With the rise of Jordan Peele’s Twilight Zone (2019-20) and Misha Green’s Lovecraft Country (2020), we are hopefully entering a golden age of Black horror TV, following decades in which the genre was marked by a lack of diversity. An exception appeared in 1994, however, in the three-part HBO horror/sci fi anthology, Cosmic Slop.
While Cosmic Slop was a unique example of a Black horror anthology made for TV in the nineties, it was not an isolated work of the genre. As Robin R. Means Coleman outlines, the nineties did give rise to numerous, albeit underfunded, Black horror films. Means Coleman makes the distinction between the labels “Blacks in horror” and “Black horror,” with the former indicating films about Black people but often lacking knowledge or political acuity and the latter comprising films created by Black people and that draw knowledgeably on “Black folklore, histories, and culture” while speaking to Black anxieties, aesthetics and viewpoints.
Here’s a (unfortunately not very high-quality) trailer for Cosmic Slop:
The nineties-era films that Means Coleman describes present a messy mix of both of these approaches, with films like Tales from the Hood (1995) effectively capturing white racism and urgent problems in the Black community such as police violence, self-destruction and domestic abuse. On the other hand, she argues, films like Candyman (1992) and Blade (1998) rehearse old stereotypes of threatening Black male sexuality or jungle-like urban chaos.
Television does not afford such rich offerings. The nineties came off of a period of Reaganite representation that presented Black characters who were non-threatening to white sensibilities, seemingly to placate white fears of Black rage rather than to provide meaningful representation to African Americans. In my memory, shows like Diff’rent Strokes and Benson depicted African Americans as clowns or servants. The Cosby Show was limited to themes that supported an “American Dream” bootstraps narrative and excluded considerations of racism. And the seventies-inspired social realism of African American sit-com Good Times gradually capitulated to the spirit of eighties Reaganism by focusing on the clownish figure of J.J. whose reductive catch phrase was “Dy-No-Mite.”
In the nineties, with the rise of HBO and other cable channels, there were new opportunities for more complex representational fare on television. But we were a long way from our golden moment of socially attuned prestige TV such as Atlanta, The Wire, and Insecure. At the same time, the HBO formula was not yet established, and so there was greater room for the experimental and chaotic spirit of Cosmic Slop, parts of which draw a through-line between the subversive surrealism of Sun Ra’s 1970s film Space is the Place and recent works of black surrealist entertainment such as The Eric Andre Show and the comedy of Reggie Watts, along with the great renaissance of Afro-futurism.
In what follows, there will be spoilers. I recommend you watch Cosmic Slop before reading!
Cosmic Slop, named after a Funkadelic album, was a three-part anthology that echoed the story-structure of The Twilight Zone, but was more psychedelic and densely referential, packed with allusions to Black culture and history. The three segments are “Space Traders,” “The First Commandment,” and “Tang.” All three are dark depictions of repression and co-optation in a post Civil-Rights moment.
“Space Traders”
The first segment, “Space Traders” (directed by Reginald Hudlin), not only explores the profound white supremacy of US political and popular culture but looks at how structural racism is promoted by the media and interlinked with economic and environmental crisis. In this story, extraterrestrials approach Earth, and their spokes-alien, taking the shape of Ronald Reagan, offers to solve all of the economic and environmental problems of the US in exchange for the country’s entire Black population, which are to be handed over to the aliens for unknown purposes. After a moment of feigning outrage, the white leadership and majority of the population begin organizing to make the sacrifice.
Professor Golightly (Robert Guillaume), a Republican who has collaborated with the conservative leadership up until now, attempts to organize against the deportation. First he makes the economic argument that African Americans are essential consumers and that deporting them will damage corporate America. Then, he attempts to rally the Black leadership to start the rumor that the aliens are intending to take them somewhere glorious, triggering white resentment and jealousy. Both measures fail and the segment ends with the population being beamed up into flying saucers. Golightly has been promised that he will be given a refuge in England because of his close ties to the administration, but at the last minute this promise is betrayed and he is driven off to his doom.
In the course of laying out this dystopian plot, “Space Traders” shows a near future in which the thin public discourse of equality barely masks structural racism, and where African Americans are scapegoated and sacrificed for the ecological and economic catastrophes wreaked by capitalism.
The black liberal leadership is depicted as an ineffective, ghettoized minority. Professor Golightly, the only African American with any power in this story, has gleaned this influence by selling out and supporting a racist administration, becoming “a good soldier for the party.” Consequently, even if his ideas have merit, he is not trusted by his people and all the authority he has amassed by selling out does him no good when it really matters.
