A Nigger in the Woodpile

A Nigger in the Woodpile
Cinematography A. E. Weed
Production
company
Distributed by American Mutoscope and Biograph Company
Release date
 1904
Running time
 4 minutes
Country United States
Language Silent

A Nigger in the Woodpile is a 1904 American silent film, with a runtime of four minutes. The title is derived from the idiom Nigger in the woodpile (or fence), meaning something is wrong or "off", akin to the Shakespeare-derived expression "there's something rotten in the state of Denmark". It originates from the suspicion that when a white woman gave birth to a dark-complexioned child, the father is most likely black,[1] or from the practice of runaway slaves from the Southern United States hiding in piles of wood.[2] A copy is in the Black films section of the Library of Congress.[3]

Synopsis

The main character is a church deacon, played by a white actor in blackface, who's constantly stealing firewood from a white farmer. The farmer places sticks of dynamite in his woodpile, hoping to rid himself of the thievery in this way. When the deacon next returns to steal wood he is fooled into taking the dynamite with him among the wood. He returns home where his wife (also played by a white male actor in blackface) places the dynamite in their fireplace which soon explodes. Not killed, the deacon is hauled off by the farmer and another white man.[4]

Writing about the film's racist content, in Migrating to the Movies: Cinema and Black Urban Modernity, author Jacqueline Najuma Stewart states that the blackfaced actors are "wearing costumes signifying their traditional racial "types": Mammy in apron and bandanna; an uppity "colored deacon," striking a Zip Coon figure in top hat and tails: and his partner in crime, a harmless, shabbily dressed, white-haired Uncle Remus. The film depicts African Americans as habitual thieves,... And the film's "punitive" ending (a commonplace in early film comedies) functions to bring about narrative closure at the expense of the Black transgressors."[5]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Pendergast, Bruce (2004). Everyman's Guide to the Mysteries of Agatha Christie. Victoria, B.C.: Trafford Publishing. p. 362. ISBN 978-1-4120-2304-7.
  2. ↑ http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/politics/article2025585.ece
  3. ↑ Bean, Shawn C. The First Hollywood: Florida and the Golden Age of Silent Filmmaking. Gainesville FL: University of Florida Press, 2008, p. 106.
  4. ↑ Coleman, Robin R. Means (1 March 2013). Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from the 1890s to Present. Routledge. p. 18. ISBN 978-1-136-94294-5.
  5. ↑ Stewart, Jacqueline Najuma (28 March 2005). Migrating to the Movies: Cinema and Black Urban Modernity. University of California Press. pp. 1–. ISBN 978-0-520-93640-9.


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