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Black Male Frames
African Americans in a Century of Hollywood Cinema, 1903–2003
Roland Leander Williams Jr.
Paper $19.95s
| 978-0-8156-3005-0
| 2018
Cloth $34.95s
| 978-0-8156-3382-2
| 2014
ebook 978-0-8156-5287-8
Black Male Frames charts the development and shifting popularity of two stereotypes
of black masculinity in popular American film: "the shaman" and "the
scoundrel." Starting with colonial times, Williams identifies the 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 the stories America tells about its
black men, from the fictional Jim Crow and Zip Coon to historical figures such
as Booker T. Washington ...
(read complete book description below)
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Roland Leander Williams Jr. is associate professor in the Department of English at Temple
University. He is the author of African American Autobiography and the Quest for Freedom.
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Book Description »[Hide »]
Black Male Frames charts the development and shifting popularity of two stereotypes
of black masculinity in popular American film: "the shaman" and "the
scoundrel." Starting with colonial times, Williams identifies the 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 the stories America tells about its
black men, from the 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 the other stereotype within each
man’s personal history and within the country’s historical moment, ultimately to
argue that these men are rewarded for their portrayal of the stereotypes most
needed to put America’s ongoing racial anxieties at ease. Reinvigorating the
discussion that began with Donald Bogle’s seminal work, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes,
Mammies, and Bucks, Black Male Frames illuminates the ways in which
individuals and the media respond to the changing racial politics in America.
View other series books on Television and Popular Culture
6 x 9, 240 pages, 9 black-and-white illustrations, bibliography, index
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