Black Cinema

Description

This is an open book exam and you are encouraged to watch the films again if you are having trouble remembering plot points and characters. Remember you can look up character, cast and plot information online – part of your grade will depend upon getting those details right. Do not spend big chunks of your answer recapping the films; only include as much of that detail as is necessary for me to understand your response. It is okay if you repeat my question back to me in your response, but that won’t count as original thinking. Carefully choose specific examples from the movies referred to in the questions to illustrate your answers. You will be required to run your final answers through Turnitin so be sure to use your own words.

1. Religious practices, critiques of organized religion, and depictions of faith and spiritual community recur throughout many of the films we have seen so far this semester. How is the role of religion in Black people’s lives depicted in the following films: “Selma,” “Within Our Gates,” “Daughters of the Dust” and “12 Years a Slave”? How are religious practices and communal expressions of faith presented as indicators of identity, relationships and belonging among Black characters? How is religion shown as a tool for social control and for political organizing? What does Julie Dash seem to be suggesting about Black identity when she presents multiple faith traditions – Muslim, Christian, remnants of African religions – in “Daughters of the Dust”?
2. “12 Years a Slave” (2013), “Rebirth of a Nation” (2007, based on D.W. Griffith’s 1915 “The Birth of a Nation,” “Within Our Gates,” (1920), “Daughters of the Dust” (1991), “Malcolm X” (1992), “Selma” (2014) and “I Am Not Your Negro” (2016) – taken together, these films trace major developments in the history of Black people and relations between Blacks and whites in America, from slavery to Reconstruction, to Jim Crow, to the beginnings of the Great Migration, to the Civil Rights Movement to the present day. Considering these films as a whole, what ideas about Black experience – and white expectations — are this set of filmmakers presenting? What does white supremacy look like as you travel from “12 Years a Slave” through the set of films to “I Am Not Your Negro”? How do these filmmakers depict interactions – of various sorts, not just sexual – between Black and white bodies? What cultural and political critiques of whiteness – and in the case of “Daughters of the Dust,” its absence –are these filmmakers making? Nikole Hannah Jones’ essay in the 1619 magazine is a good refresher for how you might consider these questions (but don’t give me a recap of African American history in your answer – I want your original, critical thinking).
3. How are surveillance and policing recurrent themes in “Boyz n the Hood,” “Within Our Gates,” “12 Years a Slave,” “Malcolm X,” “Selma” and “Lift”? What are the explicit or implicit reasons for and impact of surveillance and policing in these films (be specific to each film – there’s no blanket answer). Considering the range of instances – from slave overseeing, to lynching to police brutality to FBI spying to shoplifting sting – what do these recurrent depictions of policing and surveillance suggest about Black life in America? What impact do these experiences have on the major characters in these films?
4. The directors of “Within Our Gates” (Micheaux), “Daughters of the Dust,” (Dash), “Malcolm X,” (Spike Lee), “Selma” (DuVernay), and “12 Years a Slave” (McQueen) all created richly detailed and intimately personal worlds for their characters. Each of these films also presents ideas of what it means to be an American and also what it means to belong to a Black community. How do these films explore the tensions of what DuBois described as being a “problem” and creating a sense of identity and citizenship as an American? Most of these films deal explicitly with that longing for representation and inclusion, but what case does “Daughters of the Dust” make for not assimilating? How do the cultural and relational richness of the Black worlds (what these characters have going for them) these films depict contrast with the alienation of the African in America (what they are striving for or against)?

Extra Credit: Describe how characters from any of the films we’ve seen so far this semester fit Donald Bogle’s descriptions of the coon, the mammy, the buck, the tom and the tragic mulatto. Be specific in identifying the characters, the film and how their depictions reflect these stereotypes. (15 points but you must have detailed examples of each of the five types to get the full credit).

Sample Solution