1. Introduction
[1.1] While horror as a genre is used to categorize specific kinds of media, according to Jason Mittell (2001), the component of a genre is constructed by both industrial and audience practices. We might be able to classify a group of films as horror based on common features: gore or violence; the presence of monsters, ghosts/spirits, or evil entities; a particular kind of musical score that incites suspense or drama; and a predictable ensemble of lead characters (an athletic masculine character, a sexualized feminine character, and a token character of color). While genres are a form of categorization that appear to be arbitrary, to understand what these texts do or what these texts mean, we must attend to audience reception and engagement. As Mittell contends, "texts themselves do not actively link together" (6) but rather are connected by the fluid and interconnected processes of production and reception, hinging on the audiences and their unique perspectives shaped by their personal identities and lived experiences. To fully understand horror as a genre requires us first to recognize horror as a part of cultural practices, in addition to centering audiences' social positionings. Black horror in particular requires us to situate the genre within larger systems of power. Thus, interviews provide a mode of entry to understand the relationship between Black audiences and fans of the horror genre.
[1.2] Robin R. Means Coleman's (2011) work on Black horror offers a valuable distinction between Black horror and Black folks in horror films. She explains that while Black horror films "are informed by many of the same indicators as horror films…[they] have an added narrative focus that calls attention to racial identity, in this case Blackness" (7). Black horror differs greatly from horror films that feature Black folks, as "Blacks may appear in all manner of horror films, but the films themselves may not be Black" (7). Thus, Black horror is not just categorized by counting the presence of Black characters or even Black folks behind the scenes. Black horror is contingent on engaging with Blackness and creating dialogue about racial identity. When we speak about Black horror podcasting, we extend Means Coleman's definition of Black horror films. Black horror podcasts are not solely focused on counting or evaluating Black representation in horror movies and horror movie production but are engaging in discourse surrounding Black culture and fandom in relation to horror. Thus, our interviews provide an entry point to explore not only how Blackness informs Black horror podcasters' reception and engagement with Black horror as a genre but also how Blackness simultaneously informs the Black horror content the podcasters produce. We offer data from our interviews with Black horror podcasters in which we discussed Jordan Peele's film Nope (2022) to explore the ways in which Black horror podcasters embody the unique position of being Black horror fans, critics, and creators.
[1.3] Nope is a Black Western sci-fi horror film that focuses on the Haywoods, a family of Black horse wranglers who live on a ranch outside of Hollywood and train horses for major films. The Haywoods are also descendants of Alistair E. Haywood, the jockey riding the horse in the first-ever motion picture, the infamous "Plate 626" from Eadweard Muybridge's Animal Locomotion (1887). After their father's unexpected and bizarre death, the Haywood siblings, OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and Em (Keke Palmer), find themselves as potential prey to an extraterrestrial creature that has been feeding on their horses from Jupiter's Claim, a neighboring Western-themed amusement park. In need of financial support to continue their family business, OJ and Em, along with the help of tech salesman Angel and filmmaker Antlers Holst, devise a plan to capture a money shot of the creature in hopes of gaining fame and wealth for their discovery.
[1.4] We are interested in not only how Black horror podcasters respond to Black horror films like Nope but also how they engage in Black horror fandom. We rely on John Fiske's (1989) definition of fandom as active, enthusiastic, and participatory engagement with a media text. Black horror podcasting offers space for Black folks both to engage with horror and to "[share] that love with others while paying attention to Blackness's space within media industries" (Martin 2019, 739). Through in-depth qualitative interviews with nine Black horror podcasters, we illuminate how Black horror podcasters navigate the delicate balance of being fans, critics, and creators, in addition to exploring the significant role that identity plays at each of these intersections. We address the ways that identity shapes Black horror podcasters' engagement with Black horror and informs the work they do. First, we address why Black horror podcasters are the subject of focus while teasing out the relationships, dynamics, and tensions between race, gender, horror, and fandom. We then dive into a discussion of our interview data, exploring how Black horror podcasters engage with horror, offering Nope as an example of must-see Blackness and exploring how Black horror podcasters engaged with the film. By framing our discussion of Nope as must-see Blackness, we are able to take an intersectional approach toward studying Black horror podcasters that has historically not been afforded in academic literature.
