John Landis’ (or Eddie Murphy’s) Coming to America

Gates, Racquel J. 2018. Double Negative: The Black Image & Popular Culture. Durham: Duke University Press.

Summary & Implications: What is the author’s project and why is it important now? What’s the narrative about the field that’s emerging from the reading? What narratives are silent? Whose voices are silent?

In Double Negative, Racquel J. Gates argues that the categorizing of “positive” and “negative” examples of representation in media (particularly that of Black characters, but seemingly broadly applicable to other groups and sub-groups) problematically creates a tendency in academic and popular discourses that align representation to the politics of respectability. Looking to subvert that tendency, Gates takes as her objects of study those negative representations (and their containing media) in order to reveal that, despite their reputation, they can be places where Black creators (actors, writers, directors, and even reality show stars) can insert the kinds of topics and ideas that aren’t allowed by a politics of respectability or understood by a hegemonic white Hollywood and audience. The idea is that these so called “negative” representations act exactly as photographic negatives do, revealing what isn’t there in the “positive” image by inverting it, and even bolstering that positive image by way of giving a means of expression to real feelings, ideas, and attitudes that aren’t acceptable when the goal is to become “respectable.” It is in this spirit that Gates advocates for deploying strategic essentialism to retain these positive and negative labels but to investigate what we really mean when we say that something contains or is a “negative” portrayal of a certain kind of person, and what work that image is really doing in the world, rather than just relegating it to the gutter and ignoring it except as a useful bludgeon against the media as a whole.

Gates lays all of this out in a very detailed opening chapter, which begins by running through several examples of the responses by Black celebrities (Chris Rock and Katt Williams) to the resurgent popularity of Flavor Flav at the same time as Barack Obama was trying to become president. It’s a perfect example to begin with, laying out the stakes of the project at the highest level and showing how these kinds of discourses vary depending on who the person speaking is and to whom they are speaking. She then explains herself and her conception of exactly what the words “positive” and “negative” mean in her reckoning, before at the end detailing several different kinds of negative representations, each of which she focuses on for a chapter in the remainder of the book using various exemplars as the way of working through her ideas.

Formal negativity: when a work contains formal elements, from aesthetics to narrative, that are a reversal of what is accepted in positive works. Her example chapter focuses on Coming to America, which, sandwiched between Hollywood Shuffle and Do the Right Thing as far as release dates go, contains elements of both the positive, hegemonic portrayal of Black characters within the film’s main plot, the romance, while it uses formal qualities like echoes of Eddie Murphy’s sketch comedy background in the side plots to express ideas, feelings, and jokes that were ignored by the mainstream critical reception to the film but spoke to Black audiences directly and clearly. Interestingly, she also spends some time looking at the production history of the film to suggest that it challenges traditional auteurist understandings of who is responsible for the film by showing that John Landis, the film’s director, was basically responsible for the romantic A-plot while Murphy basically had control over everything else in the film. In this way, Gates argues that we shouldn’t rely upon an easy Black writer/director = Black film equation, noting that a variety of factors might influence who should get credit for the making of a film.

Relational or comparitive negativity: when the positive representation is so dominant that its reverse is hardly visible at all. For this chapter, Gates examines a collection of what she calls “sellout films,” which were released at the same time as the respectable Boyz N the Hood and Menace II Society but were focused on Black characters who were trying to survive in white-dominated workplaces and who had to fight to retain a sense of their Black identity in the process. Gates ably argues that these sellout films were just as important as the more critically respected black male struggle films because they were able to speak to a group of people who were experiencing the same anxieties about selling out to whiteness in order to get ahead. Example by example, she shows how these films were able to both express that anxiety and show that there was a way towards both being successful and retaining a Black identity.

Circumstantial negativity: in these cases, outside discourses, for example, those surrounding Halle Berry over the first ~10 years of her career impart a kind of transference of negativity onto a text that doesn’t otherwise have anything negative in it. Gates uses this opportunity to study Berry’s evolving star image, how it was damaged by her role as a “tragic mulatto” in Queen, even though the star herself tried to counter the narrative that foregrounded her biracial identity by declaring firmly and frequently that he thought of herself as a Black woman. This confusion in the press lead, Gates argues, to Berry’s swift downfall following her Oscar win for Monsters Ball. Berry became unable to control her own star image, which led to her inability to get good roles in good films, Gates claims.

