Irish and African American Cinema: Identifying Others and Performing Identities, 1980-2000 (SUNY series, Cultural Studies in Cinema/Video)

How these two cinemas portray complex and changing notions of national and racial identity. Focusing On Two Film Traditions Not Normally Studied Together, Maria Pramaggiore Examines More Than Two Dozen Irish And African American Filmes, Including Do The Right Thing, In The Name Of The Father, The Crying Game, Boyz N The Hood, The Snapper, And He Got Game, Arguing That These Films Foreground Practices Of Character Identification That Complicate Essentialist Notions Of National And Racial Identity. The Porous Sense Of Self Associated With Moments Of Identification In These Films Offers A Cinematic Counterpart To W.e.b. Du Bois's Potent Concept Of Double Consciousness, An Epistemological Standpoint Derived From Experiences Of Colonization, Racialization, And Cultural Disruption. Characters In These Films, Pramaggiore Suggests, Reject The National Paradigm Of Insider And Outsider In Favor Of Diasporic Both/and Notions Of Self, Thereby Endorsing The Postmodern Concept Of Identity As Performance.--page 4 Of Cover. Identifying Others -- Sampling Blackness : Music And Identification In The Films Of Neil Jordan And Spike Lee -- It's A Wise Child That Knows His Own Father : Pregnant Performances And Maternal Mythologies -- Culturing Violence : Masculine Identification In Irish And African American Gangster Films -- Both Sides Of The Epic : Identification And The Nonessentialist Western -- Conclusion : Film Identification And Postmodern Identity Politics. Maria Pramaggiore. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 209-237) And Index. Focusing on two film traditions not normally studied together, Maria Pramaggiore examines more than two dozen Irish and African American films, including Do the Right Thing, In the Name of the Father, The Crying Game, Boyz N the Hood, The Snapper, and He Got Game, arguing that these films foreground practices of character identification that complicate essentialist notions of national and racial identity. The porous sense of self associated with moments of identification in these films offers a cinematic counterpart to W. E. B. Du Bois's potent concept of double consciousness, an epistemological standpoint derived from experiences of colonization, racialization, and cultural disruption. Characters in these films, Pramaggiore suggests, reject the national paradigm of insider and outsider in favor of diasporic both/and notions of self, thereby endorsing the postmodern concept of identity as performance.