A Guide to Black Cinema – Part 5: Call it ‘Atlanta’

 

 

 

“Stars are just a projection of what’s actually already inside of your mind.”

 

…

 

One of my favourite shows ever committed to programming is on its fourth and final season… and I don’t think I can handle it!

 

Whenever I find myself creatively bankrupt and attempting to make sense of my style as a thinker or even a creator, I usually find myself dialling back into Donald Glover’s seminally Black philosophical void that is the series, Atlanta. The show follows a simple premise, one revolving around the mundane, yet anxiety inducing, life of Atlanta-born Black college dropout, Earn, and his duties as the ill-experienced manager for up-and-coming rapper, Paper Boi. The show is, on surface-level, a (pardon the pun) black comedy, but beneath it all is a satirical dramatization on the lives of modern Black people, namely those from the city of Atlanta, who’s worlds warp through various obscurities in an organically peeling reality. From full-length episodes produced as talk show spoofs like B.A.N. to psychological horror episodes like Teddy Perkins, Glover and his creative team naturally cement themselves as the most innovative Black modernist in mainstream media. With auteurs like Spike Lee having laid the groundworks, Glover’s Atlanta manages to stare itself deep into the abyss of modernity and make sense of our current climate by mastering a unique and rising artform known as Afro-surrealism.

 

Now, to understand Afro-surrealism, one must first educate themselves on plain old surrealism in its original form. Surrealism can be commonly identified as an arts and literature movement of the 20^th century that sought to unlock the creative potential of one’s unconscious mind. Surrealism would rebel against rationalities to deliver unique juxtapositions and combinations to help viewers think outside the bounds of reason. Most famously surrealism is best used in modern media by filmmaker David Lynch, namely in his iconic 1990s smalltown murder mystery serial, Twin Peaks. The show, despite narratively focusing on a homicide case, sinks into dream-like states that immerses the viewer in emotion and perspective beyond the narrative to better understand a sense of place and character.

 

When asked to describe Atlanta, Glover once said the show is basically ‘Twin Peaks with rappers’… and it’s true. Atlanta may not be a noir-based whodunnit like Twin Peaks, but it is a show that prioritises location and people over a multi-layered, on-going narrative. It priorities the everyday lived experience of its characters in a city that feels too absurd to exist. The happenings and goings on in this fictionalised Atlanta ride the line between real and down right odd with purgatory malls, alligator pets and even whiteface becoming centralised motifs. Atlanta is, to put it blatantly, weird. It’s almost baffling in its absurdity at times. Yet, the show, without fail, priorities and specialises in the now – the RIGHT now. And that is why Atlanta is what you would call Afro-surrealism.

 

See, Afro-surrealism is not just the typical surrealism you are accustomed to. It’s a whole other beast that is fed by a completely separate rationality.

 

Mexican painter, Frida Kahlo, once noted that despite the world seeing her as a surrealist, she personally didn’t see her art to be “surreal”. Rather, Kahlo just painted what she saw. This is the opening point made by Black writer, D. Scot Miller, in his manifesto, Call It Afro-Surreal, in which Miller outlined ethnic artists and writers can inherently create surrealist work when basing their art and writing purely off their lived experience. The theory goes that the everyday lives of Black individuals and people-of-colour can be pushed to such extreme absurdities, primarily through the impacts of racist societies and general inequality, that our perspectives and experiences of modern life, when translated through the arts, can appear removed from typical white western culture to the point of being naturally surreal.

 

Atlanta operates as such an elusive perspective on modernity, not only because Glover is clearly entuned with Twin Peaks and the surrealist movement, but also because he is a Black man attempting to make sense of the world around him. And sometimes when attempting to make sense of a world that has historically butchered and flayed your identity, culture and, lets face it, skin colour, it feels like you are trying to make sense of it all through an acid trip. The ugly truth is nothing really does make sense. Life is absurd. Especially if you’re Black or a P.O.C.

 

The term Afro-surrealism may have been coined by Miller in 2009, but the movement has been in action for as long as oppressed marginalised societies have attempted to artistically display what they see. Afro-surrealism is concerned primarily in the present as a means for Black and P.O.C.’s to explore their current place in the world. It’s a translation through the art of immersion. The movement initially got a name in 1974 by Black writer, Amiri Baraka, when describing the work of fellow Black writer, Henry Dumas. It was originally known as Afro-surreal Expressionism, but, with Baraka’s permission, Miller dropped the “Expressionism” and renamed it Afro-surreal.

 

Afro-surrealism tends to be one of the best ways to view Black narratives in cinema to this day still. Not only does the artform allow viewers to experience a more casual insight into the Black lived experience but also takes that casualness to the next level by showing how a P.O.C.’s “casual” is not the same as a white person’s “casual” (we cop a lot in our everyday that white-skin folk couldn’t even dream of).

 

So, if you have never seen it and want something a bit different to watch, check out Glover’s Atlanta as it gracefully bows out into its final season. Its dark, but funny; light, but serious; surreal, but real. Its damn good television. And beyond Atlanta, 2018’s Sorry to Bother You and even aspects of Jordan Peele’s work are prime examples of Black cinema that dabbles in Afro-surrealism. Most of all though, shows like Atlanta are refreshing and relatable, especially for a Black or P.O.C. audience like myself. There is something comforting and arresting about knowing the disease of an unjust modernity is felt unanimously in our global communities and not just in the individual – it’s not just me. This day and age may be absurd, but there is solace in the fact this grand absurdity is a shared lived experience; it is immersive projections of the philosophies and anxieties we all suffer unanimously.

 

Read Parts 1 – 4  of Nahum’s series Here

 

 

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