Remembering slavery matters

Abstract EN

Reckoning that the audience is no longer a passive receiver of any message, Stuart Hall developed his encoding / decoding model of communication in which he argued that the decoding process of any message can result in one of the following positions : the dominant-hegemonic position, the negotiated position, or the oppositional position.

based on this premise, the crux of this paper has been established.

in other words, this paper argues that the American miniseries roots that first aired on May 30, 2016 and treated slavery as its pivotal theme is a dominant-hegemonic response to the black lives matter movement’s cause.

the findings confirm the idea and reveal that the miniseries was produced not only to address the generation of black lives matter but also to entrench the memories of the slavery regime that was inflicted upon blacks years ago in America.

this work, thus, does not only approach the study of roots differently, but also offers insight into the nature of the movement and the ideologies that directed the creation of roots.