short eyes (directed by robert m . young, 1972, harris/fox production, curtom films), frame grab. In 1977, readers of Billboard magazine and gain access into a community of earlier, he had written the wildly to hear and see Curtis himself. The were extended an invitation by viewers/listeners. The advertisement popular title song for the comedy ticket, the album, and the film each Curtom Records. An independent implied that the community was Let’s Do It Again (Sidney Poitier, relied on the multiple personas of (Don’t Worry) If record label founded by soul artist housed in a theater named for one 1975). As Ebony would write, Mayfield. Seeing Mayfield was also Curtis Mayfield, Curtom urged of the major motion picture studios Mayfield was “as at home in front hearing Mayfield. This doubleness, readers to “Let Curtis take you of the classical era (Warner Bros.) of a 72-piece film orchestra as he shuddering between Mayfield as There’s a Hell Below: to the movies!” The one-page Left with more than a stub, viewers/ [was] with a six-piece jazz combo.” character and Mayfield as guide- advertisement was fairly sparse, listeners would hear the music of However, the bridge between the performer, was part of a broader Curtis Mayfield, with little text beyond that emphatic the film and encounter a multiply- revolutionary Mayfield and the series of cultural productions, which, solicitation, which leveraged the authored conjuring of the past as the capital-driven, multi-national film and though imbricated in the industrial power of a star’s celebrity to needle glided in the grooves of the music industries was complicated. systems of record labels and movie mediate the space between a record. The music was a part of the studios, also spoke against such Cinematic Sounding, Short Eyes (Robert M. Young, 1977) soundtrack, a magazine reader, and cinema, and the cinematic form was corporate formations. The direct was Mayfield’s latest film score, but the movie theater. Against a solid foundational to the music. No mere address of the advertisement it was also the second feature film and Cultural Memory red background, the ad featured an marrying of sound track and film, is one of many utterances in which he made an appearance image of Mayfield’s recently released this was an event to participate in: constituting a counterpublic as a facsimile of himself. In Superfly LP, Short Eyes, accompanied by two the advertisement implored readers of soul that Mayfield had been Mayfield appeared for mere moments yellow movie tickets on the verge to “[g]et in line now for one of the contributing to for over a decade. of falling out of an envelope. With most exceptional performances of a in a club, playing along with the the title “SHORT EYES” stamped on movie music career” (my emphasis). film’s soundtrack. In Short Eyes he First coined by Nancy Fraser and Nicholas Forster each ticket to the Warner Theater, it Short Eyes, the LP, was Mayfield’s was embedded in the story. Not perhaps most famously elaborated was clear that Mayfield was to be a sixth soundtrack in a decade filled only, as the magazine suggested, by Michael Warner, the notion of tour guide for a trip to the movies: with cinematic work, including the would Curtis take readers to the a counterpublic points to those to buy the album was to take a ticket soundtrack for Superfly (Gordon movies, but the reader-turned- discursive spaces in which a Parks, Jr., 1972). Only two years listener/viewer would be brought collectivity is formed primarily

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through modes of sociality and grounds for agitational activities shared rhetoric that would otherwise directed toward wider publics.”3 be excluded from what is considered It may seem odd or strange to public space. The concept of a suggest that an advertisement counterpublic puts pressure on the in a trade publication meant for supposed divisions between private those in the music industry signals and public spheres, as these divisions a counterpublic organized around are often frayed if not altogether soul. In the 1960s, at its most dissolved for people who exist within a state of surveillance and exclusion, visible but rarely seen. As Fraser writes in an oft-quoted overview, counterpublics have a two-fold “The music was structure: “on the one hand, they politically resonant and commercially the basis for remaking a rhetoric of personal/impersonal address function as spaces of withdrawal and a part of the successful, soul was, as Nathan L. revolution. It is the very circulation and expansive estrangement of regroupment; on the other hand, they Grant claims,“the raw material for a of non-private experience (even if public speech as conditions of also function as bases and training cinema, and new cultural revolution.”4 As a mode delivered by privatized corporations) of music or a mode of being, soul that structures the formation and (left) figure 1: the cinematic emphasizes collective possibility subsistence of a counterpublic. (above) figure 2: Curtom Records inviting the through a singularly empowered Curtis Mayfield performing in a staged Michael Warner emphasizes the readers to be accompanied voice that shapes a shared intimacy concert meant for both the viewers form was importance of the strange, and by Curtis Mayfield on a trip to between many. Such intimacy may of the film and the characters in the movies. Billboard, October foundational be the foundation of agitational of the stranger, in his theorization Superfly (Directed by Gordon Parks, 22, 1977, 59. Courtesy of Rhino activity; such collectivity may be of counterpublics, writing, Jr., 1972, Warner Bros.), frame grab. Entertainment Company, a “counterpublics incorporate the Warner Music Group Company. to the music.”

