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  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
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Book Review: Black Movie 
by Danez Smith

Black Movie
Danez Smith
Button Poetry
2015
978-1-943735-00-6
40 pages
$12 


Danez Smith identifies as a black, queer, poz writer, currently living in St. Paul, Minnesota. Danez Smith is the author of, Don’t Call Us Dead, a finalist for the National Book Award, and [Insert] Boy, winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. Danez Smith is also the author of two chapbooks,  Hand on Ya  Knees, and Black Movie, winner of the Button Poetry Prize. He is also the recipient of fellowships from the Poetry Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, and is a 2017 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow. 


Review





















A Review of Danez Smith's Black Movie by Miguel Soto

Danez Smith’s chapbook Black Movie challenges large media outlets and film that devalue and misrepresent the black community in the United States, using direct and didactic metaphors, which do not allow themselves to fall into ambiguity, that would, in turn, need heavy interpretation, and risk being a form of misrepresentation. Readers are fixed to the poems, facing the harsh inequalities that burden our society, revealing overused tropes for black people in films, reflective of the brutality imposed on black bodies.
 
In Smith’s opening poem “Sleeping Beauty in the Hood,” Smith introduces two juxtaposing characters, setting a distinction between fantasy and reality. The allusions to film culture, especially Disney’s film adaptation of Charles Perrault’s fairy tale “Sleeping Beauty” and Singleton’s Boyz n the Hood, set up the distance between the imaginative roles people wish to fill, and the reality of existing in a marginalized community. When “townsfolk / name themselves Prince Charming,” attempting to “wake the sleeping beauty,” wishing to embody the heroic trope seen in Disney films, it becomes disheartening when the main character “Jamal” embodies the sleeping beauty, and cannot be revived by the people who wish to be Jamal’s hero. The response to “Jamal won’t wake up” is “You mad? This ain’t no kid flick. There is no magic here,” realizing the situation is a clear representation of the young black folks dying at the hands of systemic inequalities, i.e., disproportionate use of money to fund neighborhoods (“hood”) and the police brutality that this scene foreshadows, which is more prominent in the following poems, but forces the reader to take responsibility over their expectation of thinking they would be met with a happy ending.
 
In “Boyz n the Hood 2,” the speaker of the poem erases any possibility of expecting a happy ending, stating, “let’s not mention the original,” because the poem is “a series / of birthday parties for the child / who lives in the picture frame.” The allusion to Boyz n the Hood further illustrates the lack of attention and care the United States has for people who live in marginalized communities, like the hood, which was the film’s original purpose when it was released in 1991. The exposition no longer rises to the experience of loss and grief but is in a constant and endless state: “Every year we watch the family / watch their home burn to the ground. / The movies get old. The boy never will.” The sentences’ structure is short and personal, leaving the need to hide grief in metaphors and symbols behind, showing that subtlety and passiveness are not the tools for drawing our attention and treatment to the communities in subject.
 
Black Movie grounds the reader’s attention to the black community and police discrimination that persists on brutalizing black bodies. The poem “Short Film” provokes the famous poetic form, the elegy. An elegy being an appropriate response, given the recent deaths of Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, Renisha McBride, and Brandon Zachary, who are all alluded to in the poem, but it is the lack of resolution that keeps Smith from writing them into an elegy. An elegy needing three major components, lacks the third, consolation and solace. Smith’s “Short Film” begins with a profound question: “how long before / a legend / becomes / a god or / forgotten?” The question stretches into an answer: “think: once, a white girl / was kidnapped & that’s the Trojan War,” leading to the situation that calls for a monumental war in the name of justice, “Troy got shot & that was Tuesday. are we not worthy / of a city of ash? of 1,000 ships / launched because we are missed?” The response criticizes the prioritization white society takes in demanding justice for the injustice and inequality done to white people, but won’t respond to the same when the injustice and inequality are in the face of black people. When writing the section “iii. not an elegy for Renisha McBride” within “Short Film,” Smith describes the last moments before McBride’s death, “a myth of the bullet, the red yolk it hungers to show her / or the tale his hands, pale & washed in shadow / for they finished what the car could not.” Smith does not deviate for a moment from the brutal death McBride met when, in 2013, she left her crashed car searching for help, yet no police arrived on the scene, even after 911 dispatchers were contacted forty minutes before she knocked on the door of a fearful white man whose shot ended her life. Smith ends her section with, “if I must call this her fate, I know the color of God’s face.” Not only is Danez Smith challenging readers to accept that Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, Renisha McBride, and Brandon Zachary, all lack an elegy because of the dominant society’s lack of consideration, but he also deviates from using the “standard” set of rules for the English language, refusing to capitalize letters in the Roman numerals, in titles, and after using periods, indicating a deviation from the colonizer’s language; and, by proposing God’s face is white, since the oppression of black people persists after the colonizer’s introduction of Christianity, which still allows the subjection of black lives in this century. The techniques factor in audiences’ responses, using the opportunity to steer the reader’s attention to the black community, demanding the justice and respect they deserve, so those who have passed can receive a proper elegy.
 
