A Long, Long Way

Hollywood's Unfinished Journey from Racism to Reconciliation

Add to my list

by Greg Garrett

Type: Studies
Subject: Countries > United States
Keywords: United States, racism, racial issues
Publishing date: 2020
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Language: English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 256 pages
5 ¾ x 8 ¾ inches (14.5 x 22 cm)

ISBN

978-0-19-090625-2

User Ratings

(0 vote)

Average rating:

0	rating	= We can do without
0	rating	= Good book
0	rating	= Excellent book
0	rating	= Unique / a reference

Your rating: -

Report incorrect or incomplete information

Book Presentation:
From the beginning, American cinema has been both a powerful mythmaker and a social critic. D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation, arguably the first feature film, shows us just how early in its history cinema had established its influence. In 1915 it was the first movie to be screened at the White House. After the screening, President Woodrow Wilson is rumored to have said, "It's like history writ with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all terribly true." Birth of a Nation famously portrayed the Klu Klux Klan in a favorable light, a portrayal that contributed to the modern resurgence of the group and brought racist depictions of African Americans imported from the minstrel show to the silver screen. Such white fantasies of black American life have played out on our movie screens for the last century. In response, filmmakers of color have created nuanced and indelible portraits of race, as in Ava DuVernay's Selma or Barry Jenkin's Moonlight. Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman shows us just how far into our culture Birth of a Nation has reached.

In this powerful new book, Greg Garrett brings his signature brand of theologically motivated cultural criticism to bear on this history. After more than a century of cinema, he argues, movies have altered our cultural perspectives in the same way that religious narratives have. And in fact, religious traditions offer powerful correctives to our cultural narratives. A Long, Long Way incorporates both cinematic and religious truth-telling to the subject of race and reconciliation. In acknowledging the racist history of America's national art form, Garrett offers the possibility of hope for the future.

About the Author:
Greg Garrett is the author of four acclaimed novels, two books of memoir, and twenty nonfiction works on faith, politics, race, culture, and narrative, and is, according to BBC Radio, one of America's essential voices on religion and culture. An award-winning Professor of English at Baylor University, Greg also serves as Theologian in Residence at the American Cathedral in Paris, and is an elected member of the Texas Institute of Letters. He lives in Austin with his wife Jeanie and their family.

Press Reviews:
"With a theologically-focused cinematic critique, Greg Garrett takes a deep dive into the three liminal danger zones of American consciousness and conversation (race, religion and politics) in the narratives, allegories, and ideologies of such culturally powerful films as The Birth of a Nation, Do the Right Thing, Casablanca, and Get Out. Garrett's argument and insights are compelling and a great, innovative contribution to black cinema discourse." -Ed Guerrero, author of Framing Blackness and the British Film Institute study Do the Right Thing.

"In this remarkably poignant, deeply relevant book, Garrett handles his subject-the century-long tortured history of race in American motion pictures, from Birth of a Nation to Get Out--with an unusual degree of grace and sensitivity, yet also with probing scholarly rigor. He shies away from the easy answers, offering in their place an account that is at once refreshingly honest, multi-dimensional, and full of nuance." Noah Isenberg, author of We'll Always Have Casablanca: The Life, Legend, and Afterlife of Hollywood's Most Beloved Movie

See the publisher website: Oxford University Press

> On a related topic: