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Cassius Epps

Professor Akbar

July 20, y

Who Gets To Cry?: Erasure as Violence in Media and Literature

At some point in America, the idea of protecting our earth was supposed as vital, whereas

the past, present, and future actions of the American government was misaligned with this

philosophical shift. Especially since the invention of nuclear weaponry, the American

government has spent the majority of its time fighting at war, funding war, or threatening war.

The inception of this country was grown from the genocide, rape, torture, and capture of Black

and Indigenous people. In order to commit these atrocities, the land needed to be harmed. Not

only are both of these communities ever-dwindling in numbers in this country, but the animals,

plants, and other natural resources that they used to survive have been destroyed and gate kept.

However, this didn’t stop Keep America Beautiful from releasing an ad in 1971, wherein a

seemingly Indigenous man released a tear from his eye at the thought of the land’s destruction by

way of improper disposal of waste. That seemingly Indigenous man, Iron Eyes Cody, was

actually the son of Italian immigrants. A White man dressed in costume. Since this commercial,

public perception of ecological responsibility has shifted in favor of “keeping America

beautiful”, which has allowed politicians the freedom to join climate accords that scientists claim

will prove ineffective. There are penal codes dedicated to taxation and citation in service of a

problem that is mainly caused and perpetuated by major corporations, rather than private

citizens. Hypocrisy is a term that might fit this kind of behavior, sure, but there’s also another sin

being committed in this act. The most harm is caused to Black and Indigenous people when the

earth is harmed. However, Black and Indigenous people aren’t allowed to represent this harm in
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seminal spaces. An issue equally important to— but more insidious than—harm is the culture of

erasure against the victim, which supposes that only the aggressor is allowed to depict said harm.

When erasure is committed, there must be an assessment of its impact. In all forms of

communication and art, there is a subject with which ethical interaction comes into question.

With erasure, comes possession. When someone removes the accuracy from a depiction, they

then acquire said depiction as their own, with the right to manage, or mismanage, as the artist

sees fit. Sontag wrote of photography, “[t]he camera doesn’t rape, or even possess, though it may

presume, intrude, trespass, distort, exploit, and, at the farthest reach of metaphor, assassinate—

all activities that, unlike the sexual push and shove, can be conducted from a distance, and with

some detachment.” (Sontag 13) This implies that, in order to most accurately depict a thing,

distance must be placed between the subject and the artist. A photograph may be out of focus,

but that does not comment on the photograph’s truthfulness or accuracy. What is seen is what

has been done, though observers may not be able to decipher what’s been done for its full

context. Sontag also implies that intentionality is inherent in art. A picture, alone, is an unbiased

depiction, its caption is what guides its audience through their own examination of the picture.

As society moves away from the satisfaction that was once gained from the simple existence of

an image, we turn to the context, looking for meaning. At this point, the artist has the choice to

brand their work in its truth or to misguide. It’s this choice that has been the cornerstone of

artistic politic under colonial and capitalist society, which demands that a culture be built to

ensure that the direction and flow of power is maintained.

One of the more contemporary examples of this culture of erasure is modern country

music. Though Appalachian folk music is often attributed as the birth-genre of country music, its

current state, as both a sound and a culture, shares more genetic code with the Rock and R&B
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pioneered by reconstruction-era Blacks. That DNA does not stop at the intangible, like sonic

similarity, but further extends into the documented history. As Ken Burns’ documentary series,

Country Music depicts, every facet of country music originates in the Black diaspora. Andrew

Chow from Time points out that “black influence on country music starts with the banjo, which

often conjures the hazy image of a white pastoral South. But the instrument is a descendant of

West African lutes, made from gourds, that were brought to America by slaves and which

became a central part of slave music and culture in the South.” (Chow) He goes on to point out

that the songs themselves were also partially lifted from Black music: “Many of the songs that

early hillbilly artists played were likewise inherited and adapted from black sources — like slave

spirituals, field songs, religious hymnals or the works of professional black songwriters.” (Chow)

Chow points to a few specific examples of country songs that were obviously stolen from Black

artists and adapted for White audiences. Beyond the trauma that very likely was caused by the

theft of this music, there is also the string that connects those original songs to the trauma caused

by slavery and colonialism. This recontextualizes country music’s purpose from the depiction of

the struggling Southerner to the extrapolation of narrative from origin in order to silence the

originator. Coupling that context with the current racial makeup of the country music industry, as

well as the racial statistics of the South, the question reasserts: Why is the originator of this

genre, who is most tightly concentrated in the region that is most invested in the genre, not better

represented within the genre?

