R&L Logo R&L Logo
  • GENERAL
    • Browse by Subjects
    • New Releases
    • Coming Soon
    • Chases's Calendar
  • ACADEMIC
    • Textbooks
    • Browse by Course
    • Instructor's Copies
    • Monographs & Research
    • Reference
  • PROFESSIONAL
    • Education
    • Intelligence & Security
    • Library Services
    • Business & Leadership
    • Museum Studies
    • Music
    • Pastoral Resources
    • Psychotherapy
  • FREUD SET
Cover Image
Hardback
Paperback
share of facebook share on twitter
Add to GoodReads

Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Spike Lee

Ethnicity, Race, and Identity in American Independent Film

James F. Scott

Directors Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, and Spike Lee emerged as filmmakers toward the end of the 1960s, when the breakdown of the studio system paved the way for new production partnerships and gave more creative authority to directors, actors, and writers. In what has come to be called the “Indie” movement, these directors were able to explore ethno-racial themes with more frankness than previously allowed. From the perspectives of their own minority communities, Scorsese, Allen, and Lee dramatized and critiqued the challenges this restless, ethno-racial underclass posed to the “White Republic” imagined by the Founding Fathers.

The three directors whose work is at the heart of this book explore the question of how identity formation is a process of negotiation, particularly among America’s ethno-racial minorities. They emphasize the stresses related to the double burden in the assimilative process of patterning oneself after the majoritarian culture, while acknowledging in complex ways the culture of the community of origin. Annie Hall tells Alvie Singer, “you’re a real Jew.” Buggin’ Out instructs his homeboy friend, “Stay Black, Mookie!” What implications do these phrases carry? Will Alvie have a chance to modify his identity? Should he? Will Mookie honor his friend’s admonition? Is “black” also susceptible to a cultural makeover? Is identity a personal choice?

This book highlights how various films by these three directors explore the ways in which “cultural capital” (musical, artistic, intellectual, athletic, etc.) is used to erase “ethno-racial taint” (skin tones, supposed biological “traits,” offensive cultural habits). The formula ordains that assimilation and interculturation will be asymmetrical, favoring those groups or individuals who bring with them the most cultural capital.
  • Details
  • Details
  • Author
  • Author
  • TOC
  • TOC
  • Reviews
  • Reviews
Lexington Books
Pages: 334 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9
978-1-4985-4896-0 • Hardback • April 2019 • $142.00 • (£109.00)
978-1-4985-4898-4 • Paperback • July 2021 • $48.99 • (£38.00)
Subjects: Social Science / Popular Culture, Social Science / Discrimination & Race Relations, Social Science / Ethnic Studies / General, Social Science / Media Studies
James F. Scott is professor emeritus of English and film studies at Saint Louis University.
Introduction: “God’s Crucible”

Chapter One: Martin Scorsese

Chapter Two: Woody Allen

Chapter Three: Spike Lee

Epilogue: Twilight of the Tribes?
In the early 1990s—as independent films began to reflect the social tumult of US society—television and film producer James Scott (emer., English and film studies) began to follow the specific issues of identity, ethnicity, and race as treated in the films of Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, and Spike Lee. Scott chose these three because they represent social groups that had well-documented struggles with identity, social integration, and justice. This book derives from his investigations. Scott introduces his analyses with an extensive preface and summarizes his observations in an epilogue. He devotes a chapter to each filmmaker, and each receives a thorough consideration. Each film selected for study gets a detailed analysis based on, among other things, characters, plot structure, and directorial decisions. In addition, Scott traces the social influences through key historians, among them Frederick Jackson Turner, Grant Madison, and Israel Zangwell. The volume is enhanced by a 280-item bibliography and a 17-page index.



Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.
— Choice Reviews


In a sequence of incisive analyses, James F. Scott demonstrates the foundational importance of ethnicity and race in the works of three of America’s most prominent film directors. His attentive readings take due account of the congruities and divergences in each director’s treatment of these major themes, most especially as they bear upon personal and artistic development and equally upon current issues of social identity and conflict.
— Robert Casillo, University of Miami


Jim Scott’s, erudite, energetic, and wonderfully written book, Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Spike Lee: Ethnicity, Race, and Identity in the American Independent Film provides a crucial glimpse into an important area of the aesthetic production of the 1990s and the way the decade has affected the 21st century understanding of what it means to be an American. This book easily stands with The People v. O. J. Simpson as a major glimpse into the emerging picture of what now must be seen as one of the most important decades of the previous century.
— Stephen Casmier, Saint Louis University


Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Spike Lee

Ethnicity, Race, and Identity in American Independent Film

Cover Image
Hardback
Paperback
Summary
Summary
  • Directors Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, and Spike Lee emerged as filmmakers toward the end of the 1960s, when the breakdown of the studio system paved the way for new production partnerships and gave more creative authority to directors, actors, and writers. In what has come to be called the “Indie” movement, these directors were able to explore ethno-racial themes with more frankness than previously allowed. From the perspectives of their own minority communities, Scorsese, Allen, and Lee dramatized and critiqued the challenges this restless, ethno-racial underclass posed to the “White Republic” imagined by the Founding Fathers.

