Structured Invisibility in Science Fiction Films

 In “Black Space: Imagining Race in Science Fiction Film”, Adilifu Nama draws a comparison  between “the genre of science fiction film and the science fiction of race in America”. Nama explores how while we are fully aware that concepts like time travel and transportation machines do not exist, we are willing to suspend our disbelief for the escapism and entertainment that science fiction brings. Similarly, there is no biological basis for the idea that traits like eye color, skin color, or hair texture gives one group racial superiority over the other. Yet, our societies have been based on these false conceptions for centuries. 

Nama writes about how imaginative portrayals of the future can be in science fiction. There exist rocket ships, time travel, cyborgs, wormholes, and yet, no Black people. When Black people are present within the genre, they are often marginalized or made invisible from how irrelevant to the plot they are. Nama notes that this exclusion is not limited to just the genre of science fiction, but is universal among all film. Birth of a Nation (1915) is notable because it “exemplifies the type of antagonistic film representations of blackness in early cinema”. Even when films are absent of any mention of race (Nama uses 2001: A Space Odyssey as an example of this), the absence of Blackness is still “structured” and presents racial coding of civilized vs uncivilized. This absence of Blackness ascertains that Whiteness is symbolic and representative of all of humanity and all it has accomplished.