Kimberly Bain

This thesis examines Jordan Peele as the creator of a transmedial story-world that is built both via the connections between his films and the various paratextual materials that surround them. These, I argue are not extraneous adjuncts to the films but a crucial part of the overall story-world itself that take on lives of their own. Embedded within my analysis of Peele’s work is both the socio-political critiques at the centre of each film and the curation of Peele’s image. As part of this attentiveness to the wider world of film, I argue that Peele sidesteps the usual pitfalls of Hollywood cinema and production to build a company that champions diversity and collaboration within the film industry. Moreover, using Alessandra Raengo’s critical framework of the representational shadow paradigm, I argue that the public image that Peele curates allows him to bolster the representation of Black and non-Black marginalised voices within the film industry without conforming to the indexing of Black cinema as mirror-image or self-portraiture.

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