Abstract
This essay analyzes how themes of death, loss, and mourning in films released around the emergence of the #BlackLivesMatter movement produce complex relationships to mourning and black lives. Reflecting on how Mamie Till-Mobley compelled us to view the mutilated body of her murdered son, Emmett, to contemplate his loss and the brutality surrounding his murder, the essay traces seminal discursive features of mourning in the work of writers Karla Holloway, Claudia Rankine, and Anne Anlin Cheng. It then discusses how mourning in earlier films like Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life (1959) enacted a pathological cinematic mourning, while contemporary films like Straight Outta Compton (dir. F. Gary Gray, 2015) depict a range of divergent narratives around mourning and humanity. Lastly, the essay explores the oeuvre of Ava DuVernay, whose films I Will Follow (2010), Middle of Nowhere (2012), Selma (2014), and the TV show Queen Sugar (2016- ) (for which she is at the creative helm and has directed several episodes) reimagine mourning not as pathological spectacle, but as a gateway to an intimate, transformative process that contemplates the nuances of black life and loss.
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