Karukerament and Dr. Dexter Gabriel discuss the representation of slavery in cinema and TV
Yé Moun La! This episode is a discussion with Dr. Dexter Gabriel, Assistant Professor in History and African studies at UConn. You may also know him under his pen name P. Djèlí Clark. We discuss the challenges that US cinema is still facing to give an accurate representation of slavery, of the differences and similarities in the storytelling between French cinema and US cinema. TW: we discuss the representation of every type of violence in slave films. This topic might be triggering.
0:00 - 0:35: opening credits
0:35 - 5:29 : why I decided to contact Dr. Dexter Gabriel
5:28 - 8:41 : Dr. Dexter Gabriel’s definition of slavery films
8:42 - 11:39 : the trend of neo-slave narratives with “Battledream” by Alain Bidard or “Get Out” by Jordan Peele
11:40 - 13:44 : how slavery is a topic most people learn through films
13:45 - 18:04 : how making slave films is difficult and how funding impacts which films get made
18:05 - 20:59 : case of study of “Toussaint Louverture”, the French TV film with Jimmy Jean-Louis
21:00 - 24:09 : the impact of White filmmakers creating most of the slave films
24:10 - 32:17 : his take on “Beloved” and “Sankofa” as slave narratives + Guadeloupean filmmaker Christian Lara’s work on slavery
32:18 - 35:09 : is there too many slave films?
The tropes in the US representation of slavery vs. the tropes in the French representation of slavery
35:10 - 40:39 : temporal and geographical contextualization for US cinema
40:30 - 44:59 : temporal and geographical contextualization for French cinema
45:00 - 48:34 : the lack of representation of the diaspora connection + the spe
48:35 - 53:29 : the humanization of White people in slave films
53:30 - 59:12 : the representation of violence against Black women vs. Black men
59:13 - 1:03:22 : slave resistance being represented with the help of White characters
1:03:23 - 1:07:59 : representation of slave resistance: Guadeloupe/Martinique’s perspective (revolt) vs. French perspective (death)
1:08:00 - 1:10:09 : the definition of the appropriate hero. The film “Tamango” by John Berry vs. the original short story “Tamango” by Prosper Merimée
1:10:10 - 1:11:49 : closing thoughts
1:11:50 - 1:13:00 : outro
Videography of the French films and you can watch online
Battledream by Alain Bidard (it's free) | Please support Alain Bidard by buying the film here
1802 by Christian Lara (the automatic English subtitles are weird sometimes but not so far off)
No Chains, No Masters by Simon Moutaïrou - trailer with English subtitles
Toussaint Louverture by Philippe Niang (w/ English subtitles)
Here Ends The World We've Known by Anne-Sophie Nanki - trailer with English subtitles