With a Crooked Stick—The Films of Oscar Micheaux

An exploration of the thematic film work of the groundbreaking and celebrated black director and author. With a "crooked stick," filmmaker Oscar Micheaux sought to hit a "straight lick" by stressing the strategic importance of class mobility, or "uplift," for African Americans. A theme in all of his more than forty feature-length, black-produced, black-directed, black-cast, and black-audience films, uplift would allow for the better things in life: fast cars and fancy clothes, freedom of belief, financial security, and an unencumbered intellectual life. Although racism was an impediment to uplift for Micheaux and other African Americans, race as a category was of a secondary order for him in the larger game of class. In With a Crooked Stick, film studies professor J. Ronald Green pursues this seeming contradiction in a detailed analysis of each of Micheaux's fifteen surviving films. He presents critical commentary on each film's plot and action and its contribution to the overall theme of uplift. Readers will also find this an invaluable guide to the preoccupations and features of Micheaux's remarkable career and the insight it provides into the African American experience of the 1920s and 30s.

© 2004 Indiana University Press (E-bog): 9780253027702

Udgivelsesdato

E-bog: 18. marts 2004