Friday, April 19, 2024

Tag: stereotypes

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? Racial Dynamics in Get Out vs. The Invitation
Watching Get Out in the theater in 2017, I couldn't help but think about the movie The Invitation from the previous year. Both films have a similar setup: an interracial (specifically, black and white) couple heading to a remote get-together whose hosts turn out to have dark ulterior motives....
Eloise
Eloise is pretty standard ghosts-of-mental-patients-and-staff-haunting-an-abandoned-asylum fare, but for the purposes of this site, it stands out for the role of Dell (Brandon T. Jackson), a character that's such a crudely drawn throwback, he should've been thrown away before filming began. Dell single-handedly embodies at least four tired black horror...
White Fright; Or, Why Are There No Black People in Haunted House Movies?
Ever since 2009's Paranormal Activity wrested the horror crown away from the Saw franchise, fright films featuring ghosts or demonic entities have ruled the genre, churning out hit after hit -- from the Paranormal Activity films to The Haunting in Connecticut, The Devil Inside, Mama, The Last Exorcism and...
Black Horror Movies
Ever wonder how you would fare if you were a character in a horror movie? Would you be the "final girl/guy," or would you be the first to have a harpoon lodged in your rectum? Here's a handy flow chart to help you figure out your fate.
The Green Pile: The Steaming Racial Dynamics of The Green Mile
Originally published on PopMatters.com Have you ever met someone that you instantly hated? I mean, with a passion; not a mild distrust or a 'don't-drop-the-soap' hesitation, but a deep-seated gut instinct that this person should be pushed down a flight of stairs in order to save humanity. For me, that person...
LL Cool J in Deep Blue Sea
Originally published on eHow.com Introduction Being a black person in a horror movie isn't easy. You're rarely the hero, hardly ever the villain and more often than not you end up dead. But as they say, "When in Rome…die as a Roman," or something like that. At least there are steps...
The Black Die Young: The Internal Struggle of a Black Horror Movie Fan
Originally published on PopMatters.com I have a secret passion; the less addicted of you might call it an addiction. I like to watch. I rent base, filthy movies and slip them into brown paper bags so no one can tell. I sit alone in seedy, near-empty theaters, pleasuring myself with...
Scary Sistas: A Brief History of Black Women in Horror Films
Originally posted on Pretty-Scary.net Black women in cinematic history have long faced the double-barreled Hollywood stigma of race and gender "otherness," their fleeting moment of glory coming in the '90s when "You go, girl!" was introduced into the popular lexicon. On the more formal level of Oscar recognition, meanwhile, the...
Mario Van Peebles in Jaws: The Revenge
Be they stereotypes or monotypes, they're the "types" that most black characters in horror films inevitably fall into... The Spook As the name implies, the spook is spooked by all things spooky. Typically the comic sidekick, he's often spared from death by his ability to make people laugh. The "classic spook"...
The Shining horror movie poster
As a kid, The Shining made an impression on me not so much because it was a creepy, nightmare-inducing trip (which it was), but because Scatman Crothers ended up with an axe in the chest. It was an early prototype for the now-cliched black character death in modern horror...