“What if Movie is Bliss’s Own Life?”: the Symbolic Violence of the Movie in Ralph Ellison’s Unfinished Second Novel Three Days Before the Shooting...

Abstract

This article analyzes the episode “Motion Picture” in Ralph Ellison’s unfinished novel Three Days Before the Shooting…, which presents the transformation of the protagonist Bliss into the race-baiting ‘white’ Senator Adam Sunraider. In order to understand the significance of the episode it has to be read in the context of Ellison’s nonfiction writing, his numerous unpublished notes on Bliss as Mr. Movie man and the episode itself. Moreover, in his notes, Ellison explicitly interrelates the micro-level of his protagonist’s trajectory with the macro-level of American history, creating an even broader context for the story. In the process of changing from a prospective Reverend to a politician, the hero is influenced decisively by the cinema, a phase in his life that has been largely overlooked in the novel’s reception. This article attempts to close this gap by focusing on the protagonist’s metamorphosis in the cultural field. In addition, it explores the driving force behind this transformation that ensures Bliss’s success both in the field of cultural production and in the political field. The immense power that the illusionary art of the movie exerts upon the black community can be read as a soft, non-physical power or, what with Pierre Bourdieu we may call symbolic violence. The article highlights that Bliss exploits the community by using the symbolic violence of the movie as well as his own charismatic violence.

Keywords

• ralph ellison
• second novel
• three days before the shooting...
• notes
• movie
• pierre bourdieu
• symbolic violence