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their common world.”5 Warner and stranger sociability.”6 Eschewing asked Cooke to hum eight bars of continues, insisting that “even the empirical fastening and authority what soul represented. For almost “soul was part of a religiously inflected the counterpublics that challenge that pollsters claim for data, Warner fifteen seconds, Cooke, without modernity’s social hierarchy of is quick to highlight that publics are hesitation, melodiously hummed. musical discourse that called for economic, faculties do so by projecting the not based solely on co-presence, The shared symbolic grammar space of discursive circulation personal identity, or the shared of soul was part of a religiously- political, cultural and perhaps even among strangers as a social entity experience of an event. Historically inflected musical discourse that not and in doing so fashion their contingent and difficult to explicate, only elongated and re-membered ontological shifts in America.” own subjectivities around the the development and reflexive use the word (one of the foundations requirements of public circulation of a specific discourse remains at of that shared grammar) but called the foundation of the formation for economic, political, cultural, between individualized interlocutors the flexible, malleable space shaped In some ways this discursive of a (counter)public. Mayfield’s and perhaps even ontological shifts who hear his songs—whether live by Mayfield’s music and by his visible exchange among strangers was audience is part of the counterpublic in America. Soul had existed long in a stadium with all the echoic presence on film. Here rhetoric is integral to the much-lauded “For almost announced by soul, a counterpublic before Mayfield, yet the nexus of possibilities of acoustic architecture, reduced and exploded. One can soundtrack for Superfly, which that overlaps with but is not media and revolutionary politics through the crackles of a record, or only suggest. Mayfield is emblematic according to Mayfield, was written necessarily a black counterpublic.7 fifteen seconds, in the world of a film. As Nathaniel of how black performance bends “to be a commentary as though The mobilization of rhetoric and emblematized in the advertisement Mackey’s character N. hints, “I’m and is bent in the latter half of someone was speaking as the the twining of the word are critical for Short Eyes mark an especially Cooke, without suggesting, the falsetto explores twentieth-century America to create movie was going.”10 It was this components of that counterpublic. provocative point to think about a redemptive, unworded realm—a what Richard Iton calls (referring commentary that, for critics like Greil Perhaps soul’s sculpting of the word sociality and the transmedial meta-word, if you will—where the to Superfly’s score) a “certain and Marcus, challenged the film’s visual hesitation, is best heard in a question posed to beckoning of a counterpublic. implied critique or the momentary inevitable contrapuntal effect.”9 construction and its celebration of a Sam Cooke by the radio DJ Nathanael Mayfield’s voice and his reliance on eclipse of the word curiously recuses, The grammar of the advertisement New York City shaped by drugs.11 To melodiously “Magnificent” Montague in 1963. the falsetto, a technique often used restores and renews it: new word, and of the film industry is answered accompany Mayfield to the movies, After explaining his own difficulties in in soul, sound an armored fragility new world.”8 This instability mirrors by the hums and calls of soul. then, was both to participate in the hummed.” describing soul with words, Montague and provide the illusion of intimacy

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“The grammar of the advertisement and of the film industry is answered by the hums and calls of soul.”

