Greater Atlanta
Black Satire After Obama

Derek C. Maus (Edited by), James J. Donahue (Edited by)

9781496850553

Hardback, published 23 April 2024

277 pages
23.5 x 15.6 x 2 cm, 0.272 kg

The erudite analysis unpacks the complex ideas embedded in the series’s surreal vision of Atlanta. This will enhance fans’ appreciation of the show. (Publishers Weekly) Greater Atlanta is the collection we need right now. It is far more than the first extended critical study of Atlanta, one of the best television shows of our era. This volume gathers the sharpest minds interested in African American culture and satire to examine the many complexities in Black lives since the Obama presidency. A sequel to Post-Soul Satire: Black Identity after Civil Rights, in many ways Greater Atlanta is even more essential. No scholar of contemporary African American culture should be without it. - Darryl Dickson-Carr, professor of English at Southern Methodist University

Contributions by GerShun Avilez, Lola Boorman, Thomas Britt, John Brooks, Phillip James Martinez Cortes, Derek DiMatteo, Tikenya Foster-Singletary, Alexandra Glavanakova, Erica-Brittany Horhn, Matthias Klestil, Abigail Jinju Lee, Derek C. Maus, Danielle Fuentes Morgan, Derek Conrad Murray, Kinohi Nishikawa, Sarah O'Brien, Keyana Parks, and Emily Ruth Rutter

The seventeen essays in Greater Atlanta: Black Satire after Obama collectively argue that in the years after the widespread hopefulness surrounding Barack Obama’s election as president waned, Black satire began to reveal a profound shift in US culture. Using the four seasons of the FX television show Atlanta (2016–22) as a springboard, the collection examines more than a dozen novels, films, and television shows that together reveal the ways in which Black satire has developed in response to contemporary cultural dynamics. Contributors reveal increased scorn toward self-proclaimed allies in the existential struggle still facing African Americans today.

Having started its production within a few weeks of Donald Trump’s (in)famous escalator ride in 2015, Atlanta in many ways is the perfect commentary on the absurdities of the contemporary cultural moment. The series exemplifies a significant development in contemporary Black satire, which largely eschews expectations of reform and instead offers an exasperated self-affirmation that echoes the declaration that Black Lives Matter.

Given anti-Black racism’s lengthy history, overt stimuli for outrage have predictably commanded African American satirists’ attention through the years. However, more recent works emphasize the willful ignorance underlying that history. As the volume shows, this has led to the exposure of performative allyship, virtue signaling, slacktivism, and other duplicitous forms of purported support as empty, oblivious gestures that ultimately harm African Americans as grievously as unconcealed bigotry.

• "I’
  ve Done Told You, These Backhoes Ain’
  t Loyal!": Atlanta and the State of Black Satire after Obama
  Derek C. Maus
  
  Downtown Atlanta
  
  On the Perils of Enjoying One’
  s Wound: Atlanta and Contemporary African American Satire
  Derek Conrad Murray
  
  Whispering Sexuality: Queer Erasure and Black Satirical Disruption
  GerShun Avilez
  
  Satirizing Satire Itself: Atlanta’
  s Appropriation Aesthetic and the Blackening of US Civil Society
  John Brooks
  
  Awkwardness and Black Millennial Satire in Insecure and Atlanta
  Erica-Brittney Horhn and Derek C. Maus
  
  Forsyth County
  
  White (Al)lies: Eating the Other in Atlanta and Jordan Peele’
  s Get Out
  Emily Ruth Rutter
  
  Racial Self-Identification in Atlanta and Danzy Senna’
  s New People
  Alexandra Glavanakova
  
  "Know Thyself": Education and Identity Fashioning in Atlanta and Dear White People
  Derek DiMatteo
  
  Lake Lanier
  
  Canines and Tricksters in Atlanta
  Matthias Klestil
  
  "That’
  s You": Reflections on Human-Animal Doublings in Atlanta’
  s Televisual Satire
  Sarah O’
  Brien
  
  DeKalb County
  
  "You Chose Black": Atlanta’
  s Gendered Politics of Black Respectability and Representation
  Keyana Parks
  
  Atlanta and the Instability of Racial Performance
  Tikenya Foster-Singletary
  
  "What the Hell Is Muckin’
  ?": Mistranslation and Linguistic Pessimism in Atlanta
  Lola Boorman
  
  Ironic Minstrelsies of Affect in Atlanta
  Phillip James Martinez Cortes
  
  "It’
  s a Simulation, Van": Atlanta, The Twilight Zone, and the Uncanniness of Black Womanhood
  Danielle Fuentes Morgan
  
  East Point/College Park
  
  Becoming Inhuman: Donald Glover, Hiro Murai, and the Self-Alienation of Celebrity
  Kinohi Nishikawa
  
  Streets on Locke: The Volition of Atlanta
  Thomas Britt
  
  Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport
  
  Playing on the Border: Racial Ambiguity, Passing, and Possibility in Atlanta and Charles Yu’
  s Interior Chinatown
  Abigail Jinju Lee
• Composite Works Cited
• About the Contributors
• Index