‘Doomed as cartoons forever’: Subjection and liberation in Sidney Lumet’s The Wiz | Intellect Skip to content
1981
Volume 15, Issue 2
  • ISSN: 1750-3159
  • E-ISSN: 1750-3167

Abstract

This article reconsiders the importance of Sidney Lumet’s film adaption of , which was panned on release and deemed a commercial failure. Despite this, the film has always been cherished by the African American community. I examine why this is, by analysing the film's relationship to blaxploitation, its production and reception history, and some of the film’s scenes. Finally, I consider its legacy and its meaning for later generations.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1386/smt_00064_1
2021-07-01
2024-04-29
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Abercrombie, N. and Turner, B. S. (1982), ‘The dominant ideology thesis’, in Classes, Power and Conflict: Classical and Contemporary Debates, Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  2. Alexander, C. S. (2019), ‘Forget mammy!: Blaxploitation’s deconstruction of the classic film trope with Black feminism, Black power, and “bad” voodoo mamas’, The Journal of Popular Culture, 52:4, pp. 83961, https://doi.org/10.1111/jpcu.12830. Accessed 5 January 2020.
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Artz, L. and Murphy, B. (2000), Cultural Hegemony in the United States, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, https://doi.org/10.4135/9781452204673. Accessed 7 January 2020.
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Beasley, M. A. (2011), Opting Out, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Bogle, D. (2001), Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films, 4th ed., New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Bogle, D. (2016), Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films, 5th ed., New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Burger, A. (2014), The Wizard of Oz as American Myth: A Critical Study of Six Versions of the Story, 1900–2007, Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
    [Google Scholar]
  8. Campbell, D. (2005), ‘Obituary: Richard Pryor’, The Guardian, 12 December, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2005/dec/12/guardianobituaries.artsobituarie. Accessed 2 February 2020.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Davis, B. (2018), St. James Encyclopedia of Hip Hop Culture, Farmington Hills, MI: St. James Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Drummond, K., Aronstein, S. and Rittenburg, T. L. (2018), The Road to Wicked: The Marketing and Consumption of Oz from L. Frank Baum to Broadway, New York: Springer.
    [Google Scholar]
  11. Ehlers, N. (2012), Racial Imperatives: Discipline, Performativity, and Struggles against Subjection, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/princeton/detail.action?docID=670293. Accessed 12 February 2020.
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Essence (2015), ‘He said, she said: Two critics discuss The Wiz Live’, Essence, 4 December, https://www.essence.com/celebrity/the-wiz-live-review-two-critics-discuss/. Accessed 27 April 2020.
  13. Frazier, E. F. (1997), Black Bourgeoisie: The Book That Brought the Shock of Self-Revelation to Middle-Class Blacks in America, 1st ed., New York: Free Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  14. Forsgren, L. D. L. (2019), ‘The Wiz redux: Or, why queer Black feminist spectatorship and politically engaged popular entertainment continue to matter’, Theatre Survey, 60:3, pp. 32554, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0040557419000243. Accessed 6 March 2020.
    [Google Scholar]
  15. Genius Lyrics (n.d.a), ‘Diana Ross: “Can I Go On?” lyrics’, https://genius.com/Diana-ross-can-i-go-on-lyrics. Accessed 11 April 2020.
  16. Genius Lyrics (n.d.b), ‘Luther Vandross: “A Brand New Day” lyrics’, https://genius.com/Luther-vandross-a-brand-new-day-lyrics. Accessed 27 April 2020.
  17. Genius Lyrics (n.d.c), ‘Michael Jackson: “You Can’t Win” lyrics’, https://genius.com/Michael-jackson-you-cant-win-annotated. Accessed 27 April 2020.
  18. Giarrusso, J. (n.d.), ‘Seeking a home: The Wiz and the Black Arts Movement’, Yale National Initiative, https://teachers.yale.edu/curriculum/viewer/initiative_16.03.06_u. Accessed 11 April 2020.
  19. Gomer, J. (2020), White Balance: How Hollywood Shaped Colorblind Ideology and Undermined Civil Rights, Chapel Hill, NC: UNC Press Books.
    [Google Scholar]
  20. Greaves, S. T. (2003), ‘A cultural interrogation of the film, The Wiz’, Ph.D. thesis, Tempe, AZ: Arizona State University.
    [Google Scholar]
  21. Guerrero, E. (2009), ‘The so-called fall of blaxploitation’, Velvet Light Trap, 87:64, pp. 9091.
    [Google Scholar]
  22. Guerrero, E. (2012), Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  23. Hamilton, N. A. (2006), The 1970s: Eyewitness History, New York: Facts On File.
    [Google Scholar]
  24. Hannah-Jones, N. (2015), ‘Living apart: How the government betrayed a landmark civil rights law’, ProPublica, 25 June, https://www.propublica.org/article/living-apart-how-the-government-betrayed-a-landmark-civil-rights-law. Accessed 7 April 2020.
