How has race been constructed in Sapphire?
- 1. w HAS 'RACE- BEEN CONSTRUCTED IN ONE OR MORE FILMS OF YOUR CHOICE? ETHNICITY & NATION (MC53031A) BELINDA TAYLOR-WILLIAMS STUDENT NUMBER: 22014572
- 2. 'RACE' CONSTRUCTED IN OR OF YOUR CHOICE? INTRQDPCTIQN The film that 1 have chosen to look at is "Sapphire" a film made in 1959 and directed by Basil Dearden. a director well known for his social problem films. This film was made at an interesting time, or rather the subject matter was interesting and the film was made during turbulent times,especially in respect to race relations. / "By the mid - 1950s, more blatant and violent forms of racial hostility directed at a Black-British presence emerged. These included: the White riots in Camden (London, 1954), Nottingham and North Kensington (or what was generally referred to as 'Netting Hill') (London. 1958) in which racists attached immigrant groups... the general abuse of Black workers, particularly by Teddy Boys...fed into new moral panics around teen hooligans and troubled youth {rather than about British racism); and the first acknowledged racially motivated murder (that of Kelso Cochrane, a Black carpenter in Netting Hill (May 1959)." (Malik 2002:13), From looking at the quotation above 1 don't feel that it was a coincidence that 'Sapphire' was released in 1959 after the race riots. The subject matter of the film is that of a murder investigation. A young girl named 'Sapphire' has been murdered and it is up to the investigators. Superintendent Bob Hazard and Detective Inspector Phil Leoroyd to find the killer. Problems begin to arise in their investigation when they find that Sapphire who physically appears to be white is "revealed to have been a half-caste and the implications of this revelation structure the whole direction of the inquiry." (Hill 1986:84). Further investigation leads them to a "discovery of racism in lower middle classes as a possible- motive for the killing." (Bourne 1998:224), The World Book Dictionary explains 'a construct' as " an idea or theory resulting from a synthesis of impressions, learned facts, or study..." What we find in 'Sapphire' is that race' tends to less be constructed through learned facts or study but rather a synthesis of impressions. It is through the police investigation and the clues that Hazard and Leoroyd find and also the people that they come across that we are able to see how 'race' is constructed m the film, I plan to go through the film and point out the different ways that we see 'race' being
- 3. construct of presented, and I shall back my finding up with the reading that I have done. When I speak of the construction of 'race' to some this may be hard to understand:for in fact there is only one race and that is the human race. So rather I would like to present in this essay how 'blackness' is constructed in the film 'Sapphire'. Also if wordtpermit I may touch on and try to see if 'whiteness' is being constructed in any way. How.HAS 'RACE'..BEEN CONSTRUCTED IN'SAPPHIRE'? When the audience first see Sapphire she is dead a body lying in the darkShere is nothing to tell us that the young girl is not white, she has no physical attribute of 'blackness'. And Throughout the film we find that many views of 'blackness' are not constructed through known facts or things that you can see but through stereotypes, essentialism and hearsay. Stuart Hail writes "...we know that 'stereotyped" means 'reduced to a few essentials, fixed in Nature by a few simplified characteristics"' (Hail in Hall 1997:249). .And this is exactly what occurs in 'Sapphire' blacks recognised as being black through "simplified characteristics'. Sapphire's name alone reflects ways in which black women are constructed throughout the film. "The name "Sapphire' in North American culture is one given to African- American women who are characterized as being 'loud, obstinate, domineering, emasculating and generally immoral (Ferguson 1973:590}" (Young 1996:97). There is an obsession with sexuality and the exotic in the film, and it is Sapphire's sexuality and her colour that leads her to her death. Hall references Bogle m his essay 'The Spectacle of the 'Other" Bogle writes: "The Tragic Mulatto - the mixed-race woman, cruelly caught between 'a divided racial inheritance', beautiful, sexually attractive and often exotic, the prototype of the smouldering sexy heroine, whose partly white blood makes her 'acceptable", even attractive to white men, but whose indelible "stain' of black blood condemns her to a tragic conclusion." (BogleinHal! 1997:251). Tliis is a perfect description of Sapphire her tragic end being she is murdered. But this can more been seen as a punishment, seen frequently in British social problem films something always happens to a black character, whether it occurs that they die or get hurt badly. In 'Flame in the Streets' (Roy Baker 1961) Gabriel Gomez ends up being pushed on a bonfire on
