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Before this course, I knew nothing about Afrofuturism and felt that I was an outlier in African American Studies as a Political Science major. But after my first lecture with Professor Due, I knew I was in the right spot. Afrofuturism is a lot more than just science fiction, it is a significant way to help picture things while focusing on the present. The Pumzi short film is one of my favorite films so far since it shows an underground world that people live in where they are controlled by a society where water is scarce and strictly regulated. Asha, the main character, works at a museum that preserves artifacts from the past where she discovers a soil living sample that was presumed to be extinct. After her discovery, she is set on the idea that she wants to restore life to Earth’s surface and escapes the underground world to a barren desert. With almost no water she risks her life to plant the seed at the end of the film symbolizing, hope, rebirth, and resistance; this was very influential to me because it reminded me that when you want something there is nothing that can stop you even if the chances of being successful with your goal are so low. 

Janelle Monae stood out to me with all of her music videos and with how influential she is to the music industry. Dirty Computer focuses on identity and individuality. The film shows how people are being erased and reprogrammed because people are being considered different and labeled as “dirty computers”. Jane undergoes a process where all of her memories are erased because she does not conform to societal norms. In the flashbacks throughout the film, we see her different experiences with love, identity, sexuality, and rebellion. I like that she emphasizes that being different is nothing bad and something we should embrace and protect instead. Before this course, I never saw embracing my differences from the rest of the world as something good and always looked down on it but after watching Monae’s film it made me realize that if we don’t embrace our differences and feel proud of ourselves then you’re never going to be happy with yourself and no one else can change that but yourself. The scene where she had to show an identification made me think about how it is something that she predicted would happen in the future since we now have to show our Real-ID’s at the airport to fly domestically. Lastly, I like how these songs aren’t just songs, they are stories reflecting on events that we currently have going on now and how emotion is an exclamation to resistance.