Afropessimism and Afrofuturism: Speculative Fiction in American Television Series
Krzysztof Loska
krzysztof.loska@uj.edu.plJagiellonian University (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4078-798X
Abstract
The author begins with the assumption that fantastic stories are tools of speculative thinking and reflection on man’s past and future. The analysis concerns two television series classified as fantastic: Lovecraft Country (HBO, 2020) and Kindred (FX on Hulu, 2022). Both represent the artistic movement called Afrofuturism, which is an example of speculative narrative aimed at reinterpreting history, i.e., working through the traumatic experiences of slavery, and designing an alternative community for the black minority. In the above series, Afrofuturist ideas are accompanied by what can be called Afropessimism, because the story of emancipation is confronted with the opposite diagnosis, according to which being Black is synonymous with social death.
Keywords:
fantastic, time travel, speculative fiction, slave narration, racismReferences
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Authors
Krzysztof Loskakrzysztof.loska@uj.edu.pl
Jagiellonian University Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4078-798X
Professor of Humanities in the Institute of Audiovisual Arts, Jagiellonian University in Kraków. He is the vice-president of the Polish Society for Film and Media Studies and member of Editorial Advisory Board of the bi-monthly Ekrany. He has authored 150 papers and dissertations on media, popular culture, film history and Japanese cinema, published in various journals (Kwartalnik Filmowy, Studia Filmoznawcze, Przegląd Kulturoznawczy, Ekrany, Kultura Współczesna, Ethos) and edited volumes. He has published twelve books (in Polish), e.g. Dziedzictwo McLuhana – między nowoczesnością a ponowoczesnością [McLuhan’s Legacy: Between Modernity and Postmodernity] (2001), Poetyka filmu japońskiego [Poetics of Japanese Cinema] (2009), Kenji Mizoguchi i wyobraźnia melodramatyczna [Kenji Mizoguchi and the Melodramatic Imagination] (2012), Nowy film japoński [New Japanese Cinema] (2013), Mistrzowie kina japońskiego [Masters of Japanese Film] (2015) and Postkolonialna Europa. Etnoobrazy współczesnego kina [Postcolonial Europe: Ethnoscapes of Contemporary Cinema] (2016), W cieniu Imperium Wschodzącego Słońca. Japoński projekt kolonialny i kultura filmowa w Azji Wschodniej [In the Shadow of the Empire of the Rising Sun: Japanese Colonial Project and Film Culture in East Asia] (2022).
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