    The three directors whose work is at the heart of this book explore the question of how identity formation is a process of negotiation, particularly among America’s ethno-racial minorities. They emphasize the stresses related to the double burden in the assimilative process of patterning oneself after the majoritarian culture, while acknowledging in complex ways the culture of the community of origin. Annie Hall tells Alvie Singer, “you’re a real Jew.” Buggin’ Out instructs his homeboy friend, “Stay Black, Mookie!” What implications do these phrases carry? Will Alvie have a chance to modify his identity? Should he? Will Mookie honor his friend’s admonition? Is “black” also susceptible to a cultural makeover? Is identity a personal choice?

    This book highlights how various films by these three directors explore the ways in which “cultural capital” (musical, artistic, intellectual, athletic, etc.) is used to erase “ethno-racial taint” (skin tones, supposed biological “traits,” offensive cultural habits). The formula ordains that assimilation and interculturation will be asymmetrical, favoring those groups or individuals who bring with them the most cultural capital.
Details
Details
  • Lexington Books
    Pages: 334 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9
    978-1-4985-4896-0 • Hardback • April 2019 • $142.00 • (£109.00)
    978-1-4985-4898-4 • Paperback • July 2021 • $48.99 • (£38.00)
    Subjects: Social Science / Popular Culture, Social Science / Discrimination & Race Relations, Social Science / Ethnic Studies / General, Social Science / Media Studies
Author
Author
  • James F. Scott is professor emeritus of English and film studies at Saint Louis University.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
  • Introduction: “God’s Crucible”

    Chapter One: Martin Scorsese

    Chapter Two: Woody Allen

    Chapter Three: Spike Lee

    Epilogue: Twilight of the Tribes?
Reviews
Reviews
  • In the early 1990s—as independent films began to reflect the social tumult of US society—television and film producer James Scott (emer., English and film studies) began to follow the specific issues of identity, ethnicity, and race as treated in the films of Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, and Spike Lee. Scott chose these three because they represent social groups that had well-documented struggles with identity, social integration, and justice. This book derives from his investigations. Scott introduces his analyses with an extensive preface and summarizes his observations in an epilogue. He devotes a chapter to each filmmaker, and each receives a thorough consideration. Each film selected for study gets a detailed analysis based on, among other things, characters, plot structure, and directorial decisions. In addition, Scott traces the social influences through key historians, among them Frederick Jackson Turner, Grant Madison, and Israel Zangwell. The volume is enhanced by a 280-item bibliography and a 17-page index.



    Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.
    — Choice Reviews


    In a sequence of incisive analyses, James F. Scott demonstrates the foundational importance of ethnicity and race in the works of three of America’s most prominent film directors. His attentive readings take due account of the congruities and divergences in each director’s treatment of these major themes, most especially as they bear upon personal and artistic development and equally upon current issues of social identity and conflict.
    — Robert Casillo, University of Miami


    Jim Scott’s, erudite, energetic, and wonderfully written book, Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Spike Lee: Ethnicity, Race, and Identity in the American Independent Film provides a crucial glimpse into an important area of the aesthetic production of the 1990s and the way the decade has affected the 21st century understanding of what it means to be an American. This book easily stands with The People v. O. J. Simpson as a major glimpse into the emerging picture of what now must be seen as one of the most important decades of the previous century.
    — Stephen Casmier, Saint Louis University


