Black mirror : the cultural contradictions of American racism / Eric Lott.

Author
Lott, Eric [Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Published/​Created
  • Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2017.
  • ©2017
Description
xxv, 262 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

Availability

Available Online

Copies in the Library

Location Call Number Status Location Service Notes
Firestone Library - Stacks P94.5.A372 U559 2017 Browse related items Request

    Details

    Subject(s)
    Summary note
    Black Mirror explores the ways U.S. cultural institutions--classic American literature, Hollywood film, pop musical artistry, venturesome social commentary--have relied insistently and repeatedly on racial symbolic capital, including and above all blackface, to reproduce white cultural dominance. In the process these forms have threatened to betray the racial hegemony that generated them and that they exist in order to maintain. Hence the subtitle, The Cultural Contradictions of American Racism. In a series of chapters addressing such arts and artists as Mark Twain, film noir, Joni Mitchell, Elvis impersonators, Bob Dylan, and Barack Obama, Black Mirror locates the symbolic surplus value that accrues to white cultural producers and institutions whenever they traffic in "blackness"--a political economy of the sign that can sometimes surprise us (not least by producing a black president).-- Provided by publisher.
    Bibliographic references
    Includes bibliographical references (pages 209-249) and index.
    Contents
    • Black mirror: states of fantasy and symbolic surplus value
    • Our blackface America: Mr. Clemens and Jim Crow
    • The mirror has two faces: white ethnic semi-mojo
    • House of mirrors: the whiteness of film noir
    • White like me: racial trans and the culture of civil rights
    • Tar baby and the great white wonder: Joni Mitchell's pimp game
    • All the king's men: Elvis impersonators and white working-class masculinity
    • Just like Jack Frost's blues: masking and melancholia in Bob Dylan's 'Love and theft'.
    ISBN
    • 9780674967717 ((hardcover))
    • 0674967712 ((hardcover))
    LCCN
    2017013659
    OCLC
    982089197
    Other standard number
    • 40027443445
    Statement on language in description
    Princeton University Library aims to describe library materials in a manner that is respectful to the individuals and communities who create, use, and are represented in the collections we manage. Read more...
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