If the answer to that question is a culture of erasure, then it stands to reason that a similar

phenomenon will present within other representations of culture. Film is an interesting venue to

examine. The Birth of a Nation is often credited as the film that pioneered narrative film making.

Marilyn Fabe examines the movie as such and breaks down some of the scenes that set this film
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apart from the ones before. She describes the scene in which Gus is watching Flora, wherein the

audience is forced to believe that he is a threat. As Fabe points out, the movie is “obsessed with

the threat of boundary breakdowns between blacks and whites”, and then goes on to point out

that “the image of a fence appearing large in the frame as a black man is about to pursue a young

white woman is anything but accidental.” (Fabe 35) The implication here is that narrative is

solely in the hands of the filmmaker, D.W. Griffith, and that his intentions are made bare.

There’s a deeper context that Gabe never fully explores, likely due to the relatively narrow scope

of her examination of the film. Gus, our Black attacker, is in fact a White man in blackface. The

narrative of the movie centered around the idea that Reconstruction was a failure, which put

innocent White people in harm’s way by allowing Black people access to White bodies. Fabe

analyzes the portrayal of Gus, saying that “[w]hile Gus’s facial expression is neutral (he’s not

foaming at the mouth or gnashing his teeth like a stage villain), the black-and-white color

symbolism and nightmarish setting in which he is placed tell us all we need to know about his

evil nature.” (Fabe 37) Were there to have been a Black man playing Gus, the movie might send

a different message. After all, the allowance of a Black body to be mainstreamed in this way

could add some legitimacy to said Black body. The idea of Black men being intellectually

inferior would certainly be complicated by placing one in a position to show multidimensional

artistic expression. Furthermore, casting a Black person, though the preceding decades were

centered around healing a nation which had only recently freed Black enslaved peoples, would

disassociate the film from its access to the audience it intended to reach. Woodrow Wilson, a

seasoned segregationist, screened the film at the White House. This led to the resurrection of the

Ku Klux Klan in 1915. W.E.B. Du Bois detailed in Dusk of Dawn that “mob murders so

increased that nearly one hundred Negroes were lynched during 1915 and a score of whites, a
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larger number than had occurred for more than a decade.” (Du Bois 120) He credited release and

proliferation of this film with this rise, calling advancements in film “much more insidious and

hurtful attack.” (Du Bois 120) The film’s success also encouraged the organization to produce a

number of similarly-charged films, while simultaneously protesting films they found

reprehensible. This included films like The Pilgrim. Klan newspapers insisted “it was the Jewish

producers who ‘prostituted’ Chaplin’s ability.” (Rice 475) Their concern was that the film,

produced by a marginalized group who’ve been historically persecuted and harmed by White

Protestants, was intended to “ridicule” Protestantism. Their solution: to produce of their own

films which painted themselves as patriots and heroes. Non-coincidentally, many of the films

they produced included Blackface. Again, casting Black people, who regularly participated in

media and performance that was patently rooted in White supremacy without fair compensation,

would have complicated the narratives inherent in these films, but there exists another dynamic

inherent in the tradition of blackface. As George Yancy describes an article for the New York

Times, “blackface is a form of ‘white knowing’ (in reality, of white unknowing), of white

projection, and of stipulating through performance of what it means to be black by way of lies

about what it means to be white. Hence, to understand blackface, we must return to the white

face that refuses to see itself in its own monstrous creations.” (Yancy) They key term here is

“white knowing”. Authority must pass through Whiteness, but the tradition of performance

requires a certain level of realism. So, while blackface, and other forms of disingenuous

performances of race, is intended to insult, it also serves as a reaffirmation of White authority

and power. Returning to the example of Iron Eyes Cody, the use of Indigenous identity on a