2. Black horror, podcasting, and fandom
[2.1] We explore the entanglements of race, gender, sexuality, fandom, labor, and horror as they intersect, converge, and oftentimes clash in shaping the experiences of Black horror podcasters. Podcasting is an intimate and valuable space for such a tension to coexist among marginalized podcasters who are fans, critics, and creators. It is this entanglement that our podcaster interviewees indicated informs how they have cultivated this space to be more centered and tailored toward marginalized and Black-identifying audiences in their own fandom. By ignoring this statistical evidence of horror audience engagement, we are neglecting the recentering of marginalized audiences and creators who simultaneously might offer greater connection to horror content that benefits their identities rather than aims to shame or dismiss them. To understand how Black horror podcasters contribute to Black horror fandom and use their identities to position themselves as fan-critic-creators, we must understand how podcasting affords such an engagement and space in the first place.
[2.2] There have been inquiries about the cultural differences between radio and podcasts. While radio is considered a mass medium, podcasting offers audiences more agency in the ability to self-select content related to their interests and identities. Compared to radio, podcasting is a convergent media form, incorporating elements of audio, digital, and mobile media (Jenkins and Myers 2022). According to Richard Berry (2006), podcasts are a "horizontal media form" in which producers are consumers, consumers can be producers, "and both can engage in conversations with each other" (144). Podcasting has been described as a hyper-intimate and highly interactive medium (Rodgers 2022). Through podcasting, we have seen the emergence of audio enclaves and counterpublics created by both Black creators and listeners (Barner 2020; Jenkins and Myers 2022). The portability of podcasts afforded by mobile technology facilitates an immersive experience for listeners, creating an "aural cocoon" (Florini 2015, 210). For Black listeners in particular, this cocoon allows them to be enveloped in Black sociality no matter their physical location, even as they move through predominantly white spaces.
[2.3] Scholarship by Black digital scholars illuminates how podcasting serves similar functions of Black audiences. According to André Brock (2009), Black digital spaces serve a reparative function for Black users, offering access to Black community that transcends geographic boundaries. Historically relegated to physical spaces like beauty/barber shops and churches, Sarah Florini's (2015) formative work on Black podcasters asserts that the intimate and conversational nature of podcasting offers audiences a similar feeling of connectedness. As many of our podcasters shared, they have formed deep connections with their audiences through engagement, from having conversations through DMs to meeting in-person at conventions, and seek to incorporate audience feedback into each episode. For podcasters with marginalized identities, the medium can also be a disruptive technology, offering space for production and self-representation rarely found in mainstream media (Jenkins and Myers 2022, 2). For Black podcasters in particular, podcasting builds upon a legacy of Black media and Black traditions of oral storytelling, with the potential of serving as a digital archive of Black experience and culture.
[2.4] Horror podcasting focuses on disturbing, macabre, and fearful topics often found in popular culture, history, and fiction. There are a multitude of ways podcasting has invited the horror genre and themes within its space. Subgenres include, but are not limited to, horror fictional storytelling (Welcome to Night Vale [2012–]), true crime podcasts (Up and Vanished [2016–]) (note 1), historical accounts of disturbing figures or events (30 Morbid Minutes [2022–]), and reviews of horror movies and popular culture, which is the area in which our participants' podcasts are categorized. Despite the variety of topics, these horror podcasts share common themes and purposes of evoking nostalgia, inviting connection, tapping into emotional engagement, and hailing uncanniness to their spaces (Hancock 2018; Hand 2014). Despite the diversity of their content, the most popular horror podcasts are predominantly hosted by white men. The growing interest and success of true crime and other macabre/dark podcasts and the visibility of primarily white showrunners further perpetuates the assumption that Black folks are not present in these spaces or interested in the content/genre. What remains to be a limited discussion in podcast studies is attention to how the identities of podcasters and audiences inform their content creation and listening experiences, particularly within horror podcasts.
