"Let It Go Black": Desire and the Erotic Subject in the Films of Bill Gunn

This article analyzes two films by the twentieth-century filmmaker Bill Gunn, who wrote and directed STOP! (1970) and Ganja and Hess (1973). Both films are unique because they show the complicated, multidirectional power relations among erotic subjects without sexual exploitation as its aim. The phrase "let it go black" refers to Gunn's approach to the erotic subject on film, which privileges multiple evocations that blackness can bring to sexuality. I also posit a dialectic between the radical spectator and filmmaker who together can transform cinematic relationships through a shared desire to expand our imaginative perspectives outside of the bounds of the Jezebel, the Buck, and other pervasive racialized sexual types circulated by Hollywood filmmakers of all races, nationally and globally.