Digesting African-American Cinema: Art for the people, but not always by the people
The idea of the artist and distributor relationship is often overlooked when thinking of Cinema in general. Encompassing African-American Cinema as an artistic mode, I intend to view it as not only a tool of expression, but a system often conflicted by its own dependencies to higher distributional powers. I have devised five categories that most African-American films can fit into according to reoccurring themes, motifs, and perspectives: The Independent, Black Womanist, Blaxploitation, Black Yuppie/ "Buppie", and Race film. I intend on drawing from five films that represent these categories respectively: Hav Plenty (1997), Love and Basketball (2000), Bar-B-Que (2001), Two Can Play that Game (2001), and Bamboozled (2000). While some of these films have reached a proverbial plateau of success through economics, others lack in cultural depth, often exhibiting a fictitious and monolithic perspective of African-Americans. By analyzing the films plot, perspective, and overall portrayal of African-Americans in relationship to African-American culture, I was able to locate stylistically digressive aspects of this Cinema. Beyond aesthetics, African-American Cinema often survives by means of marketing strategies and patterns used by White American distribution systems-tainting the true creative process and furthering the artist/distributor struggle. Perhaps, the notion of African-Americans on the other side as distributors would lessen this struggle. If this mode of artistic expression functions for a specific group, then should it not be controlled by those who can completely represent it?
School:
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Department:
Photography and Cinema Studies
Research Advisor:
Norman Denzin
Department of Research Advisor:
Communications
Year of Publication:
2002