Strategic negativity: when a show or other kind of media is already dismissed categorically as “trash,” like reality TV, people who make the show, including the onscreen stars, can actively use that label as a way of bypassing the respectability politics that dominates prestige tv for their own ends. Here Gates explores several shows, like The Real Housewives of Atlanta and Love & Hip Hop for the way that their stars assert their agency within the show’s production under the guise it must maintain of capturing “reality.” Throughout this chapter, Gates demonstrates how these shows, which were broadly labeled “ratchet” by cultural activist Michaela Angela Davis. Gates argues that, though limited by production realities and so on, the trashiness of these shows allows both the stars and their audiences places to express those ideas about their identity that wouldn’t fit in to a sitcom or traditional drama. Gates also views the ratchet reality star as one who has a degree more control over her image than one who acts in a more accepted manner. The agency, the ability to talk about things that are taboo elsewhere, and the ensuing increase in wealth and fame are the key points in this chapter.

Gates ends by looking at Empire, a show which pretends at negativity but still subtly pushes the tainted respectability politics of positive portrayals of Black characters. She notes that in its carefully manipulated depiction of its queer characters and the show’s acceptance by various critical bodies, including awards shows, Empire reveals that for all of its trashy aesthetics, it still engages in a large amount of respectability politics. Maybe one day we’ll be able to fully celebrate the so-called negative representation, Gates claims, but that day has not yet come.

Context: Who is this author debating with and why? What is the context of the text’s production and distribution? What historical, cultural, etc. factors affect the way it makes meaning? Does the author seem to be in conversation with other scholars and/or paradigms? Where is this piece of writing centered in the field? What is their intervention in the literature/field? What text is this text in conversation with?

Gates provides an important push back against what seems to be the dominant mode of talking about representation on film. The job, she argues, focuses on determining which representations are good and bad and for what reasons, then throwing the bad ones out to celebrate the good ones. Gates’ corrective is to argue for the value of studying the negative portrayal, and not just for how it was made and came to be, but for what it can actually do. She counters the claim seemingly inherent to academics that push for positive portrayals because they will make the society at large more accepting and understanding all on their own. This isn’t how it works, Gates writes, and closer attention must be paid to what representation actually does and what it doesn’t do.

The cultural context, the belief in a post-racial America following the election of Barack Obama and, at the time of the book’s release, the backlash to his presidency in the form of Donald Trump, is also crucial to understanding Gates’ project. Obama, she says, was an exemplar of the so-called “talented tenth” of Black Americans whose very existence and prominence would lift up the entire group of Black Americans, that is if the negative exemplars didn’t pull them back down. This kind of rhetoric is problematic in all kinds of ways, and Gates carefully unpacks the harm it does and, in opposition, the good that “negative” portrayals can bring to Black audiences.

All of this isn’t to say that Gates is claiming that we should only celebrate the negative representations of Black people in media, but that the positive should always be examined with, not against, the negative. It’s a call for a fuller scholarship, and that’s a valuable contribution as far as I’m concerned.

via GIPHY Love & Hip Hop Atlanta‘s Joseline Hernandez

Methodology: What is the methodological framework of this text? What methodological moves or questions does the author engage? What is their object of analysis?

Gates moves between and through various kinds of discourses, looking at film history, auteurism, genre studies, star studies, and production environments in the process of uncovering and examining her various kinds of negative representations. As she does so, she dives into varying levels of depth with her examples. Coming to America merits nearly 40 pages of investigation, Berry’s star image gets a good amount of depth as well, while both genre chapters, the sellout and ratchet reality show examples, get less space for each example, sacrificing depth for breadth. Both modes work for Gates’ points, though, and after the extensive theoretical work of the opening chapter, she can largely focus on the specifics of each case study in as much depth as she needs to.

Rhetorical Moves: What are the major rhetorical moves of the author’s arguments?

By connecting the already accepted terminology of positive and negative representations to the photographic concept of a negative that creates a positive, Gates strongly connects her ideological goals to the existing discourse on the topic. It makes for an easy and fruitful transition into digging into her way of thinking on the subject at hand. She also taps into a kind of underdog narrative that Americans are primed to buy into, which works well for her.

Engagement & Application: How do I engage this text? How does this apply to my work? Does it support or provide a counterargument or model for strong intro or lit review? In other words, why is this piece of writing useful to me and/or how is it limited (bad writing style, problematic, didn’t consider x, y, and z)? Does it intersect with other items on the list?

