From the antics of Flavor Flav on Flavor of Love to the brazen behavior of the women on Love & Hip Hop, so-called negative images of African Americans are a recurrent mainstay of contemporary American media representations. In Double Negative Racquel J. Gates examines the generative potential of such images, showing how some of the most disreputable representations of black people in popular media can strategically pose questions about blackness, black culture, and American society in ways that more respectable ones cannot. Rather than falling back on claims that negative portrayals hinder black progress, Gates demonstrates how reality shows such as Basketball Wives, comedians like Katt Williams, and movies like Coming to America play on "negative" images to take up questions of assimilation and upward mobility, provide a respite from the demands of respectability, and explore subversive ideas. By using negativity as a framework to illustrate these texts' social and political work as they reverberate across black culture, Gates opens up new lines of inquiry for black cultural studies.
Industry Reviews
"Gates considers not only formal producers of media but also black audiences who engage with these works, successfully arguing for a more nuanced understanding of what makes for black cultural production." -- Anna J. Clutterbuck-Cook * Library Journal *
"Racquel J. Gates' unpacking of black racial media figures postulates that negative images derived from cultural theorist Stuart Hall's encoding/decoding practice can be reconfigured to provide agency and hybridity to black figures. . . . Recommended. All readers." -- S. Lenig * Choice *
"Its potential for broader application across identity studies and the culture/media industries makes Double Negative essential reading." -- Leah Aldridge * Film Quarterly *
"Double Negative is unique for recovering and giving value to texts that are assumed to be without value. Gates' sharp analysis of how negative images interrogate American society in ways that the more positive ones do not is an important contribution to the fields of media studies, popular culture, and cultural studies." -- Linnete Manrique * Ethnic and Racial Studies *
"Double Negative offers evocative academic insight into past and present representations of black identity." -- Audrey Liow * Continuum *
"An exciting entry into the academic study of African American media representations. . . . Gates reclaims negative images and foregrounds their importance for understanding hierarchies of media taste and the complexities of minoritarian identity and experience. The result is an evocative and provocative foray into what she calls the 'metaphorical gutter' of representation. . . . Highly accessible and engaging, Double Negative should be required reading for academics, students, and even pop-culture journalists who are interested in the complexities of race, identity, and contemporary media." -- Brandy Monk-Payton * Journal of Cinema and Media Studies *
"Building on media studies, cultural studies, genre studies, media industry studies, reception studies, film and television formalism, critical race theory, gender theory and queer theory, Gates masterfully shifts the conversation about black image production from one mired in a reductive positive/negative binary to one that demonstrates how 'disreputable' images are productive as a conduit to nuanced discussions about black images." -- Alfred L. Martin * Film Criticism *
