Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans

I'll admit it: old movies can be hard to watch.  Not only are the morals often painfully dated and the acting overdone in many films before the advent of sound, but the pacing and editing is generally too slow and require an amount of attention that tests the patience of modern audiences. Sunrise is an exception.  It's a timeless classic that transcends the limitations associated with silent cinema by embracing the universal power of great acting and beautiful cinematography.

Murnau's romantic masterpiece tells a tale of lost love regained through the story of two anonymous figures, whose  relationship with each-other begins in desperation.  The two live together on a farm in the country, where the male lead (George O'Brien) feels trapped and unsatisfied.  He is lured away one night to a swamp by a woman visiting from the city (Maragaret Livingston), who passionately embraces him and tells him to leave the countryside for her by drowning his wife (Janet Gaynor).  The Man attempts to do this by taking her out in a boat and tying her to a bundle of reeds, but finds himself overcome with emotion and unable to do it.  The two rekindle their once-failing romance by walking around the city and enjoying eachother. At night, the two head back home over the lake, a violent storm rocks their boat causing his wife to vanish.  Convinced she is gone, the man chokes the Woman from the City in anger only to learn later that his wife has washed ashore and is still very much alive, leading to a passionate embrace just as the sun is beginning to rise.

Murnau's decision to leave the two unnamed was a conscious choice, meant to emphasize the symbolic power of the plot.  However, the credits list tells a different story.  O'Brien's character is credited as simply "The Man", and he does indeed go through a wide spectrum of emotion associated with the universality of that term, from desperation and pity to anger , ultimately settling at compassion and romantic ecstasy Gaynor's character is not called "The Woman" but rather "The Wife".  This is because she does not explicitly present herself as a woman, but rather defines herself as a faithful companion to her husband, who even after the attempted
drowning comes back to love him again.  It is Livingston's character, who urged the Man to kill his wife, that is described as "The Woman From The City". Dressed in all black, she is an independent flapper who embodies the emergence of the new, sexually liberated urban female that traditionalists so feared.  Not only does she lack the morals associated with the traditional American female, but she is literally murderous. Shots of her and the Man kissing underneath the moonlight fade in and out of shots of the Wife taking care of the couple's baby at home, juxtaposing the two opposing ideas of womanhood right next to each-other.

In many ways, Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans is a seduction narrative not unlike William Hill Brown's The Power of Sympathy, transplanted to a Progressive-era setting.  Both stories warn of the dangers associated with promiscuity and falling for emotion rather than restraint and rationale.  When the Man falls for the Woman From the City's charms in the wild expanse of nature, potentially deadly results await.  It is when the two attend the traditional marriage ceremony that he has an emotional epiphany and passionately embraces his wife again.  The movie clearly idealizes conventional definitions of romance as opposed to the lasciviousness of the emerging urban lifestyle.  Its appeal to the changing morals of the times undoubtedly shaped its widespread success.  Despite being directed by a German immigrant and becoming famous across the world, Sunrise remains a quintessentially American film

Works Cited:

Fischer, Lucy. "Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans." British Film Institute Film Classics, Volume 1. 1st ed. Lodnon: Routledge, 2002. 72-93. Print.
Hoberman, James. "Through a Looking Glass." The Village Voice [New York City] 31 Aug. 2004
Sperb, Jason. "Empty Spaces: Remapping the Chaotic Milieu of the Modernist City in "Sunrise"" Studies in the Literary Imagination 40.1 (2007)

The Birth of a Nation

"Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world" - Jean-Luc Goddard

No conversation about the history of cinema is complete without mentioning The Birth of a Nation.  D.W. Griffith's magnum opus expanded the language of film with new editing techniques that enabled him to tell a more complex story than anything that film had ever seen.  The list is daunting: flashbacks, parallel pioneered nighttime photography, and multi-plane deep focus are just some of the revolutionary techniques the film established.  However, despite its towering technical achievements, the film's legacy is tainted by its blatant racist content.  Griffith paints a distorted picture of the South where African-Americans are blamed for all of the problems brought forth from Reconstruction.  His prejudice is expressed by hypersexualizing black males into savage beasts, with weak white women as their powerless victims.

