Black horror
Black horror (also known as racial horror and horror noir) is a
The genre of Black horror became especially popular after Get Out, a horror film about racism and the 2017 directorial debut of comedian Jordan Peele, became an international box office success and won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Peele went on to direct the Black horror films Us (2019) and Nope (2022) and produce the Black horror film Candyman (2021), a sequel to the 1992 film of the same name directed by Nia DaCosta, and the HBO Black horror television series Lovecraft Country (2021). Some critics argued that, by 2020, Black horror had entered its Golden Age, while others criticized many of the Black horror projects to follow Get Out, including Lovecraft Country, the Amazon series Them (2021), and the film Antebellum (2020), as unsubtle and exploitative of Black trauma. Black horror novelists include Nalo Hopkinson, Octavia E. Butler, Linda Addison, Jewelle Gomez and Victor LaValle.
Definition
Robin R. Means Coleman, a professor at Texas A&M University and the author of the 2011 book Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from the 1890s to Present, wrote that Black horror films were "created by blacks, star blacks or focus on black life and culture".[1] Tananarive Due, a professor at University of California, Los Angeles who, as of 2019[update], teaches classes on Black horror, stated that Black horror "doesn't necessarily have to be made by Black creators" but that it typically "is made by Black filmmakers and does star black protagonists to tell a Black story" and that "sometimes it is enough just to have a Black character in a film for it to be considered Black horror".[2] She also defined Black characters in Black horror films as "actually hav[ing] agency in the film and maybe even surviv[ing]" while exceeding the stereotypical roles of Black characters in horror films "who were just sidelined or monster bait".[3] Due has compared African-American history to the genre, stating, "Black history is Black horror," while Ryan Poll, for the Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, wrote, "For African Americans, horror is not a genre, but a structuring paradigm," adding that horror works "because White people fundamentally imagine the world without horror".[4] Due has stated that a more common theme than race in Black horror is "the will to fight back and survive against overwhelming force".[5][6] Means Coleman and author Mark Harris, owner of the website Black Horror Movies,[7] similarly wrote in their non-fiction book The Black Guy Dies First: Black Horror Cinema from Fodder to Oscar that "the Black presence in horror, as in America, has always been about resilience".[8]
Black horror films often compare the lived experiences of Black American people, most commonly racism[5][9][10] and its effects—police brutality, the Atlantic slave trade, lynching, discrimination and transgenerational trauma—to horror narratives and depict them as such.[11][12][13][14] Jenna Benchretrit of CBC wrote that Black horror was "an expansive subgenre that reclaims the Black community's place in a film tradition where they have often been the first to die or are depicted as the monster".[15] Mark Harris compared the horror film trope of killing off Black characters first to marginalization, stating, "It epitomises how black characters in these movies and then other genres tend to be kind of second fiddle, thus expendable and so they get bumped off."[8][16] For Vulture, Robert Daniels defined Black horror films as horror films "directed by and starring Black folks".[17] Stephanie Holland of The Root also described Black horror films as horror films "that feature prominent Black stories and heroes" despite horror not having "always been the most welcoming [genre] for Black characters".[18] Jason Parham of Wired wrote that Black horror filmmakers "let loose arguments about class conflict or policing or the psychological terror of race, and how whiteness eats at the mind".[19]
Tonja Renée Stidhum of The Root wrote that racial and social commentary were "basically the core of the genre, historically".[20] Laura Bradley of The Daily Beast noted that Black horror films often focus on "the fear of moral corruption, particularly by proximity to white people and institutions" and frequently include references to Christianity.[3] For Refinery29, Ineye Komonibo wrote that Black horror films are "often ...imparting a moral lesson or highlighting some political struggle within our society".[21] Black horror is also sometimes referred to as racial horror, horror noir, or horror noire.[22][23][24]
History
Film and television
Precursors
Before the first Black horror films were created, American horror films scarcely featured Black actors, and those that featured Black characters often did so mockingly or depicted them as primitive in the vein of
1960s to 2000s: Blaxsploitation and 1990s resurgence
The
The
2017 to present: Get Out and surge in Black horror projects
