Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is a compelling and very thorough research study. The conclusions are well-supported by the evidence, and the studies are well-designed, especially in their ability to complement each other. It is surprising to me that studies seem to rely on peoples' memories of the film and that there is no control group of people who are seeing the film for the first time. (Apologies if this misunderstands or mischaracterizes how the research was conducted.) Memory adds a new set of variables that the narrative does not seem to account for. Assuming that you do not want to go back and redesign the research, it would be valuable to think through and address the above problematic in the text. This is also true of the heavy use of the concept of abolition and abolitionism, which is introduced on line 28 as if it were self-evident. It would be helpful to have more background and context on this critical concept, which is at the heart of the argument, including how the present study seeks to intervene in our understanding of it. 

Author Response

Comments: This is a compelling and very thorough research study. The conclusions are well-supported by the evidence, and the studies are well-designed, especially in their ability to complement each other. It is surprising to me that studies seem to rely on peoples' memories of the film and that there is no control group of people who are seeing the film for the first time. (Apologies if this misunderstands or mischaracterizes how the research was conducted.) Memory adds a new set of variables that the narrative does not seem to account for. Assuming that you do not want to go back and redesign the research, it would be valuable to think through and address the above problematic in the text. This is also true of the heavy use of the concept of abolition and abolitionism, which is introduced on line 28 as if it were self-evident. It would be helpful to have more background and context on this critical concept, which is at the heart of the argument, including how the present study seeks to intervene in our understanding of it. 

Response: Thank you for your helpful and careful comments. We have provided a brief explanation in the Methodology section to help clarify the way memory is being treated as part of the audience reception and we have also explained what abolition means more clearly at the first mention of it in the Introduction. These changes make the study more clear without affecting the design or scope of the study.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This essay is a brisk examination of different audiences’ responses to The Green Mile that succeeds admirably in addressing the leading questions its opening section identifies: “How do audiences negotiate the affective architecture of The Green Mile in a time of heightened abolitionist consciousness? What are the roles of translation, platform paratexts and sonic manipulation in duplicating and/or resisting the passive logic of the film's affect?” (2). Its conduct of the argument is able and its conclusions well-documented and persuasive. I therefore recommend its acceptance for publication.

Even so, I have two reservations about the essay I would urge its authors to consider going forward. The first of these involves contexts. The essay painstakingly divides different responses to The Green Mile along generational and linguistic lines. I was especially impressed by the way it developed its claim that “Knowing that translation practices used can also mediate or exaggerate racial meanings, we gathered matched corpora of subtitles of Spanish (Latin American), Russian, Japanese and Uzbek languages, along with dubbed scripts. The files were aligned in SubtitleEdit and synchronized between utterances with racial or religious metaphors included” (4). So I was surprised to see that the essay makes no attempt to consider other possibly informing contexts, like audiences’ earlier familiarity with Stephen King’s fiction or Tom Hanks’s other performances. Indeed the opening sentences of the Introduction—“Stephen King's serialized novel The Green Mile (1996), adapted by Frank Darabont into a 1999 film, has remained a cultural touchstone for almost three decades, setting off sustained discourse on its treatment of race, disability and capital punishment. The story revolves around John Coffey, a Death Row inmate with mental retardation and supernatural healing powers, whose execution becomes the means of the moral redemption of a white prison guard, Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks)” (1)—begin by identifying The Green Mile as a serialized novel and end by identifying it as a film. Several later sections, notably the section on auditory effects, make it clear that the film, not the novel, is the focus of the study. As an enduring result of this initial ambiguity, however, the essay never considers how audiences’ experiences of the film might have been shaped by their previous familiarity, or lack of familiarity, with the novel on which it is based. Differences like these might have had no effect on the different perceptions on which the authors focus, but since they never test for them, no firm conclusion is possible.

My more serious reservation concerns the positivism of the essay’s framework. It is clear from the beginning that beneath the essay’s scientific cast is a highly leading argument in which current audiences’ moral attitudes do not merely supersede but definitively correct earlier audiences’ attitudes in ways that are assumed without further analysis are improvements. The authors praise earlier “testimonies [which] have skepticism towards the mainstream sentimentality well before digital discourse was able to offer named tropes” (5–6). They note approvingly that “abolitionist discourse provides contemporary audiences with the critical tools to resist the absorption of emotions in redemption plots” (6). They contend that the film’s “psychoacoustical envelope - low rumble suggesting cosmic presence, high frequency hiss suggesting the spiritual exhaust - pulpitifies Coffey's torture into religious wonder by damping political anger and redirecting any speculation of spectators towards transcendence instead of action” (8). There is no question that “critical literacy and sociopolitical contexts allow viewers to resist the affective architecture of the film and prove that affect is not universally compelling but is a culturally specific affective organization” (8). The question is whether more recent audiences’ experience should itself be taken as normative.

