This article originally appeared on Shadow and Act. To read the full article, click here.
Our teen years can sometimes feel stifling — we find ourselves confined in a box desperate to stretch out and explore adulthood while clinging to the safety of adolescence. Without any of the unexpected trials of life, it’s a bewildering time and the unexpected can feel overwhelming.
Coming-of-age stories are plentiful in Hollywood for this very reason. Audiences relish the opportunity to watch characters grow and change — to make those pivotal choices that could shape their lives forever. From Juice to Higher Learning and most recently, J.D. Dillard’s Sleight, Black males have often been the subjects of these particular stories. Now, The Black TV & Film Collective’s riveting web-series, Keloid has taken this particular narrative and revived it in a fresh and sensational way.
The web-series follows Keloid (David Nixon), a shy young man whose ability to control electricity along with his telepathy, teleportation and telekinesis gifts have left him lonely and desperate to connect with anyone other than his overbearing mother, Marielle (Aba Woodruff).
Led by superhuman abilities that have been passed down through his family line, Keloid finds himself a prisoner to his mother’s well-meaning paranoia. When a horrifying event forces Keloid and Marielle to flee their home, Keloid discovers that the answers he’s been seeking all of his life might have been better off hidden.
Written and produced by Black TV & Film Collective founder Huriyyah Muhammad who also serves as the series’ showrunner, Keloid explores science fiction, superheroes and mother/son relationships that are hardly ever examined with Black characters in the entertainment space. Keloid is, of course, a Black boy with powers— however, instead of being glorified, these skills add to his otherness and isolation. For Keloid there is little to no advantage when it comes to his abilities — at least not in the first season.