[2.5] We argue that Black horror podcasters are even further invisibilized because of the compounding erasure of Black folks in podcasting, horror, and fandom studies. While the majority of monthly podcast listeners in 2019 were white men, the 2021 Black Podcast Listener Report found that 36 percent (roughly 12 million) of Black Americans listen to podcasts monthly (SXM Media 2021). In 2022, the number of Black monthly listeners was 43 percent (SXM Media 2023). Black audiences are listening to over five hours of podcasts each week, and the majority of Black podcast listeners identify as women (SXM Media 2023). Aligning with our research interests, the reports found that Black podcast listeners expressed a desire for more Black true crime and fiction content (SXM Media 2021). There has been a consistent increase year after year of women audiences listening to true crime podcasts compared to men, which has been speculated to be a form of gendered intimacy that allows women space to confront their relationships with fear and violence (Rodgers 2022; Spotify 2020). Furthermore, Black folks, particularly Black women and femmes, also love horror. In fact, horror films are 20 percent more popular with Black audiences than white audiences, and the majority of contemporary horror fans identify as women (CivicScience 2017; Navarro 2021). We aim to continue the conversations surrounding Black horror podcasters by again proving that Black people do listen to and create podcasts and take great pleasure in both. There remains, however, a needed examination of how race exists within audio performance, storytelling, and representation with podcasting, especially since podcast studies often focus on the content itself rather than the dynamics that might exist or impact listening experiences held within podcasters' space and/or their audiences (Hand 2022).
3. Studying black horror fandoms
[3.1] Black fan studies scholars have been asserting the importance of centering Blackness and Black audiences, aiming to explore the unique aspects of Black fandom outside of the lens of whiteness. What is lost when we look at Black fandom through the lens of whiteness or the framework established from studying white fans and audiences? Building upon Rebecca Wanzo's (2015) development of a new genealogy of fan studies, Black fan studies scholars are invested in re-centering Blackness "within a discipline that tends to most often ignore or offer excuses around its disengagement with race" (Martin 2019, 738). Despite an attempt in the first wave of fan studies seeking to understand fan communities and their relationships with their objects, it presented fans as othered from mainstream culture, yet maintained the problematic assumption that the majority of fans are white, cisgender, straight men (Wanzo 2015; Warner 2015). By positioning those with the most privileged identities as other, this leaves little space to explore how other communities that deviate from this expectation may also be forming fan communities and engaging with media objects in similar and vastly different ways.
[3.2] Alfred J. Martin Jr. (2019) contends that Black fans are hyperaware of the precarity of Blackness "in spaces that are either historically white and/or have been hostile to the presence of Blackness" (741). Horror and horror fandom are no exception. Horror is often understood as a genre that is unwelcoming to women/femme and Black audiences (Farrimond 2020). However, recent events have proven that the hostility might not come from the genre itself but from the fan communities it privileges. According to Wanzo (2015), sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and xenophobia are "routinely visible in fan communities" (¶ 1.4), often resulting in harassment and violence against fans with marginalized identities. Heavily associated with white geek masculinity, fan communities are rarely assumed to be anything but white, cishet men. In many of our interviews, Black women and femme participants specifically discussed receiving harassment on their podcasts' social media accounts, especially when sharing photos of their bodies or faces, which were subject to unsolicited comments or harassment. This race- and gender-based harassment was simply for entering a space historically assumed to be hegemonically white and masculinized.
