For the Time(d) Being: The Form Hate Takes in The Hate U Give. Issue 4 (1st October 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Pierce, Lee M.
• Is Part Of: Women's studies in communication. Volume 43:Issue 4(2020)
• Page Start: 414
• Page End: 428
• Publication Date: 2020-10-01
• Subjects: Ellipsis -- The Hate U Give (film) -- kairos -- prosopopoeia -- rhetoric; Communication -- Sex differences -- Periodicals; Women in mass media -- Periodicals; Sex differences in mass media -- Periodicals; 302.2082
• DOI: 10.1080/07491409.2020.1828699
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0749-1409

Abstract

Abstract: The fight for Black lives is waged in seconds; that's the lesson of the young-adult-novel-turned-feature-film The Hate U Give, hailed for its empowering narrative of one Black girl speaking out for justice. Reading critical reception of the film and novel against the official film trailer, I argue that the trailer's tracking of hands displaces speech (prosopopoeia) with "the cut" (ellipsis) as the dominant trope of a Black political agency that depends on being able to read for, not speak about, the form hate takes. The trailer offers vigilance as an akairic ( akaireomai ) temporal pedagogy for Black audiences who can no longer see the mountaintop and White audiences who might momentarily experience a life lived in seconds. Unfortunately, the trailer's disrupted marriage plot renarrates the loss of Black lives as a matter of (one) Black (woman's) guilt; the tragedy we are meant to mourn is the loss of a love, not the taking of a life.