ALSO AVAILABLE

  • Cover image for the book The It Girls: Glamor, Celebrity, and Scandal
  • Cover image for the book Popular Culture: Introductory Perspectives, Fifth Edition
  • Cover image for the book The Life and Times of Betty Boop: The 100-Year History of an Animated Icon
  • Cover image for the book Metamodernism: Historicity, Affect, and Depth after Postmodernism
  • Cover image for the book The Cultural Legacy of Disney: A Century of Magic
  • Cover image for the book Disney Gothic: Dark Shadows in the House of Mouse
  • Cover image for the book Beyond Nancy Drew: U.S. Girls’ Series Fiction in the Twentieth Century
  • Cover image for the book Intersectional Humanism and Star Trek: Discovery: Warping into a Connected Future
  • Cover image for the book Disneyland on the Mountain: Walt, the Environmentalists, and the Ski Resort That Never Was
  • Cover image for the book Sofia Coppola and Generation X (So Far): Anxious and Effervescent
  • Cover image for the book Punk Beyond the Music: Tracing Mutations and Manifestations of the Punk Virus
  • Cover image for the book Superhero Rhetoric from Exceptionalism to Globalization: Up, Up and ...Abroad
  • Cover image for the book Star Wars: The Triumph of Nerd Culture
  • Cover image for the book Disney Parks and the Construction of American Identity: Tourism, Performance, Anxiety
  • Cover image for the book Catholic Horror on Television: Haunting Faith
  • Cover image for the book Terrorism in Youth Popular Culture: Teaching the Next Generation from the Cold War to the Present
  • Cover image for the book Criminological Understandings of Horror Films: Reel Fear
  • Cover image for the book Abortion in International Popular Culture: The Decision Heard Round the World
  • Cover image for the book Disney Princesses and Tween Identity: The Franchise in Illiberal Hungary
  • Cover image for the book The Yiddish Supernatural on Screen: Dybbuks, Demons and Haunted Jewish Pasts
  • Cover image for the book Future Folk Horror: Contemporary Anxieties and Possible Futures
  • Cover image for the book Noir Materialism: Freedom and Obligation in Political Ecology
  • Cover image for the book Toxic Nostalgia on Screen: Undead Memory in the Twenty-First Century
  • Cover image for the book Trauma and the Mediated Self: Contemporary Life Writing Across Media
  • Cover image for the book Translating, Interpreting, and Decolonizing Chinese Fairy Tales: A Case Study and Ideological Approach
  • Cover image for the book Anxiety and the Contradictions of Culture: A Lacanian Approach to Gaze, Sex, Race, and Social Change
  • Cover image for the book Disney Channel’s Extraordinary Girls: Gender in 2000’s Tween Sitcoms
  • Cover image for the book Rhetorical Pain: Collective, Healing, and Hope
  • Cover image for the book The Ethics of Horror: Spectral Alterity in Twenty-First-Century Horror Film
  • Cover image for the book Class, Identity, and Finding the Right Wine in Schitt’s Creek: A Place to Love
  • Cover image for the book Better Living through TV: Contemporary TV and Moral Identity Formation
  • Cover image for the book Screening Children in Post-apocalypse Film and Television
  • Cover image for the book Japanese Horror Culture: Critical Essays on Film, Literature, Anime, Video Games
  • Cover image for the book Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: Hell’s Under New Management
  • Cover image for the book Abortion in Popular Culture: A Call to Action
  • Cover image for the book A Critical Companion to Julie Taymor
  • Cover image for the book The Ambiguities of European Comic-book Bikers: Navigating the Twists and Turns
  • Cover image for the book Harry Potter and the Myth of Millennials: Identity, Reception, and Politics
  • Cover image for the book New Directions in Childhood Studies: Innocence, Trauma, and Agency in the Twenty-first Century
  • Cover image for the book Deindustrialisation and Popular Music: Punk and ‘Post-Punk’ in Manchester, Düsseldorf, Torino and Tampere
  • Cover image for the book Teaching Popular Culture in the Humanities Classroom
  • Cover image for the book Do You Believe in Magic?: Baseball and America in the Groundbreaking Year of 1966
  • Cover image for the book Batman’s Villains and Villainesses: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Arkham’s Souls
  • Cover image for the book The It Girls: Glamor, Celebrity, and Scandal
  • Cover image for the book Popular Culture: Introductory Perspectives, Fifth Edition
  • Cover image for the book The Life and Times of Betty Boop: The 100-Year History of an Animated Icon
  • Cover image for the book Metamodernism: Historicity, Affect, and Depth after Postmodernism
  • Cover image for the book The Cultural Legacy of Disney: A Century of Magic
  • Cover image for the book Disney Gothic: Dark Shadows in the House of Mouse
  • Cover image for the book Beyond Nancy Drew: U.S. Girls’ Series Fiction in the Twentieth Century
  • Cover image for the book Intersectional Humanism and Star Trek: Discovery: Warping into a Connected Future
