Streaming Black to the future: post-soul aesthetics & competing nostalgia in FX’s Snowfall and Pose

Abstract

ABSTRACT Television networks, in partnership and collaboration with streaming platforms, are now increasingly using nostalgia themed programming to captivate diverse audiences. To meet the growing calls for diverse representation, many of these shows retell the history and events of Black America during the Reagan period, drawing on post-soul aesthetics and culture. Further, streaming services have made a conscious effort to acquire rights to older Black sitcoms, enabling Black audiences to relive the memories attached to post-soul media. Using textual analysis of FX dramas Snowfall and Pose, this paper analyses how television programmes invoke post-soul aesthetics to produce a distinct and consumable form of Black nostalgia. This results in a competing nostalgia where viewers are unable to disassociate the feel-good moments of a past era from the racial trauma, oppression and discrimination that shaped this same period. While discourse around Blackness and nostalgia should fervently occupy space outisde of topics related to structural racism and economic marignalization, this essay argues that television networks and streaming platforms are choosing to produce Black nostalgic programmes that highlight this tension. Therefore, this has led to a resurgence of post-soul-themed programming.