ABSTRACT
Chapter 4, “Black Invisibility, White Science: 1950s,” tells the story of how Hollywood shifted its attention from supernatural evils toward technological ones. Enter the Atomic Age, and with it horrifying themes of how science and technology can go astray when experimentation and discovery are left unchecked. As Americans found science laboratories to be the wellspring of things most terrifying (e.g., the fusion bomb), Hollywood deemed these spaces of intellectual and inventive achievement out of reach for Black individuals—that is, in the media’s imagination, Blacks could never be the analytically erudite). As a result, Blacks were omitted from the genre or relegated to the supporting role of snack food for mutant insects. Monster from Green Hell (1957) epitomizes this trend.
