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Frank Griffin Jr, the grandson of the original Invisible Man, runs a print shop in Manhattan under the assumed name of Frank Raymond (Jon Hall). One evening, he is confronted in his shop by four armed men who reveal that they are foreign agents working for the Axis powers and they know his true identity. One of the men, Conrad Stauffer (Cedric Hardwicke), is a lieutenant general of the S.S., while a second, Baron Ikito (Peter Lorre), is Japanese. They offer to pay for the invisibility formula and threaten amputation of his fingers if it is not revealed. Griffin manages to escape with the formula. Griffin is reluctant to release the formula to the U.S. government officials, but following the Attack on Pearl Harbor agrees to limited cooperation (the condition being that the formula can only be used on himself). Later, while in-flight to be parachuted behind German lines on a secret mission, he injects himself with the serum, becoming invisible as he is parachuting down, to the shock and confusion of the German troops tracking his descent, and after landing strips off all of his clothing.

 Despite walking into Stauffer's trap, Griffin manages to obtain the list of agents, and start a fire to cover his escape. Griffin takes the list of agents to Arnold Schmidt for transmission to England. Conrad Stauffer tries to hide the loss of the list from the prying Baron Ikito, who has been staying at the local Japanese Embassy. When Stauffer refuses to answer Ikito's questions, the two confess to each other that German and Japanese cooperation is not one of trust. Without revealing their plans to each other, both men start separate hunts for the Invisible Agent.Griffin steals into a German prison to obtain information from Karl Heiser about a planned German attack on New York City. Griffin returns with Heiser to Schmidt, who in the meantime has been arrested and tortured by Stauffer. 

Heiser escapes detection and attempts to save his life and career by phoning in Ikito's activities to Stauffer. Griffin and Sorensen are taken to the Japanese embassy, but manage to escape during the mayhem that ensues when Stauffer's men arrive. For their joint failure to safeguard the list of Axis agents, Ikito kills Stauffer and then performs seppuku, ritual suicide, as Heiser watches from the shadows. Assuming command, Heiser arrives too late to the local air base to stop Griffin and Sorenson from escaping. The couple acquires one of the bombers slated for the New York attack, and destroy other German planes on the ground as they fly to England. Stauffer's loyal men catch up with Karl Heiser and he is shot. Griffin succumbs to his injuries before he can radio ahead. England's air defense shoots down their craft, but not before Sorenson parachutes them to safety. Later, in a hospital, Griffin has recovered and is wearing facial cream so that he can be visible again. Sorenson appears with Griffin's American handler, who vouches for Sorenson that she has been an Allied double-agent all along. Sorenson is left alone with Griffin. Griffin reveals that he is actually visible under the facial cream, and they kiss. Sorenson happily accepts the challenge of discovering how Griffin regained his visibility.

On the eve of its seventieth birthday, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (1952) occupies a unique place in the American canon. On the one hand, it was instantly heralded as a Great American Novel---indeed, as Lawrence Buell notes in his study of GANs, it was the first novel by an African American to be universally admitted to the pantheon of important national fiction. At the same time, the book's subsequent reputation has ridden a rollercoaster of praise and complaint suggesting our uncertainty about what degree an epic novel about race relations should emphasize the political over the aesthetic. But while some critics find the novel a little too conservative in its insistence on the absolute autonomy of individuals to create their own identity in America, there is no doubt that Ellison's tense interrogation of the power institutions like the police and political groups exploit over minorities makes it absolutely relevant to the Black Lives Matter era.

In this episode, we explore how Ellison fused European modernism with African American jazz to create the singular voice of his narrator, whose name we're never told. We examine how the plot's picaresque form differs from Bildungsroman many coming-of-age novelists were rewriting in the 1950s and delve deep into the use of symbolism, perhaps the most telltale trait at the time Ellison wrote of a GAN's "literariness." We ask why Ellison never published a second novel after Invisible Man even as he was able to produce some of the most enduring essays on race in literature and culture until his death in 1994. Most importantly, we ask what it means for people to be invisible in American society, and how Ellison's unique exploration of the issue results in a philosophically complex story that insists that the Self must first retreat from the world to forge itself before emerging to rewrite the cliches and stereotypes the culture imposes on it.  

Music in order of appearance: “Old Ralley” by Lobo Loco; "Up in My Jam" by Kubbi; "Rap Dreams" by LOWERCASE_n; and “Inspector Invisible,” also by Lobo Loco. Clips of Ellison courtesy of (respectively) the Iowa State University Library; New York Public Library; and the Oklahoma Historical Society Film and Video Archives.

#JasonBlum & #LeighWhannell chat about #TheInvisibleMan and #horror films.

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