“You Really Want to Mess with Whitey”: The Politics of Form in The Spook Who Sat by the Door

Abstract: This essay explores the radical politics and possibilities of the film The Spook Who Sat by the Door through a close reading of film form, especially the ways the film subverts and re-purposes dominant codes and conventions for its own revolutionary messaging. I specifically examine the way Spook critically inhabits the codes of racial liberalism to expose how they operate to contain Black radical politics and coerce an identification with white supremacy and US imperialism. I then examine how the film flips the script to offer a Black radical cinematic space and perspective. To contextualize these operations, I provide a section on the history of racial liberalism and its relationship to Black radical internationalism. I also explore the film’s relationship to the genre of Blaxploitation and argue for the ways the film mobilizes the language of the genre rather than rejecting it, as is commonly argued.