I want my future discussions of representation, which will form a fundamental part of my work even if I come at it somewhat obliquely, to be as nuanced as possible. Gates provides a lot of great ways of thinking about what we might otherwise write off, and a way towards discussing those texts that might not be as good on that front as we want them to be. What else might those texts be doing that we’d miss by easily dismissing them? I’ll find out!

I’ll also take anybody’s arguments against auteurism anytime they want to provide them. It’s a valuable tool, but obviously not the only one and not always applicable.

Key Terms: What terms are key to the author’s argument, and are they operationalized explicitly or implicitly?

representation, positive, negative, ratchet, star studies, star image, auteur, genre, film history, production, agency, respectability politics, Black, hegemony, strategic essentialism

Significant Quotations: What key quotations from this work would I want to have quick access to?

Designations of positive versus negative with regard to representations of blackness and black people can be frustrating. Taken as a straightforward descriptors, they are limiting categories that do not allow us to access the full, complex range of images that circulate in the media, nor do they allow for the possibility of nuanced engagement with these images by the people that consume them. Conventional uses of “positive” and “negative” support politics of respectability and close off possibilities for multi-layered conceptions and performances of identity. At their worst, to invoke these categories uncritically reinforces racist ideologies that use discourses of black exceptionalism to further marginalize black behaviors and people that deviate from white, middle-class, heterosexual norms. (12)

The problem is that, try as we might, we cannot seem to shake the assumption that representations do the work by themselves. In other words, there is an unshakable belief that images do work outside of the histories and contexts in which they circulate. (13)

In the end, I am suggesting that it is not necessary to eradicate these categories as much as to deconstruct them: understand how they develop, where they are applied, how, and when. And further, by using these terms strategically, as critical race scholars have already done with strategic essentialism, we gain much in the way of developing a lens of analysis and language with which to understand and talk about what these texts are actually doing. Therefore, taking up Herman Gray’s call to analytically shift discussions of identity and media “from signification and representation to resonance and experience,” I propose that we actually embrace the designation of “negative” that has long been assigned to certain types of images. To activate the dictionary definition of “negative” as “expressing or containing negation or denial” reveals the ways that disreputable images such as those found in reality television, for instance, disrupt hegemonic norms regarding race, class, gender, and sexuality. […] I embrace the term “negative” because of its historical use in defining certain types of black texts and because it implies a direct, tangential relationship to “positive” representations. If the current post-racial, color-blind moment truly is a moment of color-muteness[, following Linda Williams], then perhaps the negative image functions as the repository for those identities, experiences, and feelings that have been discarded by respectable media. (15-6)

This book offers two, interrelated definitions of a “negative” text. The first type of negative text is a qualitative one that is defined by its distance from normative, white hegemonic standards of quality. […] The second definition of a negative text is a formal category that functions as an inversion of another media text. In the second sense of the term, the film or television show in question may not be thought of as stereotypical or demeaning, but has simply been erased from critical discourse because its salient formal and ideological components are not recognized as bearing significant meaning. […] The concept of negativity derives first from the idea of a photo negative. In fact, my approach in this book is based heavily on the metaphor of a photographic negative, in which a positive image is considered normal (or, in the case of media, normative) and a negative is the complete inversion of that image. I argue that these negative images engage in explorations of identity and a manner that is inversely proportionate to contemplations of identity and respectable media texts. Just as a negative is necessary for the production of a photograph, this book argues that the negative image is a necessary component for the production of the “positive” images that circulate throughout popular culture and scholarship. (17)

As a framework, negativity helps to elucidate how tastes, politics, and modes of performance develop and change, and it reveals the ways that time forms our perceptions. (18)

I argue that reclaiming these overlooked images from black popular culture and offering an alternative history of their meanings and possibilities also provides a strong intervention and present-day debates about proper black behavior and the role of popular culture in the current sociopolitical moment. Moreover, as the veritable gutter of black media, negative representations serve as the repository for all of the feelings that positive images cast aside. (21)

Negative spaces can exist as havens for topics deemed outside of the boundaries of respectable texts, particularly when those topics have to do with matters of identity. […] Similarly, reality television functions as the metaphorical gutter for the rejects of respectable black media representation. Interestingly enough, these individuals, groups, and topics that I refer to here as rejects happen to intersect and overlap with the same individuals, groups, and topics that are typically marginalized by mainstream and black uplift narratives in society. […] Many of these negative texts open up possibilities for non-normative feelings, experiences, and allegiances that, I argue, are simply not possible in the image-policed spaces of positive texts. (25-6)