The 2014 Spike Lee Black horror film Da Sweet Blood of Jesus was a reimagining of Ganja & Hess.[38] Black horror was brought to international prominence through the release of Jordan Peele's 2017 directorial debut Get Out, a horror film about racism, race relations and microaggressions.[33][39] It follows Chris Washington, played by Daniel Kaluuya, who leaves Brooklyn to visit the family of his white girlfriend, Rose Armitage, played by Allison Williams, in a white suburb, where it is revealed that they partake in medical experimentation on Black people.[25] The film also opposed the notion of a post-racial America following Barack Obama's election as president of the United States in 2008.[5][8] For The Hollywood Reporter, Richard Newby wrote that Peele "changed the game" with Get Out, which "managed to encompass the horror blacks experience on a scale unlike any we'd seen before". In 2023, Bethonie Butler of The Washington Post wrote that Get Out "upped the ante when it came to discourse about horror and race" and that "few films ... have come close to the social commentary that made Get Out a cultural phenomenon", while Nick Schager of The Daily Beast wrote that it "ushered in a wave of Black horror films and TV series that investigate and exploit modern and historical racial dynamics for monstrous thrills".[40][41] For his writing of the film, Peele won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, making him the first African-American winner of the award, and the film's international $225 million gross led to a surge in other Black horror projects.[18][29] Black horror directors William Crain, Rusty Cundieff and Justin Simien also stated that the success of Get Out offered more opportunities for Black horror filmmakers.[3][5]
Peele continued to explore Black horror in his follow-up films,
Criticism
Several Black horror films and television series made after Get Out, including Lovecraft Country, Antebellum and Them, were decried by critics and audiences for violently exploiting Black trauma, particularly in the wake of the
Cate Young of The American Prospect wrote that Black horror films and television series released after Get Out—particularly Antebellum, Bad Hair and Lovecraft Country—"ultimately fail because they do not do the hard ideological work necessary to give them the cultural and political meaning to which they aspire" and because of their "reckless deployment of spectacle over substance".[50] Charles Pulliam-Moore of Gizmodo Australia wrote in 2021, "In chasing Get Out's success, a number of studios seemingly lost sight of the reality that the movie wasn't good simply because it was a 'Black horror movie' about racist bodysnatchers."[51] For Collider, Tavius Allen suggested that many of the Black horror films and series inspired by Get Out, such as Antebellum and Them, "tend to have an exploitative angle", "frequently entertain a larger white audience", and strip their Black characters of agency "at the mercy of grotesque violence, demeaning language, or reaffirmed stereotypes". Allen argued that most Black horror to come from Get Out missed its point, writing, "It's not the reliving of the trauma that guides Get Out, it's the overcoming."[52] In 2023, Nadira Goffe of Slate opined that "the same bag of tricks ... defined much of Black horror" in the years prior, such as "the dangers of whiteness" and "the protagonist's dawning realization that 'I got what I wanted, but it wasn't what I thought it would be'". She wrote that the trope in Black satirical horror of "Black women's hair as a tortured metaphor for racial assimilation", which showed up in The Other Black Girl, Bad Hair, and the 2023 Black surrealist film They Cloned Tyrone, was "exhausting" for "perpetuating the myth of 'good' and 'bad' hair" and representing misogynoir.[53] Jason Parham of Wired criticized Them and Two Distant Strangers for not being "aware horror is not solely about horror", unlike Get Out and the television series Atlanta.[19]
Literature and art
For T, Gabrielle Bellot noted the influence of African-American folklore figures, namely Br'er Rabbit, and the 1899 short story collection The Conjure Woman by author Charles W. Chesnutt on Black horror. She also described the artworks of Kara Walker, the Betye Saar painting Black's Girl Window (1969), and the written works of authors Nalo Hopkinson, Octavia E. Butler and Jewelle Gomez as progenitors of Black horror, and named the 1967 painting The American People Series 20: Die by Faith Ringgold a piece of Black horror in visual art.[11]
Black horror novels include Gomez's The Gilda Stories (1991), Butler's Bloodchild and Other Stories (1995) and Fledgling (2005), Toni Morrison's Beloved (1997), Hopkinson's Brown Girl in the Ring (1998), Victor LaValle's The Ballad of Black Tom (2016) and The Changeling (2017), and Tiffany D. Jackson's White Smoke (2021), Zakiya Dalila Harris's The Other Black Girl (2021), and Johnny Compton's The Spite House.[54][55] Jordan Peele edited Out There Screaming: An Anthology Of New Black Horror, which compiled short Black horror stories by various authors, and it was released in 2023.[56] The Black horror comics anthology Shook! A Black Horror Anthology was released in 2024 by Dark Horse Comics and Second Sight Publishing.[57][58]
In 2001, Black horror author Linda Addison became the first Black author to win the Bram Stoker Award. She was later awarded the Horror Writers Association's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017. After Get Out was released, Black horror authors such as Addison, LaValle, Steven Van Patten, whose works addressed racism through horror, found wider audiences.[9]
References
- ^ a b c d e Means Coleman, Robin R. (May 29, 2019). "We're in a golden age of black horror films". The Conversation. Retrieved February 25, 2024.
- ^ LAist. Retrieved February 26, 2024.
- ^ a b c d e Bradley, Laura (October 31, 2021). "The Black Horror Movie Canon Is So Much More Than 'Get Out'". The Daily Beast. Retrieved February 26, 2024.