[3.3] Intersectional fan studies provides valuable insights into non-white fan communities to explore how BIPOC, women, and queer fans are "turn[ing] their exclusion into a means of creating safe, productive spaces" (Warner 2015, 34). For Black audiences, podcasting provides Black horror fans space to unpack and engage with harmful representations and stereotypes in horror films with others who share their identities and interests. Much like Black horror, Black podcasting offers space for Black folks to discuss racialization and build community around shared interests (Jenkins and Myers 2022). Black horror podcasting pairs the affordances of podcasts with the generic and cultural functions of Black horror to invite audiences to engage in discourse surrounding Black horror content and Black culture more broadly. Amidst limited representations of Blackness in horror and toxic exclusionary fandoms that reproduce racist, sexist, and homophobic ideologies, Black horror podcasters felt implored to forge their own spaces for horror fandom to talk about horror movie content from a Black perspective. According to Robin R. Means Coleman (2002), studying Black audiences and fandoms "reveal[s] the manner in which African Americans, as members of a media culture, engage with dominant cultural forms [and] work to make sense of their own conditions" (2). Black horror podcasts have served as an unrecognized source of community, transitioning from fans themselves to content creators aiming to carve out a digital space to make sense of the Black representation, community, discussions, narrative, and joy that can exist within their horror fandom. Ultimately, these podcasters are signaling Black horror films as a site that evokes these forms of conversation.
4. Method
[4.1] We conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with nine Black horror podcasters (note 2). Each interview lasted about two hours, during which participants were asked questions organized around three themes: (1) content creation: how participants started their podcasts, how they understand their labor, and the benefits and challenges of being an online content creator; (2) interpersonal engagement: how participants link their identities to their engagement with horror content and how they see their identities play a role in interpreting common themes, tropes, and stereotypes found in horror films; and (3) questions specifically about Nope. We used our interview questions as a guide and often asked follow-up questions. We encouraged participants to go on tangents, and many of these conversations provided even more valuable insight on the roles of identity within horror fandom. We aimed for our interviews to be conversational, and we often shared personal anecdotes about our own experiences as queer women of color in academia and fan communities, as well as our own personal interests in horror. Many participants expressed that the interviews felt like podcasts themselves.
[4.2] All participants self-identified as Black and/or African American, with one participant also self-identifying as biracial and another self-identifying as Afro-Latine. The average age of the participants was 30. Six participants identified as women/femme, one participant identified as a man, and two participants disclosed that they were currently exploring their gender identities. Six participants identified as straight/heterosexual, one identified as bisexual, one identified as queer, and one identified as gay. Many participants discussed other facets of identity (such as body size, education, geographic location, and socioeconomic status) in addition to race, gender, and sexuality as informing both how they engage with horror and how they create content. Given that the Black horror podcasting community is relatively small, we made our participants aware of the typical risks of being identifiable through this study as public figures who belong to a small community and recommended participants to remain anonymous as expected in interview studies. All participants surprisingly chose to not remain anonymous and offered the social media handles associated with their podcasts as identifiers. The nine podcasters interviewed were Ryan (they/them) from Brother Goulish's Tomb (@brotherghoulish) and Blerdy Massacre (@blerdymassacre), Xero Gravity (she/her) and Sharai (she/her) from Blerdy Massacre, Erika (she/her) and Roshane (he/him) from Homies of Horror (@homiesofhorror), The Real Queen of Horror (she/her) from The Bloody Disgusting Podcast (@bdisgustingpod), Sadé (she/her) from Afrohorror (@afrohorror), and Jazz (she/her) and Kat (she/they) from Girl, That's Scary (@girlthatsscary).
5. "Don't look him in the eye": Black horror podcasters and Nope
[5.1] Our following discussion features analysis of our conversations with Black horror podcasters focusing on community and identity. We approached our interviews as a recollection of not only their past engagement with horror fandom and content curation but also their present engagement. We asked podcasters questions specifically about Nope as a cultural moment to explore participants' engagement with podcasting, Black horror, and fandom. Because Nope had recently premiered during our interviews, many participants brought up the film in our conversations without being prompted. Their responses allow this section to serve as a key example of the tension that exists among Black horror podcasts in being fans, critics, and creative contributors to Black horror fandom, especially since Nope itself serves as a message to racially marginalized audiences and content creators. Peele explains that Nope is about "our addiction to attention" and describes the process of making the film as extremely "meta" (Chen 2022; Coyle 2022). According to Peele, making a movie "is basically like chasing the impossible, trying to bottle something that doesn't exist" (Coyle 2022). As the Haywood siblings try to capture proof of the extraterrestrial to save their family's ranch and achieve fame, the film presents the drive for fame and visibility as a pursuit that can have deadly consequences.
