The Problem of the Color[blind]: Racial Transgression and the Politics of Black Performance

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The Problem of the Color[blind]: Racial Transgression and the Politics of Black Performance

by Brandi Wilkins Catanese

University of Michigan Press, 2011

ISBNs

Cloth: 978-0-472-07126-5

Paper: 978-0-472-05126-7

eISBN: 978-0-472-90688-8 (OA)

eISBN: 978-0-472-02792-7 (standard)

About the Book

Are we a multicultural nation, or a colorblind one? The Problem of the Color[blind] examines this vexed question in American culture by focusing on black performance in theater, film, and television. The practice of colorblind casting---choosing actors without regard to race---assumes a performing body that is somehow race neutral. But where, exactly, is race neutrality located---in the eyes of the spectator, in the body of the performer, in the medium of the performance? In analyzing and theorizing such questions, Brandi Wilkins Catanese explores a range of engaging and provocative subjects, including the infamous debate between playwright August Wilson and drama critic Robert Brustein, the film career of Denzel Washington, Suzan-Lori Parks's play Venus, the phenomenon of postblackness (as represented in the Studio Museum in Harlem's "Freestyle" exhibition), the performer Ice Cube's transformation from icon of gangsta rap to family movie star, and the controversial reality television series Black. White. Concluding that ideologies of transcendence are ahistorical and therefore unenforceable, Catanese advances the concept of racial transgression---a process of acknowledging rather than ignoring the racialized histories of performance---as her chapters move between readings of dramatic texts, films, popular culture, and debates in critical race theory and the culture wars.

About the Author

Brandi Wilkins Catanese is Associate Professor of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies and African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

Reviews

"Beautifully written and cogently argued, Racial Transgressions addresses one of the most persistent socio-political questions in contemporary culture: 'are we a multicultural nation, or a colorblind one?' A tremendously illuminating study that promises to break new ground in the fields of theater and performance studies, African American Studies, feminist theory, cultural studies, and film and television studies."

— Daphne Brooks

Runner-Up: American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) 2012 Errol Hill Award

— ASTR Errol Hill Award

The Problem of the Color[blind] is a timely, well-written book that will appeal to students and scholars of African American theatre and performance studies, as well as those who are interested in critical race theory.

— Theatre Journal

Green does more than merely enable the reader to understand the development and conventions of a popular literary genre. Rather, he employs that genre as a lens through which to view the larger processes by which authors, printers, and political elites came to understand print's potential to reify or undermine...

— Sixteenth Century Journal

"The majesty of Catanese's book anchors itself in her shift away from the history and mechanics of nontraditional casting and in her critical engagement with the concept of colorblindness."

— Theatre History Studies