Documenting the Erasure of the Black Body from the City: Race and Revitalization in Detroit
Post on 29-Mar-2023
0 Views
Preview:
Transcript
1
Documenting the Erasure of the Black Body from the City: Race and Revitalization in Detroit
Craig Hennigan
Wayne State University
2
ABSTRACT: There is a large effort being undertaken to revitalize postindustrial rust belt cities.
Detroit, Michigan has had an influx of filmmakers documenting that effort to increase business
and economic opportunities. With new opportunities comes questions of who will win a
contest over spaces and gain the right to the city. Often, marginalized races are shut out of
While racial tropes and memes have been studied in many forms of fictional narrative films,
there is less work done in the documentary genre. Finding racial “semes” in the film Detroit
Lives, we see that the documentary style can be used to shut the black body out of discourses of
urban revitalization. Because documentary implies truth-telling and recording of history, the
style is especially problematic when depicting the black body in ways that omit them from the
possession of the city spaces in which they dwell.
In 2010, filmmaking in Michigan was booming. Film incentives given by the state of
Michigan paid for up to 42% of the production films produced in the state (Caranicas &
Abrams, 2013). One of the results of such a generous film incentive program was a boom in
documentary films focusing on the city of Detroit. One of those films, entitled Detroit Lives
was seen as a counter-narrative to films that were portraying Detroit as a city in a state of
collapsing death throes. Detroit Lives was released in 2010, just after a Dateline NBC special
hosted by Detroit-born Chris Hansen angered many Detroit residents with its defeatist portrayal
blaming the economic collapse of Detroit on Detroiters (Davis, 2010; Shea, 2010). This anger
acted as a rhetorical exigency for a different depiction of Detroit.
When Detroit Lives was released, the reception was far warmer than the Dateline NBC
special. It was called “honest” and a more “fair and accurate” depiction of what was going on
in Detroit (Wojdyla, 2010). This essay examines the film Detroit Lives and how it positions
black bodies in relation to urban revitalization efforts in Detroit. Using three indicators of
3
racial memes from James Snead’s White Screens, Black Images: Hollywood from the Dark Side
(1994), this essay analyzes the use of marking, mythification, and omission to find where black
citizens of Detroit are positioned by the filmmakers. Using Snead’s analysis as a method to
examine the film, I argue that the black body of Detroit’s revitalization are locked in the
periphery of Detroit’s revitalization narrative. This narrative is particularly problematic
because the White filmmakers of the documentary portray the positive effects of revitalization
while erasing black bodies from the urban narrative. Critical evaluation is especially important
for Detroit Lives because its reception in mainstream media as a more accurate depiction of
Detroit in opposition to the Dateline NBC report. If Detroit Lives is considered truth-telling
while constructing problematic positions for black bodies in urban revitalization then there is a
need for criticism that uncovers and mitigates the effects of racial tropes.
Right to the City
When discussing any issues regarding Detroit, it is important to discuss the racial
implications of the narratives being produced. Historically, Detroit has been a flashpoint for
racial tension, erupting on three separate occasions with deadly race riots throughout the city’s
existence. However, urban revitalization generally considered a spatial issue first and a racial
issue never. Detroit provides a setting where racial and spatial intersections are on prominent
display. In critical geography and urbanist circles, the term “right to the city” is often
considered a resistance to the dominance of global economics over the creation of the space of
cities. As rhetorical scholars, unpacking the meaning of the right to the city is important to
future usage of the phrase and its potential for movement-building.
While critical geographers tout the right to the city as a popular, progressive concept
that can be used to resist economic restructuring of cities due to globalization, the concept has
4
differing definitions (Plyushteva, 2009). The phrase “right to the city” was first coined by
Henri Lefebvre in a title essay, “Le Droit à la Ville” (Lefebvre, 1996). There is general
agreement that Lefebvre was proposing a shift in the production of urban spaces to serve
inhabitants of said spaces, particularly the disenfranchised. How that goal is realized, however,
differs among scholars.
Geographers David Harvey, Mark Purcell and planning scholar Peter Marcuse each
look at the right to the city in differing ways (Harvey, 2012; Marcuse, 2009; Plyushteva, 2009;
Purcell, 2002). Harvey looks at the right to the city as a rallying cry to begin revolutionary
changes in how city spaces are produced. The right to the city is a “political class-based
demand” (Harvey, 2012, p. 136) that can unite the heterogeneous groups of the city into an
organizing force. For Harvey, such a force is capable of resisting and upending neoliberal
economic models that serve to create disenfranchised populations within cities.
