Black Parallax: Hollywood's Recent Approach to Mitigating Racial Excess

This paper argues that from 2013 to 2021 Hollywood filmmakers have favored casting Black British actors to play Black American characters in dramas dealing with racism and oppression in the US in order to remove the racial excess associated with Black American subjects. Once excess is removed, filmmakers feel free to craft narratives that appeal to US moviegoers and that elide the national shame of the enslavement and persecution of descendants of American slaves.