Black Hollywood Unchained

Black Hollywood Unchained
Author: Ishmael Reed
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780883783535

"Twenty-eight contributors including the book's editor, Ishmael Reed, offer insightful, informed and provocative points of view of the ever changing, yet unchanged, landscape of Hollywood and film production in America"--P. [4] of cover.

Black Hollywood

Black Hollywood
Author: Kimberly Fain
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2015-06-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1440831912

This thought-provoking work examines the dehumanizing depictions of black males in the movies since 1910, analyzing images that were once imposed on black men and are now appropriated and manipulated by them. Moving through cinematic history decade by decade since 1910, this important volume explores the appropriation, exploitation, and agency of black performers in Hollywood by looking at the black actors, directors, and producers who have shaped the image of African American males in film. To determine how these archetypes differentiate African American males in the public's subconscious, the book asks probing questions—for example, whether these images are a reflection of society's fears or realistic depictions of a pluralistic America. Even as the work acknowledges the controversial history of black representation in film, it also celebrates the success stories of blacks in the industry. It shows how blacks in Hollywood manipulate degrading stereotypes, gain control, advance their careers, and earn money while making social statements or bringing about changes in culture. It discusses how social activist performers—such as Paul Robeson, Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, and Spike Lee—reflect political and social movements in their movies, and it reviews the interactions between black actors and their white counterparts to analyze how black males express their heritage, individual identity, and social issues through film.

African American Cinema Through Black Lives Consciousness

African American Cinema Through Black Lives Consciousness
Author: Mark A. Reid
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Total Pages: 359
Release: 2019-01-12
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0814345506

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.

Black Movements

Black Movements
Author: Soyica Diggs Colbert
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2017-04-28
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0813588537

Black Movements analyzes how artists and activists of recent decades reference earlier freedom movements in order to imagine and produce a more expansive and inclusive democracy. The post–Jim Crow, post–apartheid, postcolonial era has ushered in a purportedly color blind society and along with it an assault on race-based forms of knowledge production and coalition formation. Soyica Diggs Colbert argues that in the late twentieth century race went “underground,” and by the twenty-first century race no longer functioned as an explicit marker of second-class citizenship. The subterranean nature of race manifests itself in discussions of the Trayvon Martin shooting that focus on his hoodie, an object of clothing that anyone can choose to wear, rather than focusing on structural racism; in discussions of the epidemic proportions of incarcerated black and brown people that highlight the individual’s poor decision making rather than the criminalization of blackness; in evaluations of black independence struggles in the Caribbean and Africa that allege these movements have accomplished little more than creating a black ruling class that mirrors the politics of its former white counterpart. Black Movements intervenes in these discussions by highlighting the ways in which artists draw from the past to create coherence about blackness in present and future worlds. Through an exploration of the way that black movements create circuits connecting people across space and time, Black Movements offers important interventions into performance, literary, diaspora, and African American studies.

African American Folklore

African American Folklore
Author: Anand Prahlad
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 672
Release: 2016-08-08
Genre: Social Science
ISBN:

African American folklore dates back 240 years and has had a significant impact on American culture from the slavery period to the modern day. This encyclopedia provides accessible entries on key elements of this long history, including folklore originally derived from African cultures that have survived here and those that originated in the United States. Inspired by the author's passion for African American culture and vernacular traditions, African American Folklore: An Encyclopedia for Students thoroughly addresses key elements and motifs in black American folklore-especially those that have influenced American culture. With its alphabetically organized entries that cover a wide range of subjects from the word "conjure" to the dance style of "twerking," this book provides readers with a deeper comprehension of American culture through a greater understanding of the contributions of African American culture and black folk traditions. This book will be useful to general readers as well as students or researchers whose interests include African American culture and folklore or American culture. It offers insight into the histories of African American folklore motifs, their importance within African American groups, and their relevance to the evolution of American culture. The work also provides original materials, such as excepts from folktales and folksongs, and a comprehensive compilation of sources for further research that includes bibliographical citations as well as lists of websites and cultural centers.

