Why Red Face is Wrong – The Lone Ranger’s Oscar Nomination
Press Play to Listen to the Podcast Now I doubt that I need to explain to most people why red face, the practice of casting non-Native American actors to play Native American roles, is a deeply problematic one. At least I thought that was the case until the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences ...
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Inside Charlie Chaplin’s The Immigrant
Download Video | Download from iTunes In the final part of the 2013-2014 film festival we explore Charlie Chaplin's seminal 1917 film, The Immigrant. When Chaplin was exiled from the United States in the 1950s for his leftist politics, this film was used as evidence against him. In truth, much of Chaplin's work ...
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The Birth of a Nation (1915)
It is almost impossible to talk about early American cinema without mentioning D.W. Griffith's 1915 Civil War-era epic, The Birth of a Nation. The film achieved so much in terms of its scope, production techniques, use of editing, and its special effects that it is difficult to ignore. Yet, its racist and white ...
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Superman Goes to War
In 1941 Fleischer Studios began work on a spectacular series of Superman cartoons. These short films were some of the most expensive produced to that date and, by 1942, the Fleischer brothers had been removed from the project. The second sequence of cinematic Superman cartoons (1942-1943) paid much more attention to the ...
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A Song of the South – Decoding Dixie
'Dixie' -the unofficial anthem of the Confederate States of America- is one of the most controversial and divisive songs in American history. For many modern day appreciators of the track, 'Dixie' is a charming, nostalgic look at the American South, a celebration of the region's sense of its own identity. To its ...
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John Brown’s Body
Celebrating the launch of the new podcast series, The Artist in American History, this special episode explores the significance of the artist in American history by examining the evolution of "John Brown's Body", from abolitionist folk anthem to "Battle Hymn of the Republic" in the early years of the American Civil War. ...
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Understanding Torture and Violence in Early America: The Execution of William Crawford and the Gnadenhutten Massacre
Press Play to Listen to the Lecture With Disney's The Lone Ranger limping towards its DVD release, now is a good time to reflect upon the ways in which Americans, Europeans, and their descendants have produced and consumed popular media which seeks to depict -and shape- how we view the Indians. In the last ...
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