Performing Difference

Representations of 'The Other' in Film and Theatre

Jonathan C. Friedman

• Publisher: University Press of America
• Year: 2008
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780761883005
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Performing Arts

Performing Difference is a compilation of seventeen essays from some of the leading scholars in history, criticism, film, and theater studies. Each author examines the portrayal of groups and individuals that have been traditionally marginalized or excluded from dominant historical narratives. As a meeting point of several fields of study, this book is organized around three meta-themes: race, gender, and genocide. Included are analyses of films and theatrical productions from the United States, as well as essays on cinema from Southern and Central America, Europe, and the Middle East. Topically, the contributing authors write about the depiction of race, ethnicities, gender and sexual orientation, and genocides. This volume assesses how the performing arts have aided in the social construction of the "other" in differing contexts. Its fundamental premise is that performance is powerful, and its unifying thesis is that the arts remain a major forum for advancing a more nuanced and humane vision of social outcasts, not only in the realm of national imaginations, but in social relations as well.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Introduction
• Section 1. RACE AND ETHNICITY
• Chapter 01. “A Conscience for Hollywood? The ‘Social Issue’ Films of Twentieth Century Fox, 1947–1950”
• Chapter 02. “Grounding Race: Powder and the Shifting Terrain of Whiteness”
• Chapter 03. “Shylock: Shakespeare’s Sympathetic ‘Other’”
• Chapter 04. “The ‘New Marginality: ’Representations of the Favela in Recent Brazilian Cinema”
• Chapter 05. “Liminal Spaces in Fatih Akin’s Gegen die Wand/Head On: Orientalism vs. Globalization”
• Chapter 06. “Fantasies of Loss: Melancholia and Ethnicity in Israeli Cinema”1
• Chapter 07. “Cinematic Asian Representation in Hollywood”
• Chapter 08. “Passing: A Reading on a Jewish Woman’s Identity”
• Section 2. GENDER AND SEXUAL ORIENTATION
• Chapter 09. “‘This Manifest Indignity: ’Hollywood’s Portrayal of the Gender Integration of the Armed Forces in theWorld War II Era”
• Chapter 10. “Batting for the Other Team: Masculinity, Homosexuality, and Sports in Contemporary Drama and Film”
• Chapter 11. “Mestiza Feminisms and Julie Taymor’s Frida”
• Chapter 12. “The Problematic Ethnic and Sexual Discourses of Eytan Fox’s The Bubble”
• Section 3. THE HOLOCAUST, WAR, AND GENOCIDE
• Chapter 13. “Time and Representation: Generic Transformations and Historicist Interpretations of Holocaust Films”
• Chapter 14. “The Bystander and the ‘Other’ in Holocaust Films”
• Chapter 15. “Fiend, Foe and Friend: The German Image in American World War II Films”
• Chapter 16. “Representations of Genocide in Recent Films”
• Chapter 17. “Genocide and Redemption in the Modern Western”
• Conclusion
• Index
• Biographies of Contributing Authors