Well, TC, it's that time of year again, our favorite time of years, spooky season. Yes, turtleneck, scary movies, apple cider, pumpkins, apple pie. I want it all. I love the fall time. I love spooky season. We've been watching a lot of scary movies. Oh yes. This year, though, a lot of our spooky content has been centered around love Craft Country. Oh my goodness, a phenomenal show. If you haven't watched Lovecraft Country, figure out a way to watch it. It's
so well done. And even if you don't like that type of media, just watch it on mute because Jonathan Majrix, what's up? That's a beautiful man. I just told somebody to watch the show, and today they said, what is going on? I'm so confused? And I was like, that means you're only one minute in exactly, because I remember I started late. Yes, the kid was watching from the day that it dropped, and I was a couple episodes behind.
She's like, you have to watch this show. In the first ten minutes, I was like, what exactly is this? I was so confused because it was just unlike really anything I'd ever seen before. So this episode we're looking at spooky season in a different light. We're looking at it through the lens of afrofuturism horror and how it's just really changed the perspective of the genre lately. I'm TT and I'm Zachiah and from Spotify. This is Dope Labs.
Let's give people a quick overview about Lovecraft Country. Just a fy there are spoilers in this episode, so if you haven't finished watching Hip pause, now go finish watching and then come back. The major stars we mentioned Jonathan Major's journey Smoe, who we all grew up with. With every project, it feels like she's leveling up with her talent. She's just phenomenal. Ajanu Ellis Woman Withsaku, and then everybody's favorite omar Aka Michael K. Williamson and so those are like,
that's our major cast. But we got to give me Sha Green her props. So she developed this from a book by Matt Ruff called Lovecraft Country, which was based on these horror stories by HP Lovecraft. This is not just a TT and Zakia thing. The world is talking about Lovecraft Country. It's had crazy social media impressions. Every Sunday night, get Ready, everybody's on Twitter is talking about it.
People are posting about it on Instagram, and I listened to Black Girl Watching, which is just about Lovecraft Country by Brook Oby, by Brooke Obi. Yes you know we're big brook Obie fans here, huge brook Oby fans, Hey, Brook. I think Lovecraft Country saw this type of impression in the social media space and justin what we could see for Tea and this kind of horror and science fiction and this amazing blend of art. But we also saw it with Watchmen, and we also saw it with Black Panther. Yes,
get Out absolutely, So that's like futurism slash horror. Right. This really made us think a lot about what defines these types of works because it's hard to put them in a category or in a box, right right, And I know that this can't be the first instance of it, but it feels like this new renaissance or something like that, or like a huge boom in this space. So that leads us to today's topics. We're talking all things black horror, afrofuturism, and a little bit of sci fi too, and we
are so excited, so let's jump into the recitation. So what do we know? I know, Lovecraft Country has been on the tip of everyone's tongues. Absolutely, it's been one of these major entry points for people who may not have been paying attention. It feels like how people felt about Black Panther when they entered the MCU and it was like, Hey, black people, Well, we've been here. I've been trading X Men card since I was in the third grade. What's up? You was trading an X Men card?
You didn't see them? Oh, I have to send them to you. Yes, girl, I have any X Men cards. It's okay, but I did like X Men. Storm was my favorite because she's black representation. We need that. You
see how that works. Another thing that I feel like we know is that we're seeing a lot more exposure and projects that are related to black poor and afrofuturism, like Blockbuster movies and these huge, huge TV shows like Lovecraft, Country and Watchmen, Jordan Peel's films, Janelle Monet's Dirty Computer. Those are kind of contemporary adaptations or representations of afrofuturism.
