Navigating from the White Anthropocene to the Black Chthulucene

University of British Columbia film professor Brown (The Squid Cinema from Hell) critiques Buster Keaton’s 1924 film The Navigator, a comedy about two socialites who through a series of mishaps end up on a ship adrift at sea, from a radical postmodern Black and Indigenous perspective. Focusing on the two murders in the film—that of an octopus whom Keaton encounters during an underwater hull repair (and whom Brown interprets as Black-coded), and that of one of the group of unnamed Polynesian cannibals (played by Black actors) as they attempt to abduct the white female protagonist—Brown discusses the idea of Blackness as a watery, alien outsider status that cannot be understood by white culture. He frames an early scene, in which Keaton’s character is inspired to marry by the happiness of a pair of African American newlyweds, as an example of a white need to appropriate Black sensibilities. Many of Brown’s conceptual paths can seem overwrought, and his jump from the work of Gilles Deleuze to the question of whether film criticism is essentially anti-Black feels like an overly broad reach. Still, the core elucidation of the unsavory racial dynamics and white supremacist themes expressed and implied in Keaton’s self-described finest work is executed thoughtfully. Readers interested in critical theory will find this worthwhile. (July)