cadences of capitalism and to aurally Pinero during his time in Sing Sing, forces a rethinking of the sonic engage in a critique of that very only heightens the strangeness ecology of black cinema and a structure which produced cinema as of the relationship between wrestling with the importance of a space of stranger sociability. That Billboard readers, Curtis Mayfield, counterpublics to film studies. Short Eyes was an adaptation of a and the cinematic apparatus. The Thinking of the film’s audience as play about the arrival of a convicted advertisement seemed to suggest shaping this counterpublic reframes white pedophile at a prison with that Mayfield was a friendly and builds on a Bakhtinian focus on predominantly black and Latino chaperone who would bring readers discourse and dialogism that has inmates, and was written by Miguel along to enjoy the spectacle of been critical to the development of a cinematic jail where moments black film studies.12 Discourse and embalmed by the camera could be vocality are of particular interest in ogled, appropriated, and heard. understanding Mayfield’s output. Of

(left) figure 3: course, that output consisted not The relationship between Mayfield merely of Mayfield’s music, but also The opening credits of Short Eyes: the only visual and the listener, like that between of advertisements, which shaped his moment outside of the The Tombs. Short Eyes film and viewer, is characteristic persona in the press and his presence (Directed by Robert M. Young, 1972, Harris/ of the chain of circulation that across media. Warner writes that “in Fox Production, Curtom Films), frame grab. channeled Mayfield’s work, and publics, a double movement is always

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at work. … Quite commonly the result Eyes. Looking at the presence of Only a year earlier, in the pages of Young became attached to the required to gain entry into the can be a double-voiced hybrid.”13 At Mayfield on screen and hearing his Rolling Stone, he reflected on both “Curtis was the project, following the rejection of fortress of film production, but they one level, the shared language creaks recorded voice throughout the 1970s the controversy surrounding the the previous director by Pinero also point to the extended tendrils of below the surface for those not reveals a fluid archive of language glorification of drugs in Superfly and tour guide, but and the cast, one of the producers circulation that characterized much already part of the counterpublic. At that is constantly in animation, on his own interest in filmmaking. At continued to try to fit the film into of Mayfield’s career in cinema. Only another, it challenges the contracts, orally, sonically, and symbolically. first joking that he would become an there was more the mold of earlier successful prison a few years earlier, Mayfield’s status rules, and regulations of a public actor, Mayfield eventually explained, features. Despite the fact that had been used in the branding of language. Clyde Taylor gestures to Although it was a decade that began “Listen, I’ll tell you what I’d really to see and hear Young had previously worked as a Let’s Do It Again. Richard Wesley, the this double-voicedness in his call with Superfly, Short Eyes was the like to do … I don’t want to be a documentary filmmaker and had screenwriter of that film, explained: for black film scholars and artists culmination of Mayfield’s engagement film star like Ron O’Neal or Richard been a writer and cinematographer “we hoped that [Mayfield’s] song to turn away from aesthetics and with visual media. Discourse around Roundtree. I’m interested in making than just him.” on the much-praised Nothing But would help sell the movie. But when toward “a more promising grammar his interest in cinema reached pictures. What I’d like to be is one a Man (Michael Roemer, 1964), I finally heard the song I didn’t think such a height that when Mayfield of action, even though [it remains] of the Warner Brothers.”17 Mayfield securing funds remained a difficulty. that the lyrics had anything to do the production of Short Eyes was compromised by its incubation within released his album Sweet Exorcist in had established his own record label Citing the importance of Mayfield’s with the plot.”19 Despite its lack of no mere accident. Written and the palace” of Western discourse.14 the summer of 1974, he was called in the 1960s, and he regarded the soundtrack to the film’s genesis, explicitly plot-driven lyrics, “Let’s Do first performed in 1974, Pinero’s The network of relations that help to respond to the “widespread studios as a space of authorship, just Young emphasized