num_pages: 408
description: Red White &amp; Black is a provocative critique of socially engaged films and related critical discourse. Offering an unflinching account of race and representation Frank B. Wilderson III asks whether such films accurately represent the structure of U.S. racial antagonisms. That structure he argues is based on three essential subject that of the White (the settler master and human) the Red (the savage and half-human) and the Black (the slave and non-human). Wilderson contends that for Blacks slavery is ontological an inseparable element of their being. From the beginning of the European slave trade until now Blacks have had symbolic value as fungible flesh as the non-human (or anti-human) against which Whites have defined themselves as human. Just as slavery is the existential basis of the Black subject position genocide is essential to the ontology of the Indian. Both positions are foundational to the existence of (White) humanity. Wilderson provides detailed readings of two films by Black directors Antwone Fisher (Denzel Washington) and Bush Mama (Haile Gerima); one by an Indian director Skins (Chris Eyre); and one by a White director Monsters Ball (Marc Foster). These films present Red and Black people beleaguered by problems such as homelessness and the repercussions of incarceration. They portray social turmoil in terms of conflict as problems that can be solved (at least theoretically if not in the given narratives). Wilderson maintains that at the narrative level they fail to recognize that the turmoil is based not in conflict but in fundamentally irreconcilable racial antagonisms. Yet as he explains those antagonisms are unintentionally disclosed in the films non-narrative strategies in decisions regarding matters such as lighting camera angles and sound.
language: English
title: Red, White & Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms
publisher: Duke University Press Books