Purcell defines the right to the city as a radically democratic politics. The right to the
city gives inhabitants of urban spaces a proverbial seat at the table for all decisions that affect
the city in which they reside. A decision made in Chicago that may affect Detroit would
require the input and permission of Detroiters to proceed under Purcell’s interpretation. Purcell
recognizes this as limiting, but his view of the right to the city is only a starting point for more
democratic politics (Plyushteva, 2009; Purcell, 2002). Although Purcell does mention that a
new urban politics needs to better address questions of racism, sexism, homophobia, and other
ills considered more social than economic, there is little articulation of what a right to a city of
social equality might look like. Purcell claims that too often scholars aim to reduce differing
agendas of disparate groups in an urban space as anti-capitalist as a universal goal.(Marcuse,
2009; Purcell, 2002) There is a research gap in the right to the city scholarship to further
5
theorize how the racial city is configured. Analysis of racialized discourse intersecting with
neoliberal logics of space a logical step in reading.
Whiteness and Racial Neoliberalism
Whiteness and racial neoliberalism are two key elements that help us study race today.
Whiteness is a starting point to establish what it is that is being upheld through particular
discourses. Racial neoliberalism describes the evolution of whiteness and how it operates in
late capitalist society. Knowledge of terminology relevant to the economics and conditions of
today are key to understanding how race is constructed socially while having real material
impacts on people.
Thomas Nakayama and Robert Krizek describe whiteness as a set of discursive
strategies (Nakayama & Krizek, 1995). Through the use of these strategies, a discursive
formation is created. Discursive formations can have embedded contradictions, such as
whiteness being both of great importance while functionally invisible at the same time.
Nakayama and Krizek deconstruct whiteness as a center to which the Other compares itself to,
and instead theorize whiteness itself. Discursive strategies identifying whiteness arise when
white people are asked about what being white means. The importance of these strategies and
the discursive formations that are created, is the material affect it has on culture at large.
It would be simple to just change the discursive strategies in order to break down
whiteness if it were just a habit to overcome. George Lipsitz (1998) explains, however, that
these strategies are a part of an investment in the material gains that whiteness discourses
supply to white people. The investment has influence on political and legislative agendas
through the history of the United States. Federal Housing Administration loans in the 1940-
6
50s, for instance, encouraged segregation and the building out of suburbs in American cities,
and Detroit was hit particularly hard by this practice (Sugrue, 2005).
As times and economies change, the deployment of the possessive investment in
whiteness also changes. While FHA loans in the past have been shown in court to carry an
overt racist component through practices like “redlining,” today the influence of whiteness on
governmental institutions is far more covert. David Theo Goldberg (2009) describes the
present incarnation of institutionalized racism as racial neoliberalism. Each broad anti-racism
movement (e.g., abolition, civil rights) is met with pushback from a counter group that attempts
to silence conversations about the historical disadvantages of race by making the mention of race
or racialization an inappropriate topic. Antiracialism suggests “getting over, moving on, wiping
away the terms of reference, at best (or worst) a commercial memorializing,”(Goldberg, 2009, p.
21). In other words, the mention of race is shunned as racist and a post-racial lens is considered
necessary for effective governance. The de-linkages of race to policy is based in neoliberal
financial logics that are (color)blind yet always seems to implicitly disadvantage non-white
people without formally naming that as an intent of the policy. Much like color-blind policies
often have racial results, the neolibralization of racism cuts off antiracist possibilities under the
guise of acting according to market forces or personalized preferences. Rather than continue the
antiracist objectives of Affirmative Action, for instance, the antiracial turn declares that group
preferences are undesirable because of the racial discourse embedded. Rather than utilize race
as a factor in job recruitment or college admissions, the market calculation of “most qualified
applicant” supplants the goal of remedying institutional discrimination. Mass media reinforces
these neoliberal logics that protect the investment in whiteness when there are omissions of
7
discussions on racial implications of policy because it is seen as derailing the goal of moving
forward beyond race.
Black Bodies in Mass Media and Film
Representations of black people in mass media have long reinforced stereotypes that
have lingered for decades. The earliest depictions of black people in film (re)produced some of
the most common tropes about black people at the time. For example, Birth of a Nation used
multiple tropes such as the “mammy,” the “tragic mulatto,” the “brutal black buck” and more
(Bogle, 1997). The stereotypes of black characters in early films serve to entertain cinemagoers
by placing the black body at a lower social location that of the white body; whether through
status, intelligence, brutality, or buffoonery. As the films’ messages enter into the public
imaginary, audiences transfer these tropes onto black bodies outside the film. This is not to
exclude non-whites from this type of interpellation, because anybody may find gain in the
possessive investment in whiteness (Lipsitz, 1998).
