REVIEW
Black Rodeo by Mia Mask
A History of the African American Western
Erudite, informative, interesting, and easy to read professional look at the history of African American cinematic Westerns spanning over a century of cinematic treasures. The book provides synopses of the movies chosen, the political and historical inferences that might be made, and introduces the directors and actors starring in them.
What I liked:
* Bill Pickett: first African American cowboy film star born in the 1800’s
* Learning details about the Western film genre and how it changed over time
* Terms used in discussing the genre that I had not thought about in terms of Westerns and skin color: revisionist, post western, sauerkraut & spaghetti westerns, antithesis, exploitative, politicizing, blaxploitation, black liberation, westploitation, miscegenation,
* Learning how censoring at times impacted the stories allowed to be told in film
* Learning about the actors in this book, how they became involved in the profession, and remembering some that I have seen in films
* Learning about the underlying inferences that can be found within the stories the films tell
* The discussion of the “N-word”
* Learning history that I did not know before and wondering if people will ever learn from the past and implement more positive outlooks and behavior in the future
What I didn’t like:
* Thinking about the negative stereotypes and history mentioned in this book, especially thinking about the story that the movie Rosewood was based on.
Did I enjoy this book? Yes
Thank you to NetGalley and University of Illinois Press for the ARC – this is my honest review.
5 Stars
BLURB
African American westerns have a rich cinematic history and visual culture. Mia Mask examines the African American western hero within the larger context of film history by considering how Black westerns evolved and approached wide-ranging goals. Woody Strode’s 1950s transformation from football star to actor was the harbinger of hard-edged western heroes later played by Jim Brown and Fred Williamson. Sidney Poitier’s Buck and the Preacher provided a narrative helmed by a groundbreaking African American director and offered unconventionally rich roles for women. Mask moves from these discussions to consider blaxploitation westerns and an analysis of Jeff Kanew’s hard-to-find 1972 documentary about an all-Black rodeo. The book addresses how these movies set the stage for modern-day westploitation films like Django Unchained.
A first-of-its kind survey, Black Rodeo illuminates the figure of the Black cowboy while examining the intersection of African American film history and the western.
AUTHOR BIO
Mia Mask, Professor of Film, received her PhD from New York University. At Vassar College, Ms. Mask teaches African American cinema, Documentary History, seminars on special topics such as the horror film, and auteurs like Spike Lee, Charles Burnett and Ava DuVernay. She also teaches feminist film theory, African national cinemas, and genre courses. Her commentary can be heard on NPR.
Mask is the author of Divas on Screen: Black Women in American Film, published by University of Illinois Press. Divas on Screen was featured on the public radio program "Tell Me More." Formerly an assistant editor and regular contributor at Cineaste magazine, she has written film reviews and covered festivals for IndieWire.com, The Village Voice, Film Quarterly, Time Out New York, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Poughkeepsie Journal. Her criticism was anthologized in Best American Movie Writing. She is currently on the editorial board of The Black Scholar.
She has been a Visiting Professor of Film Studies at Yale University and University of Pennsylvania. She has twice been a visiting scholar at New York University. Her scholarly essays are published in the African American National Biography; Screen Stars of the 1990s; Film and Literature; and American Cinema of the 1970s. Mask edited Black American Cinema Reconsidered (Routledge, 2012). In 2014, she published Poitier Revisited: Reconsidering a Black Icon in the Obama Age (Bloomsbury, 2014).
Professor Mask served at the Institute of International Education as a member of the National Screening Committee assembled to select Fulbright scholars for three consecutive years.
Her cultural commentary can be heard on National Public Radio.
