In a feat of historical investigation and vivid storytelling, this film biographer takes on one of the greatest and most complex figures in American entertainment, Oscar Micheaux, the son of freed slaves who formed his own film production company after Hollywood failed to bid high enough for film rights to his stories. Paced like a novel, the book is sprinkled liberally with Micheaux's own words. Micheaux's career began to fizzle, along with race films, in the late 1930s, and he died in obscurity in 1951. Rediscovered decades later, he is now considered, as McGilligan puts it, the Jackie Robinson of American film.

The book overall is a wonderful resource on background knowledge regarding aspects of Micheaux's life that others cannot find easily. The most important chapter would be Chapter 9, focusing on the years between 1919 and 1921. Since Within Our Gates came out in 1920, it gives a timeline of the events that were going on right before the movie and while filming was taking place. You can also learn some really interesting facts about the movie and how Micheaux was able to get this film out to the masses and how the original version has been lost. We also learn that he likes to always have some sort of message in his films, despite having them just be entertaining. The author also considers the flashback of the lynching to be “one of the most powerful sequences in Micheaux's body of work”.

Siomopoulos, Anna. "The Birth of a Black Cinema: Race, Reception, and Oscar Micheaux's Within Our Gates," The Moving Image: The Journal of the Association of Moving Image Archivists, vol. 6.2 (Fall), 111-118, 2006.

This article talks about Oscar Micheaux's film and how it provided a rebuttal to Griffith's depiction of black violence and corruption with a story of the injustices faced by African Americans in a racist society. Siomopoulos primarily talks about the style of editing that were in both films.  Siomopoulos states, “The complicated style of Micheaux's editing works to constitute a spectator who is more politically critical than the spectator constructed by the classical Hollywood style of Griffith's film” It compares the editing of the two films and talks about how live music plays a part in the spectatorship of the film.

This article helps to show the similarities and differences between the two films, but it uses Birth of A Nation as the main comparison piece. This helps to answer the question about how the films incorporate their views in opposite ways, by explaining the cutting. It also breaks down and explains the narrative juxtapositions in the films. Birth of a Nation uses crosscutting to present a very simple opposition between white virtue and black villainy; in contrast, Micheaux's film uses a complex editing pattern to present a larger social vision of many different, competing political positions within both white and African American society. so this article helps greatly to answer the questions about how these two film relate to each other, in style and content.

Baldwin, Davarian L. Chicago's New Negroes: Modernity, the Great Migration, and Black Urban Life. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007.

While the book follows the stories and innovations of Madame CJ Walker, Thomas A. Dorsey, Oscar Micheaux and baseball's Rube Foster, it also provides a space in which we get to hear the thoughts and words of everyday people, those who sat in beauty parlors, enjoyed the early years of cinema, and made a way despite the racial, social and economic limitations. While the book is a scholarly monograph, Baldwin's expedition into social and cultural theory is so nuanced as to make the book accessible to a wider audience. Davarian Baldwin argues overall that this mass consumer marketplace generated a vibrant intellectual life and planted seeds of political dissent against the dehumanizing effects of white capitalism.

This book overall is great wonderful if you want to learn about black innovators in Chicago. But if you are interested in Oscar Micheaux in particular, then the best chapter would be the fourth entitled, “The Birth of Two Nations: White fears, black jeers, and the rise of a race film consciousness”.  The chapter begins by discussing the history and impact of Birth of a Nation. It was an escape in which the traditional white power structure of the South was asserted and black migrants had never come north. But Baldwin proves this point invalid in his historical evidence and he also shows that Griffith’s film created two nations because people like Micheaux had to respond to the story that was told in Birth of Nation. A really interesting point that he mentions is that fact that films like Within Our Gates had to constantly battle with showing the truth of the South to the masses, but also still keeping the traditional black amusement forms. He calls this “sensational realism”. He then goes on the mention Micheaux’s life and Baldwin notes the significance of Oscar Micheaux's five silent and nine sound films in constructing a New Negro racial consciousness. He gives plenty of historical evidence and reviews from the time, which helps to put the films in a clear cultural perspective.

In the 1920 silent race film "Within Our Gates" by Oscar Micheaux, he shows the racial condition in America during the years of Jim Crow, the Great Migration, and the emergence of the "New Negro." The film is about an African-American woman who goes North to help a minister in the Deep South raise money to keep a school open for poor Black children. Her romance with a black doctor opens up stories about her family's past as well as the racial skeletons in America's closet. The release of D. W. Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation" four years earlier made him want to make this film. Both films incorporate controversial subject matter; lynching, rape, and miscegenation are represented in the films, but from opposite ends of the political spectrum. In "Within Our Gates", Micheaux wants to educate his audience about racism, uplift of a people, and the urban "new Negro" emerging after the Great Migration. But how does Oscar Micheaux battle the racist representations from Griffith and portray the many different faces of the African American society through film?

Green, Ronald J. "Oscar Micheaux's Interrogation of Caricature as Entertainment." Film Quarterly vol. 51 no. 3 pp: 16-31.

In this article by J. Ronald Green he first gives a brief overview of Micheaux’s upbringing and then his early films. He mentions Within our Gates, but does not talk about the film specifically. However, there are a lot of interesting points in the article, which can relate to understanding the portrayals of African-Americans in his early films. Green talks about how caricature was perceived by Micheaux as a prime obstacle for black advancement and its removal was an early rhetorical objective necessary to his goal. Blacks in the performing arts desperately needed to shed the caricature being used as a shelter. One of Micheaux's principal missions was to show that a black man could be anything he wanted. The ABAB structure is used repeatedly by Micheaux as a narrative form for his cinematic, class-based critique. Micheaux presented a simple configuration of shot and edit that implies the "cutting" of the B figure by the A figure. When the minstrel and vaudeville performers, or B figures, are introduced in the same shot with the chorus members, or A figures, the B figures are gazed upon by the A figures in a way that implies reprobation. A/upper-class, B/lower-class structure of the cutting gaze manifested in its purist form in “The Darktown Revue”. In “Murder in Harlem”, the ABAB paradigm is integrated into a more complex narrative, and the idea of the entertainment stereotype as inhabiting the class relations of daily life is elaborated. The author breaks down these two Micheaux's films that include music and performance as subjects.

