Black Boys

The Social Aesthetics of British Urban Film

Clive Chijioke Nwonka (University College London, UK)

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English

Bloomsbury Publishing USA
16 November 2023

Film theory & criticism; Television; TV & society

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.

By: Clive Chijioke Nwonka (University College London UK)
Imprint: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 25mm
Weight: 454g
ISBN: 9798765105849
Pages: 336
Publication Date: 16 November 2023
Audience: College/higher education , Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Clive Chijioke Nwonka is Associate Professor in Film, Culture and Society at University College London, UK.

Reviews for Black Boys: The Social Aesthetics of British Urban Film

Adopting a unique, contextual approach to film, drawing linkages between the political economy, the social and the aesthetic, Clive Nwonka provides a rich and unashamedly complex analysis of Black urban film, a genre that is at best, not taken seriously, and at worst, denigrated and dismissed. Nwonka has produced the most important book on Black British visual culture since Kobena Mercer’s Welcome to the Jungle (1994). * Anamik Saha, Professor of Race and Media, University of Leeds, UK * Black Boys is a brilliant ensemble of screen cultures and the scripting of Black youth, masculinity and class. Clive Nwonka hones an intellectual and inhabited understanding of the vitality and racial abrasions that shape Black urban identity in Britain. Attuned, detailed and acute, this remarkable book reveals the reverberations across the cinematic and street life of ‘race’, politics and place. * Suzanne Hall, Professor of Sociology, London School of Economics & Political Science, UK *