Well-Served

Lee Daniels' The Butler is the culmination of what blacks in Hollywood, from its Golden Age unto its present, expected our contested involvement in the movies could, should and would be. And it is the reason why not only African-American people, but all people, will pay for the movies. It has been nearly two decades since I saw … Continue reading Well-Served →

Good Black Stuff…

I am so excited and overwhelmed with the fabulous things Black American people are doing in the arts now. Everywhere I turn, there's something new to be proud of. A picture can be worth a thousand words. Not sure if I have to credit any of these photos. Forgot where I got them from...but don't worry … Continue reading Good Black Stuff… →

Bush Mamas: A Black Film Gives Birth to Sociohorror

Professor, Writer and Director Haile Gerima’s 1975 student thesis film Bush Mama premiered on the independent and student film circuit a year before I was born. I was born in the small-town Midwest: Kankakee, Illinois, a town most people have not heard of and can barely pronounce when they do. Once I was born, I … Continue reading Bush Mamas: A Black Film Gives Birth to Sociohorror →

Patriarchy Gone Awry: The White Exploitation in The SnowTown Murders

On the one hand, The Snowtown Murders is an unquestionably brilliant depiction of a provincial environment of chain smoke and gray pallor that I recognize very well--whereby the simple offerings of eggs, bacon, toast, sausages and coffee can cement the beginning of a kinship stronger than many blood relatives... But on the other hand, the absolutely unnecessary (and true crime) atrocities against human beings that The Snowtown Murders depicts is satisfactorily unfamiliar to anything I have ever known in my life.

My First Grays

It is startlingly appropriate that I was introduced to my first gray hair this past evening, at about a quarter to 7 p.m. in the basement of the Logan Center for the Arts on the University of Chicago campus right around the corner from my home. I came out of a bathroom stall to wash … Continue reading My First Grays →

Women Should Tell Women’s Stories: on the films of the capital punishments of Wanda Jean Allen and Aileen Wuornos

In 2002, Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Liz Garbus was forced to end her documentary on the last three months of Oklahoman Wanda Jean Allen, a twice-convicted murderer. Allen was the sixth woman put to death in the United States after the 1977 reinstatement of the death penalty. The Execution of Wanda Jean depicts the frantic and pathetic clemency pursuit in the Bible … Continue reading Women Should Tell Women’s Stories: on the films of the capital punishments of Wanda Jean Allen and Aileen Wuornos →

Where Are Black Americans in Lincoln?

Here, even Frederick Douglass could not muscle his way to a significant part. I could be missing an artistic point. Or, I could be being honest: after so much has been done, Black Americans just may never satisfied with anything done about it.