For, if this book aims to highlight the way that whiteness functions invisibly and media, it must also point out that whiteness occupies a similar default position in scholarship on the media. In other words, we should productively trouble these existing discussions of taste and culture by first acknowledging that whether we use adjectives such as high, low, mass, or trash in front of the word “culture,” all of these descriptors are still referring to white culture, in that the producers, texts, and fan communities that constitute the foundations of this scholarship do not typically include people of color. (27)

While I acknowledge that negative representations sometimes fall prey to the same limiting constructions of race as their positive counterparts, I believe that the power of the negative image rests in its ability to shift the dynamics and popular culture. We see negative texts actively influencing mainstream popular culture and pulling it into the gutter in certain ways […] And, unlike the Bakhtinian carnivalesque, these are not shifts that simply bubble up temporarily only to be ultimately reabsorbed by dominant culture and robbed of their subversiveness. Nor are these subcultures that exist as a sort of parallel, underground universe to that of mainstream culture. Rather, the reverberations of negative texts function as tremors that irrevocably weaken the foundation on which their positive counterparts are constructed. Those are, in fact, performances that matter in spite of the fact that they have traditionally been understood as inconsequential as far as I articulating ideas about black identity. To this end, I examine the ways that they privileged disreputable behavior, characters, genres, and media as the means to negotiate the dynamics of culture, race, and power. (29-30)

Formal negativity involves a text that becomes a negative because one or more of its formal qualities – aesthetics, mise-en-scène, narrative, and so on – can function as an inversion of those typical positive texts. Although this type of negative text may not have a direct corollary in the positive realm, it gestures toward practices and genres either in mainstream media representation or in black media. (32)

In relational or comparative negativity, the positive counterpart directly overshadows the negative text. (32)

In circumstantial negativity, a media text is categorized due to the issues and debates surrounding it, rather than because of a direct relation to its positive counterpart. (33)

[Strategic negativity refers to] media texts that make full use of their location in the metaphorical “gutter” of media that is negativity, taking advantage of their distance from the politics of respectability to explore topics that their positive counterparts do not typically address. […] I argue that, as a genre, reality television escapes critical attention because of its negative status and because the genre itself masks the real labor of the cast and crew as “reality.” (34)

Further, [Eddie] Murphy’s immense and unmistakable influence on the film [Coming to America] runs contrary to auteurist theories that would place John Landis, the director, as the main creative force behind the film. Not simply a challenge to director-centric theories in film studies, this reimagining of Murphy as the visionary behind the film rather than Landis likewise complicates our understanding of how we define a film as “black.” Is it possible for a white director to make a “black” film, where “black” is understood not just by the race of the cast but also by its cast, themes, politics, and popularity with black audiences? Coming to America would suggest so and, therefore, troubles the commonly held assumption that Hollywood-produced films are only capable of promoting films ideologically aligned with whiteness. (38)

For it is one thing to acknowledge the structural and industrial pressures that lock black women into certain mediated tropes, but it is another thing altogether to grapple with the notion that these women actively choose to represent them themselves in these ways. Moreover, when the show creator is herself an African American woman, and the bulk of viewers are also African American women, we must contend with matters of choice and agency on every level, from production to performance to reception. Let me be clear here: I am not suggesting that we ignore the ways that larger social, historical, and industrial factors constrain the kinds of options that these women have available to them. I am, however, proposing that we look at the various ways in which the women associated with these shows negotiate these limited choices within the system of reality television, and how they use the very behaviors labeled as “ratchet” to achieve a degree of autonomy regarding the representational and economic aspects of their lives. (144)

Therefore, while some may view reality television’s conventions as tools to mask its regressive politics, I am interested in exploring how reality television actually lends itself to contemplations of racial (and gender) identity that are specific to its genre conventions. In other words, I argue that, in contrast to critically attended-to genres such as the sitcom or the hour-long drama, reality television involves deeper considerations of race, gender, class, and sexuality precisely because it is perceived as frivolous, fun, and trashy. It is reality television’s distance from respectability, its location in the gutter of television programming and critical regard, which allows it to delve into topics and issues that its respectable counterparts shy away from. (147)