The story on which the episode was based was written by Derrick Bell, a Harvard law professor who, like the tale “Space Traders’” tells of neo-slavery, has remained relevant. Very recently he appeared in the news in the wake of the denial of tenure to Cornel West. Like West, he was a Harvard professor who called out the lack of diversity in Harvard’s faculty. In Bell’s case, even though he had tenure, he took a leave of absence and went on a hunger strike to protest the denial of tenure to a Black woman professor, Regina Austin. Further back, he was used to smear Barack Obama during the 2012 election. A picture of a hug between the two men was used to claim that Obama was more radical than his centrist platform implied. If only it had been true!
Bell’s name came up again in 2020 when the Trump administration attempted to ban sensitivity training and the teaching of critical race theory by federally funded institutions, as well as when Trump attacked the “1619 Project,” Howard Zinn, and the Smithsonian Institution–proclaiming that “students in our universities are inundated with critical race theory.” Bell is considered the “father of critical race theory” and his legacy threatens the forces of white supremacy to this day.
The episode “Space Traders” closely adheres to Bell’s short story, which Conor Friedersdorf categories as “critical race theory meets sci-fi,” and as such was another target of conservative ire. But this long piece of speculative fiction is much more dense with observation and analysis of contemporary race relations, such as explicitly linking the aliens’ “modest proposal” to environmental ills and to settler colonialism; the aliens have “special chemicals capable of unpolluting the environment, which was becoming daily more toxic, and restoring it to the pristine state it had been before Western explorers set foot on it.”
Bell describes the nineties as a period of racist retrogression, where half of African Americans had become total outcasts, segregated into inner cities surrounded by high walls and armed guards or in prisons: “Long dead was the dream that this black underclass would ever ‘Overcome.’”
Predicting some of the themes explored in Peele’s genre work, both the TV episode and Bell’s story explore the element of desire that fuels white racism. In Peele’s Get Out, the white villains covet the Black body rather than detest it. In “Space Traders,” Golightly suggests that African Americans start a rumor that the aliens will take them away to a paradise in order to spark their envy and jealousy. This strategy is rejected, but it is implied in both the story and the episode, that, with militant resistance off the table, this “cunning and guile” would have been the only hope for fighting back.
Another theme in “Space Traders” that later appears in Peele’s work is the problem of cooptation. Those who do achieve status and power in white society, Peele implies, cannot make use of the power they attain because they get it by playing by white rules. Another important example of this theme in recent African American horror is the episode “The Sacrifice” from Tales from the Hood 2 (2018). This tells the story of Henry Bradley, a conservative black councilman who is cursed by Emmett Till due to his self-interested support for racist policies. Henry is forced to live through an alternate history where Till did not sacrifice himself, and finds himself little more than a slave. Through this, he comes to understand the sacrifice Till made for Black rights, and he sacrifices his own life to repent for his betrayal of those causes.
In “Space Traders” Golightly is called an “Oreo,” “Tom,” and “master minstrel of political mimicry” by his community. But unlike Chris in Get Out or Henry in “Sacrifice,” it is too late for Golightly’s redemption. Instead he learns that in the end his “chickens have come home to roost.” He will not be spared the fate of his people.
Perhaps the most devastating dimension of this story and the episode is that the nineties were a period of such deep closure, that the only hope to battle against explicit slavery was by appealing to neoliberal capitalism. Golightly’s final desperate appeal is to corporate America. He urges them to recognize the profits they would lose if they no longer had Black consumers to purchase alcohol, fuel, and junk food. Bell also notes that the white elite needs African Americans to distract poor whites from their own low status and to prevent their rebellion.
Still, even these cynical reasons for refraining from selling off the Black population are not enough to override the deep white supremacy at the core of the American psyche. At one point in Bell’s story, after American Jews protest against the trade, we see a dark foreshadowing of current white-supremacy as a violent tide of anti-semitism hammers down in response with the slogan, “Send the blacks into space. Send the Jews into Hell.” In the TV episode this sentiment appears in a joke made by Golightly’s fatalistic barber: “Didn’t I tell you that one about the American dream – it’s of all those ns swimming back to Africa with a Jew under each arm.”
In fact, in both the episode and the story, some African Americans do not bother to fight the trade. Their life in the US is not worth defending. This raises the question: is the dystopian element of “Space Traders” that the white elite is willing to sell black citizens into slavery–or that African Americans already live in a kind of slavery by another name?
“The First Commandment”
The second segment of Cosmic Slop, “The First Commandment,” also grapples with structural racism and an unmoored leadership figure, but it has a more utopian horizon than “Space Traders.” In this segment, Father Carlos (Nicholas Turturro) is a Puerto Rican Catholic priest in the South Bronx with a mixed race church. A white representative of the Catholic archdiocese orders that he donate his church’s statue of a female saint–Our Lady of Charity–to a museum, but his parishioners protest, since the statue has special meaning to them not only as a Catholic icon, but as a figure of Santeria, whose deities are syncretized with the saints of Catholicism.
