Is race a trope of horror? What is racial horror? This talk addresses the abjection of race through the lens of the contemporary horror film. From the Haitian origins of the enslaved zombie to gothic multiculturalisms, the nonwhite figure has been continually enfleshed and encoded in the West as monstrous, alien, and foreign.

Often frightening, overly desirous and hyper-appetitive, racialized creatures are the source of terror and jouissance—objet petit a in Lacanian terms. From the horrific specters of slavery and genocide of Black and Indigenous populations to Yellow Peril techno-orientalism, white Western horror thrives upon the abjection of racialized bodies.

Drawing together psychoanalytic approaches, critical race theorists together with horror, we will analyze the recent turn of Black and Indigenous horror films as well as global Asian films to reveal the ways in which such conventions are troubled by global nonwhite filmmakers. Finally, we will speculate on the extent to which racial horror casts (counter)spells on its audiences through tempo, color, rhythm, and affect.

We end with the lecturer’s own horror short Carnal Orient (2016) to discuss the ways in which horror can critique the fetishization of Asian bodies through estrangement.

About the Instructor

Mila Zuo is an assistant professor of film at the University of British Columbia. Her research centers on film-philosophy, stars, affect theory, feminist and critical race & ethnicity studies. Her forthcoming book, Vulgar Beauty: Acting Chinese in the Global Sensorium (Duke University Press, 2022) focuses on the affective worldmaking of global Chinese women film stars. As a practitioner, she directs films and visual essays, including Carnal Orient (2016), Détourning Asia/America with Valerie Soe (2019), and Kin (2021), which have screened at international film festivals, universities, and galleries.

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