Even Black is King right, These all draw heavy on what they consider, you know, the afrofuturism can and those influences, and those aren't all visual, so we know they exist, but we don't really know what they are, you know, and that kind of all the stuff we don't know and that we want to know, Right So I want to know what is afrofuturism, what defines it? What specific elements are folks looking for in order to put it into that category? And so often I find that we're
saying afrofuturism and all these other descriptors. How do we distinguish afrofuturism from sci fi and black horror? Where does one end and the other begin? That's a very good question. And then I want to know a timeline of the history of afrofuturism, like where did it start? Who were the trailblazers, Like who was the first person to think of stuff like this? I want to know that. Hmm,
that's a good question. And because we don't know where it started, are there other places where it exists and we may not even realize it, I'm sure? And then what are the specific themes for afrofuturism. What do we need to see in order to know when we see something that that is what we are looking at? Like, so you mean like kind of some visual cues, some things like like when whenever you see something with the big eyes and it's around, You're like, oh, that's a
Disney style, this is Pixar shot. You know, this is afrofuturism style. This is horror exactly. And then are you know with this big boom are there tropes to avoid? I feel like with any genre sometimes people get lazy, like are there things that people just fall back on and they're just really flat? And we ought to stay
away from that? And then I just want to know the future honestly, With the way that things are looking now, I'm like, Yo, what are movies and things and TV show is going to look like a year from now, two years from now, ten years from now, It's gonna be wild. I'm ready for the next show. All right, So let's jump into the dissection. Our guest for today's lab is doctor Kanetra Brooks.
Hi, my name is doctor Kanetra Brooks, and I am the Audrey and John leslian Dale Chair in Literary Studies at Michigan State University.
First, we wanted to hear doctor Brooks explain what afrofuturism is. But before we get into the nitty gritty with that. Let's talk about genres first, how are things categorized?
Literature has multiple genres, drama, romance, and so you get in sort of this box and there's sort of these definitions of what it should look like, and there are certain motifs. We know, if there's a cowboy film, they're gonna be ten gallon hats, they're gonna be guns, there's going to be horses. There's certain things that mark that
something is a Western. So the same way with horror and with fantasy and with science fiction, those were always sort of pushed to the side, and so they were considered a different genre.
So we've always had these elements that signal to a reader or viewer or participant or whatever to kind of tell you what genre of art you're consuming.
We know horror will have elements such as a ghost will have.
A haunted house.
Fantasy becomes a little bit more difficult to find because it's about these these worlds that are built often based on other worlds, and magic can happen in there. Science fiction, there's hard science fiction, there's soft science fiction, but they're based on technologies, they're based on hardcore science facts.
So with afrofuturism. We commonly see it clustered with sci fi and horror. It's kind of really hard to pin down, but there is a difference. So we ask doctor Brooks, what about afrofuturism, what is it really?
I usually speak about afrofuturism as a theory of time, and it's where the past, the present, and the future are not linear.
They're all conflated.
A part of the present is looking at the past and recovering what was lost and what we're going to take with us into that future that so many of us imagine. So I'm a part of the recovery project.
Shari are Thim is a scholar who calls afrofuturism speculative fiction from the African diaspora. And so sometimes we see things that are sci fi and they just added in black people, But that's not afrofuturism. It's not just black people in space. It also addresses their ancestry, so it doesn't just put a black person in a futuristic space. It takes into account their history, their lineage, and what effects that might have on who they are presently in
the future. Yeah, and I think a key part of doctor Brook's work is recovering, interweaving and assessing the remnants of the past, and so this could be spiritual traditions or philosophies or cosmologies. And she's saying, Okay, how does this show up in or how does it affect the future in these works? What are the origins of afrofuturism. How did it start? Well, there are a couple of points.
One the idea of the conflation of the past president future. It's a very old idea and multiple peoples had this idea, So the Acon people of what is now Ghana, Dogon people of Mali. And it's not just a West African concept. This applies in parts of Eastern Asia. We see this in a lot of non Western European traditions. We even see it in indigenous European traditions. This is not a new idea.
So the idea of futurism has been around since the beginning of time and all over the world. And that makes sense because folks were imagining what the lives of their descendants would be like. And so when we started thinking about afrofuturism, we really can layer it on what we consider you know classical literature and sci fi and see how afrofuturism grew along with it. So you have
sci fi as this spinoff of classical stories. Is science fiction was growing as a field, and it was basically taking stories that were already known and injecting technology and science into them. So that's science fiction layering on top of classic stories. All the while you have out for futurism growing alongside science fiction. You have to remember science fiction wasn't a respectable genre back then. So you have
these reputable black writers. So Delaney, Chestnut and Johnson. You can see more about their work in our show notes. They're telling these stories that explore the changes between society and science, but through this historical black lens. So they don't necessarily want to be affiliated with science fiction anyway, because they're really looking at race and society and culture.
