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| Movie Review | The Journal of American History, 91.3 | The History Cooperative
91.3  
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December, 2004
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Movie Reviews


Robert Brent Toplin
Contributing Editor

The information appearing in parentheses in each headnote represents the address to which inquiries can be directed about the rental or purchase of a film. If the film is not currently available for distribution, only the name of the production company appears. The absence of an address or other indication of a distributor does not necessarily mean that a film will always be unavailable for rental or purchase. In some cases the producers plan to release the films for general and educational use, but they had not completed their contractual arrangements at the time the Journal went to press. Many Hollywood films and docudramas from commercial television are available in video stores.
     Individuals who wish to propose films for review in the Journal should communicate with Robert Brent Toplin, Department of History, University of North Carolina at Wilmington, 601 S. College Rd., Wilmington, NC 28403-3201 <Toplinrb@uncw.edu>.

 
Race—The Power of an Illusion. Prod. by Larry Adelman, 2003. 3 parts, 56 mins. each. (California Newsreel, Order Department, Box 2284, South Burlington, VT 05407; 877-811-7495; < www.newsreel.org > [Sept. 13, 2004])

This excellent three-part documentary condenses recent biological, anthropological, historical, and sociological scholarship on race. It advances a dual thesis long internalized by most historians but unevenly grasped by wider publics: Fixed human subspecies do not exist, but "race" as a category of social differentiation is powerful. Lucid and gripping, Race: The Power of an Illusion is highly recommended. 1
      The most dazzling episode is the first, "The Difference between Us," written, produced, and directed by Christine Herbes-Sommers. Interweaving scientific demonstration and historical analysis, the program demolishes the assumption that race is an essential or genetic trait, showing it instead to be a cultural prism. At center stage is a group of students whose teacher, Scott Bronson of Cold Springs Harbor Lab, leads them through an analysis of a small loop (a 350-letter sequence) of their own mitochondrial DNA . When the information is entered into a global database, the experiment demonstrates to the students, who initially group themselves by surface markers, that they actually have an astonishing geographic range of exact matches. 2
      Interviews with scientific authorities such as Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin engage the common supposition that physical features, including hair texture, skin color, and nose shape, are responsible for attributes such as musical talent, athletic ability, moral behavior, and intelligence. The program does so in part by situating science historically. In the early twentieth century, scientists ascribed physical inferiority to African Americans. Jesse Owens's four gold medals in the 1936 Olympics upended that supposition, prompting science to ascribe innate physical superiority to African Americans but deny them "civilized" capacities. As the biological anthropologist Alan Goodman says, "race is not based on biology, but race is rather an idea that we ascribe to biology." 3
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