[5.2] Based on our conversations with Black horror podcasters surrounding Nope, we consider the film to be a moment of must-see Blackness, which Martin offers as a mode of exploring how Black fandom functions within discursive formations. According to Martin (2019), must-see Blackness "describes Black fans' 'civic duty' to see Blackness in all its forms" (741). Must-see Blackness exists across all cultural hierarchies and is driven by economic consumption and the object's pedagogical properties and fitness for learning and role-modeling (Martin 2019, 741). Ultimately, must-see Blackness continues Mittell's analysis of genres as discursively constructed through tracing Black fan's engagement across these discursive formations in addition to uncovering Black fan's awareness of and engagement with "the machinations of the culture industries" (Martin 2019, 741). Before questions about Nope were prompted, Peele's work was often cited by podcasters as a reference point to illustrate the significance of Black horror and their personal relationships with Black horror and fandom. But how is must-see Blackness further complicated when a fan is also a producer? As we will continue to explore, Black horror podcasters are acutely aware of their identities and positions as fan-critic-creators; these roles are deeply intertwined and heavily impact the work they do and how they approach the horror genre.
6. Black horror, fandom, and community
[6.1] For participants, horror has been a significant part of their lives as many recalled it stemming from childhood: watching horror films with their families, taking weekly family trips to the video store to rent horror films, and being introduced to horror by a parent or older sibling. This challenges our prior understandings of horror fans as isolated and antisocial (Neil 2019). Sadé even recalled using Barbies to recreate horror scenes with her sister, and Miss Sharai affectionately referred to Freddy Krueger as her childhood imaginary friend. Even as adults, watching horror invokes feelings of comfort and nostalgia. As Real Queen of Horror stated, "It takes me back to my childhood and it's [a] happy feeling." Even Peele himself describes the theatrical experience as "everything," a communal experience and the reason he fell in love with film in the first place (Murphy 2022). Through these discussions, we gain insight into the social component of horror fandom. Participation in Black horror fandom is highly communal, social, and even familial.
[6.2] The enjoyment of watching horror films is not solely from the film itself but also from watching with other Black folks. Ryan, Erika, Roshane, and Jazz all discussed an important element of watching horror movies with Black audiences: collectively yelling at the screen. According to Jazz, moviegoing is a community activity: "It's call and response…we're sitting here as a community watching the movie…[and] oh girl, everyone's reacting." Peele's debut film Get Out (2017) was an illustrative example that many of the podcasters brought up when speaking about Black horror moviegoing and audiencehood. Sadé recalled seeing the trailer for Get Out in theaters: "Immediately, me and my sister were like 'we know that, we know what that feels like.' We immediately connect to the story." Here, Afro Horror is identifying the emotional exhaustion that accompanies navigating racist undertones and microaggressions while being the only Black person in the room. Sadé expressed that watching the trailer with a white audience would have been vastly different because there are "social cues and contexts that you pick up on that [white audiences] don't and then you have to explain it later."
[6.3] Representation was a strong theme in the participants' thoughts around Nope as the film featured Black characters that challenged stereotypes often imposed on Black men. Ryan addressed the prominent thug stereotype in horror, depicting Black men as violent, hypermasculine, and unemotional. In Nope, there is an awareness of this stereotype being flipped around, and to these podcasters, it not only feels refreshing and reassuring that such representation can exist on the screen but also presents a new opportunity for an intimate connection to a character not often afforded to Black audiences. Sadé said, "[OJ] was so shy and vulnerable and…it's so great to see just a softer dark-skinned Black man on screen. It doesn't feel like you have to be Rambo." To this, Jazz extended the nuanced representation of the Black man within a familial context: "We don't see a lot of introverted Black people on screen which is nice to see, and you see him open up with his sister." Furthermore, Ryan also spoke at length about the representation of Black family dynamics in Nope: "I just love that…you see a family who, even though they butt heads, they love each other unconditionally." Nope's representation of Black siblings, albeit navigating the loss of their parents, depicts them as supporting each other despite their differences. Ryan defined this representation as the epitome of Black joy, expressing that they spent most of the film on edge, not because of the horror elements but because they were afraid of watching the Black joy exemplified through the Black family bond destroyed on screen. Nope offered audiences, especially Black horror fans, things rarely seen in contemporary horror: Black joy, a strong Black family unit, and a gentle yet strong dark-skinned Black cowboy who triumphantly saves the day and lives to tell the tale.
