Typecasting

“Typecasting is merely the most lucid and instructive history book to be published in the new millennium.” –Kurt Vonnegut

“In Typecasting, two ace historians offer a profound and sweeping study of the most everyday, often unconscious, forms of prejudice. [It’s] bound to make you think—and think again.” –Barbara Ehrenreich

“With exceptional and profound research on visual cultures, Ewen & Ewen have captured a wide-angle view of the impact of racial imaging. Using the history of art as well as popular imagery, they demonstrate the complexity found in mapping and reading this legacy.” –Deborah Willis, author of Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographs: 1840 to the Present

“What the Ewens’ book does, and does well, is warn us that the stereotypes we see – whether presented as possible fact by a Harvard president or parodied by a comedian on a movie screen — are only the surface image of a much larger political and intellectual project which arises out of an enduring contradiction at the core of our society.” –Stephen Duncombe of NYU, International Journal of Communication

“Typecasting urges its readers to become more than passive recipients of cultural knowledge, to change their community by resisting idées recues. . . . [The book] provides a fresh analysis of stereotypes and their origin, and prepares the reader to join a public discourse ‘based on knowledge, understanding, and a belief in the possibility of egalitarian community.’” –Maxwell Heller, The Brooklyn Rail

“Comprised of a series of encyclopedic essays addressing the influence of science, pop culture and history, the book reveals the blueprints for how racial and ethnic perception and misperception has been perpetrated in various cultures.” –Steve Heller, AIGA.org

“The Ewens have provided a valuable history, but Typecasting also sheds needed light on the processes of persuasion and misinformation today. . . . The Ewens show that too many of the world’s persistent ills derive from the populace’s happy ignorance.” –Eye Magazine

“This fascinating if overly ambitious study examines the rise of stereotyping in modern society and how the mainstream stereotypes the ‘other’—whether black, Jewish, gay, disabled, etc.—to maintain social order. Ewen & Ewen—the pseudonym of Elizabeth and Stuart Ewen, professors, respectively, of American studies and film and media studies—have amassed a huge amount of material across a broad spectrum of disciplines, all providing concrete examples of how Western culture, beginning in the mid-18th century with the study of physiognomy (the evaluation of character based on facial features), has consciously created visual, verbal, scientific and artistic cues to identify those outside of the dominant culture. The Ewens’ research is prodigious and their examples eclectic—silent star Mary Pickford’s film persona and notions of femininity, the social philosophy behind Roget’s Thesaurus, blackface and minstrel shows, and George W. Bush’s rhetoric on Iraq—and this mass of information is extremely well organized thematically. While the Ewens’ writing is clear and compelling, the overall effect can be overwhelming, and often the nuances get lost. Still, this is a terrific volume that will be eye-opening to academics and general readers alike.” –Publishers Weekly