Spirit in Cinema: Representations of Black Christianity in African American Film

Abstract

Since its early development, African American cinema has been engaged in an ongoing critical-cultural conversation on race, representation, and religion through the visual and aural storytelling possibilities of film. Representations of the black church and black Christianity have been prominent in the work of filmmakers, such as Oscar Micheaux, Spike Lee, Julie Dash, and Tyler Perry, seeking to represent and re-present discourses on blackness and religion through film. This dissertation aims to provide lenses through which scholars, critics, and artists can read representations of black Christianity and the black church in African American film in conversation with larger discourses on the relationship between race and religion in African American culture, politics, theology, and religious practices. I offer four lenses—cultural, gospel, critical, and political—through which to interpret cinematic depictions of black Christianity. These lenses echo dimensions of racial aesthetics, a term coined by Josef Sorett to refer to an historically continuous intracommunity discussion where the role of religion in the formation and continuation of the black community are debated as a part of a larger project of defining and redefining blackness. In this dissertation, I examine Black Nativity (Kasi Lemmons, 2013), Woman Thou Art Loosed on the 7th Day (Neema Barnette, 2012), Burning Cane (Phillip Youmans, 2019), and The Birth of a Nation (Nate Parker, 2016) through the cultural, gospel, critical, and political lenses as case studies for identifying and interpreting racial aesthetic discourses in cinematic representations of black Christianity. Recognizing black film as a part of this racial aesthetic tradition provides an essential starting point for examining the integration and interrogation of black Christianity in African American film. The analytical tools offered in this dissertation allow for scholars, critics, and artists to gain meaningful insight into the discourses informing black Christianity as a form of black religion and spirituality, which, as Amiri Baraka suggested, have historically animated black art and identity.