African American Cinema
- LAST REVIEWED: 12 August 2022
- LAST MODIFIED: 27 October 2016
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199791286-0213
- LAST REVIEWED: 12 August 2022
- LAST MODIFIED: 27 October 2016
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199791286-0213
Introduction
The category “African American Cinema” presents important conceptual challenges for scholars, critics, and moviegoers. Before laying out those challenges, though, it is important to note that African American cinema is often thought of as part of American cinema, while at the same time, African American cinema is also often thought of as part of a global black diasporic cinema. Consequently, other articles in this bibliography that focus on elements of American cinema include entries relevant to research on African American cinema, and many articles on non-US cinemas—for example, African Cinema, British Cinema, Cuban Cinema, and Transnational and Diasporic Cinemas—include entries relevant to researching topics in “black cinema.” Now back to the conceptual challenges African American cinema presents: To clarify these challenges, think about three prepositions: by, of, for. Does African American cinema mean films made by African Americans? If so, who are the key figures in the making: director, writer, performers, producers, financiers? Does it matter if the finance comes from Hollywood or independent sources? If a researcher is interested in “by,” then the articles on Authorship and Auteur Theory and on the black directors Charles Burnett, Spike Lee, and Oscar Micheaux, and actor- director Sidney Poitier, may be of interest. Does African American cinema mean films of—films that depict—African Americans? If so, must such depictions make an African American a central figure? Must that figure be “positive” or “realistic” or, indeed, performed by an actor who would self-identify as African American or black? If a researcher is interested in “of,” see also The Birth of a Nation, The Jazz Singer, King Kong, and more general categories like blackface, blaxploitation, Exploitation Film, Pop, Blues, and Jazz in Films, Race and Cinema, and African American Stars. Does African American cinema mean films that seem to be for African Americans—films that aim to address or appeal to African American moviegoers or films that, by whatever measures (say, box office success or critical approbation by black critics), succeed with African American audiences? If a researcher is interested in “for,” see also Exhibition and Distribution and also entries on various genres and modes of filmmaking. Underlying many of the critical and scholarly studies of African American cinema are additional questions of—and passionate arguments about—how politics, activism, social connections and commitments, aesthetics, pleasure, entertainment, art, and commerce interrelate with one another—and how they should interrelate with one another. This article does not favor one position in these debates over another, but aims to present a range of positions in the scholarship on African American cinema.
The Idea of Race
Researchers in African American cinema are generally motivated, at least in part, by an interest in the complex dynamics and history of race and a sense that cinema (and audio-visual culture more broadly) has played an important part in those dynamics and that history. They certainly need an understanding of those dynamics and that history. (Most researchers in African American cinema would also argue that anyone researching American—implicitly “white”?—cinema should also have such an understanding.) There is a lot of scholarship on the idea of race, so the resources listed here are a selective introductory sample. Fuentes 2012 provides an introduction to current scholarly understandings of race from the perspectives of the humanities and social sciences; the American Anthropological Association’s Statement on “Race” shows a professional scholarly association’s thinking, and how scholars collectively debate and develop positions based on collecting, analyzing, and interpreting evidence. Pigliucci 2014 provides an introduction to problems with the idea of race from the perspectives of biology, genetics, and the philosophy of science. Rattansi 2007 and Omi and Winant 2015 are book-length studies of the complex, shifting ways in which race has been conceptualized and used. California Newsreel’s Race: The Power of an Illusion covers the topic in documentary form. See also Whiteness.
American Anthropological Association. “Statement on ‘Race’,” 17 May 1998.
The main US scholarly society of anthropologists’ official position on the idea of race. Anthropology played an important role in the rise of the idea of race as a “scientific,” biological category in the 19th century; from the 20th century it has been pivotal in debunking that idea.
California Newsreel. Race: The Power of an Illusion, 2003.
This three-part documentary, available for inexpensive streaming rental, is a useful overview of contemporary scholarly and popular thinking about race. Its affiliated website provides additional resources and bibliography, and California Newsreel also carries many other documentaries focused on “African American Perspectives.”
Fuentes, Agstun. “Race Is Real, But Not in the Way Many People Think: Busting the Myth of Biological Race.” Psychology Today [blog] (9 April 2012).
An accessible, short piece that provides an overview of contemporary scientific and social scientific understandings of race and an argument for why it is crucial for people to have a clear understanding of the history of the idea of race. Also provides a useful brief bibliography.
Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. Racial Formation in the United States. 3d ed. New York: Routledge, 2015.
Latest edition of an influential work (first published 1986) analyzes how the category of race has functioned at the core of US society, politics, and culture. Argues race is not a stable property but rather a constantly shifting “formation” deployed (and fought over) in organizing and controlling the nation.
Pigliucci, Massimo. “On the Biology of Race.” Scientia Salon blog (29 May 2014).
Strong criticism of recent attempts to revitalize race as a “scientific” category that is also nuanced in its analysis of continued social, cultural, and political (what Pigliucci as a biologist and philosopher of science calls “folk”) uses of ideas of race. Includes useful bibliography.