Stereotypes in Hollywood pictures have been an object of study for a long time. There is
no question that cinema helps to define and reflect the culture of a nation. Scholarship has been
done in television media as well, with many of the same stereotypes of the cinema transferring over
to the small screen (Entman & Rojecki, 2000). Lipsitz addresses race problems as a problem not
of blacks, but rather of whiteness which creates social norms that cause racism (Lipsitz, 1998). In
many ways, those norms are formed through images portrayed in media (Entman & Rojecki,
2000). Even genres that seem more innocuous such as television news still portray a firm racial
bias through the amount of black people speaking and the positions they speak from (Entman &
Rojecki, 2000).
8
The propensity for documentaries to create real world action makes it unique. Even
though other forms of mass media certainly influence society, documentary is similar to news
media in that it has a truth-telling function that other genres of film typically do not. The genre
not only reports factual occurrences, but can access the dramatic tools of storytelling with
emotional and personal accounts of true events when news media often does not have the time
or space to do so. When executed well, a series like the Television Race Initiative that ran on
the Public Broadcasting System in 1998 can meet their goal of identifying “documentaries and
works in progress with the power to open up new ways of thinking about race or other
neglected, critical and contentious issues, and to find ways of transforming raw individual
responses into some group sensibility or conversation,”(Schneider, 2001, p. 55).
Documentary has shown it is able to respond to prevailing discourses in Hollywood
regarding race and class. One example is that of the film Antanarjuat: The Fast Runner which
was created and wholly produced by Inuit people. The film argues against primitivist tropes
often seen in depictions of indigenous peoples (Bessire, 2003). These tropes are seen in the old
film about Inuit life called Nanook of the North. In Nanook, title character Nanook looks
quizzically at technology such as a gramophone amazed at the technology of the white man. A
staged scene, but portrays the Inuit as a primitive person. Although it could be argued that the
use of a media that is created under the umbrella of whiteness can only serve to entrench
whiteness, there is little alternative if people who are racially marginalized want to appropriate
media messages (Ginsburg, 2002). Although documentary certainly contains an emancipatory
power in its association with truth, it can equally codify misconceptions.
Although many have observed how fictive representations of Black people reinforce
whiteness, (Kellner, 1995; Shohat & Stam, 2003; Wilderson, 2010) little work has been done
9
examining race critically in documentary films. The earliest documentaries were created by the
Lumière brothers in the early part of the 20th century. Their films were short, sometimes under
a minute, and depicted mundane events. Early filmmakers did not make arguments as later
documentaries would, rather the films were considered representations of the real world. As a
result, meaning was constructed between the filmmaker and the audience simply through visual
material, without any outside influence of narration or scripts (Vaughan, 1999).
Contemporary documentarians often do make an argument and present a narrative to
support positions on a wide range of social and political issues. Documentaries are
categorically labeled as a work of non-fiction, but that does not necessarily make them fact.
Fiction and non-fiction become difficult to discern in today’s version of documentaries because
the way a filmmaker portrays a subject is always susceptible to their personal biases and
agendas (Renov, 1993). The perception of the documentary film though, is that it displays
unfiltered reality. Currently, theorists look at documentaries through a poststructural lens
which takes into account that truth is subjective and that those behind the camera are restricted
by language (Minh-ha, 1993). As the genre has evolved, more filmmakers use a documentary
style in order to influence audiences toward a particular ideology or politics (Benson & Snee,
2008).
So when examining documentaries, it is important to acknowledge that while
viewers may know that the filmmakers are presenting a subjective position of an issue, their
first instinct will be to treat the genre as truth-telling. This becomes significant when
representing race through documentary. The impact that subtleties of representation have in
documentary are going to be multiplied because of the implication that documentaries are a
recording of what is, instead of what the filmmaker is selectively portraying.
10
Mythification, Marking, and Omission
In order to observe and analyze how race is being portrayed in Detroit Lives, I look to
James Snead’s book, White Screens, Black Images: Hollywood from the Dark Side (1994). In
Snead’s work, the opening essay mentions “semes” or small units of meaning. Semes have an
etymological origin in rhetoric, as semes are the smallest unit of meaning in semantics. For
Snead, he sees film as also having semes to be analyzed. Semes combine with other semes
and eventually form memes. Memes are ways that culture can be transmitted among subjects.
