African American Film after the Civil Rights Movement 4219-SD026
The course examines selected movies made by African American film directors after the Civil Rights Movement. We will look at a variety of genres-from "blaxploitation" movies of the 1970's, through highly crafted feature films and documentaries of Spike Lee and independent cinema of Julie Dash, Cheryl Dunye and Haile Gerima, to John Singleton's Hollywood blockbusters, as well as the more recent work by Ryan Coogler, Ava DuVernay, Barry Jenkins, and Jordan Peele. We will address the processes of claiming Black subjectivity in film, (re)configuring African American identity and challenging the (aesthetic, political) norms of classical Hollywood cinema. Analysis of specific films situated in the context of African American history and culture focuses on such issues as: deconstruction of racial stereotypes, Black politics, the Black aesthetic, the interconnections between gender, sexuality and race, African American icons (in music, film, sports, popular culture), the benefits and risks attending the entry of Black culture into mainstream American culture and our position as white audience.
Topics discussed:
1. African American film in the 1970s: comedy, blaxploitation and African American new wave; African American film in the late 1980s/early 1990s: the new black aesthetic of Spike Lee, John Singleton; African American film in the 21st century: the new wave.
2. African American popular culture: the music video, hip hop, African American body/image
3. Race and the tradition of American Gothic
4. Political cinema
5. African American music in film
6. African American success in Hollywood
7. A critique of mainstreaming of African American culture
8. African American independent cinema
9. Gender and sexuality in African American film
10. Black documentary filmmaking
11. Racial violence and systemic racism in the United States
Course coordinators
Type of course
Mode
Learning outcomes
1. Cultural studies: basic knowledge of film genres, film techniques and classical Hollywood conventions.
2. Tools for film analysis.
3. Knowledge of selected film theories.
4. Capacity for comparing/relating different cultural/esthetic models
5. Application of earlier knowledge of cultural studies, American history and esthetics.
6. Development of oral and writing skills in English.
7. Ability to define an appropriate research topic, locate secondary materials, construct a research paper.
Assessment criteria
Each of the students will be responsible for preparing a set of questions and/or discussion topics for the discussion of one of the films. 30%
3 in-class responses to an assigned reading. 15%
Class attendance and participation. 15%
Final paper. 40%
Bibliography
FILM
A selection from the following:
Raisin in the Sun
Watermelon Man
Sweet Sweetback's Badassss Song
Shaft
The Spook Who Sat By the Door
Do the Right Thing
Mo' Better Blues
Boyz'n the Hood
Poetic Justice
Daughters of the Dust
Tongues Untied
Watermelon Woman
Bamboozled
When the Levees Broke
Fruitvale Station
13th
When They See Us
Get Out
Nope
Black Panther
Moonlight
Sinners
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
A selection from:
Manthia Diawara, "Black American Cinema: The New Realism
Andrew Ross, "Hip and the Long Front of Color"
Toni Morrison, "Romancing the Shadow"; The Killer of Sheep
Amiri Baraka, "Spike Lee at the Movies"
Houston Baker, "Spike Lee and the Commerce of Culture"
belle hooks, "Counterhegemoning Art"
belle hooks, “Oppositional Gaze”
Dyson, "Between Apocalypse and Redemption"
Toni Cade Bambara, "Reading the Signs"
Joel R. Brouver, "Repositioning"
Interview: Julie Dash with Houston Baker
David Van Leer "Visible Silence: Spectatorship in Black Gay and Lesbian Film"
Hortense Spillers, "Uber Against Race"
Manthia Diawara, "Black Spectatorship"
Mark Reid, from Black Lenses, Black Voices
Maryann Erigha, from The Hollywood Jim Crow. The Racial Politics of the Movie Industry
Frank Wilderson III, from Red, White and Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms
Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow