Mumbo Jumbo

A four-part essay-series by the director of I Am Not Your Negro, following the sentence that Conrad's Kurtz wrote on his report in Heart of Darkness. Peck narrates a history of colonialism, genocide and white supremacy from Columbus to the American West to the Congo, mixing archive footage, animation and staged scenes. It is the story the textbooks soften.

Why it’s here: The series connects things the curriculum keeps apart: colonial violence, slavery, the Holocaust, and the ideas that justified each. What's punk is the refusal of the neutral tone, and the fact that it names the thread. What's pedagogical is that it can be paused, discussed and argued with. Pairs with Discourse on Colonialism, Orientalism and King Leopold's Ghost. Note: it is long, essayistic and dense, and some critics call its sweep too broad.

At the fictional Ivy League Winchester University, a student named Sam White hosts a campus radio show called Dear White People, and a blackface party blows the campus open. The film follows four Black students working out who they are in a place that wants them to be one thing. A campus satire played straight, with sharp jokes and no easy heroes.

Why it’s here: The film takes the 'post-racial' campus story and shows how every Black student is asked to perform one version of themselves. What's punk is that the satire turns on its own heroes too. What's pedagogical is the vocabulary it gives you: code-switching, respectability, who gets to define blackness. It sits next to Sorry to Bother You in the catalog.