- JSTOR 45151156. Retrieved February 29, 2024.
- ^ a b c d e f g Agard, Chancellor (August 26, 2020). "From 'Candyman' to 'Antebellum,' this fall is cementing the Black horror revolution". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved February 28, 2024.
- ^ a b c d e Vognar, Chris (March 20, 2019). "Black horror films may be on verge of a resurgence with 'Us'". Houston Chronicle. Retrieved February 29, 2024.
- ^ a b Crucchiola, Jordan (February 11, 2019). "Horror Noire and the Legacy of Get Out Two Years Later". Vulture. Retrieved February 29, 2024.
- ^ a b c d e f g Cutler, Jacqueline (February 3, 2023). "From 'Blacula' to 'Get Out,' the evolution of Black horror films". New York Daily News. Retrieved February 29, 2024.
- ^ a b c d e f g Blake, John (October 4, 2020). "Black writers and filmmakers are bringing new scares to the horror genre". CNN. Retrieved February 28, 2024.
- ^ Mock, Brentin (September 9, 2021). "In Slasher Film 'Candyman,' the Horror Is U.S. Housing Policy". Bloomberg. Retrieved March 2, 2024.
- ^ a b c d Bellot, Gabrielle (November 10, 2021). "How Black Horror Became America's Most Powerful Cinematic Genre". T. Retrieved February 23, 2024.
- ^ a b c d Giorgis, Hannah (April 17, 2021). "Who Wants to Watch Black Pain?". The Atlantic. Retrieved February 29, 2024.
- ^ a b Barbé-Brown, Isaura (October 31, 2020). "Tales from the Hood, the cult horror comedy 25 years on". BFI. Retrieved February 25, 2024.
- ^ a b Coleman, Ryan (June 24, 2020). "'What's Actually Happening': Looking for History in Jordan Peele's 'Get Out'". Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved February 28, 2024.
- ^ CBC. Retrieved February 28, 2024.
- ^ Fearon-Melville, Sabrina (August 24, 2023). "The Blackening: Film challenges horror movie tropes". BBC News. Retrieved February 26, 2024.
- ^ a b c d Daniels, Robert (July 28, 2022). "Black Horror Films Found Off the Beaten Path". Vulture. Retrieved February 23, 2024.
- ^ a b c d e f Holland, Stephanie (October 21, 2023). "Celebrate Halloween With the Scariest Black Movies And TV Series". The Root. Retrieved February 25, 2024.
- ^ a b c Parham, Jason (April 30, 2021). "Black Pain Will Never Stop Trending". Wired. Retrieved March 2, 2024.
- ^ a b Stidhum, Tonja Renée (June 25, 2021). "Not a Kopykat Karen? Director Coke Daniels Insists He Did Not Rip Off Jordan Peele's Get Out". The Root. Retrieved February 26, 2024.
- ^ a b Komonibo, Ineye (June 20, 2023). "The Blackening's Antoinette Robertson On The Necessary Unseriousness Of Black Culture". Refinery29. Retrieved February 26, 2024.
- ^ a b Phillips, Maya (October 19, 2020). "The Unintended Racial Horror of 'Lovecraft Country'". The New York Times. Retrieved February 25, 2024.
- ^ a b McMillian, Laurise (October 27, 2023). "Your Halloween Watchlist Needs These Black Horror Movies & Shows". Refinery29. Retrieved February 25, 2024.
- .
- ^ a b c Gordon, Doug (October 28, 2017). "How 'Night Of The Living Dead' And 'Get Out' Changed The Course Of Black Horror Films". Wisconsin Public Radio. Retrieved February 25, 2024.
- ^ Tensley, Brandon (October 18, 2020). "How horror can guide Black audiences through racial trauma". CNN. Retrieved February 29, 2024.
- ^ Findlay, Kaia; Burney-Scott, Omisade (October 7, 2022). "Why We Can't Look Away From Black Horror". WUNC. Retrieved February 29, 2024.
- ^ a b c Collis, Clark (February 1, 2019). "From 'Blacula' to 'Get Out': The top 5 most important black horror films". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved February 28, 2024.
- ^ a b c d e Jones, Okla (October 16, 2022). "A History Of Black Horror's Evolution In The Modern Age". Essence. Retrieved February 25, 2024.
- ^ a b c Ocampo, Joshua and Polk, Milan (June 22, 2021). "15 Black Horror Films to Watch Now". Men's Health. Retrieved February 25, 2024.
- ^ Benson-Allott, Caetlin (July 18, 2017). "The Defining Feature of George Romero's Movies Wasn't Their Zombies. It Was Their Brains". Slate. Retrieved February 25, 2024.