Danez Smith’s main goal in challenging the stereotypes and tropes found in films, which exploit and capitalize on black bodies, is to challenge the prejudices that are formed from taking the misrepresentation as truth. In “Scene: Portrait of a Black Boy With Flowers,” the speaker’s first line is, “& he is not in a casket,” following the line, “he does not return to dirt,” and then the lines, “he does not bring flowers / to his best friend’s wake,” taxing the reader’s expectation of death when a black person is present in a film, questioning the intent of filmmakers, who consistently correlate blackness and death. Instead, the scene is simple and graceful: “the boy is in his aunt’s garden / & the world does not matter,” closing the scene with, “pollen dusts his skin / gold as he grows.” The boy in this poem deviates from society’s backward prejudices of black boys and men, demonstrating a branch of narratives and experiences, which test the notions of a collective experience among black people.
 
Danez Smith’s Black Movie scrutinizes the false stereotypes and tropes film and media perpetuate.  The language found in Black Movie undercuts the need for complex interpretations and metaphors, which often distort reality and the truth, making the message clear-cut, being that society is far from equal and that black people demand a stop to the oppressive forces that prolong police brutality, misrepresentation, and invisibility. Black Movie is for the reader who is ready to take responsibility for their language and actions that often preserve oppressive practices and ideologies, making this a perfect collection of poems for self-education and realization. 



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Miguel is the Asst. Managing Editor and Book Review Editor for Jet Fuel Review. As an editor, one of his main concerns is giving a space to marginalized voices, centralizing on narratives often ignored. He loves reading radical, unapologetic writers, who explore the emotional and intellectual stresses within political identities and systemic realities. His own writings can be found in OUT / CAST: A Journal of Queer Midwestern Writing and Art, The Rising Phoenix Review, and Rogue Agent. He writes for the Jet Fuel Review blog in Not Your Binary: A QTPOC Reading Column.

