black lives – Page 2 – PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – Watermelon Man

Watermelon Man (1970)
Written by Herman Raucher
Directed by Melvin Van Peebles

In 1965, Time Magazine published an article about the most prominent Black comedians of the era. The list was composed of names you’re likely familiar with, like Bill Cosby (what a disappointment), Dick Gregory, and Nipsey Russell. Also on that list was Godfrey Cambridge, and unless you are a comedy historian, I would guess that you have never heard of Cambridge before. He wasn’t so much a comedian as he was a highly experienced actor. Born to immigrants from British Guiana, Cambridge was schooled in Nova Scotia while living with his grandparents after his mother & father became dissatisfied with the options given to Black children in New York City. He dropped out of medical school after three years to pursue acting and held down various odd jobs in what we call today “the gig economy.”

Movie Review – The Watermelon Woman

The Watermelon Woman (1996)
Written & Directed by Cheryl Dunye

The intersection of queerness and Blackness is where a lot of contemporary culture has emerged from. When watching Paris is Burning, I noticed how much of their slang is now part of American slang, particularly among Millennials and Zoomers. It’s nothing new. Elvis’s entire career was started by co-opting Black music and putting it with a white face. Rap/Hip hop has transcended its roots as a purely Black musical form. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with deriving inspiration from another culture to make art as long as the artist actively acknowledges the cultural roots and adheres to authenticity rather than appropriation.

Movie Review – Paris Is Burning

Paris Is Burning (1990)
Directed by Jennie Livingston

Exclusion is a standard tool used by the institutions that make up the United States. The ones who get excluded are typically BIPOC, LGBTQ, economically destitute, and/or disabled in some fashion. By pushing these people to the fringes of society, often by reactionaries who ultimately gain nothing through the act of exclusion, they are forced to create subcultures. These subcultures respond to being told they are not beautiful or have value. The marginalized simply redefine the terms of what beauty & value can be.

PopCult Podcast – Close/Saint Omer

Europe is producing some fantastic films these days and today we spotlight two of them. In one film, a young boy finds his friendship with another boy questioned by their peers leading to a fatal outcome. In the other, a writer attends the court trial of a woman accused of infanticide and in turn discovers truths about her own relationship with her mother.

Movie Review – A Raisin in the Sun

A Raisin in the Sun (1961)
Written by Lorraine Hansberry
Directed by Daniel Petrie

The history of Black people in America is a roller coaster of emotions. That’s being said by someone who can only speak about it from an outside perspective. I’m white, so I know I’ll never fully comprehend what it means to be Black in that nation. I can say that the popular perception of the struggle for Civil Rights is entirely out of whack, at least in the white circles I lived & worked inside of in Tennessee. There’s this penchant to view these things as the “ancient past” when the brutality to hold onto segregation happened during my parents & grandparents’ lifetimes. There’s an anxiety in the white mind that leads to statements like “stop living in the past,” never mind the Southern obsession with the Confederacy, and wanting to cherish its insipid ideology. The telling of the past that doesn’t seek to soothe & fantasize about history is what people bristle at. It’s simply the truth; horrible things happened in the past, and a thread running through reality connects to the present day.

Movie Review – Imitation of Life

Imitation of Life (1959)
Written by Eleanore Griffin & Allan Scott
Directed by Douglas Sirk

This was the final film from Douglas Sirk. He didn’t die following its release. He just left the United States and lived in Switzerland for the next twenty-eight years when he passed. He taught briefly in the 1970s at Munich’s University of Film and Television. But this was it. When asked about this stint in America making movies, Sirk said in a 1975 interview: “When I went to the United States, I was making films about American society, and it is true that I never felt at home there, except perhaps when my wife and I lived on a farm in the San Fernando Valley. But I always wanted my characters to be more than ciphers for the failings of their world. And I never had to look too hard to find a part of myself in them.” Sirk and his wife, Hilde, would quickly become tired of the Hollywood scene and return to Europe, but never Germany for too long. The memories were too harsh.

Movie Review – The Glass Shield

The Glass Shield (1994)
Written by Charles Burnett, John Eddie Johnson, and Ned Welsh
Directed by Charles Burnett

Charles Burnett continued making movies after My Brother’s Wedding, despite it being taken away from him in the editing room. In 1990, he directed what is arguably his best film ever, To Sleep With Anger, which I previously reviewed. That was my introduction to Burnett a few years ago, coming across this movie I’d never heard of with Danny Glover. The 1990s for Black filmmakers was an extremely fruitful period. Directors like Spike Lee & John Singleton found enormous fame and opportunities. People who worked on their films in various production capacities also emerged as writers & directors. Burnett was clearly aware of the types of movies finding a foothold with audiences, stories of the Black experience, especially regarding racism. But none of the pictures Hollywood was making ever really zeroed in on the most insidious problem in these communities, but Burnett sure as hell was going to talk about it.

Movie Review – Killer of Sheep

Killer of Sheep (1978)
Written & Directed by Charles Burnett

To be Black in America is to live in a constant state of contemplating whiteness. Of course, being a white person, I can’t say with any absolute sense what that feels like, but I can imagine it can be overwhelming at certain times. Eventually, you would become somewhat numb but never enough to escape the torment of it, to be constantly reminded of an artificial inferiority imposed on you by a culture of people who revel in their mediocrity. As a result, in the United States, there have been waves of Black cinema, each with its own distinct tones & styles, attempting to capture & communicate a feeling of what it felt like to be Black at that time.

Movie Review – Hoop Dreams

Hoop Dreams (1994)
Directed by Steve James

Since the first African people were captured, sold through European markets, and forcibly transported to “The New World,” Black bodies have been commodified by white supremacy. African people were not the first slaves, but their subjugation under the institution of chattel slavery is a defining aspect of humanity in the Western world. To pretend that it “was a long time ago,” that we live in a “post-racial world” or any other white copium is just that. It’s a complete dismissal of material facts and accurate historical analysis. Today, Black people are still seen as white commodities in capitalism’s gaze. Instead of working the fields of cotton plantations, American society works Black men as gladiator figures, tossing them in arenas to destroy their bodies and damage their brains for our entertainment. The thought of what these men will do when natural aging & physical strain catch up to them is not even contemplated by most people.