Spotlight: Kam Copeland

Abstract

Spotlight:Kam Copeland TreaAndrea M. Russworm Kam Copeland is a PhD candidate in Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Southern California and Dissertation Fellow in African and African Diaspora Studies at Boston College. Currently, he is writing his dissertation, "Muhammad Gazes: Islam, Blackness, and Resistance Cinema in the US," a representational history of Black American Muslims in cinema. This project also explores how Black Muslims have developed alternative gazes and liberatory cinematic practices to resist dominant framings of Muslimness in US media. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Kam Copeland. Photograph courtesy of Kam Copeland. TreaAndrea M. Russworm: What are some of the consistent stories and insights among texts that are central to your research on media representations of US Black American Muslims? Kam Copeland: The first chapter of my dissertation focuses on The Hate That Hate Produced (WNTA-TV, 1959), a television documentary by Louis Lomax and Mike Wallace about the growth of Black Nationalism that aired in New York. With a primary emphasis on the Nation of Islam (NOI)—which the broadcast refers to as "the Black Muslims"—The Hate That Hate Produced [End Page 8] represents Black Muslimness as theologically inferior and politically menacing to white Western society. I argue that this broadcast produced the trope of the Black Muslim fanatic—a combination of the cinematic caricatures of the Black brute and the Muslim terrorist—via the white hegemonic gaze. Nevertheless, that trope was rejected by a Black radical gaze that reimagined revolutionaries who critiqued white supremacy and US empire (such as Malcolm X) as Third World heroes. After the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, new Black public affairs television programs—such as Black Journal (NET/PBS, 1968–1977), Soul! (WNDT, 1968–1973), and Say Brother (WGBH, 1968–1997)—adopted the latter approach to reject the hegemonic gaze's representation of Black Muslimness. The image of the fanatic and the Third World hero is a dichotomy that I trace from the airing of The Hate That Hate Produced to contemporary representations. Russworm: I know your work also argues for considering media through the rubric of the cinematic. What's so generative for you about this approach? Copeland: In centering Black gazes, I focus on collective viewing practices. For example, St. Clair Bourne's documentary The Nation of Common Sense (1970), which aired on the television program Black Journal and profiled the day-to-day lives of Muslims in the NOI, was shown to audiences at banquets and other events hosted by mosques throughout the country. This allowed Muslim audiences to engage in a unified viewing experience, as though watching films at a cinema, while expressing melodic sounds of approval in line with the call-and-response traditions that exist in spiritual expressions throughout the African diaspora. I am also interested in how scholars such as Kara Keeling conceptualize various forms of the moving image, using the rubric of the cinematic to challenge dominant understandings of race, class, and gender.1 While my research and teaching interests focus on Black religion and media, this approach provides me with a framework that emphasizes collective struggle and helps me explore how theologies of Black liberation are mapped onto cinematic experiences and practices. Russworm: Tell us about a film that invites connections about race and religion and also prioritizes a Black cinematic gaze. Copeland: A chapter of my dissertation centers home videos produced in the late 1970s by the El Rukns (formerly known as the Blackstone Rangers), a Chicago-based street organization. While serving a prison sentence, Blackstone Ranger co-founder Jeff Fort embraced Islam and became known as Abdul Malik Ka'bah; he would also change the name of his organization to El Rukn. Although they would eventually embrace Sunni Islam, the El Rukns were initially affiliated with the Moorish Science Temple of America (MSTA), a Muslim movement that arose during the Great Migration in the early twentieth century. In the late 1970s, the El Rukns would host parties at their mosque, or headquarters. Affectionately referred to as "The Fort," it was located at 3947 South Drexel Blvd. in an edifice formerly known as the Oakland Square Theatre. Two home videos...