Performing Blackness on the Saudi Screen: Global Circulations, Local Histories and the Politics of Racial Representation

This study examines the persistent use of blackface as a performance trope in Saudi media, focusing on two Saudi television productions released in the aftermath of the global response to the 2020 murder of George Floyd. Situating these productions within broader histories of racialised performance, the article explores how blackface in contemporary Saudi television is shaped by the intersection of regional racial imaginaries, colonial media circulation and global traditions of anti-Black representation. Through close readings of Nakhwa (2023–2024) and Tash, the Comeback (2023), it argues that although these productions are framed as critiques of racism and calls for greater social justice for the region’s people of colour, they nevertheless reproduce performance conventions associated with blackface. Rather than treating Saudi television blackface as a direct inheritance of western minstrel traditions, the article argues that it is a local redeployment of transnational racialised performance conventions, shaped by regional imaginaries, colonial media circulations and Gulf media cultures. In doing so, it situates Saudi television within emerging scholarship on the global circulation of blackface, highlighting how racialised performance is reinterpreted and adapted across local, regional and transnational contexts.