These memes help to form dominant narratives about culture, race, gender, and other identity
markers within society. Rather than looking at the entirety of a documentary argument, the
unpacking of tropes into smaller units like memes and semes makes is easier to take note of
evidence that points toward a racially motivated ideology in a documentary film. Neoliberal
forms of racism are not overtly obvious, so a preponderance of smaller racialized semes can
help uncover power relations in film.
The three devices Snead isolates in film portrayals of the black body which help to form
semes are mythification, marking, and omission. Marking is a way that the black body is
represented as the Other to the dominant white body. This portrayal is commonly
accomplished through stereotypes represented via memes in film. For example, early 19th
century filmmakers would literally darken the skin of black bodies in earlier films with
shoeshine or polish (i.e, blackface), but today marking is more commonly done by showing
contrasting binaries, like dark v. light, dynamic v. stasis, or low class v. bourgeois (Snead,
1994). Omission is rather self-explanatory, in that the black body is literally omitted from the
narrative. Omission is a very important trait as mediated communication is not just what the
viewer sees on the screen; rather omission is “the totality of presences and absences that
11
constitutes the mediated communication,”(Entman & Rojecki, 2000, p. 5). Mythification is a
semiotic tool where the interrelationship between two bodies create a semiotic cue to the
viewer that will accept the station of each body. Snead describes the simultaneity of the
degraded other and glorified hero as essential to mythification. That simultaneous image
quickly works to create larger models of meaning that open and foreclose avenues of possible
action for the white body in authority and the black body debased, respectively.
Snead makes the claim that early filmmakers often inserted stereotypes and tropes in
their films that advanced an ideology (Snead, 1994). Films like Birth of a Nation advance
representations of blacks that are antagonistic in the face of the protagonistic Ku Klux Klan. In
the silent era of film there may have been intent among the filmmakers to place blacks in a
lower position in their portrayals of the world. Today the intent is more difficult to determine.
It is more likely today that whiteness is so entrenched into the white mindset that the resulting
racial tropes seen in films are from being accustomed to the tropes, rather than attempting to
extend them intentionally. This is why whiteness is more difficult for whites to unpack,
because the intent is not as clear as the days of the early 20th century (Lipsitz, 1998).
Analysis of Detroit Lives
A number of new documentaries about the city of Detroit have been produced in the past
few years (Dwyer, 2012). Much of the focus is on the postindustrial ruins that have become a
metonym for the city (Leary, 2011). A contradictory meme that is also often featured in these
documentaries is an element of boosterism (or cheerleading) for Detroit’s postindustrial
opportunities. The prevailing narrative for Detroit is a deindustrialized wasteland with little to no
hope, but new films are being released that portray the city as a potential site for growth and
12
change. This essay problematizes the representations of the black body in Detroit Lives, the first
of a recent boom of documentaries about Detroit.
Palladium Boots is a shoe and boot manufacturing company that created a short
documentary film entitled Detroit Lives in 2010 (Mavros, 2010). It features star of MTV’s
Jackass, Johnny Knoxville, as a host that comes to Detroit to “see what else is going on”
outside of the negative national news stories. Applying Snead’s three codings as apparatus to
analyze black bodies, the film Detroit Lives creates a narrative of revitalization in Detroit that
is controlled by the will of the white body as a master of the direction of the city.
Beginning with the use of marking in the film, through the images described below, the
black body is marked through multiple ways in Detroit Lives. In the opening of the film, there is
a montage of news reports about Detroit, whether they are real or fabricated for the film is
unclear. It is in this montage of negative stories the viewer sees the largest amount of black
bodies, and the images show clear signs of the marking that Snead discusses. The first image
shows a black person on a park bench in an overgrown lot and demonstrates the example of the
stasis that the black body exhibits which is soon contrasted after the opening montage with the
white body of Johnny Knoxville cruising through Detroit in a gold Cadillac. The face of the
black person on the bench looks down toward the ground. The gold Cadillac, by contrast, is a
quintessential Detroit automobile, and symbolic of the affluent white body able to have mobility
in a city devastated by economic disaster.
Next, the image of the working class black body that has to sell raccoon meat to survive
in the post-apocalyptic scene of Detroit as told by the filmmakers. There is a blatantly obvious
use of a trope where the black man stands next to a sign saying “Fresh Coons,” but the more
subtle markings are also significant. Again, the first white body that will be seen after this is
13
the affluent Knoxville riding in a status symbol that the viewer can now attribute to the white
body. This sets up the affluent/poor dichotomy where the hopeless black person has no
available avenue to leave their class. Additionally, it places the black body in what Snead calls
a “position of obscurity or dependence,”(Snead, 1994). Blackness in this cut not only is in a
position of obscurity, but also labels itself with a racial epithet in an unfortunate double
entendre.
