The Contradiction of African American Women in Cinema
Author : Niesha Burnett
Publisher :
Page : 25 pages
File Size : 20,43 MB
Release : 2004
Category :
ISBN :
Author : Niesha Burnett
Publisher :
Page : 25 pages
File Size : 20,43 MB
Release : 2004
Category :
ISBN :
Author : Norma Manatu
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 245 pages
File Size : 41,51 MB
Release : 2014-01-10
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9780786451449
The representation of African American women is an important issue in the overall study of how women are portrayed in film, and has received serious attention in recent years. Traditionally, "women of color," particularly African American women, have been at the margins of studies of women's on-screen depictions--or excluded altogether. This work focuses exclusively on the sexual objectification of African American women in film from the 1980s to the early 2000s. Critics of the negative sexual imagery have long speculated that control by African American filmmakers would change how African American women are depicted. This work examines sixteen films made by males both white and black to see how the imagery might change with the race of the filmmaker. Four dimensions are given special attention: the diversity of the women's roles and relationships with men, the sexual attitudes of the African American female characters, their attitudes towards men, and their nonverbal and verbal sexual behaviors. This work also examines the role culture has played in perpetuating the images, how film influences viewers' perception of African American women and their sexuality, and how the imagery polarizes women by functioning as a regulator of their sexual behaviors based on cultural definitions of the feminine.
Author : Mia Mask
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
Page : 323 pages
File Size : 24,66 MB
Release : 2010-10-01
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 0252091825
This insightful study places African American women's stardom in historical and industrial contexts by examining the star personae of five African American women: Dorothy Dandridge, Pam Grier, Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey, and Halle Berry. Interpreting each woman's celebrity as predicated on a brand of charismatic authority, Mia Mask shows how these female stars have ultimately complicated the conventional discursive practices through which blackness and womanhood have been represented in commercial cinema, independent film, and network television. Mask examines the function of these stars in seminal yet underanalyzed films. She considers Dandridge's status as a sexual commodity in films such as Tamango, revealing the contradictory discourses regarding race and sexuality in segregation-era American culture. Grier's feminist-camp performances in sexploitation pictures Women in Cages and The Big Doll House and her subsequent blaxploitation vehicles Coffy and Foxy Brown highlight a similar tension between representing African American women as both objectified stereotypes and powerful, self-defining icons. Mask reads Goldberg's transforming habits in Sister Act and The Associate as representative of her unruly comedic routines, while Winfrey's daily television performance as self-made, self-help guru echoes Horatio Alger narratives of success. Finally, Mask analyzes Berry's meteoric success by acknowledging the ways in which Dandridge's career made Berry's possible.
Author : Ed Guerrero
Publisher : Temple University Press
Page : 270 pages
File Size : 28,54 MB
Release : 1993-11-19
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 1566391261
From D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation to Spike Lee's Malcolm X, Ed Guerrero argues, the commercial film industry reflects white domination of American society. Written with the energy and conviction generated by the new black film wave, Framing Blackness traces an ongoing epic—African Americans protesting screen images of blacks as criminals, servants, comics, athletes, and sidekicks. These images persist despite blacks' irrepressible demands for emancipated images and a role in the industry. Although starkly racist portrayals of blacks in early films have gradually been replaced by more appealing characterizations, the legacy of the plantation genre lives on in Blaxpoitation films, the fantastic racialized imagery in science fiction and horror films, and the resubordination of blacks in Reagan-era films. Probing the contradictions of such images, Guerrero recalls the controversies surrounding role choices by stars like Sidney Poitier, Eddie Murphy, Whoopie Goldberg, and Richard Pryor. Throughout his study, Guerrero is attentive to the ways African Americans resist Hollywood's one-dimensional images and superficial selling of black culture as the latest fad. Organizing political demonstrations and boycotts, writing, and creating their own film images are among the forms of active resistance documented. The final chapter awakens readers to the artistic and commercial breakthrough of black independent filmmakers who are using movies to channel their rage at social injustice. Guerrero points out their diverse approaches to depicting African American life and hails innovative tactics for financing their work. Framing Blackness is the most up-to-date critical study of how African Americans are acquiring power once the province of Hollywood alone: the power of framing blackness. In the series Culture and the Moving Image, edited by Robert Sklar.
Author : Elvera L. Vilson
Publisher :
Page : pages
File Size : 13,87 MB
Release : 2017
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Author : Anita Marrie Lewis
Publisher :
Page : 110 pages
File Size : 22,90 MB
Release : 2003
Category : Communication
ISBN :
Author : Mia Mask
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 286 pages
File Size : 17,78 MB
Release : 2012
Category : Art
ISBN : 0415523222
Contemporary Black American Cinema offers a fresh collection of essays on African American film, media, and visual culture in the era of global multiculturalism. Integrating theory, history, and criticism, the contributing authors deftly connect interdisciplinary perspectives from American studies, cinema studies, cultural studies, political science, media studies, and Queer theory. This multidisciplinary methodology expands the discursive and interpretive registers of film analysis. From Paul Robeson's and Sidney Poitier's star vehicles to Lee Daniels's directorial forays, these essays address the career legacies of film stars, examine various iterations of Blaxploitation and animation, question the comedic politics of "fat suit" films, and celebrate the innovation of avant-garde and experimental cinema.
Author : Jerry Rafiki Jenkins
Publisher : New Suns: Race, Gender, and Se
Page : 234 pages
File Size : 25,3 MB
Release : 2019
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780814214015
"This book examines the link between blackness and immortality in the fledgling genre of African American vampire fiction"--
Author : André Seewood
Publisher : Xlibris
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 11,76 MB
Release : 2008
Category : African Americans in motion pictures
ISBN : 9781436321792
Using a rich compendium of evidence and a provocative perspective, the second edition of SLAVE CINEMA takes a thorough and uncompromising look at African-American cinema, African-American social identity and the American film industry. This book addresses the specific artistic, ideological and moral challenges that face every African-American filmmaker. It is broken into three main parts: Slave Cinema part 1: The Crisis of African-American Independent Cinema. Slave Cinema part 2: Five Assumptions of Race that Shackle African-Americans in Film. Slave Cinema part 3: Five Errors that Constrict African-American Cinematic Style. This second edition contains a new chapter on RACE TRAITORS: White Filmmakers who make Black Films which discusses several groundbreaking films made by whites about blacks that have been overlooked or dismissed by many African-American critics and scholars. Written by multiple award winning independent writer and filmmaker Andre Seewood. SLAVE CINEMA is his second published non-fiction work. He is also the author of SCREENWRITING IN TO FILM: Forgotten Methods & New Possibilities.
Author : George Alexander
Publisher : Random House Digital, Inc.
Page : 556 pages
File Size : 19,13 MB
Release : 2003
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN :
Directors -- Interviews. 30615000014034.