And they're respectable writers, not just like pulp fiction. Right, they're taking an academic approach to it and really trying to project and extrapolate how the future will look for black folks. Yes, and there's so much more to consider there. Please check out our show notes. So you mentioned Delaney, Chestnut and Johnson, but who are the trailblazers. And when did we see black people start telling horror stories?
My book on Black Women and Horror searching for Ciica X is this because folks told me black women don't do horror. And the easiest way to piss me off is to tell me black women don't do something.
And I was like, Oh, I got you.
And I say that Zora Neil Hurston, I really look at her as the first black woman horror writer. And I say this because she has a collection of stories and every tongue got to confess, and she's going around and basically getting the oral histories and tales from people around them.
And she has a.
Whole section called hate Tales and devil Tales. And so we have this establishment in this tradition. Here we have Dubois writing the comment Schari E. Thomas. She has a collection of stories called Dark Matter, right, And so this tradition is here.
It's about where to look. That's so wild because I've read Zora Neil Hurston and Dubois and I have never considered it through this lens right, right, I think this is exactly what we needed to kind of shine a light. Yeah, it makes you think about all of the things that we read in high school in college and say, hmm, maybe this wasn't just like traditional literature, Like maybe this is afrofuturism, maybe this is horror, maybe this is sci fi.
We're gonna take a quick break, and when we get back, we're going to talk about where black horror and afrofuturism are hiding in plain sight and where these genres are going in the future. We're back, and the next question that we had for doctor Brooks was where are black horror and afrofuturism hiding in plain sight?
We just have to look at the reality that so much of our stuff is oral, so much of our stuff passes down individually or in small groups, and just because you can't find something within the general public does not mean it doesn't exist.
This is such a good point. I feel like we're always talking about the printing press and who had access to it, but it really shapes what we consider to be legit history. Right the printing press has white supremacy in every single cog and script. But when you think about the stories that are told in your family and passed down, it's not hard for me to see it honestly. I mean because even present day, we pass down different stories from our famili's generation to generation. My family has.
This duality where they are very very good, upstanding Christians, but there were always these whispers about like who can talk to the dad who has this relationship with the dead. Well and so and so visited me last night and she said this, this and this, And I don't think that multiplicity is anything for us to be ashamed of. I think it's a beautiful thing in our family. But I also have to deal with the idea that it
makes some people in my family uncomfortable. It's just push and pull with my mom because I I know she's also dealing with her own feelings about what has happened and what has been done with her belief system.
But she also is this wealth.
Of knowledge and she tells these stories and I learned all these things about my family and about everybody in Placaman's Parish, and she's like, you should go talk to so and so, and you need to be with so and so and so. She gets into it in these really really interesting ways.
To all the people I love. I tell you, if I die, I will come back and haunt you. And if you should perish before me, please come back and haunt me too. Yes, this is something that Zakia tells all of her friends, and I don't know if I can commit to haunting her. I'm just saying, if it's an option, be my guest, be my guest, put our friendship to the test. You know, you talk to me all about it all the time, about how and your family that you guys talk about these types of things. Yeah,
you know. I was saying to my dad, come back and haunt me and he said, oh, you mean a haint And I was like, no, I mean haunt and he was like, yeah, like a haint. And I was like, we're using these vowels differently. This is a verb. It seems like he's talking about it now. And doctor Brooks just confirmed that it's called a haint in different storytelling. Yeah,
I was with you, Uncle Curtis. So even when we don't realize it, there's a little bit of horror and af for futurism going on all around us.
Yeah, and you guys are speaking about affle futurism as genre and including horror under it, because black folks don't necessarily pay attention to genre and there's a part of my book where I say that black women genre writers are writing fluid fiction, and I said, they don't pay attention to this is horror, this is science fiction, this is fantasy. They write and they blend these things together, and that often it can act as a mirror for the simultaneous oppressions.
That black women feel right and experience.
So it's not just womanhood, it's not just racial, it's not just class, it's not just sexuality. It's all those things together, and they're always flowing.
I look at it as a political tool as well.
Right, if you're constantly in motion, it's hard to pin you down in stereotyping. It's hard to stop the development of who you are. So black women are always oscillating, they're fluid. You cannot pin us down to one of our identities and therefore lock us into something, because we refuse to be locked in your small boxes.