- 4. Guy Fawkes Night. Sapphire is punished for "passing" for white arid also for being sexually attractive to the opposite sex. " "The texts often involve narratives constructed in such a way that if such interdictions are broken and the boundaries of racial propriety transgressed, then the perpetrators are "punished" or threaten with punishment. Thus the racially ambiguous Sapphire is murdered alter consummating her relationship with her white fiance..." (Young 1996:91). Sapphire's sexuality is first referred to when Hazard and Leoroyd go to her room in the house she was residing in before she was murdered. Hazard comes across a locked draw, when he opens it he finds colourful clothes, sexy undergarments and high-heeled shoes. "Her locked drawer delivers up a flurry of exotic underwear (accompanied by a strident musical chord!)" (Tarr in Screen 26/1). This particular musical chord is one played frequently throughout the film a sexy, smouldering piece of music which links Sapphire with people and places, "...it is precisely the effect of the film to expand the connotations of colour to the 'colour" of the music and dancing, sexuality and violence (and hence ????? the fetishitic fascination of the detective for Sapphire's clothing with its suggestion of "exotic" sexuality)"' (Hill in Screen 26/1) It's Sapphire's clothing that seta up the enigma, and in the end solves who she was and who her murdered was. When Hazard opened up the locked drawer there was shock on the landlady's face when she leaves the room Hazard remarks, "Clearly there was a side to Sapphire she (land lady) didn't know about" this statement is true in more ways than one. In another scene involving Sapphire's clothing or, to be more specific a red taffeta petticoat, after Hazard and Leoroyd are made aware that Sapphire is 'half-caste" we see how "black sexuality - now becomes a dominant not. to say disturbing, preoccupation" (Hill 1986:83). The petticoat and its part-black owner lead the audience to ideas of black promiscuity, "At the level of dialogue, the film seeks to disclaim such an interpretation. Reflecting on the meaning of the "red taffeta under a tweed skirt', Leoroyd offers the explanation 'that's the black under the white alright." Hazard tells him to 'come off it'; but what we see, rather than what we are told, seems to support Leoroyd rather than Hazard." {Hill 1986:85).
- 5. We can see that through. Hazard and Leoroyd's investigations Sapphire is living up to her African-American originated name. We can also see how "blackness" is being constructed along with the "construction of whiteness' in the character Sapphire. When she was found she was wearing a brown tweed skirt, blouse, jacket and tights. In these clothes she is presented to the audience as a respectable young lady and assumed to be white. What she wears underneath leads Hazard and Leoroyd to find out otherwise. 'Red taffeta.' and exotic underwear in a locked drawer, things that Sapphire wanted to keep secret, presented in this way 'blackness' is constructed through sexuality and seen as something that Sapphire was ashamed of. Sapphires "association with sexual promiscuity is defined by her relationships and activities that situate her in the world of blackness." (Landy 1991:477). When the two detectives find out that Sapphire is pregnant. Hazard assumes that the father is David Harris (Sapphire's fiance) bat now that they know Sapphire is "half-caste' Leoroyd remarks "I don't know you can't be sure now. it could be anybody." The paternity of Sapphires unborn child is only questioned because she is "coloured'. Another way that we find 'blackness' being constructed is through music. "The film links card plating and music and dancing to the blacks, the blacks to sexuality, and sexuality to violence." (Landy 1991:477). When Hazard and Leoroyd find the clothes in the locked drawer in Sapphires room they also find a half torn photograph, they soon find out that it was taken in Tulips a club that Sapphire frequented and where she would "dance crazy' with black men. Mr Tulip who owns the Tulip club refers to Sapphire as a lily-white', a "lily-white' being a woman who is part black but can "pass" for white. In the Tulip club there are many 'lily-whites' and you can see on Hazard and Leoroyd's faces that they find t hard not to look at the women who are in a sense to them forbidden fruit. Mr Tulip remarks "lily- whites... you can always tell 'cause once they hear the beat of the bongos...they can't hide that swing." This is an essentialist sentiment "the film endorses an ideology of blacks as 'naturally' more vital, more rhythmic and more sexual." The film "confine(s) its blacks, as 'essentially' different (rhythmic, sexual) and determined by nature." (Hill 1986:88). So basically because these women "lily-whites' have black blood, in them they are able to dance and can't help
