‘The Birth of Black Consciousness on the Screen’?: The African American Historical Experience, Blaxploitation, and the Production and Reception of Sounder (1972)

Abstract

The black historical film Sounder (1972) was a key feature of the heated debate over race representation in Hollywood cinema in the early 1970s. Indeed, while marking a break from the post-Second World War social problem film, this Depression-set family drama also ran counter to the controversial blaxploitation boom of the period, by emphasising universal themes over those of race. Widely acclaimed in the national press, these qualities also focalised the ongoing conflict over values pertaining to the splintering of the Civil Rights movement and the rise of Black Power in the second half of the 1960s. Making use of a range of primary source materials, including letters sent to the film’s producer and director, this analysis examines Sounder’s turbulent social, cultural and ideological contexts. It considers the aims and influence of key personnel, the wider discussion of black filmic representation, and the film’s complex and contradictory contemporary reception.