Through an analysis of filmic representations of Black femininity, and the Black Femme in particular, this book highlights the ways "the cinematic" structures both racist and sexist portrayals, and their potential undoing.

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Another Litany for Survival 1
1. The Image of Common Sense 11
2. In the Interval 27
3. “In Order to Move Forward”: Common-Sense Black Nationalism and Haile Gerima’s Sankofa 45
4. “We’ll Just Have to Get Guns and Be Men”: The Cinematic Appearance of Black Revolutionary Women 68
5. “A Black Belt in Bar Stool”: Blaxploitation, Surplus, and The L Word 95
6. “What’s Up With That? She Don’t Talk?”: Set It Off’s Black Lesbian Butch-Femme 118
7. Reflections on the Black Femme’s Role in the [Re]production of Cinematic Reality: The Case of Eve’s Bayou 138
Notes 159
Bibliography 195
Index 203

Kara Keeling is Assistant Professor of Critical Studies in the School of Cinematic Arts and of African American Studies in the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. She is a coeditor of James A. Snead’s Racist Traces and Other Writings: European Pedigrees/African Contagions.