Race and the Revolutionary Impulse in The Spook Who Sat by the Door

Description

Ivan Dixon's 1973 film, The Spook Who Sat by the Door, captures the intensity of social and political upheaval during a volatile period in American history. Based on Sam Greenlee's novel by the same name, the film is a searing portrayal of an American Black underclass brought to the brink of revolution. This series of critical essays situates the film in its social, political, and cinematic contexts and presents a wealth of related materials, including an extensive interview with Sam Greenlee, the original United Artists' press kit, numerous stills from the film, and the original screenplay. This fascinating examination of a revolutionary work foregrounds issues of race, class, and social inequality that continue to incite protests and drive political debate.

Acknowledgements
Introduction: The Spook Who Sat by the Door / Michael T. Martin and David C. Wall
1. Writer/Producer's Statement: The Making of The Spook Who Sat by the Door / Sam Greenlee
2. "[D]uality is a survival tool. It's not a disease": Interview with Sam Greenlee on The Spook Who Sat By the Door / Michael T. Martin and David C. Wall
3. Cinema as Political Activism: Contemporary Meanings in The Spook Who Sat by the Door / Marilyn Yaquinto
4. Persistently Displaced: Situated Knowledges and Interrelated Histories in The Spook Who Sat by the Door / Samantha N. Sheppard
5. Subverting the System: The Politics and Production of The Spook Who Sat By the Door / Christine Acham
6. The Spook Who Sat By the Door, Screenplay / Sam Greenlee and Melvin Clay
Appendix A: Press Kit
Appendix B: National Film Registry Entry, The Spook Who Sat by the Door / Michael T. Martin and David C. Wall
Appendix C: Sam Greenlee: Biography and Select Bibliography
Appendix D: Ivan Dixon: Biography and Select Filmography
Index

Sujets

• Histoire du cinéma
• Histoire du cinéma
• Histoire du cinéma
• Cinéma
• Cinéma
• Cinéma
• Cinema
• Media
• Race
• Film
• ART
• Digital
• Black
• Ivan Dixon
• American
• African American
• History of film
• Video
• Screenplay
• América
• Película fotográfica

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 01 mars 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253031808
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Race and the Revolutionary Impulse in THE SPOOK WHO SAT BY THE DOOR
Studies in the Cinema of the Black Diaspora
MICHAEL T. MARTIN AND DAVID C. WALL
Published in cooperation with the Black Film Center/Archive, Indiana University
Indiana University Press