Rattansi, Ali. Racism: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
DOI: 10.1093/actrade/9780192805904.001.0001
Accessibly written overview—from an international, comparativist perspective—of the history and changing definitions of race and the ways it has been used in shaping social and political power. Concludes with useful guidance on the analytic uses—and limits—of the idea of racism as a critical tool.
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Article
- 8 ½
- 2001: A Space Odyssey
- À bout de souffle
- Accounting, Motion Picture
- Acting
- Action Cinema
- Adaptation
- Advertising and Promotion
- African American Cinema
- African American Stars
- African Cinema
- AIDS in Film and Television
- Akerman, Chantal
- Allen, Woody
- Almodóvar, Pedro
- Alphaville
- Altman, Robert
- American Cinema, 1895-1915
- American Cinema, 1939-1975
- American Cinema, 1976 to Present
- American Independent Cinema
- American Independent Cinema, Producers
- American Public Broadcasting
- Anderson, Wes
- Animals in Film and Media
- Animation and the Animated Film
- Anime
- Arbuckle, Roscoe
- Architecture and Cinema
- Argentine Cinema
- Aronofsky, Darren
- Art Cinema
- Arzner, Dorothy
- Asian American Cinema
- Asian Television
- Astaire, Fred and Rogers, Ginger
- Audiences and Moviegoing Cultures
- Australian Cinema
- Auteurism
- Authorship, Television
- Avant-Garde and Experimental Film
- Bachchan, Amitabh
- Battle of Algiers, The
- Battleship Potemkin, The
- Bazin, André
- Bergman, Ingmar
- Bernstein, Elmer
- Bertolucci, Bernardo
- Bigelow, Kathryn
- Biopics
- Birth of a Nation, The
- Blade Runner
- Blockbusters
- Bong, Joon Ho
- Brakhage, Stan
- Brando, Marlon
- Brazilian Cinema
- Breaking Bad
- Bresson, Robert
- British Cinema
- Broadcasting, Australian
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- Burnett, Charles
- Buñuel, Luis
- Cameron, James
- Campion, Jane
- Canadian Cinema
- Capra, Frank
- Carpenter, John
- Casablanca
- Cassavetes, John
- Cavell, Stanley
- Censorship
- Chahine, Youssef
- Chan, Jackie
- Chaplin, Charles
- Children in Film
- Chinese Cinema
- Cinecittà Studios
- Cinema and Media Industries, Creative Labor in
- Cinema and the Visual Arts
- Cinematography and Cinematographers
- Cinephilia
- Citizen Kane
- City in Film, The
- Cocteau, Jean
- Coen Brothers, The
- Colonial Educational Film
- Color
- Comedy, Film
- Comedy, Television
- Comics, Film, and Media
- Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI)
- Copland, Aaron
- Coppola, Francis Ford
- Copyright and Piracy
- Corman, Roger
- Costume and Fashion
- Cronenberg, David
- Cuban Cinema
- Cult Cinema
- 3D Cinema
- Dance and Film
- de Oliveira, Manoel
- Dean, James
- Deleuze, Gilles
- Denis, Claire
- Deren, Maya
- Design, Art, Set, and Production
- Detective Films
- Dietrich, Marlene
- Digital Media and Convergence Culture
- Directors
- Disability
- Disney, Walt
- Doctor Who
- Documentary Film
- Downton Abbey
- Dr. Strangelove
- Dreyer, Carl Theodor
- Eastern European Television
- Eastwood, Clint
- Ecocinema
- Ecocinema
- Eisenstein, Sergei
- Elfman, Danny
- Epic Film
- Essay Film
- Ethnographic Film
- European Television
- Exhibition and Distribution
- Exploitation Film
- Fairbanks, Douglas
- Fan Studies
- Fantasy
- Fellini, Federico
- Festivals
- Film Aesthetics
- Film and Literature
- Film Guilds and Unions
- Film, Historical
- Film Noir
- Film Preservation and Restoration
- Film Theory and Criticism, Science Fiction
- Film Theory Before 1945
- Film Theory, Psychoanalytic
- Finance Film, The
- Ford, John
- French Cinema
- Game of Thrones
- Gance, Abel
- Gangster Films
- Garbo, Greta
- Garland, Judy
- German Cinema
- Gilliam, Terry
- Global Television Industry
- Godard, Jean-Luc
- Godfather Trilogy, The
- Godzilla
- Golden Girls, The
- Greek Cinema
- Griffith, D.W.
- Hammett, Dashiell
- Haneke, Michael
- Hawks, Howard
- Haynes, Todd
- Hepburn, Katharine
- Herrmann, Bernard
- Herzog, Werner
- Hindi Cinema, Popular
- Hitchcock, Alfred
- Hollywood Studios
- Holocaust Cinema
- Homeland
- Hong Kong Cinema
- Horror-Comedy
- Hsiao-Hsien, Hou
- Hungarian Cinema
- Icelandic Cinema
- Immigration and Cinema
- Indigenous Media
- Industrial, Educational, and Instructional Television and ...