And I think we see Misha Green doing this exact thing with Lovecraft Country. So on screen, we're just weaving in and out of these different elements. Yes, it feels like horror sometimes because it can get a little bit gory with some of the killing. Yeah, but then you're dealing with monsters, so that seems a little bit like
sci fi ish. Yeah, then you're on a whole Indiana Jones type quest for a secret book next year space and then next to your time traveling and doing something that seems very very futuristic, with like chips in your arm and stuff like that. But then I also feel like I'm getting a little bit of soul fou vibes, Like Hippolyta is our big mama of source. We see
her bringing the family together. But then you also have a love story being told between Letty and Tick, so it's giving you all of these like love and basketball vibes and stuff like that. Lovecraft is a ten in one. It's one of those ten and one pins. You remember those. You click it down, you're right with one color. Click again, you're right with another color. Yes, she's doing that with genres technic color screenwriting. You gotta keep your eyeballs peeled.
I mean, there's so much. It's family dynamics, everything, and I really think because it's not easily boxed into one genre. When you're watching, you have to engage on this deeper level and ask what's happening? What am I thinking about this.
And that's why Lovecraft country is so hard to define, right, it's fluid genre fiction. I can't look at straight dramas. I can't look at at twelve years of slave. I can't handle something like that. I need something where somebody's ancestor gonna come in and set everybody on fire and take you to the ancestral space and teach you how to do the spells and all this sort of stuff.
I need that sort of agency within it. And I also need that sort of sense of magic, because we've always had these ontologies or ways of being where we have this magical aspect, not about us, but that the magic is possible.
Ah magic or that's another element. I guess that's what we really want to know. What are the specific themes in afrofuturism and are there any tropes that you should really avoid.
I think it still has to be done well. You got to do your homework, you gotta read, you got to watch. Some of the best stuff is not visual because for so long black folks been excluded from creating films and television shows. You got to go to the comics, you got to go to the literature. You know, horror is about an excess of emotion, or when black horror is done well, you feel all those emotions and so
it's not just anybody can get in this game. I talk about that scene in which Manahatti her skin is melting off of her skeleton that she burns, and I say, this is when horror is operating on all cylinders, that we can see the awesomeness of this something that should be considered grotesque, but we're actually crying with sadness when it's happening. We feel the empathy for her.
I was definitely crying in that scene from Lovecraft Country just too Much. Yeah, it was a really emotional scene because you know the power in it. She has to die in this way in order for things to happen the way they're supposed to happen, and it's just heart wrenching but then also powerful and pretty grotesque honestly because we are watching her burn alive. I think there are scenes in Black Panther that are like that for me,
do you remember and get out? When oh boy takes that picture and that flash goes off right and that guy's like get out, like even though I've never had that exact feeling. It almost feels like when you get to a place. Have you ever experienced going somewhere you're like, oh, finally somebody else that looks like me, let me go talk to them, and they're like this, ain't it right.
It's like those mirages in the desert. You think you found an oasis, right, and it's like, Nope, that's just more saying right, and your stomach drops that feeling.
Hm.
Absolutely absolutely. And then even at the end of Get Out, when we think the main character might be about to die and then his friend comes out and kills a lady and it's like, yes, like you you're so excited,
but somebody something really like awful just happened. But you feel liberated, you know, like freedom because we know it had a possibility of going a whole different way exactly depending on who is in that car exactly who gets seen automatically as the threat because it was a cop car and we were like, oh, this is not gonna end well oh yep, but then it turns out to be his friend and you just feel like this overwhelming sense of joy And I think this is part of
the appeal, right watching something so layered and imaginative as Lovecraft makes me think I want more of this exactly. I think that this is set in the tone for everything to come. So we ask Doctor Books about the future of afrofuturism and horror. Where is it going right now?
There's this huge renaissance of why a literature of black girls and fantasy, Black boys and fantasy. I'm now reading a song of Raith and Ruin. We have Tommy Alda Yemi's work. We have L. Penelope's work. We have The Rage of Dragons. Ooh, we have LLL McKinney. She's done this Like Black Girl. We take on Alice in Wonderland. There's so much good stuff out there. I'm overwhelmed with it, but in such a good way because out of hungered for this.
