Full Description
Contributions by GerShun Avilez, Lola Boorman, Thomas Britt, John Brooks, Phillip James Martinez Cortes, Derek DiMatteo, Tikenya Foster-Singletary, Alexandra Glavanakova, Erica-Brittany Horhn, Matthias Klestil, Abigail Jinju Lee, Derek C. Maus, Danielle Fuentes Morgan, Derek Conrad Murray, Kinohi Nishikawa, Sarah O'Brien, Keyana Parks, and Emily Ruth Rutter
The seventeen essays in Greater Atlanta: Black Satire after Obama collectively argue that in the years after the widespread hopefulness surrounding Barack Obama's election as president waned, Black satire began to reveal a profound shift in US culture. Using the four seasons of the FX television show Atlanta (2016-22) as a springboard, the collection examines more than a dozen novels, films, and television shows that together reveal the ways in which Black satire has developed in response to contemporary cultural dynamics. Contributors reveal increased scorn toward self-proclaimed allies in the existential struggle still facing African Americans today.
Having started its production within a few weeks of Donald Trump's (in)famous escalator ride in 2015, Atlanta in many ways is the perfect commentary on the absurdities of the contemporary cultural moment. The series exemplifies a significant development in contemporary Black satire, which largely eschews expectations of reform and instead offers an exasperated self-affirmation that echoes the declaration that Black Lives Matter.
Given anti-Black racism's lengthy history, overt stimuli for outrage have predictably commanded African American satirists' attention through the years. However, more recent works emphasize the willful ignorance underlying that history. As the volume shows, this has led to the exposure of performative allyship, virtue signaling, slacktivism, and other duplicitous forms of purported support as empty, oblivious gestures that ultimately harm African Americans as grievously as unconcealed bigotry.
Contents
"I've Done Told You, These Backhoes Ain't Loyal!": Atlanta and the State of Black Satire after Obama
Derek C. Maus
Downtown Atlanta
On the Perils of Enjoying One's Wound: Atlanta and Contemporary African American Satire
Derek Conrad Murray
Whispering Sexuality: Queer Erasure and Black Satirical Disruption
GerShun Avilez
Satirizing Satire Itself: Atlanta's Appropriation Aesthetic and the Blackening of US Civil Society
John Brooks
Awkwardness and Black Millennial Satire in Insecure and Atlanta
Erica-Brittney Horhn and Derek C. Maus
Forsyth County
White (Al)lies: Eating the Other in Atlanta and Jordan Peele's Get Out
Emily Ruth Rutter
Racial Self-Identification in Atlanta and Danzy Senna's New People
Alexandra Glavanakova
"Know Thyself": Education and Identity Fashioning in Atlanta and Dear White People
Derek DiMatteo
Lake Lanier
Canines and Tricksters in Atlanta
Matthias Klestil
"That's You": Reflections on Human-Animal Doublings in Atlanta's Televisual Satire
Sarah O'Brien
DeKalb County
"You Chose Black": Atlanta's Gendered Politics of Black Respectability and Representation
Keyana Parks
Atlanta and the Instability of Racial Performance
Tikenya Foster-Singletary
"What the Hell Is Muckin'?": Mistranslation and Linguistic Pessimism in Atlanta
Lola Boorman
Ironic Minstrelsies of Affect in Atlanta
Phillip James Martinez Cortes
"It's a Simulation, Van": Atlanta, The Twilight Zone, and the Uncanniness of Black Womanhood
Danielle Fuentes Morgan
East Point/College Park
Becoming Inhuman: Donald Glover, Hiro Murai, and the Self-Alienation of Celebrity
Kinohi Nishikawa
Streets on Locke: The Volition of Atlanta
Thomas Britt
Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport
Playing on the Border: Racial Ambiguity, Passing, and Possibility in Atlanta and Charles Yu's Interior Chinatown
Abigail Jinju Lee
Composite Works Cited
About the Contributors
Index