 Micheaux interrogated entertainment as a function of class in a direct way that takes entertainment to be a literal, not just representational, sociopolitical condition inherent in the films. This tools helps to show another way that he is able to educate his audience about racism and the uplift of a people. Caricatures are just another form of blackface and other demeaning portrayals that Micheaux did not like. I also found Green’s ABAB structure very interesting overall because it brings a new dimension to Micheaux’s work.

            The author of this article, Charlene Regester, compares directors D.W. Griffith and Oscar Micheaux, and the impact of each on American silent cinema. Through the examination of each director's films, the author provides examples of how American films in the silent era that portrayed racially-charged characters played an important role in race relations-visually empowering and disempowering both black and white constituencies. While films like Birth of a Nation promoted white supremacy and the separation of the races, writes Regester, Micheaux responded to the reductive myths ingrained in Griffith's prejudices, constructing instead nuanced and overtly revisionist accounts of the African American experience. Like author J. Ronald Green, Regester proposes that Micheaux raised taboo racial topics to present black subjectivity as complex and resist racially infused representations.

            This article's focus on character symbolism provides helpful information for my discussion of Body and Soul. It explores how Micheaux split Robeson's protagonist into two parts: Robeson as morally righteous Sylvester, and Robeson as the Reverend Isaiah, a fantasized figure who should represent morality, but actually signifies its antithesis. The evil reverend struggles to locate his righteous self through parishioner Martha Jane's mirror image. Martha Jane symbolizes the ability to assume moral position, and she associates Sylvester with the desired racialized definition of blackness, which counters the criminality of Rev. Jenkins. This use of Robeson for both the protagonist and the antagonist displays two important truths: there is an extremely thin line between good and evil, and the complexity of black subjectivity. Utilizing these symbols, Micheaux hoped to elevate blacks and guide them into a position of respect and high esteem, not just in the eyes white oppressors, but for themselves and the whole of the black community.

 

In his chapter of Black American Cinema, author and professor J. Ronald Green applies W.E.B. DuBois term "twoness" to Oscar Micheaux's film style. First, Green mentions Thomas Cripps's ground-breaking book on the history of race movies, Slow Fade to Black, how Cripps based his assessment on the cultural phenomenon of racial assimilation, and Cripps's referral to Black cinema as anti-assimilation. Within this book, says Green, Cripps recognized a debilitating dilemma for Black film in America, with which Cripps closely associated DuBois's concept of twoness of American racial codes: how Blacks face the possibility of two social identities at the same time, whose relations to each other are strained, but which each Black American must somehow resolve individually. Ultimately, Blacks have a need to retain their ethnicity in the face of assimilation, and Cripps viewed black cinema as a form of non-assimilation. Green then goes on to highlight how Micheaux's financial struggles to make films failed to explain his retention of early film techniques. The author believes Micheaux seemingly amateur, raw style contributed to his message of truth.

While Cripps accused Micheaux of imitating white films because of his harsh critiques of his own black community, Green opposes, arguing that Micheaux's depictions brought life and reality to film. In addition to his constructive criticisms, meant to provoke change in the black community, Micheaux rejects typical Hollywood style in order to display his non-assimilation. Micheaux's style shows retention of early film traits that critics (like Cripps) often label as amateurish, naïve artlessness. Simple, direct, and jagged, Micheaux meant for his films to counter aesthetically pleasing Hollywood dramas, like Griffith's Birth of a Nation, and symbolize truth. As Green illustrates, Micheaux's films suggested that the glossy illusionism of Hollywood films concealed the truth, a virtue that Hollywood failed to value. Just as the beautiful body of Rev. Jenkins in Body and Soul hid corruption, the polished appearance of Hollywood film constantly masked honesty.

 

Feminist author Bell Hooks discusses the works of Oscar Micheaux, and how they challenge conventional racist representations while still producing images that convey the complexities and feelings of blacks in a realistic manner. Bell Hooks explores the techniques used by Micheaux to not only mirror real life, but to also go beyond the realm of the ordinary. She explains Micheaux's utilization of melodrama, clarifying how his films work to transgress boundaries and offer perspectives on black experience unseen in any other cinematic practices. Micheaux's focus on both interracial sexual bondings and racialized sexual politics as they influenced the expressionism of desire in black heterosexual couples is also mentioned. Hooks then applies her thoughts to Micheaux's 1932 film Ten Minutes to Live, and considers how it problematizes the location of black heterosexual pleasure with a rigid social order, based on color, that makes the desired object the body most resembling whiteness. For my essay though, I will refer to Bell Hooks's interpretation of Micheaux as a black director.

            Like many other present-day Micheaux scholars, Bell Hooks defends Micheaux's intentions for creating seemingly racist films. Her evaluation of Micheaux in terms of melodrama proves useful for understanding his method. Micheaux melodrama depends on grand gestures, broad moral themes with narratives of coincidence, reverses and sudden happy endings organized around a rigid opposition between good and evil, the characters represent forces rather than people, and the style throws doubt on the adequacy of speech to express the complexities of passion. These characteristics of melodrama are valuable for my argument because they deal with general concepts of human life, not black or white life. Broad moral themes and the balance of good versus evil have surfaced repeatedly in film and literature because they are part of the basic human condition. Body and Soul provides a perfect example of Micheaux's melodrama style.

