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UCLA Now Offers A 'Get Out'-Inspired Class On Racism And The 'Black Horror Aesthetic'
Jordan Peele's horror film Get Out made history at the box office this year, earning over $100 million in domestic ticket sales and becoming the highest-grossing original debut ever. Now, author and professor Tananarive Due is using the wildly successful film as inspiration for a course titled "The Sunken Place: Racism, Survival, and Black Horror Aesthetic", to be offered at UCLA this fall.
Due discussed the inspiration behind her course in an in-depth interview with Gizmodo last week, telling writer Evan Narcisse that the success of Get Out has helped create a framework for black horror storytellers in Hollywood and in academia: "Look: I love horror. But it never dawned on me that I could have a black horror course before Get Out. When a movie like that comes along, you now have a reference point to talk about everything that has come before." (The whole interview is worth reading, if you have a few minutes.)
The course's syllabus will include works by black horror and speculative-fiction authors like Octavia E. Butler, Nalo Hopkinson and Chesya Burke, Due told LAist on Tuesday. Additionally, Due's students will examine racism through the lens of films including William Crain's 1972 blaxploitation film Blacula, Wes Craven's The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988), and Jonathan Demme's 1998 adaptation of the Toni Morrison novel Beloved.
According to the UCLA Registrar's office, Due's class is already full, with a lengthy waitlist. Not surprising; if we were enrolled at UCLA, we'd be pulling out all the ass-kissing stops in order to nab a spot.
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