I take no pleasure in reporting that Raoul Peck’s globetrotting, centuries-spanning associational documentary is one of the worst “serious” films made in recent years. Shockingly, and with increasing intensity, nearly each aesthetic decision Peck makes has the opposite of its intended effect. Part of the four hours’ failure comes from wanting to be a significant work, all at once, of film theory, film history, postcolonial theory, intellectual history, media history, media theory, and rhetorical analysis. It falters with all these…

Please allow the candor of my passions a forum without preemptive judgment.

The “post-racial mystique”, as Catherine Squires calls it, need not be found in cases where racial recognition unexpectedly springs to the surface. On the contrary, the very concept of being “post-racial” means that race does not factor into discussions regarding politics or the polity, because the urgency of those conversations have been lessened or even permanently quelled. Accordingly, depictions of history, especially those guided by nostalgia and longing…