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  • Home
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  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Art Fall 2021 >
      • Bonnie Severien Fall 2021
      • Camilla Taylor Fall 2021
      • Guilherme Bergamini Fall 2021
      • Emanuela Iorga Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Poetry Fall 2021 >
      • Maureen Alsop Fall 2021
      • Annah Browning Fall 2021
      • Romana Iorga Fall 2021
      • Natalie Hampton Fall 2021
      • Sherine Gilmour Fall 2021
      • Adam Day Fall 2021
      • Amanda Auchter Fall 2021
      • Adam Tavel Fall 2021
      • Sara Moore Fall 2021
      • Karen Rigby Fall 2021
      • Daniel Zhang Fall 2021
      • Erika Lutzner Fall 2021
      • Kindall Fredricks Fall 2021
      • Cin Salach Fall 2021
      • Andrew Zawacki Fall 2021
      • Micah Ruelle Fall 2021
      • Rachel Stempel Fall 2021
      • Haley Wooning Fall 2021
      • Rikki Santer Fall 2021
      • Evy Shen Fall 2021
      • Suzanne Frischkorn Fall 2021
      • Danielle Rose Fall 2021
      • Eric Burgoyne Fall 2021
      • John Cullen Fall 2021
      • Maureen Seaton Fall 2021
      • Hannah Stephens Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Nonfiction Fall 2021 >
      • Kevin Grauke Fall 2021
      • Courtney Justus Fall 2021
      • Amy Nicholson Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Fiction Fall 2021 >
      • Tina Jenkins Bell Fall 2021
      • David Obuchowski Fall 2021
      • Thomas Misuraca Fall 2021
      • Aiden Baker Fall 2021
      • Jenny Magnus Fall 2021
  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
      • Jonathan Kvassay Spring 2022
      • Karyna McGlynn Spring 2022
      • Andrea Kowch Spring 2022
      • Layla Garcia-Torres Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Poetry Spring 2022 >
      • Robin Gow Spring 2022
      • T.D. Walker Spring 2022
      • Jen Schalliol Huang Spring 2022
      • Yvonne Zipter Spring 2022
      • Carrie McGath Spring 2022
      • Lupita Eyde-Tucker Spring 2022
      • Susan L. Leary Spring 2022
      • Kate Sweeney Spring 2022
      • Rita Mookerjee Spring 2022
      • Erin Carlyle Spring 2022
      • Cori Bratty-Rudd Spring 2022
      • Jen Karetnick Spring 2022
      • Meghan Sterling Spring 2022
      • Lorelei Bacht Spring 2022
      • Michael Passafiume Spring 2022
      • Jeannine Hall Gailey Spring 2022
      • Phil Goldstein Spring 2022
      • Michael Mingo Spring 2022
      • Angie Macri Spring 2022
      • Martha Silano Spring 2022
      • Vismai Rao Spring 2022
      • Anna Laura Reeve Spring 2022
      • Jenny Irish Spring 2022
      • Marek Kulig Spring 2022
      • Jami Macarty Spring 2022
      • Sarah A. Rae Spring 2022
      • Brittney Corrigan Spring 2022
      • Callista Buchen Spring 2022
      • Issam Zineh Spring 2022
      • MICHAEL CHANG Spring 2022
      • henry 7. reneau, jr. Spring 2022
      • Leah Umansky Spring 2022
      • Cody Beck Spring 2022
      • Danyal Kim Spring 2022
      • Rachel DeWoskin Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Fiction Spring 2022 >
      • Melissa Boberg Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Nonfiction Spring 2022 >
      • Srinaath Perangur Spring 2022
      • Audrey T. Carroll Spring 2022
  • Issue #24 Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Art Fall 2022 >
      • Marsha Solomon Fall 2022
      • Edward Lee Fall 2022
      • Harryette Mullen Fall 2022
      • Jezzelle Kellam Fall 2022
      • Irina Greciuhina Fall 2022
      • Natalie Christensen Fall 2022
      • Mark Yale Harris Fall 2022
      • Amy Nelder Fall 2022
      • Bette Ridgeway Fall 2022
      • Ursula Sokolowska Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Poetry Fall 2022 >
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      • e Fall 2022
      • Stefanie Kirby Fall 2022
      • Lisa Ampleman Fall 2022
      • Will Cordeiro Fall 2022
      • Jesica Davis Fall 2022
      • Peter O'Donovan Fall 2022
      • Mackenzie Carignan Fall 2022
      • Jason Fraley Fall 2022
      • Barbara Saunier Fall 2022
      • Chad Weeden Fall 2022
      • Nick Rattner Fall 2022
      • Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow Fall 2022
      • Summer J. Hart Fall 2022
      • Daniel Suá​rez Fall 2022
      • Sara Kearns Fall 2022
      • Millicent Borges Accardi Fall 2022
      • Liz Robbins Fall 2022
      • john compton Fall 2022
      • Esther Sadoff Fall 2022
      • Whitney Koo Fall 2022
      • W. J. Lofton Fall 2022
      • Rachel Reynolds Fall 2022
      • Kimberly Ann Priest Fall 2022
      • Annie Przypyszny Fall 2022
      • Konstantin Kulakov Fall 2022
      • Nellie Cox Fall 2022
      • Jennifer Martelli Fall 2022
      • SM Stubbs Fall 2022
      • Joshua Bird Fall 2022
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      • Helena Pantsis Fall 2022
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      • Courtney Ludwick Fall 2022
      • Anna Oberg Fall 2022
      • Acadia Currah Fall 2022