[6.4] According to Martin (2019), "Black fans use their fan engagement to not only maintain and cultivate close social ties with friends and family members but also to get others interested in their fan object choice" (739). So where do Black horror fans go to talk about movies after the credits roll and the lights turn back on? The desire for a space to facilitate conversational dialogue similar to the communal in-person viewing experience and the need to carve out space specifically for Black horror fandom led our creators to podcasting. Black horror podcasters sought spaces where the nuances of the Black experience are inherently understood. Podcasting has enabled Black horror fans like our participants to find and connect with each other and have more complex conversations about identity and horror based on shared lived experiences. Through podcasting, Black horror fans are negotiating identities and lived experiences while simultaneously unpacking problematic representations in their beloved genre, often critiquing their favorite childhood films as "the films that made them," as Miss Sharai so aptly described. The reflection on the representations of Black characters in Nope illuminate the ways in which Black horror podcasters are both talking back to on-screen representations and talking to each other, engaging in dialogue and unpacking horror films through the lens of Blackness. Podcasting extends these conversations, transcending geographical boundaries, moving beyond the screening room or living room and inviting a wider audience of Black horror fans to join the conversation.
7. Must-see Blackness, must see Nope
[7.1] Participants like Xero Gravity discussed the anticipated premiere of Nope as a cultural moment that every Blerd (Black nerd) and horror fan had been waiting for. Xero compared the excitement surrounding Nope to the premiere of Marvel's Black Panther (2018) as moment of togetherness, particularly for Blerds: "Everybody was really, really proud to be who they are…we're proud to be Brown and we're also proud to be nerdy, and this is a moment." According to Xero, these moments of reveling in Blerdiness through engagement with a new Black horror film are few and far between, and she explained that she savors every moment "because I don't know when the next one is going to be." The lack of consistent releases of films targeted to Black audiences means that every premier is treated like an event. Providing another example of a Black film event, Xero recalled her mother sending her selfies from the opening night of Black Panther, dressed up and "so proud…taking pictures with the poster, like 'Wakanda forever!'" Martin references Black Panther as a moment of must-see Blackness in which Black audiences are motivated to support Black media objects not just for their content but also for their sociocultural impact.
[7.2] Must-see Blackness is deeply embedded in politics of visibility. First, as Martin (2019) states, must-see Blackness is not built around love for the object but rather "love for mediated Blackness" (743–4). The motivation to see and support projects by Black creators or with Black casts like Black Panther and Nope are driven by the desire to see increased Black representation, both on screen and behind the scenes. Second, the ways that Black horror podcasters are engaging with must-see Black objects are very public and highly visible, from the movie theater, to podcast episodes and social media posts, to cosplay. And third, as this support is predominantly financial (views/streams, ticket and merch sales, etc.), they are hyperaware that they are speaking with their dollars. The participants often shared how it was a communal responsibility to show up for Jordan Peele, just as they did for Black Panther. What is interesting is that they speak of showing up for Peele and not the film, and they don't see their ticket purchase as supporting the film industry but as directly supporting a Black filmmaker.
[7.3] The Black dollar has been discussed as a key form of power for Black folks, especially Blerds. Wanzo (2015) asserts that economic power is an integral part of Black consumption and resistance. Participants commented that by showing up for Peele, each ticket purchase becomes a demonstrative act that greatly impacts Black creators. According to Xero, "Just buying a ticket…[shows] that if anything else, putting Black people behind the scenes, and giving them a voice, and giving them money to make a movie that they want to make is going to make you more money." Similarly, Ryan explained that they continue to support Black films because it is a way of supporting "culture and family and community." The podcasters we interviewed are not naive, as many have firsthand experience in TV and film production, but they recognize that it is a small, feasible act that can start a ripple of change in the industry. Blerds use their purchasing power to support Black horror projects like Nope in hopes that proving their success at the box office will lead to the continuation of similar projects and the inclusion of more Black creatives in film.
