As Krin Gabbard brilliantly reveals in Black Magic, we duly recognize the cultural heritage of African Americans in literature, music, and art, but there is a disturbing pattern in the roles that blacks are asked to play-particularly in the movies. Many recent films, including The Matrix, Fargo, The Green Mile, Ghost, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Pleasantville, The Bridges of Madison County, and Crumb, reveal a fascination with black music and sexuality even as they preserve the old racial hierarchies. Quite often the dependence on African American culture remains hidden-although it is almost perversely pervasive. In the final chapters of Black Magic, Gabbard looks at films by Robert Altman and Spike Lee that attempt to reverse many of these widespread trends.
Gabbard's book is a joy to read, a really fine, original piece of work. He detects a significant pattern in contemporary American cinema, and with great critical insight and clear explanations, he traces its themes and variations.
This is a clearly written, well-argued book . . . both readable and intellectually rigorous. The author's case that white appropriation of African American culture has shifted from obvious and literal forms to the disembodiment of black expressions is astutely demonstrated by his exploration of the intersection of jazz and the narratives of popular commercial films.Ed Guerrero, Cinema Studies, New York University
Gabbard's rcih book reveals that cultural critics have only begun to fathom the sublime and the ridiculous extent of racial appropriations of black culture in white American films. As this book shows, it is both 'magical' and appalling.Linda Williams, author of Playing the Race Card:Melodramas of Black and White from Uncle Tom to O.J. Simpson
Serving the white audience. The racial displacements of Ransom and Fargo ; Black angels in America : millennial solutions to the "race problem"
Unrepresentable subjects. Evidence : Thelonious Monk's challenge to jazz history ; Revenge of the Nerds : representing the White male collector of Black music
Black magic, inverted. Robert Altman's jazz history lesson ; Spike Lee meets Aaron Copland
