Topic

The following essay is a response to topic number one on the first essay assignment sheet.

Essay

A picture is worth a thousand words. A film’s mise-en-scene helps the audience deduce story elements such as which are the good guys or bad guys. Setting and costume, two elements of mise-en-scene, work in Glory and The Searchers to define and contrast two distinct racial spheres; however, the audience is not left to interpret these clues by themselves. The audience is guided by being privy to the interpretation, thoughts, and opinions of a white mediator, whose character frequently fluctuates between the two racial spheres in question. Unfortunately, the mediator becomes problematic, because while blurring the distinction and becoming a part of both worlds, he simultaneously maintains the separation.

This separation in Glory is economic in nature. White domestic space in the film is especially large compared to that of the African Americans. A celebration at the Shaw home, with officers in uniforms and women in gowns, displays the great wealth and abundance of space--for living or celebrating--enjoyed by the white community. Robert Shaw’s tent in the camp also has an abundance of room. Shaw is able to enter and move about his tent standing erect. The only soldier’s tent the audience enters is shared by four grown men and a small boy, into which they must crawl almost on their hands and knees, and there is no reason to assume that this situation differs any from that of the rest of the soldiers of the 54^th. And while white gatherings frequently occur indoors, the African American soldiers gather outside (most likely due to the cramped space of their living quarters). The shout scene occurs outdoors around a fire and even their dining hall is exposed to the elements, appearing to be situated in a building resembling a barn. Costumes too separate the white characters from the African American ones, most notably in the uniforms of the soldiers and the officers. When the black soldiers first arrive at the camp, they have only the clothes on their backs, which range from suits to ill-fitting rags. Few, if any, have proper shoes. Officers in uniform command them. Officers, who have more than one uniform for more than one occasion, like the decorated uniforms with large gold epaulets worn at a party. This contrast is remedied more than any other distinction in the film, first by the procurement of proper shoes and socks for the black soldiers and finally by the arrival of uniforms and rifles. But the sense of wealth versus poverty is not eliminated and remains present in the mise-en-scene through setting and dress.

Many of the same distinctions are drawn between the whites and Native Americans in The Searchers. The separation of white domestic space and the space occupied by the Native Americans is not so much an issue of wealth and poverty as it is civility versus savagery, the inside versus the outside. White action occurs inside the home, many times around such domestic standards as the dining table or the rocking chair. Native Americans command the wild and dwell in teepees, not unlike the tents of the African American soldiers of Glory. Any crossover between these two areas is violent: Scar’s Commanche tribe attacks the Edwards home, the Texas Rangers venture out to pursue the Commanche tribe, Ethan and Marty track down Scar. Inside the white home--an immovable, static structure, incapable of being moved unless it is destroyed--is no place for violence, but Scar’s tribe are wanderers and while they live in teepees, their position is constantly changing and therefore they live everywhere in a sense. And out there is where the violence and savagery of the film takes place. Costume coloring also connects the characters to their domestic spaces. White women are most often in blues and whites, their male counterparts in darker shades, colors neatly reflected in the subdued light found within their homes. Reds and browns are found on Native Americans, both men and women, colors taken from the rugged landscape in which they live. The separation of inside and outside, civility and savagery, remains constant throughout the mise-en-scene.

Audience interpretation of the two races contrasted in each of these films is colored considerably by the main character (Robert Shaw in Glory and Ethan Edwards in The Searchers), whose mediation between the two spheres is conflicted by his discomfort in either. At the beginning of Glory, Robert Shaw expresses empathy for the plight of the African Americans displaced by the war efforts--not an altogether common sentiment among other white soldiers. At the celebration in the Shaw home, Robert is offered command of the first black volunteer infantry, but he is uncomfortable, suffering from shell shock, and jumps at the slightest noise; he escapes outside. It is outside that Robert comes to the decision that he will take the command position and his first volunteer is Thomas, a second generation free black that is also one of Robert’s close friends. At the officer’s dining hall he stays only for mere minutes, excusing himself from a table of his fellow white officers after taking offense to an insult not about him but about his men. In wanting his men to be treated like all other soldiers of the Union, he declares that their receiving lesser wages is unfair and commands that neither he nor any of the other white officers of the 54^th will take their pay until the black soldiers receive a fair wage. He acknowledges the economic disparity presented by the mise-en-scene. Additionally, Shaw is often pictured roaming the camp among his African American soldiers, though he attempts to maintain a distance from his men that he deems professional.

But Shaw’s movement between the white world and the world of his soldiers is anything but smooth. Shaw frequently claims he doesn’t know his men, even though the letters to his mother are filled with interpretation and speculation about the soldiers, what they must have gone through before joining the war, and their cultural differences. He remarks that many of his fellow white officers had never seen a black person before the war, but it is doubtful that Robert himself has had extensive exposure to the culture. His experience is apparently limited to African Americans like Thomas--free and educated--because he expresses surprise when he tells his mother that his soldiers are learning quickly. Robert even distances himself from Thomas, taking them from being the equals of free men to the relationship between commanding officer and soldier--and not only a soldier but also a black soldier. Indeed, every connection or effort at connection Robert attempts to make is incomplete. His grand gesture of ripping up the paycheck has completely different implications for his men. He’s wealthy, white, and an officer, no doubt supported in his endeavors by his family. On the other hand, his men may very likely be the only source of income for an entire family. He’s not exactly making the same sacrifice. Moreover, Shaw is not the sole link between his men and the white sphere he represents. Shaw enlists one of his men, John Rawlins, to report to him the concerns of the other soldiers--as if he could not give his men permission to come to him with their problems or observe the problems himself, like the simple fact that his men need proper shoes. Shaw makes the effort to cross or blur the racial and economic lines drawn in the film, but by professing a certain ignorance he excuses himself from the problems his mediation causes.

In The Searchers, Ethan has similar difficulties. He appears on the frontier and is welcomed into the Edwards home, but steps back outside to sit on the porch while the rest of the family goes to bed. He is questioned about his prolonged absence from the family and never directly answers the questions. There is a sense of Ethan’s distance from his family, but when he returns to the Edwards home, destroyed by the Commanche raid, he immediately calls out Martha’s name. This establishes an emotion and a connection, and yet it’s not his immediate family--it’s his brother’s wife. Ethan ventures out into the wild to retrieve Debbie and bring her back into the fold of the family, or so we presume. Ethan also carries an extensive knowledge of Commanche customs and language. This aspect of his character, like many others, is never fully explained.

More than being troubled by a smooth transition like Robert in Glory, Ethan suffers from an extreme prejudice of a race with which he appears to identify in many ways. Ethan’s hatred and intolerance of Scar manifests itself in violence. The very violence indeed that he is so against. More than being unsure and afraid of the actions of the Commanche tribe, the audience becomes unsure and afraid of Ethan’s actions. He is at the same moment repulsed by the Native Americans and repulses us as viewers and interpreters. The Native Americans do not appear in any of their own scenes. Their point of view is not presented without a white character in attendance.

In Glory and The Searchers, the white race and the race of color are clearly distinguished along specific lines by elements of mise-en-scene, particularly setting and costume. A mediator, a member of the white race, and the focal character of the film’s narrative connects these spheres. The distinguishing characteristic of these mediators is their troubled existence in an area between the racial spheres represented. In guiding the audience interpretation of the mise-en-scene with their own inconstant view, they concurrently make the spheres indistinguishable and separate. These characters, problematic as they may be, are important because they illustrate the ambiguity of race, racial stereotypes, and racial spheres.