UC Berkeley

When D.W. Griffith began filming The Greaser's Gauntlet in 1908, no one could have predicted that he would create an enduring character. This dissertation explores the history of the greaser character and its influence in American and Chicanx Literature. Beginning with The Greaser's Gauntlet, this study traces the greaser character and illuminates the history of greaser cinema in several films, including: Broncho Billy and the Greaser (1914) and Licking the Greaser's (1914/1918). The dissertation then argues that the images produced in these films are essential to establishing racialized representations of Mexican and Latinx characters in the U.S. film industry and in the social sphere. Next, the dissertation investigates artistic responses to the greaser character. In particular, the dissertation examines four novels—Nathanael West's Day of the Locust (1939), José Antonio Villareal's Pocho (1959), Oscar Zeta Acosta's Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972), and The Revolt of the Cockroach People (1973)—to show how creative writers have reimagined and critiqued the character in their fictions.