that “the film It Again” would become a number play featured some moments of form the counterpublic of listeners discussion as to the significance of as cinema was a place of discourse. came together in order, really, to one single on the Billboard Hot 100, musical performance, but Mayfield’s and viewers enables such a grammar the title,” since many thought the Still, the tickets in the Billboard be a record deal and sell music … and the film was one of the most character, Pappy, had been entirely of action. Thinking with Mayfield’s album was a reference to the William ad—an image intended to promote [Afterwards we thought,] let’s see financially successful releases of absent. When production on the own revolutionary politics and lyrics Friedkin horror film The Exorcist Curtom Records and Short Eyes— how we can integrate [Mayfield] 1975. Listeners of Mayfield’s music 15 Such a discussion was not film began, the adaptation was as a composer throughout the 1970s (1973). read “WARNER,” not “MAYFIELD.” into the movie … [because he was were part of a “social imaginary” conceived of as an exploitation amplifies the functioning of such a unfounded: in a 1973 cover story for the reason] we got the money.”18 that remained coherent even while feature with the hopes that Mayfield’s network. This is precisely why it is Jet magazine, Mayfield was reported With this extensive engagement continuously developing across score could replicate the success Young’s comments may seem helpful to examine the circulatory to be “say[ing] he will expand into in the cinematic soundscape of different media.20 Though Mayfield 16 of Superfly. Even when Robert to reflect the cynical bargaining framework of soul surrounding Short movie- making in a few months.” the 1970s, Mayfield’s presence in was certainly a transmedia figure,

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film, and his camera weaves in and … say if you think you bad!” These “This is a space through prison bars, constructing a first lines refer, in part, to a section location of captivity that is defined (“Street Smarts”) of H. Rap Brown’s of surveillance both spatially and socially.21 Cells autobiography, a sort of poem that mark individual sites that are never Henry Louis Gates, Jr. singles out but also a site entirely separated from one another as representative of “signifyin’.”22 and are within earshot of the Brown was the chairman of SNCC dayroom where inmates eat, listen to following Stokely Carmichael’s exit, of sociality.” music, and socialize. This is a space of and Pappy’s invocation of Brown surveillance but also a site of sociality. signals a collective outside of the film that audiences may (or may the specific addresses of soul and It is in the dayroom that Mayfield’s not) have registered.23 Delivered as the conditions of his appearance character, Pappy, performs the single a short series of statements, Pappy’s show a network of consumers rather “Do Do Wap is Strong in Here,” rapping here sounds less like a than a dominating figure who would after coming to the assistance of threat of an impending fight than a define a discourse. Curtis was the an unnamed character when he is rhetorical unraveling of performance tour guide, but there was more assaulted by another inmate, Go- to see and hear than just him. Go (Miguel Pinero). When Go-Go threatens Pappy, he responds, “Ain’t Mayfield’s presence in Short Eyes nobody willing to give up nothing gestures outside the frame and but hard times and bubble gum, (right) figure 4: towards the movie’s production and you know they don’t allow Pappy thinking as he plays the dozens with history. Robert Young lived in and chewing gum in the joint … I’m as Go-Go (offscreen). Short Eyes (Directed filmed the Men’s House of Detention serious as terminal cancer and by Robert M. Young, 1972, Harris/Fox in Lower Manhattan (known as The Production, Curtom Films), frame grab. that is the final stage, brotherman Tombs) during the production of the

