Black Boys - The Social Aesthetics of British Urban Film

In Black Boys: The Aesthetics of British Urban Film, Nwonka offers the first dedicated analysis of Black British urban cinematic and televisual representation as a textual encounter with Blackness, masculinity and urban identity where the generic construction of images and narratives of Black urbanity is informed by the (un)knowable allure of Black urban Otherness. Foregrounding the textual Black urban identity as a historical formation, and drawing on a range of theoretical frameworks that allow for an examination of the emergence and continued social, cultural and industrial investment in the fictitious and non-fictitious images of Black urban identities and geographies, Nwonka convenes a dialogue between the disciplines of Film and Television Studies, Philosophy, Cultural Studies, Black Studies, Sociology and Criminology. Here, Nwonka ventures beyond what can be understood as the perennial and simplistic optic of racial stereotype in order to advance a more expansive reading of the Black British urban text as the outcome of a complex conjunctural interaction between social phenomena, cultural policy, political discourse and the continuously shifting politics of Black representation.

Through the analysis of a number of texts and political and socio-cultural moments, Nwonka identifies Black urban textuality as conditioned by a bidirectionality rooted in historical and contemporary questions of race, racism and anti-Blackness but equally attentive to the social dynamics that render the screen as a site of Black recognition, authorship and authenticity. Analysed in the context of realism, social and political allegory, urban multiculture, Black corporeality and racial, gender and sexual politics, in integrating such considerations into the fabrics of a thematic reading of the Black urban text and through the writings of Stuart Hall, Paul Gilroy, Judith Butler and Derrida, Black Boys presents a critical rethinking of the contextual and aesthetic factors in the visual constructions of Black urban identity.

List of contents

Acknowledgements
Dedication

Introduction
1. The Symbolic Location and the Extractive Choreographies of the Black Mytheme
2. Hegemonic (A)Symmetries of Black British Filmic Identity in the 90s
3. Black Cultural Politics and the Management of Racial Difference
4. The Hauntological Black Urban Other
5. A Storm in Angell Town: Black Youth Delinquency in Storm Damage
6. Constructing Black Urbanity: Mediatations of Black-on-Black criminality
7. 'Fuck Society': Tower Block Dreams, Adjacent PSB and Urban subcultural Excessivity
8. Kes With Guns: Bullet Boy and the Urban Text’s Ontological Suture
9. Hugging a Hoodie: Broken Britain, Conviviality and the Agnotology of the Urban Text
10. Defensible Black Spaces: Race, British Identity and Architecture in Attack the Block
11. Of Simulacra, Performativity and Language: Top Boy, Black Cultural Visibility and the Popular
12. Conclusion: The (Un)Exceptional Textures of Black Urbanity

Bibliography

About the author

Clive Chijioke Nwonka is Associate Professor in Film, Culture and Society at UCL, and Faculty Associate of the UCL Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation, UK. Nwonka’s research centres on the study of Black British and African American film, with a particular focus on the images of Black urbanity and the modes through which Black identities are shaped by representations of social environments, architecture, social and political conjunctures and the hegemony of neoliberalism within forms of Black popular culture. Nwonka has published extensively on racial inequality in the screen industries. Dr. Nwonka’s research is interdisciplinary and spans across Film Studies, literature, Cultural Studies, Black Studies and Sociology.

Summary

In Black Boys: The Aesthetics of British Urban Film, Nwonka offers the first dedicated analysis of Black British urban cinematic and televisual representation as a textual encounter with Blackness, masculinity and urban identity where the generic construction of images and narratives of Black urbanity is informed by the (un)knowable allure of Black urban Otherness. Foregrounding the textual Black urban identity as a historical formation, and drawing on a range of theoretical frameworks that allow for an examination of the emergence and continued social, cultural and industrial investment in the fictitious and non-fictitious images of Black urban identities and geographies, Nwonka convenes a dialogue between the disciplines of Film and Television Studies, Philosophy, Cultural Studies, Black Studies, Sociology and Criminology. Here, Nwonka ventures beyond what can be understood as the perennial and simplistic optic of racial stereotype in order to advance a more expansive reading of the Black British urban text as the outcome of a complex conjunctural interaction between social phenomena, cultural policy, political discourse and the continuously shifting politics of Black representation.

Through the analysis of a number of texts and political and socio-cultural moments, Nwonka identifies Black urban textuality as conditioned by a bidirectionality rooted in historical and contemporary questions of race, racism and anti-Blackness but equally attentive to the social dynamics that render the screen as a site of Black recognition, authorship and authenticity. Analysed in the context of realism, social and political allegory, urban multiculture, Black corporeality and racial, gender and sexual politics, in integrating such considerations into the fabrics of a thematic reading of the Black urban text and through the writings of Stuart Hall, Paul Gilroy, Judith Butler and Derrida, Black Boys presents a critical rethinking of the contextual and aesthetic factors in the visual constructions of Black urban identity.

Foreword

The first dedicated analysis that explores the emergence and allure of the Black urban film genre for filmmakers, broadcasters and audiences in the contemporary British mediascape.

Additional text

Black Boys is a precious and unique assessment of the vital, everchanging living archive of Black British film and TV. Through Nwonka's detailed historical alignments and incisive theoretical poetry we come to view these texts less as a window onto the realities of UK Black urbanism but rather as a way of questioning their version of that reality. What is included in these film spectacles of violence and bodily and social injury and also what remains absent and out of frame? Black Boys helps us find an answer to these questions and gauge how close these texts are to an adequate portrayal of Black lives on screen.

Product details

• Authors: Clive Nwonka, Clive Chijioke Nwonka, Clive James Nwonka
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.06.2022
• EAN: 9781501352829
• ISBN: 978-1-5013-5282-9
• No. of pages: 336
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Art > Theatre, ballet; SOCIAL SCIENCE / Media Studies, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Black Studies (Global), United Kingdom, Great Britain, PERFORMING ARTS / Film / History & Criticism, Relating to Black British people, TV & society, Media studies: TV and society, Black & Asian Studies, Film Theory & Criticism, Film history, theory or criticism