Last, a very sharp image that represents how marking can actually cause the black body to
become even darker as a man sits in a very dark window of what looks to be an abandoned
building. The blackness of the dark room surround the black body, allowing the skin of the body
to blend into that background. The shot from the outside of the building during the day peering
into the room creates a large contrast from the bright outside to the dark inside. These markings
are not the same as in film eras long past where they were needed to truly distinguish black from
white characters to resolve any conflicts or confusion in the white mind but they still exist in
the documentary in question and serve to make the black “more black” and contrast with the
white body.
Mythification in film is more than just stereotyping, but a method of encoding messages
that serve to do ideological work (Hall, 1997). In the case of Detroit Lives, the choices of whom
to interview in the film and how they are portrayed is of vital importance. Knoxville becomes a
myth himself cruising the city in his gold Cadillac in direct contrast to the groups of blacks
hanging out in the streets. He is the dominant “I” to the black bodied Other that is portrayed
throughout the first 60 seconds of the film. A portion of the film frames three young black
males grouped on a sidewalk, their back turned to the camera and the viewer is left to wonder
what they are doing. The refusal to show faces indicates they may not want to show their
14
identity, or they are hiding something, encouraging the viewer to believe the males are engaging
in possibly antisocial or illegal activity. During this scene the narration labels them further
stating how “you see a lot of bad stuff in Detroit,” (Mavros, 2010). Where the black portrayal is
despair and criminality, Knoxville is the happy optimistic dominant figure. Riding in the car
with Knoxville becomes a way for the film to create myth of other interviewees. Only white
bodies can ride in the Knoxville chariot through the streets of Detroit, as not a single black body
is portrayed inside. The white body can have the mobility and status of being chauffeured in the
golden status symbol, while black bodies are relegated to sidewalks, back turned, anonymous
and silenced.
The people who hold the key to the future of Detroit in this film are the white
entrepreneurs. The only time a person is asked where they would like to see the future of Detroit
to be it is asked to Phil Cooley, white entrepreneur, restaurateur, and to many residents a gentrifier
(“It’s time for a new narrative on Detroit” 2010). He is the one who rides in the Knoxville
Cadillac and holds the key to the future of Detroit, rather than the marginalized populations that
were here before him. Cooley mentions how he intends to change the landscape of his
neighborhood although these changes proposed have been a part of making the Detroit
neighborhood of Corktown a hip place with rising values of property. He has been dubbed the
“Prince of Corktown” or the “de facto spokesman” of the revitalization of Detroit, and Detroit
Lives continues to propagate that myth (Ryzik, 2010).
Artistic and Musical Minstrels
The prevalence of artists, and mainly musical artists, in the black body continues a long
tradition of showing blacks in the minstrel form. Although these entertainers are not the same as
the old minstrel that would bear the markings of blackface, it is a recreation of the same trope
15
without the makeup. The entertainers of the film still primarily find success in their field from
entertaining white audiences, from Martha Reeves to electronic musician Carl Craig. The
connection is clearly similar to what Tommy Lott calls a “neo-minstrelry” (Lott, 1997). Neo-
minstrelry is described, however, as making a critique of the entertainment industry. Detroit
Lives brings neither a critique of the entertainment industry or the city revitalization programs,
rather just the white acknowledgement of black success through the entertainment of whites
with capital.
The minstrel trope continues through other sections of the film as well. Knoxville and hip
hop artist Black Milk visit the home of Berry Gordy, the founder of the Motown record label.
There is significance in that the new rap artist is being linked back to the black entertainers of the
past. The linkage marks the hip hop artist as the past of Detroit, rather than the future. The past
is where the causes of city collapse occurred. White entrepreneurs represent the future, while
black entertainers, even new styled and young black entertainers, are still marked with Detroit’s
past. During the scene visiting Berry Gordy’s home there are flashes on the screen of multiple
black entertainers, imprinting the images of the black image from the past. Black Milk himself
even speaks of the entertainers who had sat at the piano he was sitting at, “Smokey [Robinson],
and I wonder if Stevie [Wonder] touched this piano too, and now Black Milk touched this piano
too.” Using the past the film embeds the black body into regulated places where success can be
gained by them. With that past is an implied causality that Detroit’s economic turmoil is due in
part to the policies and residents of the city in the past. Those that were not of Detroit in the past
could not be responsible for its devastation. While initially this might make sense, urban
historian Thomas Sugrue has pointed out that the troubles of Detroit are multi-faceted and have
many causes from within and outside the city. From racial tension, ill-fated urban renewal
16
policies, state government, local leadership, to mobility of capital and white flight, there were
many problems of the city creating a perfect storm of economic unrest leading to the conditions
of today (Sugrue, 2005).