  • Cover image for the book Disneyland on the Mountain: Walt, the Environmentalists, and the Ski Resort That Never Was
  • Cover image for the book Sofia Coppola and Generation X (So Far): Anxious and Effervescent
  • Cover image for the book Punk Beyond the Music: Tracing Mutations and Manifestations of the Punk Virus
  • Cover image for the book Superhero Rhetoric from Exceptionalism to Globalization: Up, Up and ...Abroad
  • Cover image for the book Star Wars: The Triumph of Nerd Culture
  • Cover image for the book Disney Parks and the Construction of American Identity: Tourism, Performance, Anxiety
  • Cover image for the book Catholic Horror on Television: Haunting Faith
  • Cover image for the book Terrorism in Youth Popular Culture: Teaching the Next Generation from the Cold War to the Present
  • Cover image for the book Criminological Understandings of Horror Films: Reel Fear
  • Cover image for the book Abortion in International Popular Culture: The Decision Heard Round the World
  • Cover image for the book Disney Princesses and Tween Identity: The Franchise in Illiberal Hungary
  • Cover image for the book The Yiddish Supernatural on Screen: Dybbuks, Demons and Haunted Jewish Pasts
  • Cover image for the book Future Folk Horror: Contemporary Anxieties and Possible Futures
  • Cover image for the book Noir Materialism: Freedom and Obligation in Political Ecology
  • Cover image for the book Toxic Nostalgia on Screen: Undead Memory in the Twenty-First Century
  • Cover image for the book Trauma and the Mediated Self: Contemporary Life Writing Across Media
  • Cover image for the book Translating, Interpreting, and Decolonizing Chinese Fairy Tales: A Case Study and Ideological Approach
  • Cover image for the book Anxiety and the Contradictions of Culture: A Lacanian Approach to Gaze, Sex, Race, and Social Change
  • Cover image for the book Disney Channel’s Extraordinary Girls: Gender in 2000’s Tween Sitcoms
  • Cover image for the book Rhetorical Pain: Collective, Healing, and Hope
  • Cover image for the book The Ethics of Horror: Spectral Alterity in Twenty-First-Century Horror Film
  • Cover image for the book Class, Identity, and Finding the Right Wine in Schitt’s Creek: A Place to Love
  • Cover image for the book Better Living through TV: Contemporary TV and Moral Identity Formation
  • Cover image for the book Screening Children in Post-apocalypse Film and Television
  • Cover image for the book Japanese Horror Culture: Critical Essays on Film, Literature, Anime, Video Games
  • Cover image for the book Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: Hell’s Under New Management
  • Cover image for the book Abortion in Popular Culture: A Call to Action
  • Cover image for the book A Critical Companion to Julie Taymor
  • Cover image for the book The Ambiguities of European Comic-book Bikers: Navigating the Twists and Turns
  • Cover image for the book Harry Potter and the Myth of Millennials: Identity, Reception, and Politics
  • Cover image for the book New Directions in Childhood Studies: Innocence, Trauma, and Agency in the Twenty-first Century
  • Cover image for the book Deindustrialisation and Popular Music: Punk and ‘Post-Punk’ in Manchester, Düsseldorf, Torino and Tampere
  • Cover image for the book Teaching Popular Culture in the Humanities Classroom
  • Cover image for the book Do You Believe in Magic?: Baseball and America in the Groundbreaking Year of 1966
  • Cover image for the book Batman’s Villains and Villainesses: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Arkham’s Souls
facebook icon twitter icon instagram icon linked in icon NEWSLETTERS
ABOUT US
  • Mission Statement
  • Employment
  • Privacy
  • Accessibility Statement
CONTACT
  • Company Directory
  • Publicity and Media Queries
  • Rights and Permissions
  • Textbook Resource Center
AUTHOR RESOURCES
  • Royalty Contact
  • Production Guidelines
  • Manuscript Submissions
ORDERING INFORMATION
  • Rowman & Littlefield
  • National Book Network
  • Ingram Publisher Services UK
  • Special Sales
  • International Sales
  • eBook Partners
  • Digital Catalogs
IMPRINTS
  • Rowman & Littlefield
  • Lexington Books
  • Hamilton Books
  • Applause Books
  • Amadeus Press
  • Backbeat Books
  • Bernan
  • Hal Leonard Books
  • Limelight Editions
  • Co-Publishing Partners
  • Globe Pequot
  • Down East Books
  • Falcon Guides
  • Gooseberry Patch
  • Lyons Press
  • Muddy Boots
  • Pineapple Press
  • TwoDot Books
  • Stackpole Books
PARTNERS
  • American Alliance of Museums
  • American Association for State and Local History
  • Brookings Institution Press
  • Center for Strategic & International Studies
  • Council on Foreign Relations
  • Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
  • Fortress Press
  • The Foundation for Critical Thinking
  • Lehigh University Press
  • United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
  • Other Partners...