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that refers indirectly to Mayfield’s guards, the various inmates return cuts back and forth between the preacher, this scene is not quite an Mayfield’s reference to Brown, aurally own status as a musical celebrity. to the dayroom where a haunting “Ain’t nothing Latino inmates using the table as a emphasized moment of spectacular points to a space outside of the silence, made from remnants of a drum and dancing on one half the blackness. The film is not utopic prison. (The film never visually leaves When prison guards interrupt possible fight, floats through the air. but a little room, and black inmates on the in its vision of sociality as Go-Go the interior of The Tombs.) Entirely the encounter, Pappy shrugs his From solemn to sonorous, Go-Go other looking on, playing dominos, uses this moment to plant a shiv absent from the play, and entirely shoulders, announcing, “Ain’t nothing slowly sashays into the dayroom, and nodding heads. When Fender in Pappy’s cell, which will later be present as an intervallic moment of but a little doo-wop.” With this doo-wop.” eventually looking at various inmates finishes and is given daps by Pappy, discovered by the guards. Unlike sociality in the film, Mayfield’s song coda, the term “doo-wop” summarily grouped around tables. As the one of the inmates turns on a radio the choreographed sequences of opens up the relationship between registers the verbal exchange camera cuts between a series of the lack of acknowledgment from and calls out, “you can do better than plantation musicals, which emerged screen and viewer. Mayfield’s between Pappy and Go-Go. Named P.O.V. and reaction shots, Go-Go other prisoners. When Go-Go walks the cat on the radio man!” Pappy/ with the development of sound in character is called to top the “cat in the 1960s, but emerging earlier as finds no sympathy. Crossing his away, Cupcakes (Tito Goya), a Puerto Mayfield responds by singing with/ cinema and framed sites of captivity on the radio” who is in fact Mayfield one of the ancestors of soul, doo- arms and smirking, he calls out, Rican inmate who is also berated over his own song “Do Do Wap Is as settings for jubilant spectacle, this himself. Of course, listeners would wop is a mode primarily reliant on “You motherfuckers don’t want by Go-Go, puffs out his chest and Strong in Here.” Marked by a series truncated performance turns away have heard the cat on the radio the polyphonic structures of both me here, bail me the fuck out! Get extends his arms to his sides in a of close-ups of Mayfield’s face, his from an emphasis on representing outside of the theater. This kind of harmony and collective sociality. your commissary slips together.” pose of victorious masculinity as performance is, at first, one of self- the space of a prison. The scene aural mirroring sets the stage for Although the term often refers to As this address fails and Go-Go is he climbs to the top of a table and concealment, even preservation. With briefly becomes one of withdrawal. what I call recollective theater, a a consonant collection of sounds, only answered by silence, he makes calls out, “Every night is Latin night his head tilted down and his face in process in which viewers engage the harmony here is dissonant and This withdrawal exists in a space one final command: “Yo fuck y’all.” here at the house of detention.” shadow for most of the first minute with a past experience and memory linguistic, rather than tonal. Still, at of connectivity. Though stitching There is a double-voicedness in this Performing the role of emcee, of the song, Mayfield seemingly of hearing the tune. Mayfield’s its foundation remains this shared the film world together and moment. Mayfield’s character is Cupcakes reconfigures the place of denies the viewer the pleasure of performance, then, becomes a self- condition of incarceration. Pappy’s keeping diegetic continuity, the suggested as a site of identification the dayroom as a kind of club space. proximity that a close-up promises. reflexive moment that archives the rapping re-makes the possibilities use of the radio also allegorizes (he was to accompany viewers to While Pappy eventually does begin production of the film and also the within the carceral framework of With Cupcakes’s initiation of a the film’s own production history, the movie), and yet the camera to move around and emote with his sociality of what theater director the prison, and within language celebratory rite, the musician Freddy which necessitated a recording aligns briefly with Go-Go, only to body, raising his hands occasionally Marvin Felix Camillo calls the “society itself. Commanded by the prison Fender begins to sing as the film from Mayfield. Thus the radio, like find this identification ruptured by in praise as though he were a within a society” of Pinero’s play.24

