Still Killing Mockingbirds: Narratives of Race and Innocence in Hollywood’s Depiction of the White Messiah Lawyer

Wendy Leo Moore; Jennifer Pierce

doi:10.18778/1733-8077.3.2.09

Authors

Wendy Leo Moore Texas A&M University, USA
Jennifer Pierce University of Minnesota, USA

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.3.2.09

Keywords:

Race, Racism, Film, Popular culture, Whiteness

Abstract

Through a narrative analysis of movies confronting issues of race and racism in the post-civil rights era, we suggest that the movie To Kill a Mockingbird ushered in a new genre for movies about race which presented an image of a white male hero, or perhaps savior, for the black community. We suggest that this genre outlasted the era of the Civil Rights Movement and continues to impact popular cultural discourses about race in post-civil rights America. Post-civil rights films share the central elements of the anti-racist white male hero genre, but they also provide a plot twist that simultaneously highlights the racial innocence of the central characters and reinforces the ideology of liberal individualism. Reading these films within their broader historical context, we show how the innocence of these characters reflects not only the recent neo-conservative emphasis on “color blindness,” but presents a cinematic analogue to the anti-affirmative action narrative of the innocent white victim.

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Author Biographies

Wendy Leo Moore, Texas A&M University, USA

Wendy Leo Moore (PhD) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Texas A&M University. She hold a Ph.D. in Sociology, as well as a J.D., and her research integrates the sociology of race and law. Her book Reproducing Racism in Elite Law Schools: White Institutional Space and Social and Political Inequality, is in production with Rowman & Littlefield.

Jennifer Pierce, University of Minnesota, USA

Jennifer L. Pierce (PhD) is an associate professor of sociology in the Department of American Studies at the University of Minnesota. She has published Gender Trials: Emotional Lives in Contemporary Law Firms (California Press, 1995), Is Academic Feminism Dead? Theory in Praxis (NYU Press), and Feminist Waves, Feminist Generations: Life Stories from the Academy (Minnesota Press, 2007). She is currently working on a book tentatively titled Racing for Innocence: Whiteness, Corporate Culture, and the Backlash Against Affirmative Action.

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