While much of film theory has explored the function of representation, image and stereotype, there is renewed focus on the “being” and affective life of race within visual culture. Critics explore the conditions of racialization in which a subject does not fully accede to humanity — forms of what Mel Chen calls animacy specifically in relation to Asian objects and bodies — and how racialization exposes subjects to conditions of precariousness and risk of death. The history of racial stereotype might be explored through this lens, through the calcification of type as a form of denaturing or what Homi Bhabha calls the “ ‘fixity’ in the ideological construction of otherness” or a fixed form of representation that denies the play of difference (312). The most abiding racial and ethnic stereotypes are of figures that are deemed uncivilized, subhuman or disposable subjects: Mexican bandits, Latina spitfires, Latino buffoons, Pacific Islanders in grass skirts, mammies, uncle Toms, maids of all races, bloodthirsty Native Americans, hypersexual squaws, inscrutable Asians, lotus blossoms and dragon ladies. In all of these depictions, race is a sign of nonbeing or lesser being. In this chapter, I explore various tributaries of film theory and racial being through recent critical interventions that capture many of the tropes of film and media theory and point to new ways of imagining and depicting racialized figures.

Visual culture participates in the transformation of political cultures, a link made all the more powerful and complex by the recent emergence of new digital modes of screen production and reception and a social responsibility raised to heightened value in times — such as now — of great social tension. Films such as Get Out (2017) are imbued with the charged political events and violence against black bodies that inspired Black Lives Matter while television shows that feature nuanced black characters and storylines, like Shonda Rhimes's Scandal (ABC 2012– 18), are bolstered by the political efforts of Black Twitter — the same digital means that helped foment a revolution in the Arab world.

One of the founding organizers of Black Lives Matter, Alicia Garza, makes apparent the connection of this movement with Latinx politics, particularly around the carceral complex that includes prisons and extends to detention centers for migrants.