In fact, it seems that part of the reason the priest has been ordered to give away this precious icon is as punishment for his flock’s “pagan” practices. When the priest capitulates to his white higher-ups and allows the statue to be moved, she goes missing. She returns as a living, radiant Orisha–Oshun–saving a prostitute from abuse and then setting up camp in a “crack house” as a healer of lost souls. When the priest goes to witness her miraculous manifestation, he begins his own conversion. At first he faints in the face of this miracle. In the hospital, his Catholic superior tries to convince him to deny the miracle he has witnessed, in the name of the one true god. But when Father Carlos returns to his church he experiences visions of the dancing Orisha during mass, and when he gives his parishioners communion they are seized by the spirit of their ancestral gods, and break into African dances.
Like “Space Traders,” “The First Commandment” centers on a person of color who misuses his authority, not because of some inherent bad intent, but because of his own delusions. Humored by his community, father Carlos seems to be the only person in his church who doesn’t understand the resilience of syncretism and the importance of historical memory.
Padrino (Efrain Figueroa) is the most outspoken member of Father Carlos’s “flock,” and it is he who must gently lead his priest to the truth. When the statue disappears, Father Carlos is instructed to accuse Padrino of the theft, and the latter guesses that he is being manipulated, asking if his Cardinal had “sen[t] his Puerto Rican slave down to the jungle” and admonishing him to “remember who you are, what you are, where you came from,” because “you can be sure this is something the Cardinal never forgets.”
Ensconced in his leadership’s rigid hierarchies, Father Carlos is also isolated from the suffering of those in the ghetto around him. It takes the miracle of the statue, who makes herself available to the poor where they most need it, to help him realize that his role must be to prioritize cultural hybridity and the material needs of his community. Like Professor Golightly, the priest has been instrumental in tethering his people to the logic of white supremacy, but in “The First Commandment” it is not too late for him to convert to a liberationist faith.
As in recent Black “social thrillers,” “The First Commandment” is an example of how the horror genre can be a more canny way of exploring social issues than straightforward realistic “message movies.” Supernatural entities like African Orishas require a “belief” that goes beyond the literal or rational. Instead, we must investigate their mysteries as a potent repository of repressed history and trauma.
As in Peele’s work, “The First Commandment,” is written and directed by a man, Warrington Hudlin, whose first works were in the comedy genre. This comedic element pervades the story, as in the scene where a group of homeless men first encounter the living Orisha, and they humorously express their incredulity when she suggests they take shelter in a dangerous “crack house.” As in Peele’s work, this comedy and “happy ending” displays not just historical trauma, but black resilience and adaptability.
“Tang”
“Tang,” the third episode of Cosmic Slop, reads as a naturalist one-act play, albeit one with a mysterious twist that has supernatural dimensions. As in “Space Traders” and “The First Commandment,” one of the key characters is a man of color who has lost his way and abused his role in the community. In this case T-Bone (Chi McBride) is a domestic abuser, and the episode demonstrates the fatality of misogyny in the Black community. Without overcoming this monstrosity, any other form of rebellion is impossible.
In this episode T-Bone is decentered by his partner, Tang (Paula Jai Parker), whose name is the name of the episode itself. She has finally resolved to stand up for herself after years of abuse from her husband, who sends her out to donate blood and participate in medical experiments while he sits at home drinking beer. The first half of the episode torturously shows Tang screwing up her courage to fight back and then retreating in fear of her husband’s violence and her lack of options. Tang’s situation is not unique. Faintly, in the background we hear screaming voices from other apartments in the tenement, indicating that domestic abuse is widespread.
In the midst of this, a mysterious delivery man comes to the door and hands the couple a box shaped as if it held long-stemmed roses. As we see the delivery man leave, he dematerializes, adding a supernatural touch. The miserable couple find that the package contains a rifle and a note which reads:
WARNING DO NOT INFORM POLICE! LEARN YOUR WEAPON AND WAIT FOR INSTRUCTIONS! FREEDOM IS NEAR!
Immediately, Tang is captivated by this revolutionary message while T-Bone retreats, afraid that he will violate his parole. More than that, he is content with his lot, since he has Tang to serve as his virtual slave. The abused Tang, on the other hand, has nothing to lose.
When it becomes clear that T-Bone won’t allow Tang to participate in the revolt she tries to shoot him but realizes the gun is not loaded. She uses every resource she can muster to secretly load the gun and turn on T-Bone again. And as she does so, the apartments around her erupt with gunfire. People begin to fall from windows, perhaps other husbands who are being shot by their wives or other victims of inter-Black violence. One of the falling bodies drops a gun in front of T-Bone and he grabs it. In the end we are left with the impression that the couple will shoot each other simultaneously, supporting Ed Guerrero’s argument that black nineties film was responding to a “rise of an insidious, socially fragmenting violence” with the result that “black rage has lost its political focus in this violent apartheid environment.”
