Artists like Kendrick Lamar (whose To Pimp a Butterfly is a spiritual sequel to the 1984 taboo), Janelle Monáe, and Boots Riley have built careers on destroying the walls that stood firm forty years ago.
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Let me know how you’d like to proceed. Artists like Kendrick Lamar (whose To Pimp a
John Sayles’ indie sci-fi film is perhaps the closest visual representation of the keyword. An alien—who looks like a mute Black man—crash-lands in Harlem. He is hunted by "white slavers" (literal men in black). The film never names racism, but it visualizes it as a cosmic horror. It was a taboo-breaker: a science fiction film where the alien is Black and the oppressors are visibly white, released at the height of Reagan’s "Morning in America." Let me know how you’d like to proceed
Nevertheless, the film’s release was met with protests from community groups who had not seen it but reacted to the title alone. In the summer of 1984, a Chicago video store owner was arrested for renting Black Taboo under local obscenity laws, specifically citing the title as evidence of "deviant content." The case was eventually dismissed, but the arrest created the exact notoriety the film needed. Overnight, Black Taboo -1984- became a must-see for the curious and the rebellious, not because of what it showed, but because someone had gone to jail for it.
In the alternate 1985 timeline, when Marty McFly enters Biff Tannen’s "Pleasure Palace" casino, two VHS tapes are visible on a bar.