The authors observe that because “This oscillation, which Goodhead (2021) calls the resisting spectator, is comprised of not just a critical posture but socialized competence that is correlated with Black Lives Matter activism, TikTok abolition explainers and critical prison studies curricula” (10), “interpretive communities with abolitionist vocabularies can disrupt the sentimental closure that is no longer working acutely” (10). As a result, “A comparative analysis of Netflix thumbnails and Tik-Tok reaction videos places Coffey's disability as a question mark of viewers' social desires and racial empathy. These activities redefine the passivity of spectatorship and transform it into active listening and viewing which could lead to the transition between consumptive catharsis and structural critique” (11). Pairing classroom viewings of the film with viewings of The Nickel Boys, they argue, will correct The Green Mile’s tendency “to offer white guilt cleansing as long as audiences do not have the critical infrastructure to refuse its bargain: white suffering for Black moral elevation” (11). The exercise they prescribe—“As a corrective to these affective mechanisms, transformative pedagogies need to expose the film's aesthetic machinery in some way” (10)—does not so much encourage active and critical reception so much as differently prescribed reception: instead of being trained to give one response by the film’s literal and subtextual cues, audiences are now trained to give another more approved response whose validity is tacitly assumed to be universal. This is dangerous territory, and I hope that the authors, in their commendable zeal to examine the ways more recent audiences have resisted the film’s racial politics, do not succumb to the temptation of pushing a single agenda of their own that later generations are likely to find equally timebound.

Author Response

Comments: 

This essay is a brisk examination of different audiences’ responses to The Green Mile that succeeds admirably in addressing the leading questions its opening section identifies: “How do audiences negotiate the affective architecture of The Green Mile in a time of heightened abolitionist consciousness? What are the roles of translation, platform paratexts and sonic manipulation in duplicating and/or resisting the passive logic of the film's affect?” (2). Its conduct of the argument is able and its conclusions well-documented and persuasive. I therefore recommend its acceptance for publication.

Even so, I have two reservations about the essay I would urge its authors to consider going forward. The first of these involves contexts. The essay painstakingly divides different responses to The Green Mile along generational and linguistic lines. I was especially impressed by the way it developed its claim that “Knowing that translation practices used can also mediate or exaggerate racial meanings, we gathered matched corpora of subtitles of Spanish (Latin American), Russian, Japanese and Uzbek languages, along with dubbed scripts. The files were aligned in SubtitleEdit and synchronized between utterances with racial or religious metaphors included” (4). So I was surprised to see that the essay makes no attempt to consider other possibly informing contexts, like audiences’ earlier familiarity with Stephen King’s fiction or Tom Hanks’s other performances. Indeed the opening sentences of the Introduction—“Stephen King's serialized novel The Green Mile (1996), adapted by Frank Darabont into a 1999 film, has remained a cultural touchstone for almost three decades, setting off sustained discourse on its treatment of race, disability and capital punishment. The story revolves around John Coffey, a Death Row inmate with mental retardation and supernatural healing powers, whose execution becomes the means of the moral redemption of a white prison guard, Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks)” (1)—begin by identifying The Green Mile as a serialized novel and end by identifying it as a film. Several later sections, notably the section on auditory effects, make it clear that the film, not the novel, is the focus of the study. As an enduring result of this initial ambiguity, however, the essay never considers how audiences’ experiences of the film might have been shaped by their previous familiarity, or lack of familiarity, with the novel on which it is based. Differences like these might have had no effect on the different perceptions on which the authors focus, but since they never test for them, no firm conclusion is possible.

My more serious reservation concerns the positivism of the essay’s framework. It is clear from the beginning that beneath the essay’s scientific cast is a highly leading argument in which current audiences’ moral attitudes do not merely supersede but definitively correct earlier audiences’ attitudes in ways that are assumed without further analysis are improvements. The authors praise earlier “testimonies [which] have skepticism towards the mainstream sentimentality well before digital discourse was able to offer named tropes” (5–6). They note approvingly that “abolitionist discourse provides contemporary audiences with the critical tools to resist the absorption of emotions in redemption plots” (6). They contend that the film’s “psychoacoustical envelope - low rumble suggesting cosmic presence, high frequency hiss suggesting the spiritual exhaust - pulpitifies Coffey's torture into religious wonder by damping political anger and redirecting any speculation of spectators towards transcendence instead of action” (8). There is no question that “critical literacy and sociopolitical contexts allow viewers to resist the affective architecture of the film and prove that affect is not universally compelling but is a culturally specific affective organization” (8). The question is whether more recent audiences’ experience should itself be taken as normative.

