Themes and Objectives

The engagement of African elements can be identified at various points of the African American cinematic record and thus cannot be confined to any one era, genre or production mode (i.e., mainstream or independent cinema). Because the use of African elements transcends these usually distinct cinematic categories, their employment will be explored here as a theme, alternating in its utilisation with each film.

African elements function or operate in several ways, often varying with the genre and the target audience. They either, 1) are engaged in a way that draws on historical facts and events in order to establish African American connections with Africa, 2) contribute to and facilitate the comedy of the scenes they occupy, 3) are employed in a way that erotically objectifies African bodies and/or makes references to their supposed excessive sexuality, or 4) remain uncommented on although they signify a larger thematic complex beyond their actual existence within the film. These four key categories of employment will form the basis of investigation in this thesis. They are discussed separately for the sake of a conceptual analysis although often two or more of these categories overlap and interplay with one another.

I would like momentarily to refer to the proposed selection of films in order to highlight the engagement of African elements in them. The purpose of such a demonstration is to reveal how, and to what end, trends in the themes of the films and their affinities to their respective contemporary popular black consciousness activities, incorporate African elements into their narratives. This brief undertaking will illustrate how these popular and successful African American films reproduce and nurture contentious impressions of Africa and Africans in their quest to establish and/or maintain a distinct African American identity.

Ultimately, it will also establish the premise for why in the current scholarship there should be a place for a more differentiated analysis of black experiences within the discussed films, though some have already been subject to academic discussion.

For example, in relation to the above-referenced comedic contributions, in the commercially successful, Barbershop, the role of the African character, Dinka (Leonard Earl Howze), like Imani Izzi’s (Vanessa Bell Calloway) in Coming to America (whose role is also subject to the misogynist overcurrent present throughout the film), is both limited and controlled because within the story, the African American characters (as well as the actors and films’ producers) retain the power to reiterate and interpret what is shown to be African practices, looks and speech, either through performance or in dialogue. As a result, the

“Africans” become useful springboards insofar as they assist the progress of the African American characters or simply provide comic relief or humorous situations.

As a by-product of comedies such as Coming to America (1988) or as seen in the drama Jungle Fever (1991), the erotic objectification of African bodies and references to their supposed excessive sexuality also facilitate the development of the African American characters. For example, in Coming to America, this can be observed in the characterisation of the African women portrayed therein. In Jungle Fever, Inez (Theresa Randle) claims to reconcile her “full spectrum” dating by making “a pilgrimage to Africa, the motherland [to]

find [herself] a true tribesman.” By “full spectrum dating,” Inez means all men irrespective of ethnicity. As the conversation continues, the women refer to the size of this imaginary tribesman’s genitals. Thus, in order to rectify her perceived transgressions against the African American community, Inez suggests being with an African man to “clean her slate.”

African characters rendered in this capacity often have little or no agency and/or merely seem to fulfil sexual desires. Be it subservient women or endlessly potent men, the sexual availability of the African characters in such narratives is always already a given.

In terms of a historiographic engagement, Sankofa and Daughters of the Dust use African elements to reinforce the idea of a resilient ancestral connection which allows (and has allowed) the African American characters in the stories to transcend their physical and/or mental imprisonment, (i.e., slavery and/or the legacy of slavery). These characters find strength to meet their challenges because they acknowledge and accept an Africa-centric cultural origin. Whilst making connections with Africa by focusing on a spiritual legacy that survived the slave trade, the use of the African elements in these films thus becomes a way in which an African American viewership can construct a strong collective identity through a process of (re)discovery from a self-determinist perspective. At the same time, the two films highlight the fluidity of that “origin;” that it is impossible to define and is therefore necessarily created and recreated by the individual. Such films (and series like Roots) draw on historical facts and events to establish African American’s connections with Africa.

The visual remaking of life in an African village in Roots, attempts to reproduce the Africa that Kunta Kinte (LeVar Burton) came from. The Africa created and performed here is imagined as a positive symbolic space. Moreover, presenting Islam as Kunta’s faith (which reflects aspects of the then burgeoning black nationalist ideology and which was the religion chosen by those African Americans who sought to identify themselves more closely with an African heritage) whilst at the same time including a loose reproduction of some aspects of West African cultural practices (like the boys’ initiation ceremony), hints at the very

subjective process of interpreting or producing Africa. In a paradoxical shift from the films described in the comic or sexual categories above, such reproductions are usually atavistic in their approach. Conversely, although also engaged in the creation of an African geography, Coming to America’s kingdom of Zamunda is an obvious work of fantasy, with the object of showcasing an ostentatiously wealthy, hyper-civilised African society. The formalities and stringent codes of conduct displayed point to an Africa which, in its Edenic perfection, allows the viewer to vacillate between longing to be there and the relief that they are not. The film thus presents the opportunity for a double reading of the “idyllic Africa” trope, which is arguably contrary to the impression left by the one presented in Roots.