 

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3300592?&Search=yes&term=body&term=soul&term=micheaux&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dbody%2BAND%2Bsoul%2Bmicheaux%26gw%3Djtx%26prq%3Dbody%2BAND%2Bsoul%2Bmicheaux%26Search%3DSearch%26hp%3D25%26wc%3Don&item=24&ttl=89&returnArticleService=showArticle

In her article, University of Southern California Professor of English, Susan McCabe, discusses the 1930 avant-garde film Borderline, and actor Paul Robeson's role in the film. McCabe explores the "dissecting gaze" of director Kenneth Macpherson-- his focus black, masculine bodies and racial fantasies. The article explains that Borderline demonstrates how the crisis of masculinity is also a racial crisis, and how the film invokes the femme fatale as both a smokescreen for racial anxieties and as an index for how sexuality impinges upon race. McCabe also illustrates how the filmmaker utilized Paul Robeson in an attempt to dismantle the myth of black masculinity as predatory, and instead portrayed the white male's projection of desire upon the black body. Despite her admiration of Borderline, McCabe acknowledges the film's serious limitations in its representation of race: how it objectifies Paul Robeson and associates him with the femme fatale. This essay establishes how Borderline fits into Robeson's career, the outside influences on the film, the film as the avant-garde answer to Birth of a Nation, and an analysis of significant scenes that render Robeson as both the bearer of disavowed desires and as capable of reconstructing cultural borderlines.

            Although this article concentrates on Borderline, McCabe mentions important details about Body and Soul in her description of Paul Robeson's career. In Body and Soul, Robeson played both the evil minister Isaiah Jenkins and his noble counter-part, his brother Sylvester. As McCabe suggests, Micheaux chose Robeson to play both roles for a very important reason: to present the body and soul as separate, split entities, yet, in tenuous union through Robeson. This idea has become most prevalent in modern discourse, which situates the "black body" and "white soul" as polarized. I will argue against this modernist discourse, proposing that Micheaux proposed no difference between black and white in Body and Soul, and that the moral dilemma faced by Rev. Jenkins embodies the struggle of all mankind.

 

Citation:

Musser, Charles. "To Redream the Dreams of White Playwrights: Reappropriation and Resistance in Oscar Micheaux's Body and Soul" Yale Journal of Criticism 12.2 (1999): 321-356.

Content and Relevance of Work:

Professor of Film Studies at Yale University, Charles Musser, attempts to reevaluate Oscar Micheaux's Body and Soul after its misinterpretation by various scholars over the years. In order to counteract scholars' misreading of the film, Musser describes the "problems" of Micheaux's stylistics: his intertwining of flashbacks with dreams in Body and Soul, and how this destabilizes the status of the represented event. Musser refuses to blame Micheaux's unfortunate economic circumstances and his lack of funding for his individualistic approach to film. This article also mentions how Micheaux adapted the story behind Body and Soul from three plays by white playwrights: Bagby Stephens's Roseanne and Eugene O'Neill's two race plays The Emperor Jones and All God's Chillun' Got Wings. The content of each of these plays is discussed, along with actor Paul Robeson's involvement in all four productions, and Micheaux's supposed exploitation of Robeson. Musser analyzes Micheaux's strategy for reworking these plays into his own complex narrative, and the film's critical reception at the time of its release and today.

            As mentioned before, this article examines Micheaux's use of flashback in Body and Soul. These flashbacks subvert the significance of the particular occurring event in order to achieve a higher goal. According to Musser, Micheaux thought that dream and reality had a similar structure lacking coherence or a logical pattern of cause and effect, a standpoint with which I disagree. If Micheaux truly felt cause and effect did not exist in life, he would not have created Body and Soul. The entire purpose of making this film was to notify the black community of its major flaws, which is the cause, and provoke his black audience to fix these issues, which is the effect. This effort is symbolized in Martha Jane's character, who must hear and believe her daughter's confession of Rev. Jenkins rape in order to face reality. Blacks must hear Micheaux's message to facilitate change in American society.  

 

Citation:

Green, Ronald J. "Oscar Micheaux's Interrogation of Caricature as Entertainment." Film Quarterly 51.3 (1998): 16-31.

Content and Relevance of Work:

J. Ronald Green's article addresses the issue of Black stereotypes and caricatures displayed in the entertainment industry. Green believes that pervasive, ethnic images blocked any autonomous effort put forth by African American entertainers to provide a realistic model of African American citizenship. Since nothing could be accomplished until that problem was resolved, Oscar Micheaux made this issue a top priority. Then, the author highlights important milestones of Micheaux's career, his childhood, and the financial hurdles he was forced to overcome. Green focuses on the success of D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation: the stereotypes and setbacks it provided for African Americans, and the motivation it provided Micheaux to remove these caricatures. Micheaux, Green argues, recreates these caricatures for the purpose of criticizing them, and explains how dialects provide a framework in relation to his ethnic criticisms.

Overall, Green's defends Micheaux's use of caricatures, saying it draws attention to what is wrong in the Black community, so that Blacks can repair the problem in what Green calls a "search and destroy" mission on Micheaux's part. Since this text suggests that Micheaux goes beyond positive images to function within the race as a starting cure, Micheaux held high expectations for the future of black and white race relations. If the black community were to answer his call, and repair its problems, blacks could finally command respect from whites. As a result, the change Micheaux attempts to provoke could spark an end to most of the mistreatment and racism projected by whites upon blacks. Unlike author Charlene Regester's article titled "The Misreading and Rereading of Oscar Micheaux," Green's article does not discuss Body and Soul's relevance a larger audience (i.e. not just a black audience).

 

 

Citation:

Regester, Charlene. "The Misreading and Rereading of African American Filmmaker Oscar Micheaux: A Critical Review of Micheaux Scholarship" Film History 7.4 (1995): 426-449.