Like “Space Traders,” “Tang” presents a bleak view of Black life in the nineties. Without a revolutionary horizon or economic hope, T-Bone turns on the most vulnerable person he can find. In this context, the “gift” of freedom is merely another form of condemnation.
Unique for its moment, “Tang” is a bridge to other periods of Black crisis and innovative representation. It is an adaption of a short story by the great black detective novelist Chester Himes, written in 1967. The original story follows a similar trajectory, with T-Bone pimping out Tang, and Tang enthusiastically embracing the revolution, while T-Bone recoils. In both the story and the episode, the women are the revolutionary force, ready to fight their white oppressors because they have nothing to lose but their chains. In both versions T-Bone has become reconciled to his fate and comforted by the servitude of his wife. Instead of rebelling, he watches TV. In Himes’ version, T-Bone watches a Black minstrel comedy and in the Cosmic Slop episode he watches a show about Ike and Tina Turner. Notoriously, Ike abused Tina, but T-Bone laughs at the movie as if it were comedy. In this equivalency between T-Bone’s viewing choices, Kevin Rodney Sullivan (the episode’s director) stresses the role of domestic abuse in racial subjugation.
The story raises the specter of Black militancy, only to show how gendered divisions in the Black community prevent solidarity. In the 1967 context, Tang appears to be awakening to the possibilities of Black power. In the 1994 episode Tang’s consciousness seems to come too late–it is hard to imagine any networks of solidarity beyond her apartment. The short story ended up becoming the first chapter of an unfinished novel written by Himes, Plan B. which Kali Tal classifies as a “black militant near-future novel” in which “African Americans join in violent revolution against the system of white supremacy.” As Sean Lovitt explains, in Plan B, the gun delivery is shown to be a revolutionary plot, and “Tang’s desire for freedom has a double meaning: freedom from her pimp/boyfriend T-Bone and freedom through an uprising.”
In the episode, the brief moment of science fiction, the dematerializing delivery man, adds an imaginative and comic dimension to the couple’s suffocating domestic confinement. In this, as in the other episodes, the use of genre rather than straightforward social realism is a means to depict the dire conditions for people of color in the nineties while maintaining a utopian horizon.
This utopian horizon of Cosmic Slop is emphasized in the framing of these episodes by Parliament Funkadelic’s George Clinton. He is shown as a floating head set against swirly, colorful backdrops, projecting a third eye from his forehead and sporting an array of elaborate wigs. The title Cosmic Slop is derived from the name of Funkadelic’s 1973 album as are the psychedelic aesthetics of his presentations. These embody the band’s use of what Amy Nathan Wright refers to as “humor and myth to create a carnivalesque image and cosmological philosophy.” Cosmic Slop is “beyond the twilight zone… deeper than deep in the black hole,” Clinton declares. His appearance is brief, but the choice of Clinton as the Rod Serling-like narrator of the show emphasizes an Afrofuturistic orientation, where the stories are presented to contribute wisdom and values for a new world of Black becoming, echoing what Wright calls Funkadelic’s working class foundation for an “emphasis on self-discovery, identity formation, and transcendence.”
Unfortunately and unsurprisingly, HBO didn’t elect to continue Cosmic Slop, and it stands alone as a daring but discarded contribution to Black myth-building in the nineties. But luckily, through word of mouth and projects of recovery we can keep unearthing these lost treasures that will pave the way for daring and militant genre experiments, such as Jordan Peele’s recent resurrection of The Twilight Zone.
Check out Reginald Hudlin talking about Cosmic Slop on his website.
Works Cited
Guerrero, Ed. “Framing Blackness: The African-American Image in the Cinema in the Nineties.” Cinéaste, vol. 20, no. 2, 1993, pp. 24-31.
Lovitt, Sean. Mimeo Insurrection: The Sixties Underground Press and the Long, Hot, Summers of Riots. University of Delaware, PhD dissertation, 2020.
Means Coleman, Robin R. Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from the 1890s to Present. Routledge, 2011.
Tal, Kali. “That Just Kills Me: Black Militant Near-Future Fiction.” Social Text, vol. 20, no. 2, 2002, pp. 65-91.
Wright, Amy Nathan. “Exploring the Funkadelic Aesthetic: Intertextuality and Cosmic Philosophizing in Funkadelic’s Album Covers and Liner Notes.” American Studies, vol. 52, no. 4, 2013, pp. 141-169.
Johanna Isaacson writes academic and popular pieces on horror and politics. She is a professor of English at Modesto Junior College and a founding editor of Blind Field Journal. She is the author of The Ballerina and the Bull (2016) from Repeater Books, has published widely in academic and popular journals, and runs the Facebook group, Anti-capitalist feminists who like horror films. You can find her on Academia.edu: https://ucsc.academia.edu/JohannaIsaacson.
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