[7.4] There is much to be said about the engagement with must-see Blackness, not just at the fan level but at the critic and creator levels as well. This engagement with highly anticipated horror films is part of their job and is a surefire way to lead to successful or even viral content. Despite the podcasters having their content planned weeks in advance, many have already planned bonus content and complete episodes dedicated to Nope. The podcasters also view their podcasts as another platform to uplift Black films and filmmakers. Ryan explained that sharing content on social media is essentially free, but this is a form of engagement and interaction that shows support for other creators and their work. It also increases the visibility of other creators. Uplifting the Black community, particularly other Black horror podcasters, motivates much of our participants' work. Sadé echoes this sentiment, explaining that while the Black horror podcasting community is small, it is strong. Additionally, the podcasting sphere is a space where Black horror fans and Blerds can be rewarded for their interests in ways that may have been stigmatized in mainstream spaces.
[7.5] Black horror podcasters are able to show their support and engagement with Black horror through financial support and engaging in fandom, as well as through their podcasting work by creating content. As many of them commented during the release of the film, they have been going Nope crazy, buzzing with excitement for the film and talking about it on all of their social media platforms. Our conversations with the podcasters about their outward excitement for Nope supports Wanzo's (2015) assertion that Black fandom is hypervisible, affective, and far from ambivalent. Real Queen of Horror bought a Nope T-shirt to wear to the premiere. Xero, who saw the film twice the week of its premiere, even visited Universal Studios to tour the sets because she needed to get a picture at Jupiter's Claim. For Xero, being able to get as close as possible to Nope through visiting the sets, taking photos to be shared on social media, and collecting merch (she confessed to taking a multitude of posters and pins from the premiere) is a way to share in the success of the film. Not only are the podcasters able to revel in the excitement of must-see Blackness, they are able to share these moments with folks that look like them. For the podcasters, supporting and celebrating Nope ultimately equates to supporting and celebrating Blackness.
8. Nope and negotiating identity
[8.1] Nope opened at number one to $44 million (Rubin 2022). The film had the highest opening weekend in the last three years, earning above average for the horror genre box office premiere (Rubin 2022). Nope was also recognized by the American Film Institute as one of the top ten films of 2022. However, critics viewed the film as an underperformance in comparison to Get Out and Us, with many ranking Nope their least favorite of the three. The podcasters identified this pressure on Peele to continue producing films at the same caliber or with the same tone as Get Out. With his largest budget yet, Peele shared, "I had to go as big as possible" (Coyle 2022). Many of the podcasters attributed Nope's critiques to Peele's blackness. Jazz expressed that despite the outstanding cinematography, special effects, and message, the critics simply "didn't want to give it a chance. And that happens so often when Black people make anything." And Miss Sharai contended that "we should be allowed to fail." Here, Sharai is not just speaking about Peele but about all Black creatives, including herself. The participants are recognizing their own relationship with Peele's work within their personal connections to Black horror and fandom, but Peele's journey also speaks to their professional engagement as Black horror creators.
[8.2] It is in the interpretation of the messages and representations in Nope where we can see the intersections of identity and Black horror fandom. Nope is also a commentary on the erasure of Black folks in film, and opening with the first Black man in a motion picture was intentional. Though we know the name of the horse in "Plate 626," the rider has never been identified. As Kat expressed, while the film is infamous, the character is unknown: "You ain't really hear shit about that Black cowboy. But you heard a lot about the original motion picture." There are also several shots that feature a poster of the 1972 Western Buck and the Preacher starring Sidney Poitier, which Peele explained was the first film he knew of with Black cowboys: "The myth that cowboys were just white guys running around, it's just not true, but we don't know that because of Hollywood and the romanticized view of a very brutalized era" (Coyle 2022). While Peele admittedly invented Alistair E. Haywood for the film, he shares that he had a connection with the jockey: "This forgotten character, who doesn't have a name…It felt like the film was about my ability to reclaim that lost soul, and those that have been erased and exploited" (Chen 2022). Similarly, Black horror podcasting serves as a form of this cultural preservation and a reclamation of Blackness amidst a toxic industry hellbent on its erasure. Nope is engaging in commentary on the whitewashing of history and the whitewashing of the film industry, and it invites Black creators to reflect on the often inseparable relationship between their own identities and the content they produce.