In 1968's Night of the Living Dead, he did this by casting a black man, Duane Jones, as his hero, then allowing that hero to be executed by a posse of vigilantes who mistake him for a monster—in a sequence that strongly evokes U.S. lynching photos.
- ^ a b c Rocque, Starr (July 22, 2022). "Black Horror 101". Mic. Retrieved March 2, 2024.
- ^ a b Jean-Philippe, McKenzie and Ewart, Asia (September 27, 2021). "22 of the Scariest Horror Movies in Black Cinema". Oprah Daily. Retrieved February 25, 2024.
- ^ Kelley, Sonaiya (March 15, 2019). "A timeline of the most influential black horror films and filmmakers". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved February 29, 2024.
- ^ Kohn, Eric (July 13, 2018). "'Tales From the Hood' Director Rusty Cundieff: Why It Took 20 Years to Make a Sequel to His Black Horror Anthology". IndieWire. Retrieved March 2, 2024.
- ^ Hanninbal Smith, Camilo (October 15, 2020). "Here's why the 1995 film 'Tales from the Hood' still matters". Houston Chronicle. Retrieved February 25, 2024.
- ^ "Anatomy of a Title: 'The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster' (Exclusive)". A.frame. June 8, 2023. Retrieved February 25, 2024.
- ^ Andrews-Dyer, Helena (October 23, 2020). "'Bad Hair' and 9 other scary movies where Black characters actually survive until the end". The Washington Post. Retrieved March 2, 2024.
- ^ Berlatsky, Noah (July 22, 2022). "The metaphor at the center of Jordan Peele's very ominous 'Nope'". NBC News. Retrieved February 23, 2024.
- ^ Washington Post. Retrieved February 25, 2024.
- ^ a b Schager, Nick (September 12, 2022). "'The Blackening' Tries Like Hell to Parody Horror-Movie Racism". The Daily Beast. Retrieved February 25, 2024.
- ^ Briger, Sam (March 30, 2021). "'Lovecraft Country' Creator Aims To Reclaim The Horror Genre For People Of Color". NPR. Retrieved March 2, 2024.
- ^ Perry, Jamyra (October 16, 2020). "'Tales from the Hood 3' star says being Black is scary enough". The Philadelphia Tribune. Retrieved March 2, 2024.
- Austin Chronicle. Retrieved February 25, 2024.
- ^ Maki, Vanessa (June 7, 2023). "'The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster' Review : This Isn't Your Typical Frankenstein's Monster". The Mary Sue. Retrieved February 29, 2024.
- ^ Donato, Matt (June 14, 2023). "The Blackening Roasts Racist Horror Tropes and Slays the Crowd". Paste. Retrieved February 26, 2024.
Tim Story's The Blackening is ground-standing Black horror that'd make trendsetters from Rusty Cundieff to Jordan Peele proud.
- ^ St. Félix, Doreen (May 31, 2019). "'Ma,' 'The Help,' and the Vexing Collaborations of Octavia Spencer and Tate Taylor". The New Yorker. Retrieved 26 February 2024.
- ISBN 978-1-4968-4549-8.
- The Mary Sue. Retrieved February 26, 2024.
- ^ Young, Cate (November 20, 2020). "Why So Many Black Horror Films Are Horrors Themselves". The American Prospect. Retrieved February 29, 2024.
- ^ Pulliam-Moore, Charles (May 2, 2021). "'Racism+' Is How You Get Shows Like The Falcon and the Winter Soldier". Gizmodo Australia. Retrieved March 2, 2024.
- ^ Allen, Tavius (October 13, 2021). "How 'Get Out' Inadvertently Started a Wave of Black Trauma Films". Collider. Retrieved February 29, 2024.
- ^ Goffe, Nadira (September 13, 2023). "It's Time to Retire the Black Woman Hair Trope in Film and TV". Slate. Retrieved March 2, 2024.
- ^ Giorgis, Hannah (October 30, 2023). "Six Books That Will Scare You—And Make You Think". The Atlantic. Retrieved March 2, 2024.
- ^ Woods, Paula L. (October 26, 2023). "6 books to get you started with Black horror, classic and new". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved March 2, 2024.
- ^ Williams, Allison; Placzek, Jessica; Williams, Veralyn; Luse, Brittany (October 3, 2023). "Jordan Peele presents a 'new' Black horror" (Podcast episode). It's Been a Minute. NPR.
- ^ Salmon, Will (June 8, 2023). "Award-winning Black creators unite for Shook! A Black Horror Anthology". GamesRadar+. Retrieved March 2, 2024.
- ^ Reid, Calvin (February 13, 2024). "Panel Mania: 'Shook! A Black Horror Anthology,' Edited by Second Sight Publishing". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved March 2, 2024.