The Birth of a Nation's theme is spelled out in its opening title card, which reads "the bringing of the African to America planted the first seed of disunion."  This perspective stems from the work of  Griffith's friend Thomas F. Dixon, whose books The Clansman and The Leopard's Spots were the source material for the movie's two-tiered plot.  The first half is relatively tame, and largely deals with the tragic results warfare has on domestic life while highlighting the bravery of Confederate troops.  D.W. Griffith was strongly influenced by the "Lost Cause", which sought to present the Confedracy as an embodiment of nobility and virtue in response to their defeat in the Civil War. The movie begins with the story of two families: the northern
Stonemans, and the southern Colemans.  Brothers Phil and Tod Stoneman visit the Colemans on a brief visit down south, during which Phil falls in love with the young Margaret Cameron, while Ben Stoneman is entranced by a photograph of Phil's sister, Elise.  Their romantic prospects are cut short when the Civil War beings, and what follows is a series of violent battles boasting tragic deaths for both families.  The two youngest sons of each, Tod Stoneman and Duke Coleman, die in combat clutching eachother in their arms.  Meanwhile, Ben Cameron risks his life through a series of heroic charges that leave him badly wounded.  He is sent to a hospital, where he finds that the girl of his dreams, Elise, works as a nurse.  The first half reaches its climax with a depiction of Lincoln Assassination at Ford's Theater, where Phil and Elise Stoneman are in attendance.

This first segment of The Birth of a Nation is largely focused on romantic melodrama and elaborately staged The Birth of a Nation's second sequence on the Reconstruction era that Griffith's racist ideologies are fully unleashed.  This portion takes place in a grossly exaggerated version of the South, where Reconstruction measures have led to blacks controlling all local legislatures and terrorizing white citizens as revenge for slavery.  Austin Stoneman, the head of the Stoneman family, is revealed to be a staunch abolitionist who appoints the mulatto Silas Lynch as Lieutenant Governor.  He imposes a brutal regime where whites are oppressed, children are harassed, and Klan members are executed.  Ben Cameron once again proves himself to be a hero; first by murdering Gus, a black man who attempts to seduce Flora Cameron, and at the end by saving Elsie Cameron from being forced into marriage with Silas.  The movie ends with the Klan assuming control of the town and the Cameron and Stoneman couples finally marrying, achieving the harmony that had been lost in the recklessness of the war and Reconstruction.
war scenes.

The black characters in The Birth of a Nation are, as expected, portrayed in a highly buffoonish manner. One of the earliest depictions of African-Americans happens when the Colemans walk past a group of black men singing and dancing in the street.  The group is poorly dressed and behaving in typical minstrelsy fashion, while the titular white family are outfitted in formal attire and are watching the spectacle with amusement.
Likewise, in the legislature scene, the black politicians are smoking cigars, drinking beer, and clowning about cartoonishly. Their sexuality is similarly reckless. One of the institutions that the black Reconstructionists seek to disrupt is marriage, a deeply symbolic concept in American literature that stands for the for the integrity of the unified republic.  When Gus, a black Union solidier, targets the young Flora Coleman in the wild expanse of the southern forests, he tries to force her to be his wife.  Similar tactics are employed by Silas Lynch when he kidnaps Elsie Coleman for the purpose of marriage. This is paralleled by the relationships of the Coleman and Stoneman couples, who take their time forming relationships and are never shown desiring to engage in direct physical contact.  Although Gus is shown as a strong and dominating figure, he is easily taken down and killed by Ben Coleman and the KKK, an assertion of white male dominance and propaganda for the Klan's necessity. Interestingly, all of the antagonists are mixed race characters.  The fact the sexual union of white and black produces the movie's villains is a symbol of the disruption of the union Griffith saw as stemming from blacks being introduced to America in the first place.  It is not just men who are who are treated this way, either. Austin Stoneman keeps a mulatto housemaid named Lydia Brown, who is a typical Black Jezebel caricature: a highly promiscuous black woman who easily seduces Stoneman simply by exposing her bale shoulder.

White women are also depicted as objects for males to sexualize, but they are idealized rather than mocked and their sexual conduct is chaste and restrained.  Just as the black characters are simplified into a stereotypes, women are valued in the film solely for their beauty and innocence.  Young girls are chosen as the subject of the black man's desire because they were culturally expected to be submissive and powerless.  The objectification of women begins when Ben Cameron sees the photo of Elsie Stoneman and immediately falls in love in love.  It is not her character, her personality, her intelligence or any quality other than her attractive looks that draws him to her. Throughout the film she is nothing more than a stock character capable of two emotions: love for her male partner and fear of the wicked Negro. Flora Coleman, the youngest Coleman daughter, is completely unable to defend herself when Gus chases after her in the forest.  Rather then be forever shamed by sexual association with Gus, she throws herself off her cliff and dies with the innocence that was so admired in young women preserved.  Women are also associated with domestic life, as is explicitly shown when Silas Lynch literally intrudes into the Stoneman household and chases Elsie around, who glows with a white radiance in marked contrast to the ugly, black-cloaked Lynch.

Griffith's intention with The Birth of a Nation was to recast the South in a positive light while heralding the KKK as virtuous heroes against the threat of freed black men tearing apart the American values upheld by the Confederacy. His usage of innovative cinematic techniques allowed for more advanced and natural shots and cinematography, giving the highly fictionalized second segment an air of documentary realism.  It was the first feature length film that represented the Civil War, thus becoming the main representation for a new generation who did not experience it themselves.  The promotional poster on the right highlights the purported accuracy of its Civil War depictions, while ignoring the racist content as if it is not problematic or a focal point of the film.  However, the public reaction was quite the opposite. Riots and protests occurred at screenings of the film throughout the country. This massive controversy contributed to the film's popularity, providing it with an importance that extended beyond the world of cinema. Not only did it internalize the beliefs of many disenchanted southerns at the turn of the century, but it also spread its sexualized racism throughout the country for further influence. Its representation of empowerment in the KKK helped to rejuvenate the Klan in America and added to its comeback in the 1920's. On the other side of the spectrum, the film actually helped the NAACP as well by lending them an iconic representation of  what white prejudice and racism was.  They obtained greater visibility by organizing massive boycotts in major cities.  By using provacative sexual representation as its primary discourse, The Birth of a Nation was raised to levels of fame and success that Griffith may not have been able to achieve with a more streamlined message.

Works Cited:

Cripps, Thomas. "Slow Fade to Black." New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Fisher, Philip. The New American Studies: Essays from Representations. Berkeley: University of California, 1991
Mullen, Haryette.  "Optic White: Blackness and the Production of Whiteness."  Diacritics 24.3 (1994): 71 -89
Olund, Eric. "Geography Written in Lightning: Race, Sexuality, and Regulatory Aesthetics in The Birth of a Nation." Annals of the Association of American Geographers 103.4 (2013): 925-43.
Rogin, Michael. " 'The Sword Became a Flashing Vision': D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation." Representations 9 (1985): 150-95

Traffic in Souls

The beginning of the twentieth century in America is referred to as the Progressive era for the numerous

cultural changes that occurred.  City life was rapidly growing as a result of both rapid industrialization and a significant influx in the immigrant population.  Accompanying this expansion was an increasing amount of corruption at both the political level and in the emergence of organized crime.  Amidst these social developments was a newfound prominence of educated, conscientious women moving upward in society and working to obtain the rights once reserved for men.

It was against this backdrop of social reform that "white slave" narratives became a sensation.  These stories generally followed a formulaic outline: young girls in big cities who are kidnapped by prostitution rings and forced into sexual servitude.  The tales drew their inspiration from a expose funded by the John D. Rockefeller Foundation called Commercialized Prostitution In New York City.  In most cases, the claims made by such reports were greatly exaggerated and largely fictitious.  This mattered little to the public, however.  The white slavery narratives appealed to audiences because they capitalized on common fears about the shifting morals associated with urban development.  By emphasizing that the women living a life of prostitution are being held against their will, these stories upheld expectations about female sexuality as submissive and non-imposing.  They also segregate sexual behavior to red-light district where brothels were housed, further connecting a change in sexual norms with urban development.  Under the guise of progressive reform, traditionalists used white slave narratives to uphold the old guard of sexual behavior and perpetuate a fear of city environments. University of Illinois professor Brian Donovan estimates that at least fifteen white slavery related plays and six  movies were produced in the early twentieth century at the height of their popularity.

The first of these movies was George Loane Tucker's Traffic in Souls, released in 1913 by Universal Studios.  The film tells the story of Mary and Lorna Burton (played by Jane Gail and Ethel Grandin, respectively).  The two sisters are Swedish immigrants in New York City, who work together in their father's candy shop.  Tragedy strikes when Lorna is drugged and abducted by Bill Bradshaw (William Cavanaugh), a member of a powerful prostitution ring that preys on vulnerable young immigrants.  Mary teams up with her cop boyfriend Officer Burke (Matt Moore) to find her sister and bring her captors to justice. Through
secretly recording phone conversations using wax cylinders, Lorna reveals the operation to the police and has ring leader William Trubus (William Welsh) arrested.  The film ends with Trubus returning home after getting out on bail, only to find that his daughter is distraught and his wife has killed herself.

Traffic in Souls is different from typical white slavery narratives in that it is not the immigrants who are the perpetrators of evil, but rather the victims whom the film sympathizes with.  Rather, it is the institutions central to cities that Traffic in Souls takes ire against. The villains are not shady alley-dwellers but prominent businessmen: Turbus is a wealthy business owner of significant wealth who himself works for social reform.  He and his associates stalk their prey near the immigration offices in Ellis Island, dashing new immigrants dreams of success and exposing them to the darkside of urban life immediately upon their arrival.  Even the Burton sister's boss at the candy store is unnecessarily harsh to the two simply in regards to their occasional tardiness, and unjustly fires Mary once her sister goes missing.  In addition, the fact that Laura is unable to do anything about her enslaved situation is another feature common to white slavery narrative.  She is powerless without the aid of a man.  It is only with Burke's fighting in the film's action sequences that she is able to be set free of enslavement.  This reinforces the idea that male authority figures are the source of salvation for women who are victims of prostitution rings. Indeed, white slavery narratives were entirely written by men for a female audience.  This speaks to their fear of the emerging 'new Woman' as confident and in control of her sexuality.  Traffic in Souls enforces a regulatory agenda where sex is a crippling force that a woman must fear, and from which she must be rescued by the males who hold power.

Picture on right is one promotional poster used to promote the film.  It is a blatant exaggeration of a scene that occurs toward the end of the movie.  Rather than a large group of women, Trubus is only about to beat Lorna - and even then, the whipping itself is never shown itself on screen.  By relying on this kind of sensationalist imagery for promotion, Traffic in Souls caters to a latent obsession with sexuality and male dominance.  Taken on its own, the image resembles those of plantation owners disciplining slaves. Just as blacks were relegated to the status of property in slave-holding states, this poster similarly turns women into objects, whose very sexual agency is under the control of their male superior. The transfer of these symbols normally associated with African-Americans was particularly shocking to the white audiences the film was intended for, as femininity had been equated with the freedom that defined America ever since the term "Lady Liberty" was invented.  Note that the figures are exclusively white: white slavery narratives  ignored other races entirely, as if the capture of white women was the only kind of prostitution that proposed a threat to society.

Traffic in Souls was a smash hit, grossing $450,000 in its first few weeks and putting Universal on the map.  It is also notable for being the first movie with an original screenplay to open on Broadway. The film's use of parallel editing techniques to cut between multiple narratives was also an innovation that can still be seen today in pictures about social reform such as Crash.  Many viewers who had been misled into believing the film contained sex scenes were disappointed to find an elaborate police drama instead.  Regardless, the picture was still controversial, and was banned in many cities, including Chicago.  Its release and successive popularity was largely responsible for 'white slavery' being added to the list of unacceptable film content in Hollywood's Hays Code.  These restrictions led to the white slavery phenomenon gradually fading out of the public consciousness, only to be replaced by other methods of female objectification.

Works Cited:
Brownlow, Kevin. "Traffic in Souls." Griffithiana 32 (1988): 227-36
Donovan, Brian. White Slave Crusades: Race, Gender, and Anti-vice Activism, 1887-1917. Urbana: University of Illinois, 2006.
Hiroyuki, Matsubara. "The 1910s Anti-Prostitution Movement and the Transformation of American Political Culture." The Japanese Journal of American Studies 17 (2006): 53-69.
Olund, Eric. "Traffic in Souls: The New Woman, 'whiteness' and Mobile Self-possession." Cultural Geographies 16.4 (2009): 485-504. 

Hi!

Hello and welcome to SCREEN SEXUALITY.  This blog is my final project for Alicia Williamson's Representation & Sexuality course at the University of Pittsburgh.  In the following posts, I will be taking an in-depth look at how American films have depicted the intersectionality of race, sex, and politics in a way that reflects the time and place they were produced.  Movies covered will range from mainstream blockbusters to low-budget art films.  The focus of the content will generally pertain to the themes covered in class, but I also hope to touch upon important movements in the expression of sexuality in film, such as pornography, New Queer Cinema, and feminist film theory. Throughout these analyses, I will show that sexuality has played an instrumental role in the development of cinema as an art form in the United States.   As Foucault points out in his definitive work The History of Sexuality, the establishment of regulations on sexual expression developed in the Seventeenth century have not diminished but strengthened the amount of sexual content in artistry by proliferating the amount of content relating to sexual discourse. Societal perceptions on gender and racial expectations inevitably influence film through the action depicted on screen and the camera's gaze.  If we agree with Freud's view in his Three Essays of Sexuality that the act of looking itself is "a derivative of touching, and therefore, able to arouse desire by contiguity," then the cinema may be seen as a voyeuristic stage where desires and ideals of sexual construction are depicted.  This blog will highlight how dominant sexual discourses are constructed in both the explicit narrative and the mise en scene of the film's world.