Weird Westerns

Weird Westerns
Author: Kerry Fine
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 526
Release: 2020-08
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1496221745

2021 Top Ten Finalist for the Locus Awards in Nonfiction Joshua Smith's chapter "Uncle Tom's Cabin Showdown" won the 2021 Don D. Walker Prize from the Western Literature Association Weird Westerns is an exploration of the hybrid western genre--an increasingly popular and visible form that mixes western themes, iconography, settings, and conventions with elements drawn from other genres, such as science fiction, horror, and fantasy. Despite frequent declarations of the western's death, the genre is now defined in part by its zombie-like ability to survive in American popular culture in weird, reanimated, and reassembled forms. The essays in Weird Westerns analyze a wide range of texts, including those by Native American authors Stephen Graham Jones (Blackfeet) and William Sanders (Cherokee); the cult television series Firefly and The Walking Dead; the mainstream feature films Suicide Squad and Django Unchained; the avant-garde and bizarre fiction of Joe R. Lansdale; the tabletop roleplaying game Deadlands: The Weird West; and the comic book series Wynonna Earp. The essays explore how these weird westerns challenge conventional representations by destabilizing or subverting the centrality of the heterosexual, white, male hero but also often surprisingly reinforce existing paradigms in their inability to imagine an existence outside of colonial frameworks.

The Media War on Black Male Youth in Urban Education

The Media War on Black Male Youth in Urban Education
Author: Darius Prier
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 156
Release: 2017-03-27
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1317512596

News media, film, and the music industry have become powerful sources of misrepresentation of Black male life in the social imagination of white society. The pedagogy of popular culture has important implications for educators and youth advocates who desire to challenge the myths and distortions that ultimately harm youth. This volume raises awareness of the media war on Black male youth in popular culture, and the impact this image battle has on the discriminatory treatment of the population in urban educational settings. Citing the recent controversial deaths of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis, the portrayal of black males in contemporary films, and the locus of hip-hop masculinities, this volume offers a unique framework for analyzing how contemporary image-making practices affect Black male youth in urban education. It also offers ethical considerations for educators in their critique, consumption and reading of Black male subjectivity in media, and provides avenues for practical applications of critical media literacy on the ground.

Race on the QT

Race on the QT
Author: Adilifu Nama
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 182
Release: 2015-04-15
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 029277236X

Known for their violence and prolific profanity, including free use of the n-word, the films of Quentin Tarantino, like the director himself, chronically blurt out in polite company what is extremely problematic even when deliberated in private. Consequently, there is an uncomfortable and often awkward frankness associated with virtually all of Tarantino's films, particularly when it comes to race and blackness. Yet beyond the debate over whether Tarantino is or is not racist is the fact that his films effectively articulate racial anxieties circulating in American society as they engage longstanding racial discourses and hint at emerging trends. This radical racial politics—always present in Tarantino's films but kept very much on the quiet—is the subject of Race on the QT. Adilifu Nama concisely deconstructs and reassembles the racial dynamics woven into Reservoir Dogs, True Romance, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill: Vol. 1, Kill Bill: Vol. 2, Death Proof, Inglourious Basterds, and Django Unchained, as they relate to historical and current racial issues in America. Nama's eclectic fusion of cultural criticism and film analysis looks beyond the director's personal racial attitudes and focuses on what Tarantino's filmic body of work has said and is saying about race in America symbolically, metaphorically, literally, impolitely, cynically, sarcastically, crudely, controversially, and brilliantly.

Africanization and Americanization Anthology, Volume 1

Africanization and Americanization Anthology, Volume 1
Author: Rinos Mwanaka
Publisher: African Books Collective
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2018-04-24
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 079749698X

Africanization and Americanization Anthology, Volume 1: Searching for Inter-racial, Interstitial, Inter-sectional, and Interstates meeting spaces, Africa Vs North America, comprises of 107 pieces from 43 poets, 4 essayists, 6 storytellers, and 1 playwright from North America and Africa regions: professors, leading theorists and researchers. The contributors are: Barbara Foley, Barbara Howard, Biko Agozino, poets; A.D Winans, Tim Hall, C Liegh McInnis, Nat Turner, Allan Kolski Horwitz, Changming Yuan, Tiel Aisha Ansari, Diane Raptosh, Wanjohi wa Makokha, storytellers; Paris Smith, Sheree Rene Thomas, and journalists; Kenneth Weene and several other essayists, street poets, academicians, musicians, visual artists... This collection is vibrant, discursive, penetrating, and is invaluable to literary and language experts, poetry collections, social and human scientists, political theorists, race theorists, development practioners, students, general readers and many others.