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Neither entirely removed from and describe life within the essential social death.”28 Those implications the public, nor a static space of structure of global anti-blackness: “I remain shards of the constitutive an isolated-in-time culture, Short plan to stay a black motherfucker/ possibilities of the counterpublic Eyes frames The Tombs as a site Steeped in the depth of the same that Mayfield’s presence engenders of multiple registers. The scene of living hell/so I ain’t too proud to die but does not exhaust. The word— performance becomes part of the here as well/Do do wap is strong in that supposedly discrete semantic broader rhetoric of a counterpublic here.” Fracturing the filmic world unit—like Mayfield’s falsetto remains in its layered reflexivity. Mayfield of The Tombs, the public airwaves thin and contingent in this space. is not just singing with a radio: of the radio echo throughout the Released in the same year as his song refers to the history of dayroom. Yet, the very inclusion of Short Eyes, Saturday Night Fever black music and its engagement these lines in the film suggests not (John Badham, 1977) mobilized its in the precarious condition of a radio version (public censorship soundtrack within a narrative as well. what Orlando Patterson and Afro- would not permit Mayfield’s use Originating as a story in New York Pessimist critics have called “social of an expletive) but the very vinyl Magazine, the rights for the film death.”26 Mayfield’s lyrics constitute soundtrack that Curtom Records the discourse of a counterpublic had released, and was advertised were purchased by the Australian in the pages of Billboard, and later recording manager Robert Stigwood. Stigwood viewed the film as a vehicle Jet.27 Citing Mayfield’s “plan to stay a black motherfucker,” Fred Moten for artists he managed, including the (left) figure 5: 29 Though its roots were suggests “exhaustion as a mode or Bee Gees. Denying the intimacy of proximity, planted in the world of journalistic form or way of life, which is to say Pappy begins to sing “Do Do reporting, it was the film’s star, John sociality, thereby marking a relation Wap is Strong Here.” Short Eyes Travolta, who became the draw for whose implications constitute, in (Directed by Robert M. Young, youth audiences. The film’s depiction 1972, Harris/Fox Production, my view, a fundamental theoretical of disco relied on a distortion of Curtom Films), frame grab. reason not to believe, as it were, in

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what was then a subculture. Saturday granting as it did center stage to a What, then, does it mean to black filmmaking, a more useful and and the appearance of different instead to describing a fragment Night Fever was a case of cultural racist, misogynist, and homophobic think of Mayfield accompanying viable criterion for criticism comes performances. The funding for Short from the history of a counterpublic tourism and cooptation as it provided antihero.”30 As was so often the case cinemagoers throughout the 1970s? from the concept of ‘interruption.’”31 Eyes relied on an understanding of of soul. That trajectory may best be a blueprint for white, heterosexual with American film in the 1970s, His career suggests not only a way Mayfield’s voice, body, song, and the public’s interest in cinema as a understood through the possibilities men to embezzle disco and erase its Saturday Night Fever trafficked in of interpreting the relationship performance provide moments specific audiovisual medium and yet of interruption. Short Eyes and the black, Latino, and gay origins. Trading the language of crossovers that between cinema, soundtracks, of what might be understood as the film animated a counterpublic advertisement in Billboard both accompaniment for appropriation, attempted to swallow counterpublics and counterpublics but also of interruption, and his role in Short through a transmedia figure. played as a part in the industry and the violent erasure of race and through a dispersal of politics. Less understanding how, in Kobena Eyes signals the political stakes. A Narrating the trajectory of Mayfield’s also point to a space of sociality sexuality undergirded the film as it about harmony, the film presented a Mercer’s terms, interruption is sort of counterpublic of soul, like the relationship to cinema and Short excluded by that industry. Mayfield’s attempted to make itself relatable univocal voice. There is little grammar critical to an aesthetic attempt at archive forming around Blaxploitation Eyes helps suggest a path that presence and soundtrack signal a to white audiences as a document of action in the image of Travolta’s sociality. As Mercer writes, “[t]o the cinema, is one that is constantly in avoids framing discourse in terms specific moment in which the aural of the contemporary moment. As angular body cutting up the floor and extent that what is at issue is not the process of formation, a process like crossover success or margin and filmic are co-constitutive not only Tavia N’yongo writes, “Saturday though there may be an invitation a struggle between one persona that is persistently interrupted and center (a hermeneutic that of a counterpublic, but of each other. Night Fever encapsulated for many to dance with the film, there was and another but between different by the production of new works still haunts scholarship) and moves the drawbacks of the crossover, little revolutionary accompaniment. ways of thinking and talking about