Knoxville speaks to other people who are involved in the revitalization and
redevelopment of Detroit. Those that are interviewed are considered the bright spots of an
otherwise negative postindustrial image. It is noticeable that what urbanist and author of The
Rise of the Creative Class Richard Florida would consider the desirable young creative
entrepreneurial class are all young white people in this film (Florida, 2003). Every black voice
but one is a type of artist, mainly musical artists from Motown, hip hop, or electronic music and
they are labeled as such although some have accomplished much more outside of music.
Martha Reeves, for example, is a former Detroit city councilperson from 2005-2009, but hasn’t
released a new song since 1990 (“Martha Reeves Discography at Discogs,” n.d.). Reeves
certainly could have been portrayed as an active agent in the revitalization of Detroit, but
instead Detroit Lives keeps her as a Motown star. This makes her a cultural icon, but one from
the past rather than one in the present.
Although almost every business entrepreneur in this film has been young and white, one
is not. When there is a single black subject that is comparable in business stature to all of the
white subjects of the film that represent the future of Detroit, it is important to pay close attention
to the representation they are given in the film.
The Case of D’Mongo’s
Larry Mongo, owner of D’Mongo’s café, identifies himself as a businessman in Detroit
for the past 35 years. His position is outside of the young creative that are represented in the
film as doing the work of revitalization of the city. He is the old guard who closed the doors to
17
his café for years as Detroit depopulated. Mongo tells the story of how too many murders by his
place of business caused him to close in the early 1990’s. More recently, Mongo tells the story
of how the neighborhood had gone through changes in both demographic and attitude. He
says, “Five years ago [if] I saw white girls running down the street… everybody would call 911
like ‘who’s chasin’ ‘em?’And [then] I realized they were jogging. And I said ‘Am I in Detroit?’
The complexion of the area was changing, and the influx of white people changed the
definition of what it meant to be in Detroit to the point that Mongo actually questioned the
space he resided.
As new white clientele that moved into downtown Detroit, they pleaded for Mongo to
open his café again. D’Mongo asks them for a date to open, and they tell him June 24th. That
day fell two days after a local Critical Mass bicycle ride, and to his surprise two hundred white
people on bicycles were at his door to confirm the re-opening of Café D’Mongos. The re-
opening was successful due to the influx of white customers.
In this story, the white holder of capital tells the black businessman to open his business and
even goes so far as to specify the day. Mongo is dependent on the white body for patronage and his
portrayal is not that of an actor in the revitalization story; rather he is a beneficiary of the white
renewal of downtown Detroit. The images that follow depicting a busy night at the café show a
vibrant clientele and not a single black body. Even the employees and musician playing blues
music is white as a soundtrack from a black blues song is played. The business success of the black
citizen is wholly dependent upon white citizens allowing that success to happen.
This is notable because Mongo would be a part of the private upper business class that
Harvey indicates are in control of the direction of the city. In the case of Detroit Lives, however,
the skin color of the clientele Mongo serves plays a greater role in his success or failure than his
18
class position. Although Mongo has more class privilege than most residents of the city, the
dependence on whites to patronize, work at, and even entertain is telling when determining who
really has a right to the city. The position of power that Mongo carries as the business owner is
a paper tiger. The right to the city and urban citizenship is only afforded to Mongo with the
permission of the white body.
To conclude the close reading, Snead’s film device of omission will be addressed in
Detroit Lives. In a later section of the movie two band members, one white and one of Asian
descent, drive through the Heidelberg Project. Heidelberg is a socially aware art project
constructed and reconstructed often by black artist Tyree Guyton. Guyton holds an honorary
doctoral degree from the College of Creative Studies for the work he performs at Heidelberg.
He began his art project as a way to beautify the blighted homes that were in his neighborhood.
His art addresses class disparities in Detroit and can be very political in nature. Rather than
interview Guyton or talk about the meanings behind the art of the project, Knoxville and the
band members drive through the blocks of public art snapping photos and staring in wonder.
Guyton and his point of view are omitted.
Another glaring omission is in a figurative sense of the population that remains in
Detroit. Carl Craig states Detroit is a “blank canvas for developing business, for developing
anything you can think of.” In the closing, famous punk band MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer
says, “It’s the perfect opportunity for the American Dream to be realized that something can
come out of nothing. That’s what artists have always done, created something out of nothing.”
