Abstract

This article explores two 1940s B-horror zombie movies to argue that the revitalization of the “coon” and the “mammy” from the slave era in the early twentieth century was part and parcel of the dominant culture’s efforts to contain and control the “monstrous black” of the white imagination. Furthermore, I posit that the dehumanization and Othering that characterized white America’s treatment of African Americans is not a thing of the past. The article advocates for a transatlantic and trans-temporal orientation from scholars, which would allow them to reassess Hollywood films in relation to the systemic racism that pervades American culture and that circumscribes the choices that African American actors had in the past and continue to have today.

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