Ashlee Blackwell – Bitch Flicks

On Our Terms: A Black [Women’s] Horror Film Aesthetic

What horrors are directly related to Black women? What elements, themes, aesthetic appeal would make a horror film a solid example of Black female centrality and agency? And even still, strike fear in a universal audience… Our ghosts: how are they different?

This guest post written by Ashlee Blackwell originally appeared at Graveyard Shift Sisters and appears here as part of our theme week on Women in Horror. It is cross-posted with permission.

Black Aesthetics. It was a class I took as an undergraduate many years ago. What defined the term for the purposes of the course began with how Africans from thousands of years ago developed a culture of leisure, creation for pleasure in what is seen. The word aesthetic by its very meaning is “concerned with beauty or the appreciation of beauty” and more openly, “a set of principles underlying and guiding the work of a particular artist or artistic movement.” Our numerous discussions naturally shifted to the present and understanding of what encompasses Black aesthetics today on our terms. Specifically an African American aesthetic.

There is a reason why Patricia Hill Collins’ flagship book, Black Feminist Thought notes the critical implications of experience in her theory. When a “historically oppressed group” such as Black women produce “social thought designed to oppose oppression… not only does the form assumed by this thought diverge from standard academic theory — it can take the form of poetry, music, essays, and the like,” opposing racist and sexist practices imposed upon their livelihood in these ways. Simply put, “U.S. Black women participated [and continue to participate] in constructing and reconstructing these oppositional knowledges. Through the lived experiences gained within their extended families and communities, individual African American women fashioned their own ideas about the meaning of Black womanhood.”

There is a daily, moment by moment struggle with intersectionality. Black women can and do, many times, never, and/or always, magnify our individual and communal Black aesthetic as a part of our identities, bridging our experiences as Black women to our interests.

Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995) directed by Ernest R. Dickerson

This experience could carry so remarkably in horror films. Sometimes discussions on cinematic horror efforts by Black women focus on whether we could even classify the text as horror. Eve’s Bayou, Beloved, rely on a significant degree of supernatural elements to tell their stories. Instead of imagining horror, death, gore and the grotesque, supernatural beings in excess, the emphasis should always be on the attempts at soliciting fear and unease in an audience. With horror, that is the base. What creates a comfortable classification are elements that break the fourth wall: demons, goblins, ghosts, killers, zombies, and various other personifications suspended in the unknown.

I’m deeply curious as to why horror isn’t a space where a number of Black women are exercising cinematic efforts in tackling supernatural stories that feel familiar. I hear it time a plenty about other female horror filmmakers utilizing the horror genre as an exorcise in personal fears embedded in their womanhood. Wretched (2007) does this, Hollywood Skin (2010) also. What horrors are directly related to Black women? What elements, themes, aesthetic appeal would make a horror film a solid example of Black female centrality and agency? And even still, strike fear in a universal audience…

Our ghosts: how are they different?

Ghost stories are so prevalent because every single culture on the planet has a mythos surrounding them. They vary in form and symbolism so much, I’d be here for weeks non-stop writing what I wanted to be a thoughtful essay into a book. But imagine ghosts acting as direct reflectors of our fears an anxieties. Or as malevolent guides into the nightmares faced by Black mothers losing their sons at disproportionate rates. Ancestors past who fought for equality, those that didn’t, suspended in acquiescence. The possibilities are limitless.

Tales From The Hood (1995) accomplished this to an extent. Although male-centric, it opened the door for opportunities in depicting the fear in African American men’s lived experiences. Crazy K in a nuanced way haunted the minds of his three killers in a snapshot of violence amongst Black males in the 1990s.

For Black women, we could ask ourselves how ghosts would play a role in our physical and psychological undoing. How our spirits are unique to our beings?

The grotesque: Our bodies in historical context.

