African American Cinema through Black Lives Consciousness

Mark A. Reid

• Publisher: Wayne State University Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780814345481
• eBook ISBN:
  9780814345504
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

African American Cinema through Black Lives Consciousness uses critical race theory to discuss American films that embrace contemporary issues of race, sexuality, class, and gender. Its linear history chronicles black-oriented narrative film from post–World War II through the presidential administration of Barack Obama. Editor Mark A. Reid has assembled a stellar list of contributors who approach their film analyses as an intersectional practice that combines queer theory, feminism/womanism, and class analytical strategies alongside conventional film history and theory. Taken together, the essays invigorate a "Black Lives Consciousness, " which speaks to the value of black bodies that might be traumatized and those bodies that are coming into being-ness through intersectional theoretical analysis and everyday activism. The volume includes essays such as Gerald R. Butters's, "Blaxploitation Film, " which charts the genre and its uses of violence, sex, and misogyny to provoke a realization of other philosophical and sociopolitical themes that concern intersectional praxis. Dan Flory's "African-American Film Noir" explains the intertextual—fictional and socio-ecological—dynamics of black action films. Melba J. Boyd's essay, "'Who's that Nigga on that Nag?': Django Unchained and the Return of the Blaxploitation Hero, " argues that the film provides cultural and historical insight, "signifies" on blackface stereotypes, and chastises Hollywood cinema's misrepresentation of slavery. African American Cinema through Black Lives Consciousness embraces varied social experiences within a cinematic Black Lives Consciousness intersectionality.The interdisciplinary quality of the anthology makes it approachable to students and scholars of fields ranging from film to culture to African American studies alike.

Index

Abrams, Kathryn, 184, 199

Africa and African past, Gerima on, 195–96

African American film noir, 121–23

distinctive traits of, 134

and early African American neo-noir, 123–26

heyday of, 126–32

ongoing legacy and influence of, 132–34

African American neo-noir, 123–26

African Americans

advancements of, 60

cinematic representations of, 212, 214–15

control over representations of, 236

history of involvement of, in feature filmmaking, 1–7

ignorance regarding, in For Love of Ivy, 66–68, 71

agency. See also black agency; black female agency

defined, 184

transformative, in Bush Mama and Sankofa, 197–99

Aggressives, The, 268–69

Allan, Tuzyline Jita, 208–9

Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, 133

Anderson, Benedict, 285

antiheroism, and Negro Spiritual Woman, 238–40

autography, 286

Baldwin, Bridgette, 190

Baldwin, James, 23

Bambara, Toni Cade, 213–14

Bamboozled, 132–33, 214–15

Baraka, Amiri, 25

Barnes, Steven, 248

Beast of the Southern Wild, 244–47

Beauboeuf-Lafontant, Tamara, 240

Before Sunrise, 161

Before Sunset, 161

Beloved (Morrison), 210

Bennett, Lerone Jr., 88–89

Berger, Maurice, 236

Bergner, Gwen, 24, 31, 32

Beugnet, Martine, 161

Birth of a Nation, 238–39

black agency, 48, 55, 56–58. See also black female agency

black anger

in African American film noir, 125, 126

in The Secret Life of Bees, 222–23

“black cinema,” 124

Black Eye, 124

black female agency

in Gerima films, 1...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• I. Postwar Film Treatment of the Civil Rights Era: The Fifties through the Sixties
• II. The Blaxploitation Film and Pastiche
• III. PostNegritude Black Film: Pastiche and Race
• IV. Black Cinematic Womanist Praxis
• V. Sexual and Racial Polyphony in New Black Films
• Contributors
• Index