Suchergebnisse

The inventions of the Negro -- In the year 1915 : D.W. Griffith and the rewhitening of America -- Blackface minstrelsy and Black resistance -- Resistance and imitation in early Black cinema -- The racial regimes of the "Golden Age

"Robinson traces the emergence of Black political cultures in the United States from slave resistances in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to the civil rights movements of the present."

The growth of the early film industry in the US coincided with the institutionalisation of racial segregation at all levels of society. At the same time, an increasingly self-assertive Black middle class had begun to organise itself culturally, socially, politically and economically in ways that contradicted the virulent cultural racism underpinning 'Jim Crow'. The importance of the new medium is often stressed for its role in cohering America's new immigrant communities. However, it is its political function in the service of white supremacy and big business - a cultural instrument to cement racism and foreclose any potential alliance between Black and immigrant labour - that is explored for the first time here.

Explores "Blaxploitation" films, arguing that the recent resurgence of Blaxploitation, like those produced 1969-1975, not only degrade the black actors & the black lower classes they portray, but misrepresent the aspirations of black liberationists. The evolution of cultural propaganda in films is traced, contending that 1970s Blaxploitation films adopted the ideological stratagems of 1930s jungle/plantation movies. Hollywood's manipulation of Angela Davis's public image into an exotic black nationalist is discussed, maintaining that her cinematic treatment transmuted liberation into vengeance & made a mockery of social justice. Representations of black women as savage vigilantes in films such as Foxy Brown (1974) are explored, along with the portrayal of urban anarchy & the racial hierarchy of ghetto criminality. The ability of Blaxploitation & "Bad Black Woman" movies to transmute the liberation movement & misrepresent history is discussed. 19 References. J. Lindroth