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Blog Post #3

Throughout this past week’s discussions and lectures, we have gone over many more important factors of African American Horror. The points regarding this evident topic that we discussed in class so far have taught me many new things about this field which I previously had not been exposed to. This week in particular, however, the movie Candy Man and the many themes that are involved in it is what stood out to me the most. Specifically, the theme of black trauma through a white lens is one thing that we discussed which really intrigued me. As was mentioned in Thursday's lecture, this theme where the many horrors of black trauma are seen through the lens of a white person. For example, in the film Candy Man, we can see how the black characters are seemingly the background characters to Helen, the white woman. After discussing this in class I also began to think back to one of the previous lectures and started to draw connections between this theme and the one about how black characters are typically made to be seen as easily dispensable in film. I believe that this theme of making them easily dispensible is seen once again here in this film, especially in regard to their appearances compared to Helen’s story. Another theme of this film that I found to be engaging was the common theme that has been seen throughout movie history where a film will portray a black man sort of ‘on the hunt’ after a white woman. This was another type of common characteristic in African American Horror, and even just horror in general, that I had not really paid much attention to in the past. However, after discussing the history of Hollywood, it becomes clear that this theme has been seen time and time again. For example, in “Birth of a Nation”, this horribly racist film that was once praised by America demonstrates this exactly, depicting black men as monsters. Another example of this that we went over which I honestly never even thought of as matching this description was the example of the 1930s film “King Kong”. This has obviously been one of the most popular films in Hollywood’s history, however, I never thought to draw a connection between the plot of that film and this theme of making black men appear as evil toward white women. While this may be a more subtle application of the harmful stereotype, a connection can definitely still be made.