Rhetoric Race and Religion
What Movies Teach about Race: Exceptionalism, Erasure, and Entitlement has been nominated for the Book of the Year award for the National Communication Association’s Critical and Cultural Studies Division. Authored by Dr. Roslyn Satchel and nominated by Dr. Douglass Kellner, the George Kneller Chair in the Philosophy of Education at UCLA, the book was the first in the Rhetoric Race and Religion book series.
In his nomination letter, Kellner writes
Satchel’s text demonstrates how Hollywood film is a form of cultural pedagogy that teaches us about race and how representations of white people and people of color reproduces racism and a system of domination and inequality. In particular, Dr. Satchel shows how dominant cinematic representations of race justify the supremacy of one (white) race over people of color and how white supremacy is presented in film as “natural” and as “common sense,” thus reinforcing racism and systems of inequality, and undercutting American democracy.
“One of the strengths of the text,” Kellner continues, “is how Dr. Satchel’s grounds her critique of Hollywood (mis)representations of race in the system of film production which determines who gets to make movies, who “greenlights” them, who publicizes and promotes them, and who determines what films are actually shown in theaters, television, and new digital modes of distribution, leading to analysis of the studios and the system of Hollywood production and distribution.”
In closing he writes
In sum, combining insider knowledge of the Hollywood film industry in which she worked, with academic knowledge of issues of framing, ideology, image, and message, with critical knowledge of contemporary film, Roslyn M. Satchel’s What Movies Teach about Race provides an important intervention in contemporary discussions of film and race. The manner in which Dr. Satchel describes and employs complex concepts and theories to illuminate popular Hollywood films is highly impressive. Her cinema studies display a breadth of knowledge, as well as exhibit exceptional writing talents, that make her work of interest and accessible to students, academics, and to the general public.
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