A Blackbirdsploitation Film
The Early Bird Gets The Worm (Right Place, Wrong Time)
Here's a little music video I made last night...
Here's a little music video I made last night...
posted by Sturgeon General at 12:17 PM
Friday, October 13, 2006
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8 Comments:
that was pretty tight. i like the song. message, i didn't get. hey, what was that website you told me about again?
i forget.
archive.org
Well, insofar as it has a message, i guess it was to expose (or possibly twist) the underlying text of the original cartoon, which was obviously the racist aspect of it. The story I was trying to tell in the video was the denied heroism of the bird who gets up early to get the worm. Or at least the struggle he absorbs. Sorry, this sounds ridiculous when talking about cartoons.
Tthe most important part of the video I think is when the "mammy" bursts into the room and scolds the bird for reading the book (isn't the early bird gets the worm kind of a primer for the capitalist system of hard work is rewarded?) So when you take out the sound track, and the mammy bird is imitating the fox (thats gonna get the bird if he tries to get the worm), it seems like she is instead imitating what the bird would turn into if he read too much and filled his head with those crazy ideas (the ideology of our economy).
So the bird wants to go out and get his own, but his "mammy" is trying to keep him from doing so (to protect him because of his obvious inability to succeed). That's why I cut it off halfway, right after he decides to set his alarm for the early morning, because it leaves the resolution open, but at the point where neither the little bird nor "mammy" have been proven right. Of course in the original cartoon, the "mammy" is proven right, and the little birds are content relying on her for their worms. But where does she get her worms? The obvious implication in the establishing shot of the farm is that the Blackbirds are southern sharecroppers, so she probably doesn't even own the worms she feeds her little blackbird babies with. Maybe the fox owns them (thus setting up a system where he eats the blackbird babies as they rebel and try to find their own worms). What's the way out of this situation for the Blackbird children?
Man I don't know... Goldwyn and Meyer just don't strike me as being another ISA... I still don't understand how everything becomes ideological in the first place... or whether ideology is the chicken or the egg...
Does the fact that you can read that cartoon as you did show that the ideology of the time was a racist capitalist one? Or was the ideology at the time a racist capitalist one, and therefore, the cartoons of the time were either part of that ideology or reactionary against it? Why is everything political? Is it just that we are born, enter the symbolic order, and thereby necessarily become subsumptive in the political unconscious? I just don't buy the notion that we're always already in ideology. Let me answer this more fully (that is, polemically and indirectly) in something I wrote a couple days ago, to be seen in the next posting.
Not to be presumptive, but I actually kind of posted that comment because I thought you would want to argue against it. But while my comment was a little tongue-in-cheek, the original cartoon is actually pretty obviously racist (at the very least on the extremely stereotypical level - in the same way that Aunt Jemima is racist - one might say Aunt Jemima is not a racist stereotype, but thats just simply insupportable). I was trying to work against that racism in my little video or maybe just play with those stereotypes, pitting them against each other. That's why I chose the song, which is a very sterotypically "black" song (but sung by a white guy) about the need to get out of the "funky" ("bluesy") situation he's in. I guess that kind of makes me like Dr. John singing that song...
I mean the original cartoon was made at a time in our country (1939) when slavery was still within living memory. I also think of course that cartoons could have been made against the grain of intrinsic racism in our society (see: segregation, USA, 1870's-1960's), but this one just wasn't, and I think that's evident in its conclusion, which is, no matter how you read it, a reaffirmation of the status quo. Yet it's also not overtly racist - no one is overtly labeled as stupid or inferior. If it has an ideology, its honestly more invested in politics and economy than it is in ideas of race. And I think it does have an ideology, or at least a historical context which it has to be viewed against.
That is not to say that the cartoon HAD to be ideological, but it is to say that this specific cartoon WAS ideological, because it supported the status quo (the immobility of black sharecroppers, educationally and economically).
Also, it is important to note that cartoons like this are pretty directly related to blackface comedy, which was/is pretty obviously ideologically racist.
Finally, all of this is not to say that there are not other readings of the cartoon - one way to see it is that the choice to focus on a black family is just an aesthetic one, and that the true identification is with the childhood of the little bird, and that makes the cartoon about trying to "leave the nest" before one's time. That seems to be the original intention of the cartoonists, to create a little moralizing tale about maturity (and in that instance, the mammy is the symbol of maturity). Wait, this still sounds politically ideological. Anyway, the point is that you can read this cartoon on different levels - it doesn't have to be on the level of race. But to deny the racial aspect of the cartoon is to be blind to the whole idea of race and how it worked in the US in 1939.
Also, it's been a while since I read Althusser, but I would say that Metro-Goldwyn Mayer is probably a prime example of an ISA. They're out there, not to entertain (at least that's not they're ultimate goal) - they're out there to make MONEY, baby, and that is closely linked in a huge corporation like that at a time like that to supporting the status quo, NOT going against it (since they are the top of the heap). In fact, the ideology of the cartoon might not be inherent ideology at all: instead, it might even be a conscious process designed specifically to morally support the status quo, under the guise of an Aesop's Fable.
I would like to modify my last comment by adding the fact that the Fox "The Villain... as if you didn't know" could be a symbol of the white-run economy which oppresses black sharecroppers. In that sense, the cartoon could be viewed as a little radical. But that also leads me to think that there needs to be an aspect like that in any narrative like this, in order for us as viewers to identify ourselves not with the Fox (the oppressor) but with the oppressed, so that we may disavow our inclusion in that system of oppression. After all, this cartoon was produced by upper-middle class whites for upper-middle class whites.
I aggree with tyler's thoughts here. It lines up with some stuff I've been talking about in class, Photography and American Lit, about how in the 1930's and onwards, American culture was absolutely saturated with racist imagery, of the general brand of this cartoon and Aunt Jemima etc. The idea is that photography can capture any aspect of reality with just the push of a button, but we chose to only produce certain images: either the carefree Black man, or the threatining Black man. Eating a watermelon or brandishing a weapon. Fried chickin. The question is, can we see the same problems at work in our contemporary culture? It's so obvious to see them in the past, they seem to jump out at us as heinously offensive, but in our own time they seem subtle and subliminal. Perhaps in a few decades they will seem as obvious as this cartoon. COPS. 50 Cent. People condemn mainstream gangsta rap--who owns the record labels that choose what to promote, and promote 50 cent over hundreds of talented underground MCs? It's an ISA.
right on jed. i think its important to look at our history with a critical eye (now i sound like a public service announcement), but only insofar as we then use that critique as a self-critique. of course, there's still a lot of untold and overtold stories in today's media, and we're so supersaturated with it all that it's incredibly difficult to keep up with it at an intellectual level - and when you try, you find all sorts of resistance for some reason. people really aren't willing to look at entertainment critically. unfortunately, mass media is also not as simple as it once was. the man is no longer just the man, now he's carson daly, and al gore, and katie couric, and bill o'reilly, and the kid down the street making myspace videos of himself skateboarding off a roof. cartoons like "the early worm gets the bird" aren't played on tv anymore, and that's why they've entered the public domain as the queer tumbled heads of a decapitated (and supposedly impotent) history. but i personally think you're right in saying that similar things are happening today, but because we're seeing out of these eyes, we can't see the eyes themselves, unless we really strain hard and pop our eyes out of our heads or something, or cross them and maybe they can see each other. anyway cops is a perfect perfect example. also, cops is not made just because some company wants us to think black people are all shirtless crackheads and the police is here to protect us god-fearing white people from them - but because we believe this shit, and enjoy watching it! in the same way, the cartoon we just analyzed didn't produce the stereotypes in it - it just used them, because people didn't realize what the hell was going on. that doesnt mean that fox shouldnt be responsible for putting cops on the air, but the important thing is to show people what cops is leaving unsaid (really, the discourse it must disavow), and then hopefully there wouldnt be such a demand for crap like that. more ideological shows: extreme makeover (+ home edition), the flavor of love (the flava flav dating show), fear factor (maybe?). most reality shows, really. also, good morning america, and obviously, all news programs. also sesame street. and spongebob is gay.
This is great conversation guys, I wish I had been keeping up earlier in the week. Tyler, I think it's a really good reading of the cartoon...I think it's particularly interesting how we can read it as simultaneously stabilizing and de-stabilizing a "status-quo" or cultural hegemon...one of the things I'm most interested in is how today it seems like satire and critique are so quickly folded back into these ISAs (is there ever even a separate place? this is Alex's question but also slipped out as a quote from one of the Creeley poems we read today).
Anyway, thanks a lot for this Tyler.
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