liquid blackness • Vol 8 • No 1
April 2024 • William Brown
Abstract Jordan Peele's Nope (2022) features a shape-shifting and Cthulhu-esque alien that feeds off settlers and other arrivants in the California desert. Focusing in particular on the Haywoods, a family of Hollywood horse wranglers descended from the otherwise anonymous Black rider on the horse of Eadweard Muybridge's famous Animal Locomotion Plate 626, Nope can be read as suggesting the ubiquitous nature of anti-Black violence. Furthermore, this essay will suggest that the informe nature of the alien, referred …