  25. Harris, T. (n.d.), ‘The trickster in African American literature: Freedom’s story’, National Humanities Center, n.d., http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/freedom/1865-1917/essays/trickster.htm. Accessed 3 May 2020.
  26. Hassler-Forest, D. (2016), ‘Utopian afrofuturism in The Wiz’, Utopia Anniversary Symposium, 9:1, pp. 73124.
    [Google Scholar]
  27. Kerr, P. (1986), ‘Growth in heroin use ending as city users turn to crack’, New York Times, 13 September, https://www.nytimes.com/1986/09/13/nyregion/growth-in-heroin-use-ending-as-city-users-turn-to-crack.html. Accessed 24 April 2020.
    [Google Scholar]
  28. Kokonis, M. (2008), ‘Hollywood’s major crisis and the American film “renaissance”’, Gramma, 16, p. 176.
    [Google Scholar]
  29. Lester, E. (1975), ‘Geoffrey Holder: The whiz who rescued The Wiz’, New York Times, 25 May, p. 109.
    [Google Scholar]
  30. Levine, L. W. (1978), Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom, New York: Oxford University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  31. Lorde, A. (2007), ‘The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house’, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press, pp. 110114.
    [Google Scholar]
  32. Lumet, S. (1978), The Wiz, USA: Universal Pictures.
    [Google Scholar]
  33. Obensen, T. (2020), ‘The Color Purple revisited: Why Spielberg’s movie is still problematic and meaningful to many Black women’, IndieWire, 3 April, https://www.indiewire.com/2020/04/the-color-purple-debate-anniversary-1202217786/. Accessed 16 March 2020.
    [Google Scholar]
  34. Phillips-Fein, K. (2013), ‘The legacy of the 1970s fiscal crisis’, The Nation, 16 April, https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/legacy-1970s-fiscal-crisis/. Accessed 21 March 2020.
    [Google Scholar]
  35. Rabin, N. (2003), ‘Joel Schumacher’, The A.V. Club, 2 April, https://www.avclub.com/joel-schumacher-1798208274. Accessed 24 March 2020.
    [Google Scholar]
  36. Ray, V. E., Randolph, A., Underhill, M. and Luke, D. (eds) (2017), ‘Critical race theory, Afro-pessimism, and racial progress narratives’, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 3:2, pp. 14758, https://doi.org/10.1177/2332649217692557. Accessed 9 April 2020.
    [Google Scholar]
  37. Sartwell, C. (1998), Act Like You Know, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  38. Schaefer, E. (1999), ‘Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!’: A History of Exploitation Films, 1919–1959, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  39. Schlitz, M., Cassandra, V. and Elizabeth, M. (2010), ‘Worldview transformation and the development of social consciousness’, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 17:7–8, pp.1836.
    [Google Scholar]
  40. Seewood, A. (2008), Slave Cinema, Philadelphia: Xlibris.
    [Google Scholar]
  41. Summers, C. (2013), ‘The demons that drove Richard Pryor to make us laugh’, BBC News, 25 August, https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-23724276. Accessed 26 April 2020.
  42. Turner, P. A. (1994), Ceramic Uncles & Celluloid Mammies: Black Images and Their Influence on Culture, New York: Anchor Books.
    [Google Scholar]
  43. Ware, D. (2017), ‘Negro week at the 1939–1940 New York World’s Fair’, HuffPost, 26 February, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/negro-week-at-the-19391940-new-york-worlds-fair_b_58b26313e4b02f3f81e44893. Accessed 11 April 2020.
  44. Vergara, C. (2013), ‘Everyday life in the hood: New York 1970–1973’, Time, 13 February, https://time.com/3796749/everyday-life-in-the-hood-new-york-1970-1973/. Accessed 20 May 2020.
    [Google Scholar]
  45. Wright, J. (2014), ‘Black outlaws and the struggle for empowerment in blaxploiatation cinema’, Spectrum, 2:2, pp. 6386.
    [Google Scholar]
  46. Yakir, D. and Lumet, S. (1978), ‘Wiz kid’, Film Comment, 14:6, pp. 4954.
    [Google Scholar]
  47. Yancy, G. (2005), ‘Whiteness and the return of the Black body’, Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 19:4, pp. 21541.
    [Google Scholar]
  48. Yancy, G. and Alcoff, L. M. (2016), Black Bodies, White Gazes: The Continuing Significance of Race in America, 2nd ed., New York: Rowman & Littlefield.
    [Google Scholar]
  49. Salter, Destiny (2021), ‘“Doomed as cartoons forever”: Subjection and liberation in Sidney Lumet’s The Wiz’, Studies in Musical Theatre, 15:2, pp. 13349, https://doi.org/10.1386/smt_00064_1
    [Google Scholar]
http://instance.metastore.ingenta.com/content/journals/10.1386/smt_00064_1
Loading
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a success
Invalid data
An error occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error