Representations of Bierria’s Racial Conflation in Mainstream Films and Series

In this article, I explore the concept of racial conflation as developed by Alisa Bierria, examining its influence in a binational corpus of American and Québécois/Canadian mainstream films and television series to underscore the problematic representations of Black people on screen. I begin by outlining Bierria’s definition of racial conflation, highlighting its three features: (1) the bidirectional relationship between “Blackness” and “criminality,” where criminal actions are racially interpreted as “acting Black,” thereby reinforcing pervasive stereotypes; (2) interdependent intensity, where the perceptions of “Blackness” and “criminality” mutually influence each other; and (3) intransigence, i.e., the persistent association between “Blackness” and “criminality” despite potentially mitigating social identities. I then highlight examples of two approaches to racial conflation in a selection of contemporary works—including horror, satire, and sitcoms such as Get Out or Lakay Nou —one I call complicit, which reinforces the conflation, and the other I call critical, which opposes it. By bridging these two geo/cultural contexts, I seek to make clearer a transnational racial logic that persists despite differing production environments. These examples underscore how mainstream on-screen representations of Black people too often oscillate between overcoming and perpetuating harmful stereotypes.