Although inspired by similar motivations for the narrative objectives of Roots, Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust takes on a different approach. Unlike Roots, the story takes place in one setting where all the generations are presented together – including an unborn child who is also the narrator. It has a more spiritual and poetic emphasis and by constructing the narrative in an isolated setting, Dash allows herself the possibility of creating a world of her making, independent of the limitations which would affect a story which is trying to fit a particular history.

Ultimately, despite making a link to contemporary African America by following a genealogy (Roots), focusing on a preserved culture in an isolated location (Daughters of the Dust), or reinvigorating visions of powerful African kingdoms as Coming to America does, each emphasises an imagined Africa and/or African cultural practice(s). As the historically white privilege of writing and interpreting American history has shaped (and been shaped by) the available visual images, these filmic works seek to re-imagine and re-interpret history and Africa from an African American point of view, which, as will be illustrated in chapters three and four, has the dual and limiting effect of simultaneously creating an Africa and Africans who are reductionist and fixed in their representations.

There is also a considerable collection of films in which African elements are present yet disjointed from a direct relationship with African characters, though they signify a larger thematic complex which transcends their function within the film. These elements are often props and costume which remain uncommented on, although they, in narratives which portray struggles against white domination in films like Higher Learning, invoke images and a rhetoric of Africa, arguably, to create a connection to the struggle for and the success of winning independence from white political power, such as those led by African countries during decolonisation. In Higher Learning, the resolute, defiant African American character, Fudge (O’Shea Jackson, known as Ice Cube), is often presented displaying such affiliations

and knowledge, for example in the way his room is decorated, or in various parts of his dialogues.¹⁵

In one of the dramatic high points of New Jack City which is accompanied by an energetic hand-drum soundtrack, the hero, Scotty Appleton (Ice-T, also, Tracy Marrow) grabs at a leather pendent which displays the map of Africa worn by the villain and rhetorically questions his allegiance to the community nationalism inspired by Afrocentrism and its endeavours for collective, community uplift: “How the hell you gon’ wear this and sell poison to our people? You ain’t shit!” At this point, Scotty rips off the leather pendant he is referring to (01:28:29 minutes).

As in Higher Learning, the African elements in New Jack City,¹⁶ appear as props, costume and extra-diegetic music, and their employment again suggests strength derived from the acknowledgement and establishing of common denominators with African identities in order to overcome the challenges they are faced with, stemming from the white American hegemony presented in the film.

Similar to these narratives, films like Shaft in Africa and The Spook Who Sat by the Door (The Spook) emphasise that freedom from white oppression as experienced by African Americans is precipitated by self-determination and collective pride. In The Spook, references are made to how independence in Africa and Asia were won through organised guerrilla action and how these fights were motivated by the self-determination of the oppressed peoples. Most importantly however, as the lead character Dan Freeman (Lawrence Cook) states, the narrative stresses that this fight should not be rooted in “hate for white people” as a consequence of their historically conflicted relations, but in the desire for community betterment.¹⁷ That is: African Americans should not only be able to identify who the “real enemy” is (i.e., the dominant white American hegemony), they should be fighting for proactive as opposed to reactive reasons; that African Americans should fight because they want to improve their social and political positions from a place of pride rather than one of anger. In Shaft in Africa, this desire for freedom from white oppression is demonstrated by the fact that the plot is centred on a slave trade, which takes Africans out of Africa to be used for the financial betterment of European powers. This mirrors the history of African Americans in America. Shaft, who is characterized as the embodiment of defiance and individual pride, destroys it; an African American who, now presented with the chance,

15 An elaboration of this example will be presented in chapter three.

16 This is with the exception of the scene of the final “show down” between Scotty and the villain, where Scotty verbally (and therefore directly) addresses the African element worn by his adversary.

17 See The Spook 00:47:38 to 00:48:16minutes.

valiantly stamps out slavery. Despite being peripheral to the narrative as a whole, the African elements nevertheless act in a catalytic capacity for whichever African American character they are associated with.¹⁸