Imaging Blackness

Imaging Blackness is the complex concept of expressing, recognizing, or assigning specific sets of ideas or values used in the depiction of African Americans. This depiction can be shown through various forms of media: film, television, literature. More specifically in film, the portrayal of African Americans have been imaged and captured throughout history.

"Imaging Blackness" is a term first used by Audrey T. McCluskey in her 2007 book Imaging Blackness: Race and Racial Representation in Film Poster Art.

From the beginning of modern cinema, images of African Americans have played a primary role in the cinematic imagination of the West. These negative images have promoted a demeaning and undignified image of African Americans as a general group. However, simultaneously film has enabled African Americans to covey their creativity and originality, despite some intentions of whites to confine black humanity or use the African American race as a scapegoat. The beginning of black presence in American film, started with the concept of “blackface”. Disguised by the idea of entertainment, white actors painted their faces black and accentuated their lips by covering them with bright red lipstick. Their outer appearance reflected society’s curiosity of blackness. The concept of blackness was initially used to ridicule African Americans, showing white superiority to blacks, but then society became attracted to the controversial concept. Consequently, blackface became a popular fad in American culture. Ideas have developed and changed over time, but film has always had the ability to play on society’s racial visions.

In the 1890s a new form of visual representation was introduced to America and international audiences. The high literacy rate at the beginning of the twentieth century caused the creation of advertising for newly animated films. The first forms of advertising were vividly colored crates or switchboards used to promote an upcoming film. Seen as a way to preview a story with visual highlights, these advertisements enticed viewers and attracted audiences to movie theatres. This concept created the modern day movie poster. The invention of the movie poster itself is attributed to a Frenchman named Jules Chéret. He applied a printing process called stone lithography for the creation of his poster. As film technology progressed, evidently there became a need for more movie posters. It became a standardized process used to promote every new movie. The General Film Company standardized the size of a film poster at 27’’ x 41’’, allowing the poster to fit inside the glass casing outside of theatres. This was called the “one sheet” poster. These posters included texts and images supplied by the movie producing company. A constant dispute amongst associates in the movie producing company was whether to showcase star actors on their movie posters. The producer’s objective was to sell their product, the movie, which is done by advertising. On the other hand, the stars demanded that these posters became a reflection of them and their talents. Movie studios hired illustrators to produce posters that were artistic as well as inventive, constantly trying to find ways to appeal to the biggest audience. During the pre-television era of the 1950s, poster art became the typical way of movie advertising, consisting of the desirable image of a movie star with some text or other images explaining a part of the movie history.

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