Detroit, with the 711,000 people that remained, is relegated to being nothing. They are omitted
from the revitalization discourse altogether. The filmmakers encourage people to flock to
19
Detroit to create their something from nothing, despite the something or some people that do
exist in the city.
These omissions amount to what Goldberg calls “Racisms without racism,” not to be
confused with Eduoardo Bonilla-Silva’s Racism without Racists (Bonilla-Silva, 2010; Goldberg,
2009, p. 360). Under a realm of neoliberal racism the invoking of race becomes racist, while
silence is acceptable. Race then disappears from the public eye, creating a situation where the
invocation of race is stigmatized, that leaves no avenues to remedy structural institutions that
damage people of color. The “blank canvas” is waiting for the white brush to wash over and create
a new Detroit. A Detroit where the historical and current racial struggles can be painted over and
ignored in exchange for an entrepreneurial renewal free of interference from government,
population, or other obstacles.
Implications
The use of the three devices in Snead’s method of analyzing films shows that depictions
of the black body still entrench power in a dominant narrative. Documentary filmmaking with
a feel of truth-telling makes the logics uncovered by these devices particularly problematic. In
the case of Detroit Lives as an example of boosterism documentaries regarding urban areas,
there is an issue surrounding ownership of revitalization efforts. The idea of the right to the
city has to be able to enfranchise not just the disadvantaged class, but the racially marginalized
as well. Without an avenue for enfranchisement, even when class mobility is achieved racially
marginalized people will still be on the outside of the power structure much like Mongo.
Although the ideological system of whiteness is one that is global, this research is
focusing on the local implications of that system. Control over contested spaces are not solely
enacted through the State, but also through our discourse. Mass media has a large impact on
20
how we frame ownership over spaces, and filmmaking has a long history in formulating
popular opinion of citizens. The global system of whiteness is communicated through media
and filtered down through people affecting localized systems of space.
Black bodies are not included in media depictions of revitalization. Rather than a
depiction of marginalized communities being a part of an effort to create a better situation in
postindustrial urban areas, instead the task of revitalization is assigned to the white body. The
black body becomes a victim that waits for redemption and salvation from the young white
entrepreneur that enters the city in order to “save” it. The entrepreneur that is responsible for
rebuilding the city has to be white, because prevailing memes only allow blacks to entertain
or serve the white citizen in the city.
In the event that postindustrial cities do make an economic and social return to the
successes of the past, the overarching narrative gives whites ownership of the comeback. A
strategy to bring power through an invocation of the right to the city must address both
economic as well as racial strategies of marginalization. Detroit Lives constructs Detroit in a
way that is exclusive to a large portion of the citizens of the city.
Future Directions
In examining Detroit Lives it is not surprising to find racial imagery in documentary that is
common with previous forms of media. It is important to continue examining how documentary
films about spaces exert power over people dwelling in those spaces. One direction would be to
focus more on the messages regarding postindustrial cities. As the economic landscape changes
so will the communication forms coming from these cities. The communication not only from the
city, but descriptions of the cities from outside the space will help to form new social
constructions of what the meaning of these spaces are. Looking from a spatial analysis lens, it
21
could be said that much of the new media coming from Detroit are amounting to Detroit-
sploitation films, along the lines of the Blaxpoitation films of the seventies.
Analysis of further documentaries about cities should also be performed on a macro
level to confirm whether the stereotypes are being used in most of other films or if some show
signs to resist the order of whiteness. Resistance in media to dominant narratives of place
would be a useful endeavor to examine in order to further liberation for the people that reside in
affected places.
The most important note, however, it to continue criticism. Goldberg and others will
inform us that race itself, and all of the cultural baggage associated with it, is created through
discourse (Goldberg, 1993). The mass media can set the agenda of how we think of race.
Through criticism there must be possibilities to change dominant discourses in an attempt to
being life to the socially dead. Without those possibilities, the alternative of stasis in the face of
continuing gratuitous violence to the black body is untenable for communication scholarship.
22
References
Benson, T. W., & Snee, B. J. (2008). New political documentary: Rhetoric, propaganda, and
the civic prospect. In T. W. Benson & B. J. Snee (Eds.), The rhetoric of the new
political documentary. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Bessire, L. (2003). Talking back to primitivism: Divided audience, collective desires.
American Anthropologist, 105(4), 832–838.
Bogle, D. (1997). Black beginnings: From Uncle Tom’s Cabin to The Birth of a Nation. In V.
Smith (Ed.), Representing Blackness: Issues in Film and Video (pp. 13–24). New
Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.
Bonilla-Silva, E. (2010). Racism without racists: color-blind racism and the persistence of
racial inequality in the United States (3rd ed.). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield
Publishers.
