Presenting Oprah Winfrey, Her Films, and African American Literature
Oprah Winfrey has long promoted black issues by being involved as a producer or actor in the adaptation of works by African American writers for film. This volume evaluates Winfrey's involvement in the visual interpretation of African American literary te
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Oprah Winfrey and the Trauma Drama: “What’s So Good About Feeling Bad?” R ic a r d o Gu t h r i e
In several film productions and acting appearances by Oprah Winfrey, the trauma of the past weighs heavily on interpretations of a Black historical “presence” that invites and then forces viewers to contemplate that which is inexpressibly painful but which nevertheless must be encountered through the filmic gaze. In cinematic adaptations of classical Black literary works such as Native Son and Beloved Oprah, adopts dramatic roles that depict her as the victim of depraved experiences. I call these cultural-political productions “Trauma Dramas,” since they use cinema and television to explore injuries of race and history in dramatic vehicles for popular consumption. Instead of following the impetus of novels as prisms for contemplation of the pains and injuries of the past, these films fixate on enduring assaults and psychological injuries suffered by female protagonists—particularly those portrayed by Oprah. The cinematic adaptations of literary imaginings of the worlds within Native Son and Beloved, for example, effectively recount the long struggle for progress by African Americans in Jim Crow America and during slavery and its aftermath; but they also constitute a traumatic dilemma for viewers: What is the truth behind the racial regimes evoked through painful extractions of
10.1057/9781137282460.0006 - Oprah Winfrey and the Trauma Drama
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CH A P T E R
Ricardo Guthrie
history and memory in the current age? What’s so good about feeling bad1 about what was done in the past? And: What are the implications of Oprah Winfrey’s production of “Trauma Dramas” on the silver screen and on television? According to Cedric Robinson, “Racial regimes are constructed social systems in which race is proposed as a justification for the relations of power. . . . [T]he covering conceit of a racial regime is a makeshift patchwork masquerading as memory and the immutable. . . .”2 Using Robinson’s cultural-historical analysis of how American film wields historical memory to either reinforce or undermine racial regimes, I will interrogate racial discursive themes in the filmic adaptations of Native Son (1986) and Beloved (1998)—assessing the connection between cinematic trauma and sociohistorical conditions in the late-twentieth century, as these ref lect racial and “post-racial” sentiments in a comforting ethos that falsely rewards Americans for feeling bad about the past, while ab
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