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"When we said 'black is beautiful' in the late sixties, that meant the black man is beautiful. There is this tendency now to want to constantly rehabilitate the black man as patriarch, and I have problems with positing that as the goal of the community. Yes, I struggle with and for my brother. I speak with and for my brother. But I think my brother has an equal responsibility to speak with and for me."
- Angela Davis
Black Is...Black Ain't a film by Marlon Riggs featuring Angela Davis and bell hooks
BLACK IS... BLACK AIN'T is an unabashedly frank look at black identity in America. In his final project before losing his battle with AIDS, acclaimed director Marlon Riggs challenges the traditional definition of blackness while issuing a ringing call to African-Americans to celebrate diversity within the community. A powerful and intelligent critique of racism, sexism, and homophobia, the film trains a bright spotlight on the exclusiveness and rigidity of the black institutions of family, church, and community. [film link]
Black is...Black Ain't
"While the film critically interrogtes cleavages among blacks, it also exposes the social, political, economic, and psychological effects of racism, and the role racism has played in defining blackness. By adopting this dual focus rather than exclusively interrogating black discursivity, Riggs offers a perspective that is decidedly quare. He calls attention to differances among experience; and he calls attention to the consequences of embodied blackness. The montage of footage from the riots in Los Angeles and the interviews with young Black men who characterize themselves as "gangbangers" bring into clear focus the material reality of black America and how the black body has historically been the site of violence and trauma." --E. Patrick Johnson, "Quare Studies, or (Almost) Everything I know I learned From My Grandmother
Black is...Black Ain't
Rating: 3.5/5
Does Riggs' Black Is...Black Ain't succeed in staging the type of political intervention Stuart Hall calls for?
Does Riggs disrupt essential blackness through this documentary? Is it effective?
Marlon Riggs challenged racism and homophobia. His documentary highlights different aspects of blackness from themes like identity, myth, and religion to oppression, sexuality, and equality.
I do not think that Riggs is staging a political intervention but more of a message out to what is happening in the black community as far as constant ideas/issues that arise when you believe you are apart of this race. Riggs' documentary addresses this issue of "Who's African?", "Are you black enough?", and these other questions that stir when faced with a race that is so diverse and so broad. In the beginning of the documentary, we see a stirring pot of gumbo and the narrator is identifying the gumbo as a parallel to the black community because of the great spectrum of people that identify with the black race or ethnicity. Black will never be a pure form because of the original disperse of Africans that took place around the world.
The term "black" has great historical, cultural, and political significance and can not just be constituted in one racial category for it has different significance to different people. In the beginning, "being black meant a code of silence. No one talked to each other because that would have admitted vulnerability which was considered feminine". Having feminine or even somewhat feminine attitudes was not socially accepted. You are supposed to have tough skin and almost prove your blackness all the time.
Hall says how there is a "mistaking what is historical and cultural for what is natural, biological, and genetic". This is true and the documentary can agree with this as well. Blackness and identifying with black has more historical and cultural significance than any genetic code can produce.
Response by: Sharai
Trailer to Marlon Riggs' "Black Is...Black Ain't" Documentary
