Black interiority visualized: Cinematic narratives of slavery

Abstract This chapter argues that twenty-first-century cinematic narratives of slavery visualize the intimate details of chattel slavery that sometimes remain understated in autobiographical narratives of slavery. It begins with a discussion of the series The Underground Railroad, where the protagonist’s escape to a free all-Black town reveals how slavery’s racial logics persist within Black communities and how white supremacy violently undermines Black prosperity. It analyzes Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation, which reclaims the historical Nat Turner’s rebellion as an act of self-emancipation to emphasize the complex ways Black people formed and maintained community and family and culture, despite the macro and micro assaults that slavery leveled against enslaved Black people. Finally, the chapter demonstrates how such films balance slavery’s brutality with affirming Black humanity to encourage viewers to focus on the ways Black cultural traditions become central to the imaginative, artistic, and political possibilities that cinematic narrative of slavery provide.