Some things shining: Gooding-Williams, Cavell, receptivity, and Fred Astaire

Abstract In work influenced by Wittgenstein, Stanley Cavell has explored a connection between philosophical scepticism and social alienation. He has found this connection symbolized in, of all places, the art of Golden Age Hollywood, specifically in Vincente Minnelli’s 1953 MGM musical The Band Wagon. In one Fred Astaire song-and-dance number from that film, Cavell finds a representation of anxiety produced by failures of knowledge and understanding, and in another Astaire number he finds restored human connections that relieve that anxiety. However, Robert Gooding-Williams has challenged Cavell’s interpretations, taking these dances to represent, and to exemplify, white American privilege and cultural exploitation rather than general human conditions of anxiety and relief. This article defends Cavell’s reading by arguing that, under Minnelli’s direction, Astaire’s performances pay tribute to the subcultures of several oppressed American groups, thereby displaying a broad aspiration for America and humanity. Astaire’s dances become nuanced expressions of an ideal, not simple cases of cultural appropriation.