Content and Relevance of Work:

In this article, author and editor Charlene Regester defends Micheaux's intentions for making such controversial films, implying that the public misreads and misinterprets his work. Regester counters quotes from other Micheaux scholars, such as Gary Null and Donald Bogle, to argue her opinion that Micheaux presented valuable lessons to the Black community in each of his films. The article advises the re-examination of Micheaux's films. This text investigates how the critical profile of Micheaux has been constructed by researchers and scholars, how this profile has changed overtime (each decade from before the seventies to the nineties), and how it continues to evolve. Although many Micheaux scholars believe his films lacked ethnic truth and only reflected the outlooks of the black bourgeoisie, Regester claims Micheaux felt that whites and blacks were on an equal level: just as affluent, educated, cultured, and well-mannered. Lastly, Regester confronts the difficulty of studying African American filmmakers by the same standards as those used for critiquing white American filmmakers without taking into consideration the unique obstacles that complicated the African American filmmaking efforts.

According to Regester, Micheaux ignored the supposed burden of representing the blacks in only a favorable light because if his desire to better the African American community. Cripps says, in his quote within the article, this need to accurately depict black life is an exposé of social conditions relevant only to "Negro circles," and that Rev. Jenkins is an allegorical black figure who symbolizes the overall struggle of blacks: whether to fill the role of prim bourgeois, and risk losing black culture, or to become a criminal and hustler. Regester states, though, that through Micheaux's description of this rare side of black life to the general public, audiences (both black and white) found similarities to one another. Micheaux's focus on the dichotomy of good and evil pertains to a struggle of all mankind, not simply that of the black race. This particular aspect of Body and Soul that Regester identifies will be at the center of my essay.

 

In his essay, Professor of Cinema Studies at City University of New York, David A. Gerstner compares the styles and editing techniques of the black father of cinema, Oscar Micheaux, with those of the whit father of cinema, D.W. Griffith. Despite their similarities, like laying new creative groundwork for cinema, or the use of melodramatic devices to heighten both spectator response and the spectacle unfolding onscreen, Gerstner quickly establishes a crucial disparity between these two "fathers" of film: Micheaux and Griffith's similar use of temporally ambiguous parallel editing must be traced along a different set of cultural and aesthetic paths. Gerstner examines the classical Hollywood cinema, to which Griffith attributed greatly, mode of production, largely considered to be an illusory and cohesive filmic representation of time and space. Gerstner goes on to describe Griffith's works and use of parallel editing. Then, Gerstener discusses Micheaux's approach to film, and the similarities of Micheaux and Griffith's parallel editing. The essay highlights the "affect cut:" how directors, especially Micheaux, reorganize time and space within their films for a more powerful affect upon the audiences. Finally, Gerstner explains the projections of black manhood in Micheaux's Within Our Gates.

Gerstner's views are useful for my essay because his assessment can further my argument concerning Micheaux's individualistic style as a rejection of Griffith's popular Hollywood methods. Gerstner clarifies Micheaux's use of flashbacks for temporal vagueness, describing them as components that saturate the filmic present with the weight of the traumatic past. Micheaux wanted his audience to be unsure of shifts in space and time to emphasize the magnitude of this burden of the past on his characters. In order to fully relate to the story, Micheaux thought viewer must experience the trouble and stress of the burden as much as the characters in the film.

 

Citation:

Musser, Charles. "To Redream the Dreams of White Playwrights: Reappropriation and Resistance in Oscar Micheaux's Body and Soul" Yale Journal of Criticism 12.2 (1999): 321-356.

 

 

J. Ronald Green's article addresses the issue of Black stereotypes and caricatures displayed in the entertainment industry. Green believes that pervasive, ethnic images blocked any autonomous effort put forth by African American entertainers to provide a realistic model of African American citizenship. Since nothing could be accomplished until that problem was resolved, Oscar Micheaux made this issue a top priority. Then, the author highlights important milestones of Micheaux's career, his childhood, and the financial hurdles he was forced to overcome. Green focuses on the success of D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation: the stereotypes and setbacks it provided for African Americans, and the motivation it provided Micheaux to remove these caricatures. Micheaux, Green argues, recreates these caricatures for the purpose of criticizing them, and explains how dialects provide a framework in relation to his ethnic criticisms.

Overall, Green's defends Micheaux's use of caricatures, saying it draws attention to what is wrong in the Black community, so that Blacks can repair the problem in what Green calls a "search and destroy" mission on Micheaux's part. Since this text suggests that Micheaux goes beyond positive images to function within the race as a starting cure, Micheaux held high expectations for the future of black and white race relations. If the black community were to answer his call, and repair its problems, blacks could finally command respect from whites. As a result, the change Micheaux attempts to provoke could spark an end to most of the mistreatment and racism projected by whites upon blacks. Unlike author Charlene Regester's article titled "The Misreading and Rereading of Oscar Micheaux," Green's article does not discuss Body and Soul's relevance a larger audience (i.e. not just a black audience).

 

Citation:

 

Green, Ronald J. "Oscar Micheaux's Interrogation of Caricature as Entertainment." Film Quarterly 51.3 (1998): 16-31.

 

Citation:

Regester, Charlene. "The Misreading and Rereading of African American Filmmaker Oscar Micheaux: A Critical Review of Micheaux Scholarship" Film History 7.4 (1995): 426-449.

In this article, author and editor Charlene Regester defends Micheaux's intentions for making such controversial films, implying that the public misreads and misinterprets his work. Regester counters quotes from other Micheaux scholars, such as Gary Null and Donald Bogle, to argue her opinion that Micheaux presented valuable lessons to the Black community in each of his films. The article advises the re-examination of Micheaux's films. This text investigates how the critical profile of Micheaux has been constructed by researchers and scholars, how this profile has changed overtime (each decade from before the seventies to the nineties), and how it continues to evolve. Although many Micheaux scholars believe his films lacked ethnic truth and only reflected the outlooks of the black bourgeoisie, Regester claims Micheaux felt that whites and blacks were on an equal level: just as affluent, educated, cultured, and well-mannered. Lastly, Regester confronts the difficulty of studying African American filmmakers by the same standards as those used for critiquing white American filmmakers without taking into consideration the unique obstacles that complicated the African American filmmaking efforts.

According to Regester, Micheaux ignored the supposed burden of representing the blacks in only a favorable light because if his desire to better the African American community. Cripps says, in his quote within the article, this need to accurately depict black life is an exposé of social conditions relevant only to "Negro circles," and that Rev. Jenkins is an allegorical black figure who symbolizes the overall struggle of blacks: whether to fill the role of prim bourgeois, and risk losing black culture, or to become a criminal and hustler. Regester states, though, that through Micheaux's description of this rare side of black life to the general public, audiences (both black and white) found similarities to one another. Micheaux's focus on the dichotomy of good and evil pertains to a struggle of all mankind, not simply that of the black race. This particular aspect of Body and Soul that Regester identifies will be at the center of my essay.

 

The authors, filmmaker Pearl Bowser and professor Louise Spence, explore Oscar Micheaux's silent drama, Body and Soul (1925), in relation to some of the critical discourses of the past. After the release of Birth of a Nation in 1915, many middle-class Black-Americans desired for assimilation and acceptance into typical White-American culture. Creating films that reflected his personal experiences and observations, Micheaux focused on realistic representations and important issues of the race-conscious Black community, rather than positive images. The texts describes how many members of the Black community felt Micheaux placed too much emphasis on the oppressed, causing social embarrassment, and accused him of disloyalty.  The authors use the considerations and critiques of Body and Soul and other early works to examine some of the competing cultural value judgments that inflected the politics of racial identity and pursuit of racial unity throughout the period between the Great War and the Great Depression.

            The aspects of Body and Soul discussed in this article address how Micheaux exposed stereotypes in order to convey a message to his Black audience. Bowser and Spence consider how Micheaux challenged the authority of the minister within the Black church congregations with his main character, malevolent preacher Isaiah T. Jenkins. The parishioners support the minister, despite his violent and murderous ways, with their unquestioning faith. The article points out that, while the minister's power goes unsupervised, the church-goers "blind faith" endorses the minister's corruption. The guise of the ministry enables the con artist to hone and deploy his deceptions. Just as Rev. Jenkins hides behind the body of the church (the congregation), blacks hide behind the burden of representation: since blacks represent the minority, and all people are defined by race, they feel as though every move made will affect others' perceptions of the black race. Therefore, blacks wish to conceal or ignore the flaws within their own community. Although African Americans expect artistic voices to "represent" blacks only in a good light, or to be art of protest in civil rights and race relations, "representation" is not art. Art is about truth, which Micheaux realizes, and truth is always a burden on the truth-teller. Willing to accept this burden, Micheaux uses film as a call to the black community, a message pinpointing important issues that he felt must be fixed.   

Citation:

 

Bowser, Pearl and Louis Spence. "Oscar Micheaux's Body and Soul and the Burden of Representation" Cinema Journal 39.3 (2000): 3-29.

 

In "With a Crooked Stick", J. Ronald Green pursues this seeming contradiction in a detailed analysis of each of Micheaux's 15 surviving films. He presents critical commentary on each film's plot and action and its contribution to the overall theme of uplift. Green clearly establishes Micheaux's unrelenting critique of white supremacism and black complicity, his strong and original style, and his promotion of moderation, independence, and ethical integrity for class uplift. Readers will find this an invaluable guide to the preoccupations and features of Micheaux's remarkable career and the insight it provides into the African American experience of the 1920s and 30s.

In this book, the most relevant chapter for the topic would be the second chapter, which focuses on the movie. First he goes through the plot, characters, and the central action of the film. Then he talks about the most important themes of the movie, which would be overcoming oppression, class distinctions, race, and race in relation to class. Then he has a section on the style of the film, and also touches on the issues of cutting. So this seems to be a great overall resource for the film. It is not as specific as some of the articles mentioned, but it is a good beginning piece to read.

The film Body and Soul, released in 1925 by African American filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, was met with criticism because of its negative portrayal of its African American characters. Was Oscar Micheaux truly racist against his own kind or is there another reason for which he presented negative images of African Americans in his film Body and Soul?

Citation:

Bowser, Pearl and Louis Spence. "Oscar Micheaux's Body and Soul and the Burden of Representation" Cinema Journal 39.3 (2000): 3-29.

Content and Relevance of Work:

Pearl Bowser and Louis Spence's article, "Oscar Micheaux's Body and Soul and the Burden of Representation", looks at Micheaux's unflattering representations of black people in the film Body and Soul and their effect on what was, for the most part, a disapproving black community. Bowser and Spence view Micheaux's film as an attempt at exposing black realities. However, it was clear that many people in the 1920's did not want to see blacks portrayed in this negative or downtrodden light. Many critics denounced Micheaux's film because it did not provide blacks with a character of color on the screen who they could emulate and feel proud of. Bowser and Spence explain how other black filmmakers of the time were producing films with larger-than-life representations of black protagonists. Micheaux's Body and Soul, however, challenges the authority of its protagonist black preacher and depicts the various class conflicts even within black society. Bowser and Spence make sure to point out that not all aspects of the black characters are shown in a negative light either. For example, the laundress Sister Martha Jane in Body and Soul is shown as hard-working. In the end it seems that Bowser and Spence's underlying argument is that in the film Body and Soul Micheaux was trying to expose the truth of an African American class structure that was becoming more and more stratified. In order to do this, they contend, he had to portray all facets of black society, both good and bad. This article is extremely relevant to the question at hand in that it addresses the film directly and provides a distinct reason for why Micheaux felt the need to display negative images of black people on screen. First of all, it must be noted that not all black characters and not all aspects of the black characters were actually negative. Secondly, Micheaux saw the necessity for showing these negative images in order to address the class divisions within black society. Thus, in the eyes of Bowser and Spence, Micheaux's motives were not entirely racial; he was concerned with the internal divisions in black communities and was not racist against his own kind.

Citation:

Allmendinger, Blake. "The Plow and the Pen: The Pioneering Adventures of Oscar Micheaux" American Literature 75.3 (2003): 545-569.

Content and Relevance of Work:

Blake Allmendinger elects to analyze Micheaux's written works as opposed to his films in his article titled "The Plow and the Pen: The Pioneering Adventures of Oscar Micheaux". However, this is still very relevant to the question I have posed because a look at his portrayal of black people in his writings may help us understand Micheaux's representation of blacks in his film, Body and Soul. Allmendinger's focus, in particular, is on three of Micheaux's novels which he believes form a trilogy: The Conquest, The Homesteader and The Wind from Nowhere. Allmendinger argues that historians and critics have focused too much on Micheaux the filmmaker and allotted an inadequate amount of research and time to study of Micheaux the author. He contends that Micheaux's partially autobiographical novels reveal the most about his personal beliefs and ideas. Allmendinger puts a lot of stock in what he dubs Micheaux's "double consciousness"; this was a contradiction between black reality and fantasy in which Micheaux knew that people of his race could achieve economic success but were, in essence, hindered by the white man's underestimation of black potential. Allmendinger alludes to this as he points out the contrast between Micheaux's first book of the trilogy, The Conquest, and the other two books, The Homesteader and The Wind from Nowhere. The former refutes the notion that blacks can achieve the American dream and the latter two run counter to this and provide black protagonists who lift themselves up and become heroes who realize freedom. The difference between the two storylines possibly runs the gamut between reality and fantasy. Allmendinger also points out that Micheaux's alter egos, the protagonists of these novels, exhibit contempt for blacks who do not work diligently and attempt to rise above racial bounds. This could correspond to Micheaux's film Body and Soul and the characters he presents there. The negative images he provides in Body and Soul may be similar to the blacks in these novels who he appears to disdain for their lack of effort to overcome racial tensions. It is clear that Almendinger's analysis of Micheaux's writings proves very useful in understanding Micheaux's view of blacks and concomitant presentation of blacks in films such as Body and Soul.

Citation:

Regester, Charlene. "The Misreading and Rereading of African American Filmmaker Oscar Micheaux: A Critical Review of Micheaux Scholarship" Film History 7.4 (1995): 426-449.

Content and Relevance of Work:

In her article titled "The Misreading and Rereading of African American Filmmaker Oscar Micheaux: A Critical Review of Micheaux Scholarship", Charlene Regester provides an account of the ways in which Micheaux's films and literary works have been interpreted over the years. She starts with the period before the 1970s and works through the decades of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. In the process she demonstrates an increasing awareness and appreciation for Micheaux's work by scholars and film historians. By the 1990s, she contends, Micheaux had correctly taken his place as a crucial part of black film history. Although it does mention the film Body and Soul briefly in some examples, this article does not expressly focus on the film. However, this article proves very useful to our investigation in that it provides varying interpretations by a range of scholars who were trying to analyze Micheaux's role as a filmmaker and his motives and goals within his films. By reading different scholars' views of Micheaux's films and their role as racial commentaries will provide us with good jumping-off-points for understand Micheaux's controversial Body and Soul. Before the 1970s, for example, Regester explains how scholars believed that Micheaux distrusted many people in society such as ministers and demonstrated this distrust in his films. This could help us understand Micheaux's negative depiction of the Reverend Jenkins in Body and Soul. According to Regester, critics before 1970 also condemned Micheaux for compromising his own identity in favor of white values in order to create successful films and make more money. This could be another plausible reason for Micheaux's negative depictions of blacks in his film Body and Soul; perhaps he was simply an opportunist, appealing to a white audience that would sell more tickets. In the 1970s, there was continued criticism of Micheaux's films for perpetuating demeaning images of blacks by whites. However, by the 1990s, Regester shows us that interpretations of Micheaux's films had shifted and it became more accepted that Micheaux should be commended for his portrayal of blacks in his films because they heightened racial tensions and increased audience awareness of race-related issues. These diverse interpretations are very useful in offering conceivable reasons for why Micheaux presented negative images of blacks in his film, Body and Soul.

Citation:

Hooks, Bell. "Micheaux: Celebrating Blackness" Black American Literature Forum 25.2 (1991): 351-360.

Content and Relevance of Work:

Bell Hooks' article, "Micheaux: Celebrating Blackness", explores the way in which Micheaux used his films to challenge conventional racist representations of blacks. She contends that Micheaux, however, was not interested in simply responding to racist white films by portraying positive images of blacks; he wanted to portray blacks as complex characters defined by their experiences and their emotions and not by their color. Hooks focuses on another one of Micheaux's films called Ten Minutes to Live. She argues that in the film nothing is as simplistic as it may appear in everyday life and that perceptions can easily be manipulated. By exaggerating these complex images of black people and black society Micheaux was able to provoke his audience and make people reevaluate the way in which they approached race and color. The result in Hooks' mind is a celebration of blackness. Although this article focuses on another one of Micheaux's films Ten Minutes to Live, it nevertheless provides an original opinion on Micheaux's complex representations of blacks in his films and thus a possible manner in which to approach Micheaux's other film, Body and Soul. Bell Hooks' would most likely argue that Micheaux was anything but racist against his own kind in creating films such as Body and Soul. On the contrary, he promoted black pride and wanted society to view black men and women as multifaceted beings who should not be restrained by the color of their skin. Hooks' article can help explain why Micheaux refrained from presenting blatantly positive images of blacks in his film Body and Soul; it was more important to Micheaux to portray blacks as intricate characters who could be both good and bad depending on their experiences and feelings. Micheaux saw race as playing little role in a person's proclivity for being good or bad and wanted to convey this in films such as Body and Soul. Hence, the existence of negative images as well as positive images of blacks in the film.

Citation:

Bilwakesh, Nikhil. "Alias Jeremiah: Oscar Micheaux's pathetic preachers." West Virginia University Philiological Papers Vol.15 (2003) .

Content and Relevance of Work:

In Nikhil Bilwakesh's article, "Alias Jeremiah: Oscar Micheaux's Pathetic Preachers", he delves into the illustration of preachers in Micheaux's early novels as well as his two early films: Within Our Gates and Body and Soul. Bilwakesh also analyzes Micheaux's integrationist philosophy in terms of racial superiority. His argument in the article is to demonstrate two of Micheaux's goals in films such as Body and Soul: First, to portray preachers as beings who should be sympathized with because they have fallen to corruption due to unfortunate circumstances. Second, to show the merits of racial integration. He focuses on the Reverend Jenkins character in Body and Soul, claiming that the Reverend is presented in a negative light in order to elicit sympathy from the viewer because black preachers such as Jenkins are vulnerable to the "traps of corruption". Bilwakesh points to Jenkins' alcoholism and solitary drinking as ways in which Micheaux conveys the misery of the preacher. Although Bilwakesh is focusing on the religious connotations of Micheaux's film, in doing so he also addresses the question of why Micheaux presents negative images of blacks in the film. It could be that Micheaux presents these negative images of black characters such as the stereotypical black Reverend Jenkins in order to convey their pathetic and thus sympathetic sides. Bilwakesh's discussion of Micheaux's integrationist theory is also relevant to the investigation. He points to the superiority of "mulattoes" in Micheaux's films and how these characters are almost always the "healthiest and sanest" and most "positive characters". The negative characters, Bilwakesh claims, are usually presented as either dark black or starkly white, such as the preacher and the white racist mobs in Body and Soul. Bilwakesh sees this positive representation of people of mixed-race as Micheaux's attempt at destroying stereotypes from white films such as Birth of a Nation. This emphasis on Micheaux's integrationist philosophy is also very relevant to the posed question and almost leans toward the argument that Micheaux was somewhat racist against his own kind and saw superiority in a mixed race.

Citation:

Green, Ronald J. "Oscar Micheaux's Interrogation of Caricature as Entertainment." Film Quarterly 51.3 (1998): 16-31.

Content and Relevance of Work:

In the article titled "Oscar Micheaux's Interrogation of Caricature as Entertainment" Ronald J. Green takes a look at Oscar Micheaux's response to negative stereotypes and images of blacks in early white films. Green explains how most black directors responded by creating films that portrayed positive images of blacks in society. However, although Micheaux like the other directors saw caricatures and stereotypes as barriers to black people's individuality and emancipation, he believed that he would be most effective in his films if used these same caricatures of blacks and simply exaggerated them to the point where he would be mocking their existence in white films. Thus, he would be using negative stereotypes in his own films with the purpose of criticizing them. Green describes the ‘ABAB' character method used by Micheaux as a specific way in which he used caricatures to critique a class-based society. His films would have ‘A' characters and ‘B' characters: The ‘A' characters would represent black middle-class legitimacy while the ‘B' characters were supposed to symbolize illegitimate black caricatures such as "coons". Green uses the preacher played by Paul Robeson in Body and Soul as an example of a ‘B' character. Green recognizes that Micheaux's use of negative images of blacks in his films such as Body and Soul can create the sensation that Micheaux was racist against his own kind. However, Green's argument is that Micheaux was not trying to further degrade his own kind; he was attempting to draw on existing stereotypes in order to criticize their place in society. Thus, this article is very relevant to the analysis of whether or not Micheaux is using the film Body and Soul to present a negative image of blacks with the purpose of criticizing their place in society. Green analyzes the role of black caricatures in Micheaux's films and even uses Body and Soul as an example. Green's article can be seen as a counterargument to the idea that Micheaux was racist against his own kind and so is a valuable source in the investigation of the presentation of blacks in Micheaux's Body and Soul.

Citation:

Musser, Charles. "To Redream the Dreams of White Playwrights: Reappropriation and Resistance in Oscar Micheaux's Body and Soul" Yale Journal of Criticism 12.2 (1999): 321-356.

Content and Relevance of Work:

In his article, "To Redream the Dreams of White Playwrights: Reappropriation and Resistance in Oscar Micheaux's Body and Soul", Charles Musser analyzes the origins of the film and, more importantly for this investigation, the message that Micheaux was trying to get across through the film. Much of the article focuses on how Micheaux adapted the film from plays made by whites about black life. Musser performs an extensive analysis and demonstrates how much of Body and Soul is derived from the two plays Roseanne and The Emperor Jones. It appears that Musser's overarching goal in revealing these connections is to assert that Micheaux was "reappropriating" these plays: he was pulling from the original white plays in order to create a black critique of white racial ideology and white views of blacks through false stereotypes. Musser also emphasizes dreams and reality in Micheaux's Body and Soul. He believes that Micheaux used dreams in this film to convey the nightmare that blacks live every day because of racism in American society. Micheaux used Martha Jane's unrelenting dream state in order to frustrate blacks into wanting her to awake from fantasy and confront reality. He hoped that this would translate to the viewer's own life and cause blacks to want a change. Musser presents Micheaux as a daring filmmaker who was willing to put his job on the line and offend people in order to address the issue of racism that he felt was most important. This very much relates to the question of why Micheaux used negative images of blacks in Body and Soul. It seems that Musser would argue that Micheaux was simply taking stereotypical interpretations of blacks conjured up by whites, as demonstrated in white plays, and emphasizing them with the purpose of showing blacks how whites looked down on them. Thus, according to Musser, these negative images of blacks were replicated by Micheaux in his film Body and Soul in order to elicit a response in black audiences who were disturbed by this negative representation of their kind, causing them to confront racism.

