Communication and Theatre, Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, WA 98447, USA
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