Research, work, and talk about a Black woman’s body is never done. My recent delve into critical reading on artist Kara Walker’s “A Subtlety or the Marvelous Sugar Baby” exhibit by the prolific Dr. Brittney Cooper and other cultural and social news monitoring, lately involving Nicki Minaj, points directly at a long history of complicated approaches to perception, agency and authority about the Black female body. Once mandated as livestock, ripe for breeding under the most inhumane and psychologically frightening circumstances. This history is taught in these essays, in college classrooms and so forth because of an argument that surrounds the cycle of a time where literal ownership over our bodies were littered with an ideology that places an unwavering burden of negativity on our physical selves. Our lips are too big, our voices are too deep, our skin is too dark, our hair is abnormally textured.

Goodnight My Love (2012) directed by Kellee Terrell

A Twitter inquiry from model and filmmaker Lary Love Dolley pointed directly towards tackling these issues within the horror genre. With fervent excitement, I assume she is looking into developing a horror film surrounding the pervasive perm, hair straightening process when she asked if it had been done before. I’ve personally never seen a film that has, but I imagine the vast possibilities for discussion and extreme special makeup effects! We are taught we are the antithesis of beauty, yet we “produce an opposed thought and aesthetic” designed to challenge history as it carries into the present.

I’ve been attempting to conceptualize a space for Black voices in the horror film genre for awhile now. Imagining new ideas for thought when we think about what a “Black horror film” is and how we can take our definitions further. Our experiences and cultural productions are so convoluted as to be so ripe for cinematic exploration in genre film, that it would bring a fresh flood of originality horror desperately needs.

The top image is a still from Ganja & Hess (1973) directed by Bill Gunn.

Ashlee Blackwell is the founder and managing editor of Graveyard Shift Sisters, a website dedicated to highlighting the work of women of color in the horror and science fiction genres. She holds a MA in Liberal Arts from Temple University and aspires to bring intersectional horror into the college classroom.

20 Years of ‘The Craft’: Why We Needed More of Rochelle

Rochelle was the social outcast with the other handful of social outcasts of St. Bernard Academy, sure. But how do we cinematize the Black girl outcast teenager that many of us felt like? That just so happens to be a practicing witch? Much of what can be read of Rochelle relies heavily on those of us whom she meant so much to.

This guest post written by Ashlee Blackwell originally appeared at Graveyard Shift Sisters and appears here as part of our theme week on Women in Horror. It is cross-posted with permission.

The Craft (1996) is a film that came out around the time I turned 13. A freshman in high school and firmly established as a minority within a minority in my predominantly white/European immigrant working-class suburb right outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was a painful observation. I was constantly confronting microaggressions about what kind of Black person I was supposed to be, and wasn’t, from all of my peers. I was the weirdo. And I found myself socializing with other weirdos who were the pop culture nerds, especially those who liked genre films and TV (The X-Files and Buffy The Vampire Slayer consumed my life for many years) as much as I did.

But my racial difference only highlighted the rise of a reaction that one particular friend, in retrospect I realize wasn’t much of one, consistently searched for from me. As if my nerdiness, introvertedness and his incomprehension that I didn’t fit his concept of a Black person was a code to crack. It was twenty years ago and I still remember this high school hallway conversation all too vividly. He just had to tell me about the Black girl in this new movie called The Craft. And how Rochelle (the Black girl, played by Rachel True) was told by Laura Lizzie (Christine Taylor) after she bravely confronts her as the victim of Laura’s harassment that she doesn’t like “negroids.” Instead of being observantly taken aback, he dished this unwanted spoiler with delight and amusement. As if blatant racism, fictional or not, was something to laugh about.

I don’t know what I expected from a 13-year-old white guy. I don’t know why I even remained casually friendly with him. But I do remember not finding it as chuckle-inducing as he did. And I additionally remember my silence. Because I couldn’t quite find the words at such a young age so quickly, not to express being offended (I wasn’t), but to question why this particular scene I just had to know about, and maybe even reprimand his emotional immaturity and insensitivity.

It was one of those moments where I knew I would never fit in. Anywhere. I would always be the weirdo.

