Black male frames: African Americans in a century of Hollywood cinema, 1903-2003
2015; Association of College and Research Libraries; Volume: 52; Issue: 12 Linguagem: Inglês
10.5860/choice.191007
ISSN1943-5975
Autores Tópico(s)Media, Gender, and Advertising
ResumoBlack Male Frames charts development and shifting popularity of two stereotypes of black masculinity in popular American film: the shaman and thescoundrel. Starting with colonial times, Williams identifies origins of these roles in an America where black men were forced either to defy or to defer to their white masters. These figures recur in stories America tells about its black men, from fictional Jim Crow and Zip Coon to historical figures such as Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois. Williams argues that these two extremes persist today in modern Hollywood, where actors such as Sam Lucas, Paul Robeson, Sidney Poitier, Denzel Washington, and Morgan Freeman, among others, must cope with and work around such limited options. Williams situates these actors' performances of one or other stereotype within each man's personal history and within country's historical moment, ultimately to argue that these men are rewarded for their portrayal of stereotypes most needed to put America's ongoing racial anxieties at ease. Reinvigorating discussion that began with Donald Bogle's seminal work, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks, Black Male Frames illuminates ways in which individuals and media respond to changing racial politics in America.
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