Citation:

Wiesenfeld, Judith. "For the Cause of Mankind: The Bible, Racial Uplift and Early Race Movies." African Americans and the Bible. Ed. Vincent L. Wimbush and Rosamond C. Rodman. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2001. 728-740.

Content and Relevance of Work:

In her article "For the Cause of Mankind: The Bible, Racial Uplift and Early Race Movies" found in the book African Americans and the Bible, Judith Wiesenfeld explores both the prevalence of religious themes in early black films and the ways in which early black filmmakers attempted to respond to D.W. Griffith's negative representation of blacks in his film Birth of a Nation. Wiesenfeld first analyzes Birth of a Nation which she sees to be the catalyst for much of early black film as it denigrated blacks and promoted a racist ideology. She then explores the overall ineffectiveness of the initial response by blacks embodied in the film Birth of a Race which attempted to use the Bible to emphasize equality. The rest of her essay focuses on the methods of one particular black filmmaker, Oscar Micheaux, and his creation of films such as Within Our Gates and Body and Soul to respond to widespread racism against blacks in white films. Wiesenfeld takes a look at Body and Soul and demonstrates how Micheaux depicted blacks as thinking members of complex communities which varied according to class, education, religion and politics. She emphasizes this "complex" image of blacks which Micheaux chose to present instead of a deliberately positive one. Wiesenfeld also comments on Micheaux's use of religion and the Bible in Body and Soul to accentuate black rights and equality. Wiesenfeld's essay is extremely relevant to the investigation in that she explores directly the absence of a positive representation of blacks in Micheaux's Body and Soul. Nevertheless, she makes clear that Micheaux made his film as a response to racism in order to demonstrate the misunderstood complexity of blacks and their inherent claim to equal humanity. She would also argue that religion and the Bible were important concepts used by Micheaux to convey the equality deserved by all human beings. From this article I would assume that Wiesenfeld would reject the notion that Micheaux was racist against his own kind in creating films such as Body and Soul.

Citation:

Friendly, David T. "Guild Will Honor Pioneer Black Film Director" Los Angeles Times 17 May 1986, natl.

Content and Relevance of Work:

David T. Friendly's article, "Guild Will Honor Pioneer Black Film Director", ran in the Los Angeles Times on the 17^th of May, 1986. The point of the article was to report a recent development in the film industry: the Directors Guild of America would be presenting Micheaux with a lifetime achievement award for his work as a prolific director. The article continues by pointing out that up until this point little if any attention had been devoted by film scholars to Micheaux's achievements as a director. Thus, the rest of the article is Friendly's attempt to clarify Micheaux's work and place in history for the uninformed reader. Friendly's presentation of Micheaux's place in history proves helpful in understanding whether or not Micheaux was truly racist against his own kind. The article paints a picture of Micheaux as a proud black who created films to counter white, racist stereotypes. Friendly even uses Body and Soul as an example of a film, like all of Micheaux's films, that was "warmly received by black audiences." He also points out how Micheaux's films always portray the black man as the hero who comes out on top. Micheaux is also applauded in the article for creating films that countered white Hollywood in their respective casts; Micheaux used light-skinned black actors to play white characters whereas white Hollywood painted white actors to play black characters. The article presents Micheaux as a symbol of black pride and a proponent of black rights. Thus, Friendly's interpretation of Micheaux's films such as Body and Soul is that he was anything but racist against his own kind and actually presented positive images of blacks for black audiences to emulate. This article is very useful for our investigation but also lacks the depth required to understand Micheaux's reason for using negative images of blacks in Body and Soul. In fact, Friendly does not acknowledge Micheaux's negative representations of blacks at all.

Citation:

Green, Ronald J. "Body and Soul" With a Crooked Stick: The Films of Oscar Micheaux. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004. 66-96.

Content and Relevance of Work:

Ronald J. Green's chapter titled "Body and Soul" in his book With a Crooked Stick: The Films of Oscar Micheaux gives a detailed synopsis of the film as well as a breakdown of several themes central to the film's message. Green's underlying argument throughout the chapter is that the good Paul Robeson character, Sylvester, is the hero of the film with whom the audience is meant to return to reality identifying with. One of Green's initial points is that not all characters in the film are presented negatively. However, he admits that it is clear that the more negative characters such as Reverend Jenkins and the confused Martha Jane definitely receive more screen time than the more positive characters such as Isabelle and Sylvester. Green demonstrates how the majority of the film takes place in Martha Jane's nightmare fantasy in which her daughter is raped by the evil Reverend Jenkins character. In reality, however, Green points out how the film ends with Isabelle marrying the good inventor, Sylvester. Green seems to be implying that Micheaux wants to show the audience that negative white images of blacks are merely fantasies that blacks must not get caught up in. Isabelle represents the next generation of African Americans and thus her decision to marry the good Sylvester represents hope for black communities. Green's chapter is very significant to our investigation because of the chapter's sole focus on Body and Soul as well as Green's attempt to understand Micheaux's use of both negative and positive representations of blacks. Green sees Micheaux's film as both staying true to harsh black realities but also defining the possibility of a positive road ahead for blacks to achieve the American Dream. Green's analysis of the film's plot and characters also provides very useful information toward understanding Body and Soul and Micheaux's underlying goals for directing the film.