As a little girl, I love where it's going. I think there's just so much out there, and I'm learning more. Our producer just told me about a documentary of black horror on the Shutter Channel. It's called Horror Noir. Doctor Brooks has a book called Searching for Sicker Acts, and you should definitely check that out. And it also can open the door into all types of horror. I found my entry into horror, starting out with Goosebumps. Y'all remember
Goosebumps and R. L. Stein. I jumped very shortly after that, my mom bought me Octavia Butler and Tonan a redo. Now that is a jump that will have you scared in the night. I think my entry was Goosebumps, like you said. But then also on Nickelodeon, they had a show called Are You Afraid of the Dark? Yes. I love that they did these shorts where it was like a scary story, but it was like kind of kid friendly. There was nothing that was like super super gory, but
it was scary. And I think that's when I realized I actually like being scared, because I would have watched those episodes and just be like, oh my gosh. I thought it was phenomenal. Yes, and I think some people just like to be scared, you know, And there's you know, there's something about activating that fight or flight response that will do it for me every time, every time. But I don't want to be in danger. I want to be scared, but I don't want to really be in danger.
But I think there's something about showing all of these elements of what gets considered scary, and you can teach fear, right, so we're not all scared of the same things. There are some things that get taught that you can be afraid of. These scientists did this experiment, which is totally unethical, but we already talked about the unethical origins of science in Lab twenty five, but they implanted fear in this
child and he was like irrationally afraid of white bunnies. Right, because they were able to show that you can train fear if you really think about it, depending on who controls the narratives around scary stories, you can train fear. We've seen some people have been trained to be afraid of whole groups of people and their cultures. Truth. Doctor Brooks really hit the nail on the head, kind of exposing who decides what should be scary.
I always talk to my students, you know, I say things are about power dynamics, and I said, who does it empower for you to be afraid of your spiritual traditions?
I always show them.
I show them like Thor, I show them Loki, I show them Odin, and I'm like, you paying money to see these non Abrahamic traditions. You take statues of Buddha and bring them into your house. You celebrate thor god of Thunder, but when we bring in Shangou you scared. Do you realize that you are only afraid because these were traditions that gave enslaved folks power, that gave enslave folks identities. So while you paying money to see one and then you won't step out the room and leave.
When I mentioned the other power dynamics, who is empowered by these things existing as they are?
It ain't you. It ain't your grandmama. This is so true. And when she's talking about Shango, that is an orisha that is of the Yuruba faith, so Nigerian faith. The traditions of the enslaved people and the things that they did to survive, so like the medicine that they created for themselves, we've automatically said, oh, that's like devil's work. But then we have people who do acupuncture, and I'm like, why have you decided that acupuncture is okay? But then
things that are from a different culture is unacceptable. We've been trained to have these biases even for things that are of the people that we are from. This takes us right to blood magic. We saw in Lovecraft Country the protection over that house, and then people are like, oh, that's dark, that's evil. I can't believe they're showing this, or that's primitive to believe these things. But if you believe that, you consume the body and blood of Christ
every first Sunday of the month. If that's not blood magic, I don't know what is. Did you see da Vinci code they trace the bloodline through centuries. If this is not some vampire type stuff. Follow the sign of the Rose and it's about the womb. But I'm like, what is going on here? The chalice is the womb, this is too much. The uterus is a cup. We can make any religious tradition look pretty grotesque and scary, but if we see the beauty in everyone's culture and traditions,
then none of it is scary. And it's just what your family, your ancestors did to survive. And you won't just do what's cool at the time. Like I see all y'all buying Crystal's burness age and all these things like that, and I'm just like, Okay, well where did you get that from? And how come when other folks are doing communion that is also okay, But then when you have folks that believe that certain spirits or gods
are guiding their lives, you're like, that's crazy. Why it's all in the framing of rituals, And I think we have to break those barriers of who's credible and who's approved and okay and civilized and who's not. All these are fake markings, right. I'm of the school of if
you like it, I love it. Whatever you do, whatever traditions that your family or that you're starting in your family, because I realize some people might not necessarily know the traditions of their people because of slavery and the loss of those traditions and cultures, and so you're redefining or finding those traditions. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that,
and I think it's actually a really beautiful thing. So that just leads us to the point that representation in media is so crucial, and it's not just oh, you have this one black person in this horror film or whatever. It's about also bringing in their ancestry and culture and telling their story. Just having a person of color on screen, it means nothing if they don't have a fully developed character that you can truly see yourself. We're not showing
up in dying first, we're over that. Some of the characters that I think of when I think of black folks and representation in like science fiction and horror and things like that, I go all the way back to Star Trek. My dad is a huge Star Trek fan, and so I've watched a lot of Star Trek. I would not have guessed that about mister Sho Dia, right, but he is, like, he's a big fan. He loves Star Trek and Star Wars and all everything that science fiction.
