Black Body (1992)

Overview

Black Body is a harsh and compelling meditation on the contradictory values assigned to black bodies in American culture: they exist as both desired and feared, abject and powerful. The “black body” is a body whose surface reflects projected fears and repressed desires; as such, it exists as a site of ideological struggle, a surface which is simultaneously eroticized and denegrated. With nightmarish narratives and loaded terms hovering over an image of a naked torso bound with wire, Harris shows how these contradictory values continue to cripple and contort the self-image of blacks. The video conveys a powerful sense of confusion and trauma, the problem of inhabiting a body that is a cultural taboo.