Signifyin' Cinema: Rudy Ray Moore and the Quality of Badness

This article engages the limits of both film and race studies in their approach to heterogeneous and “low” forms of African American cultural production through an analysis of the films of Rudy Ray Moore. While Moore’s films have been almost entirely overlooked in both film studies and black studies, they were extremely popular among black youth of the 1970s and have exerted a powerful influence on today’s hardcore hip hop artists (and their understanding of how to turn black market entrepreneurship into global enterprise). The theory of “signifying”, advanced most rigorously by black literary theorist Henry Louis Gates Jr, helps explain how and why Moore has slipped through various critical nets — and grounds a claim for why we should take “bad” black film seriously. Close film and context analysis illustrates how Moore’s low‐budget films “signify” on Hollywood and the system of expectancies that go with putatively “good” filmmaking and reveals the extent to which they constitute a hybrid cultural and multimedia practice. As vehicles designed to elaborate on the badman of black folklore, Moore’s films contribute to the long history and rich language of “toasting” in African American oral culture and music. As such, far from being emblematic of black filmmaking’s impoverished relationship to mainstream cinema (as a cinema manqué), these films constitute vital precursors to the hip hop music video.     

Latitudes: New Indian Transnational Cinema

This article examines films and video art that speak to conditions of exile and displacement, including the work of Mona Hatoum, Sonali Gulati, and Onir. It proposes the term “latitude” to interrogate the aesthetic and formal properties of these artworks, seeking to understand how lesbian and same-sex eroticism and identities are central to their efficacy.     

Contesting meaning: Newfie and the politics of ethnic labelling

The ethnic label Newfie is a site of ideological dispute: for some, it is simply an informal term for residents and expatriates of the Canadian province of Newfoundland, for others it may function as an in–group term of solidarity which takes on negative connotations when used by non–Newfoundlanders, and for still others it is the equivalent of a racial slur. In this study we first trace the history of the term, a fairly recent innovation. We then examine present–day attitudes as expressed in (provincial and national) media discourse and in self–report data. We argue that debate over Newfie is part of a larger ideological struggle concerning the commodification of an ‘invented’ Newfoundland culture, which itself must be understood in terms of Newfoundland’s socioeconomic position as Canada’s poorest province. Finally, we compare the Newfie case to other instances of contested group labelling.     

Against wisdom: the social politics of anger and aging

Focusing on two books key to the cultural history of aging in America in the twentieth century—G. Stanley Hall's Senescence: The Last Half of Life [Hall, G. S. (1922, rpt. 1972). Senescence: the last half of life. New York: Arno Press] and Betty Friedan's The Fountain of Age [Friedan, B. (1993). The fountain of age. New York: Simon and Schuster], this essay explores: (1) the cultural reflex of invoking wisdom as the special strength of the old and (2) the strategy of using anger to call attention to ageism. “Against Wisdom” argues that it is difficult, if not virtually impossible, to envision a productive future for the elderly through the joint cultural building blocks of wisdom and anger. A manifesto of sorts, the essay calls for a moratorium on wisdom and suggests that stories of a vitalizing anger at being marginalized because old be told and circulated, and concludes with a story from Barbara Macdonald's Look Me in the Eye: Old Women, Aging, and Ageism.     

Museums and the visually impaired: the spatial politics of access

Based on a study of 36 museums in London and the South East of England, the paper offers a deconstructive reading of ‘access’ and its spatial practices by analysing their responses to the visually impaired visitor. Within any discursive space we find aporial, non‐discursive moments that introduce ambivalence into an otherwise seemingly ordered and known arrangement. Such forms of presence have been described, amongst other things, under the heading of the figural (Lyotard). In the discursive space of the museum, a space of seeing and conservation, the visually impaired visitor figure tacks its way into the museum as such a figure that we can call (after Mark C. Taylor) an underdetermined not. Through such a figure we can consider the (dis)ordering effects that this ambivalent form of presence can have. The study reveals how such a figure not only introduces a problem of access but is also mobilised by the museum so that access can be addressed as a museum issue. Museums have changed from previously being indifferent to dis/ability needs to now existing in a state of being in‐difference with them. This idea reveals the way in which museums shift the (often haptic) challenge that such a figure makes to the (scopic) signifiers of the museum by responding to them through the less troublesome regimes of what is signified. Access in this case is neither granted nor denied but endlessly deferred.     

Introduction: Special issue on Global Lesbian Cinema

This article offers a brief introduction to this special issue on Global Lesbian Cinema. This issue particularly highlights the importance of recognizing lesbian discourse as a separate, related piece of the discourse of queer transnational and global cinema. Subsequently, brief summaries of the eight articles of this collection are provided.     

Clothing and social movements: Tibet and the politics of dress

The ‘cultural turn’ in social movement studies has brought a renewed outlook on new social movements and lifestyle movements. In this development on the symbolic challenge of contemporary movements, research has expanded to both music and art. However, little is known about the role of clothing in movements and how activists use it for social change. In making the case for a greater consideration of clothing’s tactical use in identity work, this paper explores the case of the Tibetan Lhakar movement. I argue that for Lhakar activists, clothing is the materialization of the political consciousness of the movement and symbolically acts as a mechanism of communication in shaping its political goals. By using social media to observe individualized collective actions of wearing Tibetan clothing, the paper demonstrates how activists frame and create new political opportunity structures for civic participation in a one party state that controls all speech and movement.     

#BlackIsBeautiful: the radical politics of black hair

Black Lives Matter 5280 (BLM5280) posts an image on its Facebook page each morning with the caption ‘Good morning #Beautiful people. #BlackIsBeautiful.’ The images in this series often depict Black people in ways that challenge heteronormative conceptions of family and white beauty standards. Through feminist visual culture and digital ethnography, I show how BLM5280’s photo series leverages the radical legacy of Black hair to claim symbolic and political power. I discuss my work as an allied filmmaker with the group, and examine BLM5280’s online practices in relation to its local organising. Although curating images on social media may not, in itself, bring about social change, this cultural practice plays an important role in shaping perceptions of Blackness, amplifying the voices and agency of underrepresented people, and strengthening the social and emotional well-being of BLM5280’s online and offline communities.