Includes bibliographical references (pages 241-323) and index.
Contents:
Conclusion. Part III: Video games on slavery and the Haitian Revolution. An unthinkable plot? The Haitian Revolution in US and European feature films ; Invoking the Revolution in Caribbean feature films ; Handling Haiti in HUAC-era Hollywood: 20th Century Fox's Lydia Bailey ; No white hero, no funding? Unmade Revolution epics ; Black lives mattered in the Haitian Revolution: Hollywood and slavery in Chris Rock's Top Five ; Remembering Haiti's Revolution in France and North America: documentaries, dramatic shorts, and animation -- Part II: Haitian cinematic perspectives. From the Duvalier years through the 2004 bicentennial: reflections on the Revolution's legacy ; The rising generation, Toussaint Louverture, and the problem of funding -- Part III: Video games on slavery and the Haitian Revolution. North American and European games: From MECC's Freedom! to Assassin's Creed: Freedom Cry ; French Caribbean games: honoring rebel ancestors in Mewilo and Freedom: Rebels in the Darkness -- Conclusion.
Summary:
"In Slave Revolt on Screen: The Haitian Revolution in Film and Video Games author Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall analyzes how films and video games from around the world have depicted slave revolt, focusing on the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804). This event, the first successful revolution by enslaved people in modern history, sent shock waves throughout the Atlantic World. Regardless of its historical significance however, this revolution has become less well-known-and appears less often on screen-than most other revolutions; its story, involving enslaved Africans liberating themselves through violence, does not match the suffering-slaves-waiting-for-a-white-hero genre that pervades Hollywood treatments of Black history. Despite Hollywood's near-silence on this event, some films on the Revolution do exist-from directors in Haiti, the US, France, and elsewhere. Slave Revolt on Screen offers the first-ever comprehensive analysis of Haitian Revolution cinema, including completed films and planned projects that were never made. In addition to studying cinema, this book also breaks ground in examining video games, a pop-culture form long neglected by historians. Sepinwall scrutinizes video game depictions of Haitian slave revolt that appear in games like the Assassin's Creed series that have reached millions more players than comparable films. In analyzing films and games on the revolution, Slave Revolt on Screen calls attention to the ways that economic legacies of slavery and colonialism warp pop-culture portrayals of the past and leave audiences with distorted understandings"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.