And so one of the first black folks I know, he wasn't Thief first, because there was Uhura in the original Star Trek series. It was Michelle Nichols and people loved her. I mean it was she was perfect in that role. But I also remember, and the character that has the strongest tie in my mind was Jordie LaForge from Star Trek the Next Generation, and that was played
by LeVar Burton. A lot of you guys know him as the Reading Rainbow guy or depending on your generation, a Kuntakine from Roots right, and he was so so critical to my love for Star Trek because he was like one of the only black characters I've ever seen, and so I really loved him being a part of the story and them telling his story and his perspective and all the things that he brought to the table.
Because representation is so important, Well, hold on to your sock s teat, because we got a little surprise for.
You, hey ttn. Zakia LeVar Burton here dropping into this week's edition of Dope Labs to talk about representation in the genre. You know, I have believed for a long time that there is a sort of a cellular line, not sellular, but sollular line that begins for me with Kuntakine at one end, and at the other end is Jeordie LaForge. And in the middle of that soul line, if you will, is LeVar and the reading Rainbow guy.
And I say that to say that my journey in media has been one that I never could have predicted. And in these three roles it becomes really clear to me that my destiny path has been about representation in modern media, in modern storytelling, making sure that we were there right. Being a black man on PBS and representing for literacy and the written word meant an enormous lot
to me the son of an English teacher. So yes, I believe that representation more than matters, it is essential for culture to realize its full potential for the people.
This made me very emotional listening to that, because I feel like he has. LaVar Burton has been such a huge part of my life, Like I feel like at every stage he has been a part of it, And him being on screen has been so important to my love of science, science fiction, anything futuristic, and I feel like he has had influence on such a huge influence on that space. So hearing from him and hearing him talking straight to us is well, I don't even know
what to do. Doctor Brooks and LeVar Burton gave us their thoughts on the future of storytelling.
I'm interested in what the art is going to look like fifteen twenty years from now because it's influenced a new generation.
It's gonna be so good.
One of the things for me about this modern age of digital storytelling is that no one can prevent you from telling your story. If you have a desire, you have the tools at your disposal to not only make your story, but to also get your story seen, to distribute your story through social media, and you know, and by any other means necessary. So I think we are in an age of the democratization of content creation, both in print and in video visual storytelling, and yet we
still have so much further that we can go. Obviously, it's a long way before we get to equity in the diversity of the stories that we tell.
That's it for Lab thirty four, but we have so much more for you to dig into. On our website Dope Labs podcast dot com, click on cheat sheets and go write to Lab thirty four. We want to hear from you. Leave a comment. On our website, you can find a cheat sheet for today's lab, along with a ton of other links and resources in the show notes. And if you want to stay in the know with Dope Labs, don't forget to sign up for our newsletter on our site too special thanks to our guest expert,
doctor kinnietcher Brooks. Follow her on Twitter at k eight dee one six and for even more links to our work, check out our show notes. Also, we'd love hearing from you. What did you think about today's lab? Do you have ideas for future labs? Call us at two zero two five six seven seven zero two eight and let us know. You can find us on Twitter and Instagram at Dope Labs. Podcast tt is on Twitter at d R Underscore t s h O, and you can find Zakiya at z Said.
So follow us on Spotify or wherever else you listen to podcasts. Dope Labs is produced by Jenny rattlet Mast and Lydia Smith of waver Runner Studios. Mixing and sound design are by Hannes Brown. Our theme music is by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugiura, with additional music by Elijah Lex Harvey. Dope Labs is a production of Spotify and Mega Ohn Media Group, and it's executive produced by us T T Show, Dia and Zakiah Wattley.