5 Questions With: Associate Professor of English and Director of Africana Studies at Rutgers Camden, Keith Green
5 Questions With is a recurring feature where we sit down with a special guest to get their unique perspective. In this installment we talk with Keith Green, Associate Professor of English and Director of Africana Studies at Rutgers University Camden ahead of his discussion for Space is the Place (Presented as part of our Prof Picks series — Playing at the Princeton Garden Theatre Wednesday, April 3rd at 7:30pm).
How did you first come across this Space is the Place?
I first came across Space is the Place while preparing for my class on Black Speculative Fiction. I knew of Sun Ra’s music but didn’t know that he had also made a film that spoke so directly to his vision of the cosmos and how race and the imagination mattered in it. Watching it for the first time felt like an extra-terrestrial experience!
In what ways does this film connect directly or indirectly to your personal research interests?
My love for all things Octavia Butler (beginning with her novel Kindred) led me to black science and speculative fiction more broadly. From there, I became engrossed in the writing of Samuel Delany and others. My interest in Space is the Place is a natural outgrowth of this work.
How does Space is the Place build upon or subvert the Afrofuturist and SciFi genres?
The experience of people of African descent in the New World has always and already been one of experimentation, abduction, and other-worldly disorientation. So called “classic” sci-fi assumed that white subjects were the natural surveyors of this territory, but cultural productions like Space is the Place showed that black folks were fluent in this language as well. The film takes sci-fi tropes (such as the privileged alien) and uses them to indict and reverse traditional racial hierarchies. The nineteenth century slave narrative (as embodied in figures like Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass) illustrated the lives of people who appeared to be born cut off from all earthly connections via chattel slavery, and Sun Ra just takes this history to its natural conclusion when he submits that he wasn’t born on Earth. He’s both reacting to this history as well as texturing it in some really innovative ways.
Sun Ra is best known as a musician. How do you think his music background affected his approach to this project?
Oftentimes we think of music as being mere accompaniment to film, a literal soundtrack that plays in the background while the film takes center stage. The reverse seems true with Space is the Place, especially at certain moments in the film. The music and its vision are the most important elements, and the film is a mere expression of that; one might imagine the film as the background for the music the Arkestra makes.
What potential commentary does the treatment of race in this film have on our modern world? What about modern cinema?
According to Space is the Place, people of African descent have no future in the U.S. In order to find fulfillment and self-determination, they have to look elsewhere, namely outer space. People have become disenchanted with the U.S. of late, but Sun Ra’s film reminds us of how long black folks have been seeking utopia and community elsewhere. It’s in conversation with Marcus Garvey’s Back to Africa Movement as much as it is Douglas Turner Ward’s Day of Absence (a 1965 play in which black folk vanish from the Earth). As such, its critique is that existing (social, cultural, financial, etc.) institutions are bankrupt and therefore a radical alternative is needed.
Since modern cinema could encompass so many currents, I’m reluctant to say what the film says about that. However, I will note that as a film, Space is the Place refuses to “stay in its lane” and participates in so many genres and discourses (part blaxploitation, urban documentary, musical odyssey, etc.). Regardless of what it all adds up to, its refreshing to experience something so free wheeling in its impulses and techniques.
Space is the Place is presented as part of our Prof Pics series, and plays at the Princeton Garden Theatre on Wednesday, April 3rd at 7:30pm. For more information on our upcoming Prof Pics screenings, view our lineup Here.
