5.
I Am Not Your Negro
Samuel L. Jackson lends his voice as the gay writer James Baldwin in this documentary-narrative hybrid. Based on an unfinished work by Baldwin, I Am Not Your Negro explores the sorrow and rage that still hovers over a generation of murdered African-American leaders like Malcom X and Martin Luther King, Jr. It also assaults the liberal images (dubbed “lies” by Baldwin) of black and white reconciliation and unity in movies throughout the 1950s & 60s.
Though not explicitly LGBTQ themed, I Am Not Your Negro does come from a gay writer. Maybe that’s why the questions that preoccupy the film also loom before our community. Much as African Americans lost a generation of world-changing leaders, so did the gay community: Harvey Milk died from an assassin’s bullet, while AIDS decimated the population a short time later. Likewise, a generation raised on images of the Gay Best Friend or Tragic, Dying Gay in movies and television must too confront how those placations cloaked societal intolerance. Baldwin’s voice echoes with shattering power even 30 years after his death, and I Am Not Your Negro raises questions the LGBT community—and greater America—must face, even if they don’t have answers.
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