Host: Welcome back to Late Night Thinking, this week we are going to be discussing themes present
in Black Gothic with our special guests of the week.
Host: This week’s guests include, the author of “Monster Culture: 7 Theses”, J.J. Cohen, secondly the
author of “Black Diasporic Gothic”, Maisha Wester, and finally director of Get Out, Jordan Peele.”
Host: “It is nice to have all of you guys on, I want to start off by asking Cohen, you stated in your first
thesis that the monster’s body reflects a cultural moment, how might the audience analyze the
monsters presented in different forms of entertainment, to find the deeper significance behind the
monster being presented?”
Cohen: “Well, think about how when a stake is driven through a vampire’s heart, ‘it will be stuck to
the ground at the fork, it will haunt that place that leads to many other places, that point of
indecision,’ I think this is where the monster is born ‘as an embodiment of a certain cultural
moment-of a time, feeling, and a place’. So I think that the watcher/reader/listener should really
focus on thinking about the monster as something other than itself and be willing to dissect the
monster present.”
Host: Ms. Webster what do you think about Mr. Cohen’s comment?
Wester: “Yes, well, if we look back to the 19th century, when the Black Diasporic Gothic originated,
‘black writers began to appropriate the genre to describe the real horrors of existence within racially
oppressive and enslaving societies’ because before white authors would ‘defin[e] minorities as
monstrous and thus unfit for an equal place in society’. So consumers of black gothic should expect
to encounter underlying messages from the monsters and their tropes.”
Peele: “I would like to add to the comments by providing an example, in the film I directed, the
monster in this case would be considered as how we treat each other, racism, more specifically
institutional racism. Even though this film did not offer an actual traditional monster, like a vampire,
the monster was presented through certain characters and objects/images associated with the
character. The actions/behaviors of the characters towards repeated objects/images can help the
audience to notice the relationships between the two and relate these relationships to real-life
situations .”
Host: “In Cohen's third thesis he interprets a monster’s resistance toward the categories formed by
society as a challenge proposed to the audience to question and expand their perception of society’s
categories. Mr. Peele, how does this relate to the symbolism behind the Sunken Place in the film?”
Peele: “I think originally the audience is inclined to associate the Sunken Place with slavery, however,
it can also be interpreted as the ongoing marginalization of black people. I think the Sunken Place
encourages the audience to think about being trapped and how that trapped feeling can be
associated with the oppression present in this current time.”
Wester: “I think that introducing the monster in this manner ‘ better encapsulate[s] the horrors of
racial subjugation and construction, and the insidious terror of Western regimes’. For instance, while
there are no traditional monsters in the film, ‘horror is complexly relocated within black bodies at
very specific moments, alluding to how blacks have been historically marked as monstrous in social
discourses and (Gothic) [fiction] while clarifying the moments when blacks actually become
monstrous’ – when the white characters inhabit the black character’s bodies.”
Cohen: I think that the overall concept of the Sunken Place provides a different perspective towards
slavery and oppression to the audience and that is the monster’s resistance towards societal
boundaries. I think that the complex process that goes into trapping the character in the Sunken
Place also highlights the complexity of slavery and oppression and it summarizes how challenging
the monster and the societal structures/persecution truly are.
Host: These were all very insightful comments and thank you to J.J. Cohen, Maisha Wester, and
Jordan Peele for sharing their knowledge.