Hide in Plain Sight: Primary Sources?

Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner’s Hide in Plain Sight is really difficult for me to dissent because it is, for me, one of the most interesting and historical texts we’ve read this semester. Despite my own interest in science fiction and fantasy as vehicles for social commentary I must put away my pom-poms and cast the death ray of cynicism. As a genealogy of blacklistee work, the book is very successful, so I only have a few points that I feel would make it more effective. Since it is considered a film studies book (per the category printed on the back), I think inclusion of more primary sources and figures is important to grounding their argument. My own knowledge base in much of the things they cover is minimal, so I cannot say whether or not they are stretching or coloring their information to make a point that isn’t there. It does seem however, that the sections we’ve read so far are more storytelling than textbook; while the conversational style makes it a fun read, it does lend to questioning where they come up with some of their claims.

In Chapter 3, there is a discussion of Irving Rapper’s The Brave One’s international filming. They make the claim that a scene that “takes place in a schoolroom where the boy learns about the history of his Mexican people and how illiterate Indians won a nation’s freedom from the armies of European aristocrats. So appealing are the boy and the story that no on […] saw through the plot to the didactic crypto-Marxist center” (90). While I have no reason to necessarily dispute their argument, or their assertion that this was “a true internationalization of film,” they don’t offer any evidence beyond their own argument. As a survey or textbook, I am compelled to see evidence from a primary source to support their claim. Though they may have information that supports their claim, it would be more effective (and less disputable) to have that source clearly in the text. I see the importance of documenting the groups of blacklistees that formed, and the implications of the projects they undertook, but when they jump to make claims about the INTENT of the filmmakers without evidence, they lose me. I’m also more curious about the mention of low-cost filming in Spain and Yugoslavia that they gloss over and never mention in any depth.

Maybe it’s just my hypersensitivity to the hard-boiled and noir (because of the courses I’m enrolled in this semester), but I think that looking at the influence of hard-boiled as a means for social commentary, and its influences on science fiction, horror, and fantasy would have strengthened their argument. They focus their attention across the pond, at noir made in France by blacklistees, without much mention of the origins of American noir, or the process of being defined as noir by the French after the war. I guess whether or not such information is necessary depends on the intended audience of this book. I get the impression that it is very much a survey, so I think that the inclusion of a bit more background would help that purpose. If this book is intended for people with more background in film and television than I have, I suppose it would seem redundant or unnecessary.

Finally in Chapter 4, they give some the hard and fast quantitative evidence that I was wanting, but this does more for me to highlight the lack of such statistics in their other arguments. The kind of production figures given for the section on westerns (112) would have given a lot of strength to their argument, or more girth to the story they’re telling. Though I enjoy the story that they’re telling, it does lose me a bit in the way that they summarize their way through with very little primary evidence IN the text. While it all sounds plausible (and I believe them) I think the text is deficient of primary evidence. I don’t have a sufficient background to find faults in their claims, but I am left needing to know where they find the evidence for their claims.

Also, since I had never seen Gerald McBoing Boing I found it on youtube to share (reminds me of one of my favorite childhood books Harold and the Purple Crayon)