Returning the Gaze: A Genealogy of Black Film Criticism, 1909-1949

The author of Returning the Gaze has set out to, and indeed succeeded in, writing a history of movies without actually taking up any movies. On its face, this would seem unpromising stuff, sort of like writing about umpires instead of baseball. Yet the result is an interesting contribution to the ever-evolving literature on the subject of African Americans and their historic relationship as subjects, objects, makers, and viewers to the medium of movies. Anna Everett has set yet another daunting task for herself: to set forth a historical view of black film criticism that might “be preserved and positioned alongside the canonical histories of white critical writing.” Librarians often refer to journalism, excepting perhaps bound volumes of serials, as “ephemera,” that is, printed material so fugitive, so elusive as to be difficult to find, much less make use of. Of course, as we know, in the case of “white” journalism there has almost always been a collector, a librarian, a fan who preserved old periodicals and newspapers. But black journalism has not enjoyed such good fortune, and therefore it has remained unindexed, fragmentary, and often “saved” rather than preserved. Everett, undaunted, has done solid work both in finding this literature and in making imaginative use of it—although future scholars might wish for a more precise accounting of where she found it.