On Tuesday, I wrote about the stuffed lion in Get Out (2017). Today, I want to look at the song that plays when we first encounter Chris and Rose on screen. As images of Chris’s photographs flash across the screen, we hear Childish Gambino’s “Redbone” from “Awaken, My Love” (2016). Countering the soulful sound of the song, the lyrics focus on the narrator’s paranoia … Read More Childish Gambino and “Get Out”
+ african american literature, american literature, arna bontemps, chris washington, film, get out, invisible man, jordan peele, lion, Literature, movie, mr kelso's lion, ralph ellison, rose armitage, the old south, Uncategorized
Finally, during its third week in theaters, I saw Get Out (2017). Plenty of people have commented on the film; however, there are two aspects of the film that I have not found anyone discussing: the stuffed lion that sits on the nightstand next to Rose Armitage’s bed and the use of Childish Gambino’s “Redbone”playing over the audience’s first introduction to Chris Washington as … Read More Stuffed Lion in “Get Out”?
+ american literature, flannery o'connor, gothic literature, revelation, southern gothic, southern literature, Uncategorized, you go to your church and I'll go to mine
Last post, I wrote about “When the Roll is Called Up Yonder” in Richard Wright’s “Long Black Song.” Today, I want to look at another song in a short story, this time in Flannery O’Connor’s “Revelation.” The bluegrass, gospel song “You Go to Your Church and I’ll Go to Mine” appears in “Revelation” while Ruby Turpin and her husband Claud sit in the doctor’s … Read More Music in Flannery O’Connor’s “Revelation”
+ african american literature, african americans, american literature, Literature, mississippi literature, richard wright, Uncategorized, uncle tom's children, uncle tom's children. afircan american literature, when the roll in called up yonder
As I reread Richard Wright’s “Long Black Song” from Uncle Tom’s Children (1938), I again thought about the role of music in Wright’s work. I have written about this before in relation to the epigraph for Wright’s collection and in relation to the song that appears in “Big Boy Leaves Home.” Today, I want to briefly look at the way that the hymn “When … Read More “When the Roll is Called Up Yonder” in Richard Wright’s “Long Black Song”
Interminable Rambling 
+ american literature, an art commentary on lynching, naacp, paul cadmus, reginald marsh, southern literature, to the lynching, Uncategorized, william faulkner
Minnie Cooper and John McClendon in Faulkner’s “Dry September”
by Matthew Teutsch
Last Thursday, I wrote about the “blank spaces” in William Faulkner’s “Dry September” and some works by Ernest J. Gaines. Today, I want to look at a couple of scenes in Faulkner’s story and discuss the ways that Faulkner delves into the psychological effects of lynchings and racial violence on the perpetrators themselves. As such, I will briefly discuss Minnie Cooper and John McClendon … Read More Minnie Cooper and John McClendon in Faulkner’s “Dry September”