- 6. themselves dancing to the music. So here I feel as well as the essentialism, blacks are being represented, as having no restraint, they are out of control so does that mean that whites are in control? Charles Husband writes: "Colour then became the means of distinguishing groups of people, and of identifying the behaviour to be expected of them. "Race' provided the theory which accounted for the consistency between sign of category membership colour: and the characteristic behaviour of members of the category." (Husband 1982:13). The mention of bongos refers to Africa where the instrument originated from, raid also it can refer to the jungle. The jungle is something that black people were frequently associated with. Some blacks were referred to as monkeys and were asked where their tails were. In one scene in 'Sapphire' a black man describes one such humiliation. A past friend of Sapphire's who knew her before she began to 'pass' for white told Hazard and Leoroyd that when he and Sapphire were at a coffee shop he went to the counter to pay and a white woman came up to Sapphire "thinking that she and her were the same" and remarked "Oh I see they've let the jungle in ". This shows that black people are some how representative of the jungle, savage and untamed. Music is also referred to in passing when Leoroyd asks the landlady about the gramophone in Sapphire's room; the landlady says that Sapphire played it vary softly. When they question Sapphire's previous landlady without being asked about a gramophone she remarks that Sapphire was "noisy with her gramophone". Here we see different views of Sapphire, before she began 'passing' for white she was loud, "eager to please, laughed too much'" (landlady). When she was 'passing' for white "she wanted so much to be counted in to belong"5. Sapphire's previous landlady said that she knew Sapphire was black, just as Leoroyd had said that he "can always tell;' Below are two scenes from the film, the first is where the landlady says that she knew Sapphire was black, arid in second in a doctors office where Leoroyd says that he can tell when someone is black, (this is the doctor who told Sapphire that she was pregnant).
- 7. Landlady: "Nice enough girl considering she was coloured." Leoroyd: "Oil, you knew then?" Landlady: "I guessed you can always tell too eager to please laughed too much, noisy with her gramophone but I never minded as long as they don't look it." Leoroyd; "Did she tell you she was coloured?" Doctor: "No she didn't mention it."' Leoroyd: "No, I bet she didn't, but you can always tell can't you?" Doctor: "No Inspector as a matter of fact you can't." Leoroyd: "What! Oh I can tell 'em a, mile away." These two conversations are totally absurd and a far cry from when "Black people were reduced to the sigmfiers of their physical difference, thick lips, fuzzy hair, broad face and nose..." (Hall 1997:249). But at least these are physical attributes that you can see. If it was the case that Leoroyd could ''always tell" why was he shocked Sapphire's brother, a black man exited Hazard's office? As I said before the way 'blackness" is constructed in this film is mainly through a synopsis of people's ideas, nothing based on real facts. How could the landlady guess that Sapphire was 'coloured" if she knew the real meaning of the word 'guess' she would not have used it at all 'guess: to form an opinion of without really blowing' so really the landlady knew nothing. "Both Leoroyd and the landlady lay claim to knowledge which cannot be reliably verified by visual signification but in case visual evidence fails there are a number of ways of fixing someone's racial ancestry..." (Young 1996:48). A much similar conversation occurred in Hazard's office when he and Leoroyd had finished questioning David Harris (Sapphire's fiance) Leoroyd remarked "The boy looks truthful to me" how could someone look truthful? It's just as unintelligent as 'guessing" someone is 'coloured'. Apart from this film bringing a. synopsis of stereotypes and prejudices to the British audience I feel that it has worryingly brought it bad opinion of the police force through the character of Leoroyd, The black men in the film present the audience with the different types of black men that thev themselves mav come across. "Dr. Robbins is exemplary of the educated black man, the professional who is respectable, polite and deeply identified with the aims of the law. He contrasts
- 8. sharply with the arrogant Paul Slade, a former dancing partner of Sapphires who expresses his contempt with the violent and illegal activity of the black community." (Landy 1991:476), Through Dr. Robbins, Sapphire's brother we find the respectable black man: he has come across racism, but has decided to come to terms with the fact that for him that's the way the world is. Dr. Robbins encompasses his own contradiction: he feels that nothing good can happen for black people, which is why he is doubtful that the police will find his sister's killer. But he him self is a doctor; I consider this a great achievement for a black man in the 1950s/60s. We then come across Paul Slade a pompous black man with an expensive education, which he feels give liim the right to look down on both blacks and whites. "Moreover, as Slade makes quite clear, racial prejudice works both ways. His father would not have allowed him to marry Sapphire because she was part white." (Hill 1986:84). The -violent and illegal activity of the black community is presented through 'Horace Big Cigar" a black man who was stabbed by Johnny Fiddle, a past dancing partner of Sapphires who is now in police custody as they suspect Mm of her murder., When Leoroyd goes to Horace's home to talk to him there are quite a few7 other