This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2018 by Indiana University Press
This publication supported by funding from the Black Film Center/Archive, Indiana University
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Martin, Michael T. editor. | Wall, David C. editor. | Yaquinto, Marilyn editor. | Greenlee, Sam, 1930-2014. Spook who sat by the door.
Title: Race and the revolutionary impulse in The spook who sat by the door / edited by Michael T. Martin, David C. Wall, and Marilyn Yaquinto.
Description: Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 2017. | Series: Studies in the cinema of the black diaspora | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017020635 (print) | LCCN 2017015154 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253031808 (eb) | ISBN 9780253031754 (cl : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253031792 (pb : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Spook who sat by the door (Motion picture) | Racism in motion pictures. | Race relations in motion pictures. | African Americans in motion pictures.
Classification: LCC PN1997.S653 (print) | LCC PN1997.S653 R33 2017 (ebook) | DDC 791.43/72-dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017020635
1 2 3 4 5 23 22 21 20 19 18
In Memory of Sam Greenlee
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Spook Who Sat by the Door M ICHAEL T. M ARTIN and D AVID C. W ALL
1. Writer/Producer s Statement: The Making of The Spook Who Sat by the Door S AM G REENLEE
2. Duality is a survival tool. It s not a disease : Interview with Sam Greenlee on The Spook Who Sat by the Door M ICHAEL T. M ARTIN and D AVID C. W ALL
3. Cinema as Political Activism: Contemporary Meanings in The Spook Who Sat by the Door M ARILYN Y AQUINTO
4. Persistently Displaced: Situated Knowledges and Interrelated Histories in The Spook Who Sat by the Door S AMANTHA N. S HEPPARD
5. Subverting the System: The Politics and Production of The Spook Who Sat by the Door C HRISTINE A CHAM
6. The Spook Who Sat by the Door , Screenplay S AM G REENLEE and M ELVIN C LAY
Appendix A: Press Kit
Appendix B: National Film Registry Entry, The Spook Who Sat by the Door M ICHAEL T. M ARTIN and D AVID C. W ALL
Appendix C: S AM G REENLEE : Biography and Select Bibliography
Appendix D: I VAN D IXON : Biography and Select Filmography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A project such as this is inevitably the work of many more hands than merely those of the editors. It is to all those people we must offer a general thanks for their support, encouragement, and useful and necessary criticism. There are, however, some more specific thanks we would like to offer. Firstly, we must acknowledge the support of the Black Film Center/Archive (BFC/A) at Indiana University, Bloomington, which hosted the Cinematic Representations of Racial Conflict in Real Time symposium in the spring of 2010 from which this book derives. Equal thanks must go to Indiana University for their awarding of a New Frontiers grant to the BFC/A without which the symposium itself would not have been possible. As we have gone through the process of putting this collection together many people have committed their time and energy in countless ways in an effort to ensure the quality and relevance of the contributions herein. At Indiana University Press, Janice Frisch and Kate Schramm have given us invaluable support and advice. Their patience with the progress of the book (as well as us!) has been exemplary. We must also extend heartfelt thanks to Rachelle Pavelko of the BFC/A for her constant efforts in dealing so effortlessly and cheerfully with the organizational and technical limitations of the editors! We must also thank the contributors, the range and quality of whose work serves as a testament not only to the importance of the film but also to the ever-burgeoning body of scholarship being undertaken around the subject of black cinema. Lastly, our greatest thanks must go to Sam Greenlee for his unceasing efforts on behalf of the project. In addition to making contributions in terms of his personal narrative and the lengthy interview contained in the book, both of which give unique insight into the history and context of one the most significant black films of the period, he gave us free access to all the materials at his disposal as well as giving freely of his time over the lengthy process of putting the volume together. It would, of course, be a much lesser volume indeed without his work and involvement. Sadly, Sam passed away in the spring of 2014, and we hope that this book, in however small a way, will serve as a lasting testament to his work.
The Editors
Race and the Revolutionary Impulse in THE SPOOK WHO SAT BY THE DOOR
Introduction
THE SPOOK WHO SAT BY THE DOOR
Michael T. Martin and David C. Wall
A profitable and appropriate beginning for introducing the subject of this book recalls the events that spawned it, and with which it directly engages: a symposium organized and hosted by the Black Film Center/Archive at Indiana University. The two-day event, provocatively titled- Cinematic Representations of Racial Conflict in Real Time -addressed two defining American films of the 1960s and 1970s: Michael Roemer and Robert Young s Nothing But a Man (1964) and Ivan Dixon and Sam Greenlee s The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1973). Each film, having utility for ideological accounts of historical activity, renders a distinct and compelling mode of political address in real time and during a particularly intense moment of racial conflict in the United States. Indeed, both films foreground the mobilizing strategies of black militants and civil rights activists at the time of their release and similarly share several thematic concerns, from the moral and physical decay of black life in urban America and the challenges of gender and the black underclass to inequality and political oppression.
At a conceptual level, the symposium engaged two concerns: first, the representational strategies deployed in film to signify modes of political address, and second, assessing whether such films contribute to the intelligibility of the present. Do they suggest alternative constructs of agency and social change? Do they contribute to the project of world making? And comprising cine-memories , do they mediate between historical moments and infer a futurity?
Of the two films studied in the symposium, Nothing But a Man led to the publication of a close-up in the film journal Black Camera , followed recently by the publication of a volume, expanding the close-up to include several essays, the script, the director s (Roemer) statement, and official press kit. 1 It marked the first sustained book-length interrogation of the film. Similarly, this volume, devoted to the second film in the symposium, The Spook Who Sat by the Door , constitutes the first comprehensive book-length project of its kind on this subject. As the materials we have selected for this volume demonstrate, Spook has had a dramatic life. At one point all copies of the film had been destroyed other than the one retained in a vault by Ivan Dixon, which then found an underground life on pirated VHS copies until its eventual rerelease on DVD in 2004.
A final fascinating chapter in the story of The Spook Who Sat by the Door came in 2015 when it was placed on the US government s National Film Registry. Established in 1989, the registry was designed to preserve those American films considered to be of profound cultural, historical, or aesthetic significance. 2 Of the 675 films currently on the registry, arguably none have had a more contentious history than Spook , and none might have seemed less likely to be included. But its inclusion points squarely to a recognition of the film s significance not only as an extraordinary piece of American filmmaking but also its much wider life as a political document of unique historical importance.
* *
Few American films can have had the contentious and troubled history of The Spook Who Sat by the Door . Based on Sam Greenlee s novel of the same title and directed by Ivan Dixon, and while subject to the predictable and usual difficulties of any small independent film project, it was Spook s timely and provocative subject matter that became one of several major hurdles to overcome. The story of Dan Freeman, the first African American recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who subsequently leaves the agency to foment what the editors of this volume characterize as a neo-Marxist revolution among the street gangs of Chicago, Spook s radical vision was unlikely to garner sympathetic supporters in Hollywood. Greenlee and Dixon eventually secured funding through a number of wealt