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October 1994

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Subject:
From:
J Roberson <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Fri, 28 Oct 1994 08:53:50 -0500
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>I don't mean to totally decontextualize J's comments, but I didn't want to
>repost all 11K of them.
 
So you only reposted 5.5K of them before adding your own comments ;)
 
>J is doing exactly what I'd said earlier on this
>list: exhibiting the luxury to selectively see race as important granted
 
Oh maybe I'm just not seeing too much in the film that's race-dependent.
Not much tha's important to the plot, anyway.
 
>whites are not a racial group, but rather that whiteness is the constructed
>norm in our society and therefore race is not a necessary component in all
 
I must admit that this is true - but it's not right.
 
>aspects of life. People of other races (and women, who violate the norm of
>maleness, and disabled people, who violate the norm of ability) do not have
>the luxury to put on or off a racial hat.
 
True - to an extent. Maybe the measures one has to go to are extreme.
One word: transsexuals. Or, from a recent movie: *The Ballad of Little Joe*.
These are people that put on a different hat - though I grant you it's
only the hat of gender, not race or disability.
 
>True, one can try to choose the manner in which one wears the hat, but the
>hat's meaning is constructed by the dominant and there are limits to the
 
That's when you say "fuck the dominant" and do what you like anyway.
 
>A good example of this is O.J. Simpson - he had masked his black hat well.
 
Funny. . .I'm not even a football fan and I always thought of him as a
football player first. If I had any prejudice in his court case, it'd
be against his wealth, not his race.
 
Like the cynics say: The OJ Simpson case will decide where bias in American
justice lies: Either the rich get off easy or the black man gets the shaft.
 
There's no way the legal system can win.
 
>that he had tried (and maybe even succeeded) to deny his blackness, but as
>soon as soon as he was suspected for the murder, he was reinscribed as a
 
I would say he succeeded, and would have kept succeeding if peple had just
shut their yaps and realized that he's just another murder suspect on
trial for killing his wife - not some latter-day Othello.
 
>was on the run, O.J. had learned what it was to be a nigger for the first
>time in his life). O.J. was not in control of his own racial construction
 
Well, that would mean he hadn't been one before, now wouldn't it? Which
means that without this case, he could have hypothetically gone on not
being one - which would mean that you can reinvent yourself.
 
 
 
J Roberson

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