White body continues this paradigm and reinforces the dogmatic belief that non-White bodies

should be disallowed to represent themselves in the harm they were victim to.
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This kind of erasure and propaganda has only grown and morphed in the years after

reconstruction. Since the 9/11 attacks, television and feature films have produced a pervasive

narrative against the Middle East while branding the United States military apparatus as a tool

for global heroics and satirizing the political figures of the antecedent decades into nearly-

harmless Pop Culture caricature. This is only natural given the societal preference for film in

modern-day narrative. This creates a level of risk in film that is not as inherent in literature,

which has now become the de facto space for political counter-culture and radicalism. This does

not exempt the space from erasure. Most notable in modern cannon is the release of American

Dirt, which is intended to be a fictional detailing of the struggles inherent in Mexican migrant

identity. Its author, Jeanine Cummins, was publicly lambasted for the novel’s perspective.

Chicana writer, Myriam Gerba, wrote that “Cummins bombards with clichés” (Gerba) as one of

her many issues with the novel as a whole. She also points us to an opinion piece written by

Cummins in which the author claims she is “white”, which she implies colors her opinion on

writing about race. In her own words: “What I mean is, I really don’t want to write about race.

I’m terrified of striking the wrong chord, of being vulnerable, of uncovering shameful ignorance

in my psyche. I’m afraid of being misinterpreted.” (Cummins) Though much debate can be, and

has been, had around Cummins’ intent in writing the novel, its existence remains central to the

issue. A White woman being allowed to publish a novel from the perspective of a Mexican

migrant is a form of erasure, regardless of intent. For every word written by Cummins, there is a

word in the text not written from the perspective of an actual Mexican migrant, nor written by

those in proximity to that identity. Solmaz Sharif dictates erasure in poetics as obliteration.

Sharif, who has written a number of erasure pieces, asserts that “[e]rasure may well be the

closest poetry in English has gotten to role of the state.” (Sharif) In the way that Sharif intends,
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this temporary position of power can be used in protest, a way of subverting popular vernacular

and the usage of language in order to reattain personhood, as well as agency under empire.

However, on the other pole is the power afforded to less-marginalized, which allows them to

enact that same statehood against those not given access to language. That is to say, especially

given the obliteration of Mexican indigeneity and the language inherent in that identity,

Cummins enacts political violence against an already obliterated text by supplanting her own

narrative. Compare this with the acts of the Klan, who saw not only fit to remove film that

countered their perception of identity, but also to impose their own narrative.

As we move deeper into post-modern culture, where society is inherently more

sophisticated as a result of past productions, the identification of the holes in our understanding

of erasure should be paramount. As erasure is, itself, a knowledge-making experience, the

societal reaction to the removal, supplanting, and deformation of both art and culture also serves

to make knowledge and form societal pedagogy. It’s incumbent upon media consumers to

deconstruct harm as a means to make future media in the light of restoration.

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Works Cited

Cummins, Jeanine. “Murder Isn't Black or White.” The New York Times, The New York Times,

31 Dec. 2015, www.nytimes.com/2016/01/03/opinion/sunday/murder-isnt-black-or-

white.html.

Du Bois, W. E.B., and Herbert Aptheker. Dusk of Dawn: an Essay toward an Autobiography of

a Race Concept. Kraus-Thomson, 1989.

Fabe, Marilyn. Closely Watched Films: An Introduction to the Art of Narrative Film Technique.

University of California Press, 2014.

Gurba, Myriam. “Pendeja, You Ain't Steinbeck: My Bronca with Fake-Ass Social Justice

Literature.” Tropics of Meta, 4 May 2020, tropicsofmeta.com/2019/12/12/pendeja-you-

aint-steinbeck-my-bronca-with-fake-ass-social-justice-literature/.

Rice, Tom. “‘The True Story of the Ku Klux Klan’: Defining the Klan through Film.” Journal of

American Studies, vol. 42, no. 3, 2008, pp. 471–488., doi:10.1017/s0021875808005537.

Sharif, Solmaz. “The Near Transitive Properties of the Political and Poetical: Erasure.” Evening

Will Come, thevolta.org/ewc28-ssharif-p1.html.

Sontag, Susan. “On Photography.” The Antioch Review, vol. 36, no. 2, 1978, p. 248.,

doi:10.2307/4638051.

Yancy, George. “Why White People Need Blackface.” The New York Times, The New York

Times, 4 Mar. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/opinion/blackface-racism.html.