What is a specific Black cultural practice that she describes as integral to the experience of “going to the movies” in the Black Metropolis? How does her description of such practices add complexity to our understanding of the cultural role that the movies played in this period?

1. According to Carbine, Chicago’s Black Metropolis movie theaters were a site of “specific African-American cultural practices” in the silent film era (until c. 1928).

She describes these practices in order to argue against the thesis that consuming mass culture (like the movies) flattened ethnic, racial, or class differences (what she calls the “embourgeoisement thesis”).

What is a specific Black cultural practice that she describes as integral to the experience of “going to the movies” in the Black Metropolis? How does her description of such practices add complexity to our understanding of the cultural role that the movies played in this period?

2. Ask a question about the Carbine reading.

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