Popular Culture Review 32.1
In one scene , for example , they stop to eat at a diner in a small ( Northern ) town , only to find themselves a short time later fleeing from armed white residents who try to kill them for daring to stop . Leti Lewis ( played by Jurnee Smollett ) is the first to sound the warning as she runs through the diner , rousing her companions , and driving the car to ensure their escape . The next evening , the trio find themselves in worse circumstances , face down in the woods , about to be murdered by the police of two counties for failing to leave before sundown . At that moment , creatures emerge from the woods to disrupt that plan and Leti finds herself once again running for her life to their car to bring them to safety . As viewers are left to contemplate the differences between the monsters and the racists ( or the lack thereof ), they do not have to worry about the appropriation of this moment of racial injustice . They can , instead , see a strong Black woman embracing the heroic roles established by Douglass and Jacobs .
Like The Handmaid ’ s Tale and Westworld , Watchmen and Lovecraft Country do not occupy genres like realistic or historical fiction , proving that inventive storylines and explorations of trauma can deal explicitly with race and racism . And television series are not inherently problematic for leaning on the generic conventions of slave narratives ; in fact , it is particularly telling of the current political and cultural climate that slave narratives resonate with contemporary audiences . The question of appropriation versus misappropriation is one of representation ; the choice showrunners like Bruce Miller , Jonathan Nolan , and Lisa Joy are making is not whether to reference slave narratives , but whether to permit Black individuals to play these characters and tell these stories — their stories . Black women need not be relegated to roles placing them in service to white women ; like a visit to Oak Alley , any parallels drawn between these series and slave plantation
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