Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Spike Lee: Ethnicity, Race, and Identity in American Independent Film

The three directors Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, and Spike Lee emerged in the late 1960s, exploring ethno-racial themes with more frankness and dramatizing the challenges of the restless, ethno-racial underclass to the "White Republic" imagined by the Founding Fathers. Their films highlight the stresses of the assimilative process and the use of "cultural capital" to erase "ethno-racial taint."

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 334 pages
Publication date: 02 July 2021
Publisher: Lexington Books

Directors Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, and Spike Lee emerged as filmmakers towards the end of the 1960s, when the breakdown of the studio system paved the way for new production partnerships and gave more creative authority to directors, actors, and writers. In what has come to be called the "Indie" movement, these directors were able to explore ethno-racial themes with more frankness than previously allowed. From the perspectives of their own minority communities, Scorsese, Allen, and Lee dramatized and critiqued the challenges this restless, ethno-racial underclass posed to the "White Republic" imagined by the Founding Fathers.

The three directors whose work is at the heart of this book explore the question of how identity formation is a process of negotiation, particularly among America's ethno-racial minorities. They emphasize the stresses related to the double burden in the assimilative process of patterning oneself after the majoritarian culture, while acknowledging in complex ways the culture of the community of origin. Annie Hall tells Alvie Singer, "You're a real Jew." Buggin Out instructs his homeboy friend, "Stay Black, Mookie!" What implications do these phrases carry? Will Alvie have a chance to modify his identity? Should he? Will Mookie honor his friend's admonition? Is "black" also susceptible to a cultural makeover? Is identity a personal choice?

This book highlights how various films by these three directors explore the ways in which "cultural capital" (musical, artistic, intellectual, athletic, etc.) is used to erase "ethno-racial taint" (skin tones, supposed biological "traits," offensive cultural habits). The formula ordains that assimilation and interculturation will be asymmetrical, favoring those groups or individuals who bring with them the most cultu.

Weight: 482g
Dimension: 153 x 229 x 24 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781498548984