[8.3] All participants resonated with the themes of Nope and saw how the desire for fame and wealth is extremely risky and often involves making oneself highly visible and vulnerable. Xero described the film as a "direct call to the creative community," particularly content creators who are often so hellbent on just trying to "make it." Jazz also explained that the film addresses the pressure of capitalizing on one's trauma: "Their trauma is happening to them, the thing that killed their father. They need to…keep their farm alive, and they are literally sacrificing themselves doing some dangerous shit, so they can get something on camera so they can sell a photo." She continued that having to "make your trauma into something" by continuously reliving or sharing it for social mobility or to be taken seriously is part of the Black American experience. Xero shares that Peele "mak[es] movies for Black people," and Peele admits that "Black people have a different relationship" to sci-fi and horror (Chen 2022). It is only through the lens of Blackness that the nuances of Nope could be fully understood. These themes of visibility, taming the untamable, identity, labor, legacy, and otherworldly entities draw in fruitful conversations that Black horror podcasters are at the forefront of.
9. Conclusion
[9.1] Addressing the absence of race in fan studies, Wanzo (2015) illuminates the connections between Black and fan studies, as both are "invested in the kinds of cultural productions that alterity produces" (¶ 5.3). We offer Black horror podcasting as a form of Black media production and consumption, an underrepresented community whose work exists at the intersections of Black studies, fan studies, and horror studies. Through a discussion of our interviews with Black horror podcasters and our conversations surrounding their engagement and reception of Jordan Peele's Nope, we present Nope as a form of must-see Blackness, which is further complicated by the Black podcasters' positionings as more than fans. Our analysis illustrates the complex positioning of Black horror podcasters as fans, critics, and creators of Black horror media. In addition to identity, these three positions simultaneously influence how the podcasters approach their work.
[9.2] Peele described Nope as "scary and joyous and adventurous and everything I love about film" (Coyle 2022). While these terms might seem contradictory, joy is an important element that is often overlooked in Black horror. While we touched on pleasure briefly throughout this article, pleasure is an element sorely missing from discussions of Black horror podcasting (and Black digital production and community more broadly). Peele has also extended his narrative skills to the podcasting realm, releasing the horror podcast series Quiet Part Loud. It is this extension that validates not only how Black horror can exist within a multitude of media spaces and diversify Black audience engagement but also validates the labor, passion, and dedication that our Black horror podcaster participants have been at the forefront of. The Black horror podcasters have given other content creators and their audiences alike space to reflect on their favorite horror films and franchises and unpack these mixed feelings, illustrating the important balancing act of horror fans with marginalized identities who must lovingly critique the texts they hold dear. Every participant shared similar motivations and expressed that they started their podcasts because they felt they had something to say or share and desperately craved a space to talk about horror and the complexities of navigating the genre as a Black fan with others who might understand. Despite problematic media representations, hostile fan communities, and hours of unpaid labor, the podcasters find joy in the horror genre, joy in the fan communities they have painstakingly built, and joy in the work they do.
10. Acknowledgment
[10.1] Our interview project was funded by two grants from the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor. Our initial round of interviews (with $40 paid to each participant for their time) was supported by the Winthrop B. Chamberlain Scholarship Funds for Graduate Student Research. The second round of interviews that aimed to continue interviewing Black horror podcasters but also included Black True Crime podcasters and other BIPOC Horror podcasters was supported by the University of Michigan Library Student Mini Grants.