In this book, Tryon P. Woods argues that cinematic treatments of blackness which offer explicit counter-narratives to society's deep-seated racist culture fail to escape the trappings of antiblackness and the basic antagonistic relationship between black people and the modern world, and are instead features of it-all the while posing as anti-racist.

The Cinema of Social Death: Blackhood At-Large first examines how documentary films that endeavor to expose and indict antiblack racism may, in fact, be the most efficient genre for disguising contemporary culture's parasitic relationship to blackness. The focus of the book then turns to a selection of fictional dramatic narratives by black independent film makers, including Tanya Hamilton, Haile Gerima, and Spike Lee, to consider the difficulty in telling stories of racial justice that do not fall into the contradictory trap of imposing antiblack notions of gender and sexuality. Contrary to the prevalent sentiment that these anti-racist visual narratives disrupt and unravel the suffering, lack, and pathology attached to blackness, Woods posits that the films being examined are a drag on black liberation, and thus, on human deliverance.

As such, this book's chief concern is in how our efforts to unravel the problems of the world become part of the problem. In the process, the author highlights the trap of visual culture and its racial discourse as it obfuscates the modern era's assault on human reciprocity and connection.