Lockstep and Dance: Images of Black Men in Popular CultureLockstep and Dance: Images of Black Men in Popular Culture examines popular culture's reliance on long-standing stereotypes of black men as animalistic, hypersexual, dangerous criminals, whose bodies, dress, actions, attitudes, and language both repel and attract white audiences. Author Linda G. Tucker studies this trope in the images of well-known African American men in four cultural venues: contemporary literature, black-focused films, sports commentary, and rap music. Through rigorous analysis, the book argues that American popular culture's representations of black men preserve racial hierarchies that imprison blacks both intellectually and physically. Of equal importance are the ways in which black men battle against, respond to, and become implicated in the production and circulation of these images. Tucker cites examples ranging from Michael Jordan's underwear commercials and the popular Barbershop movies to the career of rapper Tupac Shakur and John Edgar Wideman's memoir Brothers and Keepers. Lockstep and Dance tracks the continuity between historical images of African American men, the peculiar constitution of whites' anxieties about black men, and black men's tolerance of and resistance to the reproduction of such images. The legacy of these stereotypes is still apparent in contemporary advertising, film, music, and professional basketball. Lockstep and Dance argues persuasively that these cultural images reinforce the idea of black men as prisoners of American justice and of their own minds but also shows how black men struggle against this imprisonment. |
Contents
Introduction | 3 |
Whiteness Blackness and the Showdown in the Big House | 18 |
Minstrelsy Lynching and White Lore Cycles | 44 |
Cultural Gerrymandering and the Games That Black Men Play | 78 |
Forays into Films Empty Space of Representation | 99 |
Black Men Bad Raps and the Return of the Black Brute | 127 |
Conclusion | 160 |
Notes | 166 |
| 175 | |
Discography | 184 |
| 185 | |
Other editions - View all
Lockstep and Dance: Images of Black Men in Popular Culture Linda G. Tucker No preview available - 2010 |
Lockstep and Dance: Images of Black Men in Popular Culture Linda G. Tucker No preview available - 2007 |
Common terms and phrases
advertisements African American appear argues artists athletes attention audience Barbershop basketball become behavior black male black men black men’s blackface body Brothers calls chapter character claim construction containment contexts continues court criminal critical culture define desire discuss effects efforts employed enable example exists experience extent face fear figure function hand historical identity images of black imagination important language legacy lives look lore lynching masculine means minstrel minstrel show narratives nature notes notion offers performances play players police political popular possible practices prison writ large production provides puts race racial racism reads refers relation relationship represent representations resistance response rituals Rodman role scene significant slave social space story structure suggests surveillance texts tion tradition Tupac turn understand United victim violence voices white America’s Wideman young