Race and Film

The private eye as loner is evident in Carl Franklin's film Devil in a Blue Dress, in which the L.A. private detective is now a black man who has been laid off from the fledgling aerospace industry in the late 1940s--the period is evoked as an era of political and police corruption. As a land of opportunity, Los Angeles is shown as offering less opportunity for its minority population while instead creating a more hostile environment. Easy Rawlins has his version of the femme fatale in the woman in the blue dress, and, when he finds her, he discovers that she is trying to maintain an illusion by passing for whit

. . .
black community resort to violence, would steal, and can be compromised, but in this world their crimes are of a different order. The white leaders are steeped in corruption, and they use whites or blacks for their own purposes and treat no one as a human being. Easy is a man just trying to get by on his own, but he more and more finds operating in this society without taking on a degree of deception and violence impossible. His friend Mouse is a man given to violence and thievery as a way of life. He is intensely loyal and lacks the sort of corrupt nature the white gangsters possess, but his mindless violence is every bit as destructive to a spirit like that of Easy Rawlins. Devil in a Blue Dress received good critical response, but it did not do well at all at the box office. It is a difficult film to sell either to the white or the black audience. It does not fit easily into standard genres--it may be a detective movie, but it has a racial and moral center that sets it apart. The fact that the hero is a black man also sets it apart. It is also not a standard violent drama, so it does not appeal to the young, urban, black males who make black exploitation films successful. Crimson Tide places a black man in a differ
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Blue Dress, Easy Rawlins, Crimson Tide, Rawlins Indeed, Hunter Hunter, Lt Hunter, Dress LA, Captain Ramsey, blue dress, Los Angeles, Devil Blue, devil blue dress, devil blue, crimson tide, private detective, black community, easy rawlins, detective film, hunter black, white society, woman blue dress, los angeles, american crime fiction,
Approximate Word count = 1651
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

More Essays on Race and Film