black men there, playing cards and talking. When Horace realises that Leoroyd is the police he says to the men "No ignorant foolish talk man". The men are presented as clowns with a ring leader all of them are dark skinned, the room is dimly lit so the only thing that stands out is Leoroyd the only white man in the room and the black men's bright shirts and. also their white teeth. Every time Horace laughs they laugh with him whether what he said was funny or not as if they had no minds of their own. Johnny Fiddle is made to look ignorant; when Hazard and Leoroyd are questioning him he only answers "yes boss" or "no boss". He doesn't speak with properly constructed sentences; this makes him sound like a slave talking to bis white slave master. In 'Horace Big Cigar' and Johnny Fiddle we find the opposite of Dr. Robbins and Paul Slade. The black and the whit community don't seem to be that divided. When I say this I mean that although there were parts of the film were you could see that there were just white people living in a. certain area, for example where the Harris's live. There wasn't anywhere
- 9. where there were just black people, when Hazard and Leoroyd were searching through Johnny Fiddle's room the audience were able to see the difference between where he lived and where Sapphire lived. Although it was more run down than were Sapphire lived, blacks there did not dominate the area that he was rooming in were whites there too. There were even black and white children playing together outside, race doesn't seem to be a problem to them. A similar scene to this is shown several time in-the 'Flame in the Streets', children playing together without a care in the world. Below is a conversation Hazard and Leoroyd have on the way back from where Johnny Fiddle lives. Leoroyd: "These spades are a load of trouble 1 reckon we should send them back where they came from,, we wouldn't have half this bother if they weren't here." Hazard: ".. .just the same as you wouldn't have old ladies being clobbered by hooligans if there weren't any old ladies, so what do you do get rid of the hooligan or the the people the bash..." I find this conversation interesting because of the time in the film when if occurred. As I mentioned before there is no clear division between black and whit communities. There are white communities but no black communities present; instead we find black and white together. So is it the case that blacks were welcomed to the community or are they causing trouble just by their presence there? At the end of the film we find out that Mildred. David's sister was the person who murdered Sapphire. Hazard invites Dr. Robbins to the Harris's home '-'which they are not pleased about) so that he can tell everyone together who the killer is. When Hazard begins to talk he is holding a doll which belongs to Mildred's children, the doll is white and he casually hands it to Dr. Robbins whilst speaking. I have watched this film over and over again and have questioned the meaning, "...from the early part of the twentieth century to the 1060s... (there was a) perceived threat of black 'infiltration' of the self-contained 'pure' white family..." (Young 1996:84-85). Sapphire represented this threat to Mildred, which is why she felt the need to kill her and also why 'when Dr. Robbins was holding the white doll she went
- 10. in to hysterics and shouted "Get him out...don't want him near my kids, don't want his dirty hands on my children, tearing up my family, their mine." "Concern about the criminal behaviour of black settlers in the late 1940s and 1950s assumed a different form, clustering around a distinct range of anxieties and images in which issues of sexuality and miscegenation were often uppermost." (Gilroy 1992:79). Unfortunately this is what we find in 'Sapphire" the representation of black people is primarily constructed through sexuality and also stereotypes. Sapphire's clothes the one'found in the locked draw,lead the detectives to The Tulips Club, and also a lingerie shop called 'Babettes'. At the Tulips Club sexuality is referenced to not only verbally but also through the movement 0.1. tiie camera. "Cutting between the 'lily skin' dancer, her partner. Johnny Hot feet, a black woman dancer. Johnny Fingers, the 'white' woman behind the men and the bongos, the sequence concludes with direct inter-cutting between low-angle shots of the 'lilv skins" pants and thighs, revealed below twirling skirts and close-ups of the bongos.,,it makes a 'decent' into music and dancing, once again associated with sexuality, with the low angle shots below the girl's skirt referring back to Sapphire's red taffeta underskirt." (Hill 1986:86-87). And it was the "red taffeta underskirt' that led the police to 'Babettes' and in turn gave them clues about Sapphire's past and the men in her past, constructing her as promiscuous. It's usually the black men that are seen as a threat to the white family but in 'Sapphire' we find the threat is a 'half-caste' woman. "...the monitoring of the sexual activity of black men has been a consistent political manifestation of the tension engendered by the reaction of white Britain to the presence of black people in their midst. This preoccupation contained within it expressions of fears for the purity and superiority of the white 'race" which, as thev relate to terms such as 'miscegenation and 'race-mixing' are evocative of earlier scientific racist discourses," (Young 1996:87). Tins is the problem Sapphire posed, to Mildred; Sapphire was going to make her family UTiplIFv, There is also a construction of black women within the film, this is presented through the lack of black women characters, and if there is a lack of something it shows thai thev are
