Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White from Uncle Tom to O. J. Simpson

This is one of the greatest books I have ever read. I'm somewhat interested in film studies but more so interested in race and I found this analysis of the melodramatic depictions of race across the mediums of stage, film, and trials to be very enlightening. One of the greatest things about Linda Williams is that she does not condemn or overpraise. She analyzes everything dialectically. While one might abhor, for instance, blackface minstrelsy that denigrated African Americans, Linda Williams makes the point that it was first through blackface that whites gained a sense of the humanity of blacks, all the while making fun of them.The style of the book is readable. Linda Williams is an intellectual but she manages to make her work accessible to those who have not studied film academically. Familiarity with the concept of modernism would help with the first chapter, but is not necessary. If you have studied Morrison, Fanon, Nietzsche, Benjamin and the other thinkers Linda Williams makes brief references to, you will probably get a richer understanding of this book. However, speaking for someone who is only moderately familiar with those intellectuals, I nevertheless gained a deep understanding of the book. Linda Williams is a very competent writer.

Needed this for a class on race and diversity. Interesting, extremely poignant, even more so now than when I took the class.