Fear Mongering
In the first part of Native Son, Bigger goes to see a movie with Jack called The Gay Woman. In it, a white woman cavorts behind her rich husband's back. She goes to a jazz club with her lover, and while they are there, a Communist runs in with a bomb. Her lover throws the bomb out of the window, and it turns out that he was trying to kill her husband but got the wrong guy. This makes her run back to her husband, and the movie ends.
This scene is small, more of a transition than anything else, but still, there's a lot to unpack here. First of all, it's never explicitly stated that the woman's lover is black, however, with some context clues (the club and Bigger and Jack's response, most notably) and the overall themes of the book in mind, it's reasonable to assume that he is. So I'm going to go through the rest of this post with this assumption.
Firstly, in the movie, the lover is treated as a commodity for the woman, a pastime as opposed to an actual companion. The focus is more on her, as she giddily cheats on her husband like it's a thing to do. The lover is a proxy; nameless, faceless, could be easily replaced. Even when his life is threatened, it turns out he wasn't even the one important enough to kill.
Then, there's the inherent messages of the differences between races. The white woman and her husband are seen as elegant and regal, members of an uppity champagne-drinking class of people. Meanwhile, the imagery at the jazz club is loose and wild, almost animalistic. The scene is punctuated by a rabid Communist about to blow up the club. The woman's lover heroically leaps in the air to disarm the bomb (by throwing it out a window), and instead of thanking or regaling him with respect, the woman weeps for her husband, realizing just how much she loves him. So the lover is cast aside so the woman can run back to her white husband and complete her character arc. This is unfortunately a principle that is still often used in film: the token black who helps the main character recognize their flaws and realize who truly matters in their life is still very much a staple.
The movie also serves as a template for what happens throughout the rest of the book, specifically during the investigation of Mary's death: The imagery of the crazy Communist, overcome with murderous rage; Bigger himself, interviewed (and assaulted, let's not forget) by the private investigator and tossed aside when his usefulness as an asset has expired (and then the P.I insults him and calls him slurs behind his back, let's not forget that either); you could even make an argument for Bessie fitting the profile as well, being disposed of by Bigger and used as a plot point during his trial, just a body to put on parade. Obviously the metaphor is not perfect, and the movie serves less as a step-by-step foreshadow and more of an overall message, but it is my belief that Richard Wright knew exactly what he was doing when he wrote that scene into the book.
I love your deep dive into this smaller scene. These details are so easily overlooked, but it is really a sort of "Easter Egg" because of how well it fits with the overall theme of the book. Knowing that these movies and films are displayed to the general public (and assuming most of the viewers are white), it's just another example of how society caters towards whites and sends these almost subconscious messages to the viewers so they're all under the same impression.
ReplyDeleteI really appreciate this post. I didn't think about the movie scene at all after I read it, but there is a lot of meaning to the scene, which you unpack here really nicely. I think it's interesting that the same day that Bigger sees this movie, he goes out with Jan and Mary. However, in Bigger's case he is pretty unwilling to go. In my opinion, Jan and Mary see him as a similar type of prop.
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DeleteI really liked that you chose to explore the implications of this particularly like detail in the book! The more you consider it, the more examples of the dynamic of a token character being cast aside after they're finished being useful to another cause pop up (which I think is a consequence of the use of the naturalist narrative style and its focus on big societal forces over individual characters). One thought I had is that Bigger's relationship with Max plays into this in an interesting way-- you could argue that Max starts out expecting to use Bigger's trial to shed a better light on the Communist party after it's involvement in his crime, but comes to appreciate and care about Bigger for who he is as an individual.
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