- 11. not important. There are only two speaking black women characters, one a nurse who knew Sapphire before she began to '"pass'' for white, and the other who knew Sapphire just as she began to 'pass' for white. When the nurse was asked why she stopped speaking to Sapphire she explained that it was Sapphire who stopped speaking to her, she says. "I'm very distinctive you know" here she is referring to the colour of her skin. The other woman says of Sapphire "I hated, that high yellow doll." She didn't like her because Sapphire took her boyfriend from her Paul Slade. and the fact that she refers to Sapphire as 'high yellow dolF shows some resentment on her part.. Resentment that Sapphire is light skinned, and calling her "doll' shows that Sapphire was also pretty maybe prettier than her. The lack of black women in the film and also the things that they say show that black women don't hold as much interest as "lily skins'. The fact that Sapphire was 'half-caste' made her more C7iotic and forbidden to white men for her 'blackness' and forbidden to black men for her 'whiteness', but the forbidden is always that much more intriguing. WHAT HAS 'SAPPHIRE' TAUGHT Us? The last line in the film is spoken by Hazard he says, "We didn't solve anything Phil. (Leoroyd) we just picked up the pieces." In this film Hazard and Leoroyd may have picked up the pieces but it is left to the audience to pat those pieces together. " 'Sapphire'...was voted the 'Beast British Film" of 1959 by the British Film Academy. What appeared to distinguish such films, and win them critical reward (such as the BFA award) was their apparent determination not just to provide 'mere entertainment, but to confront "real situations' and 'important" social issues and, in so doing to make a positive contribution to the "good' of society." (Hill 1986:68). The problem with this film is that it was about white people for white people. All of their fears about black people; all of their stereotypical ideas about black people are presented through this film. "The themes and preoccupations of the 'racial problem.' films of the fifties and sixties made by White film-makers in Britain articulate some of those fears about Interracial relations and Black people's presence here." (Young in Screen Vol 12/1 1991:?). There is no presentation of how black people feel living in England everything is presented from a white perspective. II
- 12. When Leoroyd says that the 'spades' should go back to where they came from the film doesn't educate the audience with the fact that black people have been in England along •'•- -: time "...we can trace the presence of Black people in Britain back to the sixteenth century (Fryer 1984 in Malik 2002:12). In spite of this film being a detective film it solves no problems if only presents them. The audience are given no help to work things out, as a media student I have been educated to look at the media in a certain way to read between the lines. An audience watching this film in 1959,1 feel would not have been able to do this. 'Sapphire" "Meant as an objective exposure, it is perilously near to becoming a justification... the method used is trying to put out fire with petrol." (Nina Hibbin in Bourne 1998:255). The only time in the film when we see any type of resolution is in the doctor's office. When Leoroyd says that he can tell a 'coloured' 'from a mile away', the doctor remarks, just as you can tell a policeman from the size of his feet. He says this to make what Leoroyd said sound preposterous. I feel that instead of solving anything 'Sapphire' would have left a 1959/50s audience wondering if what was presented to them was true. Or they may have been a few that would have looked at the film critically and seen it as what it originally set out to "to 'show this (colour) prejudice as the stupid and illogical thing it is.'" (Kine Weekly December 25th 3958 p!5. in Tarr in Screen Vol 26/1 ????:54). In this essay I have tried to present the different ways that 'blackness' is constructed, the original essay question was to present how "race' is constructed, and here lies the problem. What is one's definition of 'race'? The World Book Dictionary defines "race5 as: "Any one of the major divisions of mankind, each having distinctive physical characteristics and a common ancestry;1 The definition also includes a quotation by Beals and Hoijer unfortunately the dictionary does not reference it, but 1 find it very interesting. "The whole concept of race, as it is traditionally defined, may be profoundly modified or even dropped altogether, once the genetic approach has been fully exploited."'
- 13. To me there is only one "race" that is the human race, and that seems to be what Beals and Holier are trying to explain, that, these 'major divisions of mankind" will be 'profoundly modified' and people will see that there is in fact only one race. When we start to think of 'divisions of mankind5 and different 'races' we find it necessary to start describing things and noticing differences. This is when stereotypes are produced, people find it necessary to characterize a group of people, a group of human beings. '"Stereotypes are social constructs designed to socially construct. They do not simply come into being from nothing and they are not 'used' in the same way by everyone. The way in which we apply stereotypes in cultural production is as revealing as which stereotypes we select to represent, so the question of who has the power to Yield and circulate stereotypes in cultural production is an important one." (Malik 2002:29). So what of the construction of 'whiteness'? "Trying to think about the representation of whiteness as an ethnic category in mainstream film is difficult, partly because white power secures its dominance by seeming not to be anything, in particular." (Dyer in Screen Vol 29/4 1988:44). Mute is not constructed in most films, it's just there, it's been made to seem normal and anything else is 'other' to it, "The colourless multi-colouredness of whiteness secures white power by making it hard, especially for white people and their media, to 'see' whiteness. This, of course, also makes it hard to analyse. It is the way that black people are marked as black (are not just 'people") in representation that has made it relatively easy to analyse their representation, whereas white people - not there as a category and everywhere everything as a fact - are difficult if not impossible, to analyse qua white." (Dyer in Screen Vol 29/4 1988:46). So what has 'Sapphire' taught us1? It's taught us that people feel the need to put others into categories, and what we fine! in 'Sapphire" is the divisions between black and white and also the sub-divisions within the black category but not the sub-division within the white category. If you're black you're recognised as being so by acting a certain way or taking part in certain activities. But what we need to ask ourselves is. is it necessary to put people in boxes? It is good to recognise difference but not if it leads to prejudice, stereotypes are always going to be around and some can even be humorous, but when stereotypes are produced as being fact this can be dangerous. 13
- 14. "'Until the colour of a man's skin is of QO more significance than the colour of his eyes, there will be no peace." (Haile Selassie I, 1964). (David Bygott 1992:60). 14
- 15. Stephen Bourne, Black in the British Frame, Cassell, 1998, David Bygott, and Oxford University Press, 1992, Dyer, 'White', in Paul Gilroy, There ain't no Black in the Union Jack, Routledge, 1992, Stuart Hall, 'The Spectacle of the 'Other", in Stuart Hall (ed) Cultural , Sage, 1997. John Hill, Publishing, 1986, John Hill, 'The British 'Socail Problem' Film: 'Violent Playground' and 'Sapphire', in_ScreenVgl 26/1 1 985. Charles Husband, BlceJn_Brita|ti» Hutchinson & Co, 1982, Marcia Landy, British Genres, Princeton Univetsity Press, 1991 , Sarita Malik, Black Britain, Sage Publications, 2002. Carrie Tarr, ' 'Sapphire', 'Darling' and the Boundaries of Permitted Pleasure',. in Lola Young, Fear_o£the^ Pa r k, Routledge, 1996, Lola Young, 'Representation and British 'Racial Problem' Films', In Women; a cultural review Voi2/l 1991. . C- , •c 15