ABSTRACT
Oscar Micheaux worked doggedly to create screen images that would disrupt and challenge conventional racist representations of blackness. Though Micheaux aimed to produce a counter-hegemonic art that would challenge white supremacist representations of "blackness", he was not concerned with the simple reduction of black representation to a "positive" image. Aesthetics of the popular melodrama depend on grand gesture, tableaux, broad moral themes, with narratives of coincidence, reverses and sudden happy endings organized around a rigid opposition between good and evil. Focusing on womanizing and vamping, Micheaux's work "exploits" conventional constructions of good and bad sexuality as he simultaneously "toys" with the idea of transgression. Addressing the black public's need to have race movies reproduce aspects of white mainstream cinema that denied their presence, Micheaux incorporates into his work familiar melodramatic narratives. Micheaux subtly urges black spectators to re-evaluate the internalized racism that leads them to respect white or light skin and devalue blackness.