Caranicas, P., & Abrams, R. (2013, August 26). Out-of-state tax incentives constantly
changing, challenge Hollywood. Retrieved July 31, 2014, from http://variety.com
Davis, B. (2010, April 18). Detroit Weekend: Inspiration, Anger, & Action - Detroit Moxie -.
Retrieved July 31, 2014, from http://www.detroitmoxie.com
Dwyer, D. (2012, February 2). A DIY Kit For Making A Detroit Documentary | Changing
Gears. Retrieved April 10, 2012, from http://www.changinggears.info
Entman, R. M., & Rojecki, A. (2000). The black image in the white mind : media and race in
America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Florida, R. (2003). Cities and the creative class. City and Community, 2(1), 3–20.
23
Ginsburg, F. D. (2002). Screen memories: Resignifying the traditional in indigenous media. In
F. D. Ginsburg, L. Abu-Lughod, & B. Larkin (Eds.), Media worlds : anthropology on
new terrain. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Goldberg, D. T. (1993). Racist culture: philosophy and the politics of meaning. Oxford
[England] ; Cambridge, Mass: Blackwell.
Goldberg, D. T. (2009). The threat of race: reflections on racial neoliberalism. Malden, MA:
Wiley-Blackwell.
Hall, S. (1997). What is this “black” in black popular culture? In V. Smith (Ed.), Representing
Blackness : issues in film and video. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.
Harvey, D. (2012). Rebel cities: From the right to the city to the urban revolution. London:
Verso.
It’s time for a new narrative on Detroit. « spacematters. (2010, December 14). [Blog].
Retrieved April 20, 2012, from http://fieldstofords.wordpress.com/2010/12/14/its-time-
for-a-new-narrative-on-detroit/
Kellner, D. (1995). Media culture: cultural studies, identity, and politics between the modern
and the postmodern. London ; New York: Routledge.
Leary, J. P. (2011, January). Detroitism. Retrieved February 9, 2012, from
http://www.guernicamag.com/features/2281/leary_1_15_11/
Lefebvre, H. (1996). Writings on cities. Cambridge, Mass, USA: Blackwell Publishers.
Lipsitz, G. (1998). The possessive investment in whiteness : how white people profit from
identity politics. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Lott, T. L. (1997). A no-theory theory of black cinema. In Representing Blackness: Issues in
Film and Video (pp. 83–96). New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.
24
Marcuse, P. (2009). From critical urban theory to the right to the city. City, 13(2-3), 185–197.
Martha Reeves Discography at Discogs. (n.d.). Retrieved April 18, 2012, from
http://www.discogs.com
Mavros, T. (2010). Detroit Lives. Documentary, Palladium Boots. Retrieved from
http://www.palladiumboots.com/video/detroit-lives#part1
Minh-ha, T. (1993). The totalizing quest of meaning. In M. Renov (Ed.), Theorizing
Documentary. New York: Routledge.
Nakayama, T. K., & Krizek, R. L. (1995). Whiteness: A strategic rhetoric. Quarterly Journal of
Speech, 81(3), 291–309.
Plyushteva, A. (2009). The right to the city and struggles over urban citizenship: Exploring the
links. Amsterdam Social Science, 1(3), 81–97.
Purcell, M. (2002). Excavating Lefebvre: The right to the city and its urban politics of the
inhabitant. GeoJournal, 58, 99–102.
Renov, M. (1993). Theorizing documentary. New York: Routledge.
Ryzik, M. (2010, October 19). Detroit’s renewal, slow-cooked. New York Times.
Schneider, E. (2001). Using documentaries to move people to action. Nieman Reports, 55(3),
55–56.
Shea, D. (2010, June 23). NBC’s “Dateline” Angers Detroit’s Black Residents. Retrieved July
31, 2014, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com
Shohat, E., & Stam, R. (Eds.). (2003). Multiculturalism, postcoloniality, and transnational
media. New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press.
Snead, J. A. (1994). White screens, black images : Hollywood from the dark side. (C. MacCabe
& C. West, Eds.). New York: Routledge.
25
Sugrue, T. J. (2005). The origins of the urban crisis : race and inequality in postwar Detroit :
with a new preface by the author. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Vaughan, D. (1999). For documentary twelve essays. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Wilderson, F. B. (2010). Red, white & black: cinema and the structure of U.S. antagonisms.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Wojdyla, B. (2010, September 9). Detroit Lives: Johnny Knoxville’s Honest Portrait Of The
Motor City. Retrieved July 31, 2014, from http://jalopnik.com
top related