16 William E Berry, “Curtis Mayfield’s ‘Super Fly’ Music Makes $20 Million,” Jet, May 31, 1973, 56. 1 Billboard, October 22, 1977, 59 17 Stu Werbin, “Curtis Mayfield’s Biggest Score,” Rolling Stone, November, 23, 1972, 10. 2 Lynn Norment and Bill Berry, “Unknown Millionaires of the Music World,” Ebony, April 1980, 138. 18 Robert Young, “Commentary,” Short Eyes (Directed by Robert M. Young 1977, Fox Lorber Home Video, 2003), DVD. 3 Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun 19 Richard Wesley quoted in Michael A. Gonzales, “The Legend of Soul: Long Live Curtis Mayfield!,” in Soul: Black Power, Politics and Pleasure, ed. Monique Guillory (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1992), 124. and Richard C. Green (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 233. 4 Nathan L. Grant, “The Frustrated Project of Soul in the Drama of Ed Bullins,” in Language, Rhythm, & Sound: Black Popular Cultures into the Twenty-First Century, 20 Warner, Publics and Counterpublics, 12. ed. Joseph K. Adjaye and Adrianne R. Andrews (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997), 95. 21 Nicole Rafter, Shots in the Mirror: Crime Films and Society, 2nd ed. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006), 178. 5 Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics (New York: Zone Books, 2002), 121. 22 Henry Louis Gates, The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 72–74. 6 Ibid. 23 This reference to Brown extends in multiple directions, even within the filmic world of black cinema of the 1970s, as much of Brown’s poem is recited in the film 7 For some important thoughts on a black counterpublic see Michael C. Dawson, “A Black Counterpublic?: Economic Earthquakes, Racial Agenda(s), and Black Five on the Black Hand Side (Oscar Williams, 1973). Politics,” Public Culture 7, no. 1 (1994), 195–223. 24 Marvin Felix Camillo, “Introduction,” in Miguel Pinero, Short Eyes (New York: Hill and Wang, 1975), xiii. 8 Nathaniel Mackey, From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate (New York,: New Directions, 2010), 51. 25 See Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982); and Frank B. Wilderson, Red White and 9 Richard Iton, In Search of the Black Fantastic: Politics and Popular Culture in the Post-Civil Rights Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 115. Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010). 10 Curtis Mayfield quoted in Richard Iton, In Search of the Black Fantastic, 114. 26 Curtis Mayfield, Short Eyes, directed by Robert M. Young (1977; New York: Fox Lorber Home Video, 2003), DVD. 11 See Griel Marcus, Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ‘n’ Roll Music (New York: Plume, 1997). 27 For this other advertisement, see Jet, November 10, 1977, 63. 12 For example, see Mark A. Reid, Redefining Black Film (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993); and Paula Massood, Black City Cinema: African American 28 Fred Moten, “Blackness and Nothingness (Mysticism in the Flesh),” South Atlantic Quarterly 112, no. 4 (Fall 2013): 738. Urban Experiences in Film (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2003). 29 Paula Massood, “1977: Movies and a Nation in Transformation,” in American Cinema of the 1970s: Themes and Variations, ed. Lester Friedman (New Brunswick, NJ: 13 Warner, Publics and Counterpublics, 108. Rutgers University Press, 2007), 196. 14 Clyde Taylor, “The Ironies of Palace-Subaltern Discourse” in Black American Cinema, ed. Manthia Diawara (New York: Routledge 1993), 178. 30 Tavia Nyong’o, “I Feel Love: Disco and Its Discontents,” Criticism 50, no. 1 (Winter 2008): 102. 15 When asked, Mayfield denied any specific relation to the film but left open the possibility of influence, claiming, “Oh, no, Sweet Exorcist has nothing to do with the 31 Kobena Mercer, “Diaspora Culture and the Dialogic Imagination: The Aesthetics of Black Independent Film in Britain,” Blackframes: Critical Perspectives on Black movie. As a matter of fact, I refused to go see the film until I had finished the album.” See Clarence Brown, “People Are Talking About … ,” Jet, May 23, 1974, 55. Independent Cinema (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1988), 52.

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