BLACK FACES, WHITE SPACES

Bastinen talks about American film noir. For all its aesthetic pleasures, film noir has always been a political genre attuned to the American psyche. People can't separate the brutal poetry of the dialogue from the conversations real men and women were having as they negotiated power in post-Wo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sight and sound (London) 2016-12, Vol.26 (12), p.42-45
Main Author: Bastién, Angelica Jade
Format: Magazinearticle
Language:English
Subjects:
African Americans
American culture
Character
Cultural influences
Film noir
Motion pictures
Race relations
World War II
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Bastinen talks about American film noir. For all its aesthetic pleasures, film noir has always been a political genre attuned to the American psyche. People can't separate the brutal poetry of the dialogue from the conversations real men and women were having as they negotiated power in post-World War II America. Soit follows that the deep shadows of noircannot be properly understood without considering Americas fraught relationship with people of colour. The coolness, the style, the shadows of noir are indebted to black culture--or at the very least to white America's approximation of blackness. It has been argued that noir transfers the fear of blackness that permeates American culture into the existential fear of the 'other' that marks the genre.
ISSN:0037-4806
2515-5164