The authors observe that because “This oscillation, which Goodhead (2021) calls the resisting spectator, is comprised of not just a critical posture but socialized competence that is correlated with Black Lives Matter activism, TikTok abolition explainers and critical prison studies curricula” (10), “interpretive communities with abolitionist vocabularies can disrupt the sentimental closure that is no longer working acutely” (10). As a result, “A comparative analysis of Netflix thumbnails and Tik-Tok reaction videos places Coffey's disability as a question mark of viewers' social desires and racial empathy. These activities redefine the passivity of spectatorship and transform it into active listening and viewing which could lead to the transition between consumptive catharsis and structural critique” (11). Pairing classroom viewings of the film with viewings of The Nickel Boys, they argue, will correct The Green Mile’s tendency “to offer white guilt cleansing as long as audiences do not have the critical infrastructure to refuse its bargain: white suffering for Black moral elevation” (11). The exercise they prescribe—“As a corrective to these affective mechanisms, transformative pedagogies need to expose the film's aesthetic machinery in some way” (10)—does not so much encourage active and critical reception so much as differently prescribed reception: instead of being trained to give one response by the film’s literal and subtextual cues, audiences are now trained to give another more approved response whose validity is tacitly assumed to be universal. This is dangerous territory, and I hope that the authors, in their commendable zeal to examine the ways more recent audiences have resisted the film’s racial politics, do not succumb to the temptation of pushing a single agenda of their own that later generations are likely to find equally timebound.

Response: Thank you very much for the positive evaluation and recommending the paper for publication. We have answered the two points that the reviewer has raised with minor clarifications. First, we now make clear in the manuscript that the study concerns the film adaptation and that familiarity with the novel or familiarity with Tom Hanks's previous role playings was not tested and is recognized as a limitation. Second, we have added a sentence in the Discussion to clarify that abolitionist reception is discussed as a historical interpretive position and not as a normative and universally superior position. These kinds of changes result in better conceptual clarity without altering the scope or conclusions of the study.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is valuable research that connects previous audience research with a new generation. The film under consideration is truly canonical, as is the lead actor Tom Hanks, so the consideration of its contemporary reception is appropriate.

My only suggestion would be to place the film more in context, with films whose original meaning has shifted with changes in current cultural understandings.  The term Magical Negro could be connected to Spike Lee, as well as a contemporary film -- The Legend of Bagger Vance -- that has not resonated in the millenium to the same extent as The Green Mile.

Similarly, Tom Hanks's credible persona also enhanced Forrest Gump, a portrayal of mental disability similarly used to whitewash its historical context. Section 5.1 (line 398-399) notes that streamers use Tom Hanks to promote the viewing of The Green Mile. The methodology of this study might invite other scholars to re-consider these or similar films.

The essay mentions in passing the novel version of The Green Mile. However, it does not make clear how the film adaptation's relationship to the novel.  Similarly, a connection to related King novels of film adaptations could be helpful to researchers building on this study.

Line 462:  title of film incorrectly cited.

Author Response

Comments: 

This is valuable research that connects previous audience research with a new generation. The film under consideration is truly canonical, as is the lead actor Tom Hanks, so the consideration of its contemporary reception is appropriate.

My only suggestion would be to place the film more in context, with films whose original meaning has shifted with changes in current cultural understandings.  The term Magical Negro could be connected to Spike Lee, as well as a contemporary film -- The Legend of Bagger Vance -- that has not resonated in the millenium to the same extent as The Green Mile.

Similarly, Tom Hanks's credible persona also enhanced Forrest Gump, a portrayal of mental disability similarly used to whitewash its historical context. Section 5.1 (line 398-399) notes that streamers use Tom Hanks to promote the viewing of The Green Mile. The methodology of this study might invite other scholars to re-consider these or similar films.

The essay mentions in passing the novel version of The Green Mile. However, it does not make clear how the film adaptation's relationship to the novel.  Similarly, a connection to related King novels of film adaptations could be helpful to researchers building on this study.

Line 462:  title of film incorrectly cited.

Response: Thank you for positive evaluation and helpful suggestions. We have fixed the error in the film title mentioned in the manuscript. We have also made it clear that the study is about the film adaptation and not the novel, and that comparisons with other films, star personas, and other related King adaptations are useful directions for future research that is beyond the scope of the present study.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx