Citation

Antonio SD. Black Camera 2009; 1(1): 116-135.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, Indiana University Press)

DOI

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PMID

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Abstract

This essay examines the urban and rural settings of black narratives and how they illuminate race relations in American society. It deploys fluid notions of blackness and identity in postslavery America that in part rely on the movement between these two geographical, ideological, and cultural sites. The urban-rural binary is an incubator for what I call the composite character, which refers to any form of reinvented blackness. Thus, any character composed of multiple disparate elements or ideologies such as rural and urban, North and South, black and white, rich and poor, etc., is a composite character. This binary is essential to the study of the black identity in films because it represents a central theme in American history; it is core to the development of postslavery blackness and is key to the understanding of black life today.