White Leisure, Black Labour, and Global Afro-Diasporic Entanglements in the Streaming Era: A Case Study of Sam: Ein Sachse

In this article, we provide a reading of Sam: Ein Sachse ( Sam: A Saxon, directed by Soleen Yusef and Sarah Blaßkiewitz) in terms of the media politics it presents as a Disney+ branded series. The miniseries, which is based on Black German public figure Samuel Meffire’s biography, is a 2023 transnational co-production made with an international market in mind. Meffire’s biography was narrativized once before as a documentary; this fictionalized version exhibits close ties between its Disney+ and Hulu branding and its storytelling and aesthetics. The show recounts Meffire’s story as a narrative of resilience and a search for belonging in a white normative Germany of the 1980s and 1990s. We suggest that the streaming format and brand of Disney+ inevitably shape what is possible for visualizing such a story. We argue that the miniseries struggles between depicting racism as a structural problem in both East and West Germany and suggesting that how a victim responds to racism is primarily an individual problem.