I can strongly recommend Andrew Stewart’s book to everybody as a successful multidisciplinary work that is so hard to find in scholarly treatments of film. With so many film scholars focusing narrowly on auteur theory, mise-en-scène, tracking shots and camera angles, it is a relief to read a young film scholar who makes the connection between film and politics.
–Louis Proyect, Counterpunch

Purchase the book containing bonus content via Amazon!

A book written to fight back against Trump and his alt-right goons! What does a 1956 Western starring John Wayne and a 1976 psychological thriller starring Robert De Niro tell us about America? What if anything did legendary Hollywood film director John Ford and pioneering Martiniquais-French psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary, and writer Frantz Fanon have in common? And why has America become so polarized politically in the past eight years following the election of the first African American to the presidency? In July 2010, Glen Ford, Executive Editor of Black Agenda Report, was asked to make an address at a United National Peace Coalition conference on the topic of building an alliance with anti-war isolationists within the Libertarian Party and the Tea Party movement. His address here provides a significant amount of insight. “It was more than 40 years ago that Black folks in the movement asked white people to go forth among other white people and try to civilize them. That should be part of that mission, not doing missionary work with Black folks but civilizing their own folks.” We have taken up such a request herein. We intend by serializing this book online to provide readers a tool for organizing and facilitating discussions with their friends, neighbors, and loved ones who are in desperate need of an education about racism, white supremacy, and the role they play in the oppressing people of color.

Click Here to read the entire book online for free!

OVERVIEW: American politics has become more substantially polarized in the advent of first Barack Obama and now Donald Trump being elected President of the United States. For the first time in decades, a substantial number of Americans under 35 have a favorable view of socialism, demonstrated by the candidacy of Bernie Sanders and then the growth of the Democratic Socialists of America into a mass-membership organization. Tragically, however, this has also seen a rebirth of fascist politics, as the violence at Charlottesville and other localities nationwide showed with deadly results. Yet despite this, a huge level of confusion and misunderstanding about American history and the nature of our society remains within the public.

Taxi Searchers is an attempt to explain this using the study of cinema and its history. “It is my contention,” says the author, “that we learn from a John Wayne Western called THE SEARCHERS a clear understanding of race and racism in America with particular focus on the meaning of movements like the Tea Party. Furthermore, a remake of this film by Martin Scorsese titled TAXI DRIVER grants us insight into the meaning of gun culture and the kind of psychosis that it fosters.”

Stewart combines mainstream film scholarship with the writings of revolutionary thinker Frantz Fanon to develop an analysis which is wholly original and is designed to help foster conversations that will educate about race and racism in America.

MARKETS: Film studies catered to the consumer-level market as opposed to the academic market is a fertile area for growth. Movie-related books are major sections of book stores now, depending upon the title and production company. For instance, the STAR WARS franchise now commands an entirely separate section of Barnes and Noble, featuring both fictional spin-offs as well as nonfiction ‘behind the scenes’ titles. Furthermore, titles that anthologize writings based off genre or by a certain critics, such as Roger Ebert, have steady sales.

As a separate market, there has been an uptick since the 2016 election of Donald Trump in books dealing with race, racism, and social justice struggles. The development of a new African American political movement that has borne banners such as #BlackLivesMatter has created a desire for literature that can help their allies and supporters to better understand the dynamics of these movements and their politics.

SUBSIDIARY RIGHTS: Television and documentary film rights, including web-based platforms such as Netflix or YouTube; foreign rights; first- and second-serial rights to excerpt the book before publication; translation rights; rights to produce abridged, unabridged, and dramatized audio and video adaptation; merchandising rights.

CHAPTERS:

• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Antecedents
• Chapter 2: Contexts
• Chapter 3: Go Searchin’ Way Out There
• Chapter 4: You Lookin’ At Me?
• Chapter 5: Conclusion

KEYWORDS: STAGECOACH, John Ford, John Wayne, Robert DeNiro, Jodie Foster, Harvey Keitel, Natalie Wood, Jeffrey Hunter, Ward Bond, Henry Brandon, THE SEARCHERS, TAXI DRIVER, Taxi Searchers: John Wayne Robert DeNiro and the Meaning of America, Film Studies, Charles Ramirez Berg, Earl Browder, Max Shachtman, David Caute, Joan Dagle, Peter Bogdanovich, Jimmy Stewart, Christopher M. Finan, Vivian Gornick, Julius Rosenberg, Ethel Rosenberg, Ivy Meeropol, Michael Meeropol, Robert Meeropol, Noel Ignatiev, Joseph McBride, Phillip Jenkinson, Mark Naison, Annette T. Rubinstein, Paul Schrader, Joseph Stalin, Leninism, Anders Stephanson, Gil Green, Leon Trotsky, Henry Wallace, Communist Party USA, Communist, Communism, Old Left, Leighton Grist, Brian Henderson, Arthur M. Eckstein, Peter Lehman, Louis Althusser, Roger Ebert, Kathryn Kalinak, Douglas Pye, Donald Trump, Trumpism, Settler Colonialism, white supremacy, white nationalism, imperialism, alt-right, alt right, Frantz Fanon, Black Skin White Masks, Lewis Gordon, Irene L Gendzier, WEB Du Bois