African American Cinema Through Black Lives Consciousness

<p><em>African American Cinema through Black Lives Consciousness </em>uses critical race theory to discuss American films that embrace contemporary issues of race sexuality class and gender. Its linear history chronicles black-oriented narrative film from post-World War II through the presidential administration of Barack Obama. Editor Mark A. Reid has assembled a stellar list of contributors who approach their film analyses as an intersectional practice that combines queer theory feminism/womanism and class analytical strategies alongside conventional film history and theory. Taken together the essays invigorate a "Black Lives Consciousness" which speaks to the value of black bodies that might be traumatized and those bodies that are coming into being-ness through intersectional theoretical analysis and everyday activism.</p><p>The volume includes essays such as Gerald R. Butters's "Blaxploitation Film" which charts the genre and its uses of violence sex and misogyny to provoke a realization of other philosophical and sociopolitical themes that concern intersectional praxis. Dan Flory's "African-American Film Noir" explains the intertextual-fictional and socio-ecological-dynamics of black action films. Melba J. Boyd's essay "'Who's that Nigga on that Nag?': <em>Django Unchained</em> and the Return of the Blaxploitation Hero" argues that the film provides cultural and historical insight "signifies" on blackface stereotypes and chastises Hollywood cinema's misrepresentation of slavery. <em>African American Cinema through Black Lives Consciousness</em> embraces varied social experiences within a cinematic Black Lives Consciousness intersectionality.</p><p>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.</p>