- Invasion of the Body Snatchers
- Iranian Cinema
- Irish Cinema
- Israeli Cinema
- It Happened One Night
- Italian Americans in Cinema and Media
- Italian Cinema
- Japanese Cinema
- Jazz Singer, The
- Jews in American Cinema and Media
- Keaton, Buster
- King Kong
- Kitano, Takeshi
- Korean Cinema
- Kracauer, Siegfried
- Kubrick, Stanley
- Lang, Fritz
- Latin American Cinema
- Latina/o Americans in Film and Television
- Lee, Ang
- Lee, Chang-dong
- Lee, Spike
- Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) Cin...
- Lord of the Rings Trilogy, The
- Los Angeles and Cinema
- Lubitsch, Ernst
- Lumet, Sidney
- Lupino, Ida
- Lynch, David
- Mad Men
- Marker, Chris
- Martel, Lucrecia
- Marxism
- Masculinity in Film
- Media, Community
- Media Ecology
- Melodrama
- Memory and the Flashback in Cinema
- Metz, Christian
- Mexican Cinema
- Micheaux, Oscar
- Ming-liang, Tsai
- Minnelli, Vincente
- Miyazaki, Hayao
- Méliès, Georges
- Modernism and Film
- Monroe, Marilyn
- Mészáros, Márta
- Music and Cinema, Classical Hollywood
- Music and Cinema, Global Practices
- Music, Television
- Music Video
- Musicals
- Musicals on Television
- Narrative
- Native Americans
- New Media Art
- New Media Policy
- New Media Theory
- New York City and Cinema
- New Zealand Cinema
- Opera and Film
- Ophuls, Max
- Orphan Films
- Oshima, Nagisa
- Ozu, Yasujiro
- Panh, Rithy
- Pasolini, Pier Paolo
- Passion of Joan of Arc, The
- Peckinpah, Sam
- Pedagogy
- Philosophy and Film
- Photography and Cinema
- Pickford, Mary
- Planet of the Apes
- Poems, Novels, and Plays About Film
- Poitier, Sidney
- Polanski, Roman
- Polish Cinema
- Politics, Hollywood and
- Pop, Blues, and Jazz in Film
- Pornography
- Postcolonial Theory in Film
- Potter, Sally
- Prime Time Drama
- Psycho
- Queer Television
- Queer Theory
- Race and Cinema
- Radio and Sound Studies
- Ray, Nicholas
- Ray, Satyajit
- Reality Television
- Reenactment in Cinema and Media
- Regulation, Television
- Religion and Film
- Remakes, Sequels and Prequels
- Renoir, Jean
- Repo Man
- Resnais, Alain
- Romanian Cinema
- Romantic Comedy, American
- Rossellini, Roberto
- Russian Cinema
- Saturday Night Live
- Scandinavian Cinema
- Scorsese, Martin
- Scott, Ridley
- Searchers, The
- Seinfeld
- Sennett, Mack
- Sesame Street
- Shakespeare on Film
- Silent Film
- Simpsons, The
- Singin' in the Rain
- Sirk, Douglas
- Soap Operas
- Social Class
- Social Media
- Social Problem Films
- Soderbergh, Steven
- Sound Design, Film
- Sound, Film
- Spanish Cinema
- Spanish-Language Television
- Spielberg, Steven
- Sports and Media
- Sports in Film
- Stand-Up Comedians
- Star Trek
- Star Wars
- Stardom
- Stop-Motion Animation
- Streaming Television
- Sturges, Preston
- Superhero Films
- Surrealism and Film
- Taiwanese Cinema
- Talk Shows
- Tarantino, Quentin
- Tarkovsky, Andrei
- Tati, Jacques
- Television Audiences
- Television Celebrity
- Television, History of
- Television Industry, American
- Theater and Film
- Theory, Cognitive Film
- Theory, Critical Media
- Theory, Feminist Film
- Theory, Film
- Theory, Trauma
- Touch of Evil
- Transnational and Diasporic Cinema
- Trinh, T. Minh-ha
- Truffaut, François
- Turkish Cinema
- Twilight Zone, The
- Twin Peaks
- Varda, Agnès
- Vertigo
- Vertov, Dziga
- Video and Computer Games
- Video Installation
- Violence and Cinema
- Virtual Reality
- Visconti, Luchino
- Von Sternberg, Josef
- Von Stroheim, Erich
- von Trier, Lars
- War Film
- Warhol, The Films of Andy
- Waters, John
- Wayne, John
- Weerasethakul, Apichatpong
- Weir, Peter
- Welles, Orson
- Wenders, Wim
- Whedon, Joss
- Whiteness
- Wilder, Billy
- Williams, John
- Wire, The
- Wiseman, Frederick
- Wizard of Oz, The
- Women and Film
- Women and the Silent Screen
- Wong, Anna May
- Wong, Kar-wai
- Woo, John
- Wood, Natalie
- Yang, Edward
- Yimou, Zhang
- YouTube
- Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav Cinema
- Zinnemann, Fred
- Zombies in Cinema and Media