I don’t remember when I finally saw The Craft but when I did, Rochelle’s interactive scenes with the obtuse Laura cut deep. I was flustered and empathetic to a character that was virtually invisible to an entire school population outside of her small coven of comrades, unless to be the unchecked target of racist scorn. This made her experience even that more isolating in contrast to her white female counterparts who, if they did get that brief seat at the table, were promptly dismissed for their class, burn scars, and not performing for the teenage ‘good ‘ol boys’ club. The most glaring difference; Rochelle was never going to get that seat. Along with Sarah (Robin Tunney), Nancy (Fairuza Balk), and Bonnie (Neve Campbell), all making a pact to use the dark arts to channel their angst into empowerment.

Unfortunately, Rochelle’s score to settle was not explored and displayed enough with the emotional weight it carried. It was played as superficial comeuppance for Laura’s racial intolerance. A spell was cast on her to lose what we are to assume was one of Laura’s most cherished assets and core of self-worth; her hair. But it is interesting how her straight, blonde locks were a symbol in itself of an idealized status of social capital, supposed racial superiority, and prosperity. It is interesting how Rochelle makes a sweeping statement, one so quick, sneaky, and easily missed, amongst her friends about a spell to “make me blonde.” I picked up on that 20 years ago and it’s still so apparent to the damage that these experiences inflict on women of color. These are the pieces to Rochelle we could never fully put together because the entire mold was never assembled. What’s missing is much more than The Craft could explore in its run time. And that’s more than just unfortunate.

The movie for many sparked the thirst to explore the deep intersections of the weirdo. Rochelle was the social outcast with the other handful of social outcasts of St. Bernard Academy, sure. But how do we cinematize the Black girl outcast teenager that many of us felt like? That just so happens to be a practicing witch?

Much of what can be read of Rochelle relies heavily on those of us whom she meant so much to. What kinds of conversations did young Black girls have back in 1996 and are having now about the importance of her presence in a film that at least, didn’t blend her in colorblind rhetoric? How did many us find camaraderie, empathy, and imagination in Rochelle’s broader, unseen story?

It’s been a welcomed challenge to do some unpacking and keep the discourse on Rochelle circulating. The Craft is timeless by the strength of the performances and themes. What the film conveys are ideas we carry well into adulthood, never dismissing their importance in our personal growth.

On the surface, it doesn’t necessarily do Rochelle any good for arc’s sake to supernaturally one-up the Mean Girl factor in objection to the popular Blonde girl’s accepted racist attitude, but it does bring an awareness to that other dynamic of being the wierdo — of how there are those who work to shame difference simply on the basis of skin color alone. Why is Rochelle reprimanded for, for some, being the enactor, the catharsis, of every brown teenaged girl who’s had to deal with racism and not exactly know how to combat it at such a tender age?

When True herself sat down with HitFix in May 2016, she discusses the idea that Rochelle and The Craft offered audiences in 1996 an alternative to the kind of Black characters and stories signified as Black that were being greenlit by film studios. Lamenting the fact that the scene with Rochelle’s parents was cut and her motivation for next-level witchcraft mastery was combating racial discrimination, she seemed determined to bring her very best to the material she was given. And it shows. Rachel’s government name alone sparks so many good memories for so many people. She’s proven to be a versatile actress that you’re constantly ready to embrace what she does next. Her presence in The Craft has left an indelible imprint.

Black Women in 1980’s Horror Films: Tokenism and Regression

However, I do thoroughly enjoy and sometimes defend 80s horror and the Black (female) characters I can find, but it’s crucial to examine the narrow confines of their characterization. …The 80s opened up a dialogue about where Black women’s place was not only in society, but in horror.

This guest post written by Ashlee Blackwell originally appeared at Graveyard Shift Sisters and appears here as part of our theme week on Ladies of the 1980s. It is cross-posted with permission.

Horror in the 1980s saw its most economically prosperous boom ever with droves of young audiences flocking to the theaters each weekend to catch the latest mainstream fare and the independent distribution circuit got a taste for massive dollar returns thanks to VHS technology, video rental stores, and small film companies not yet chewed and swallowed by the landmark Telecommunications Act in 1996. The abundance of films were endless. So much so, myself and other horror aficionados are still combing purposely through the virtual racks to find untapped treasures, and others we loved but don’t remember by name. Unsurprising, diverse character representations weren’t necessarily a part of this equation.

The best description of Black characters in horror films in the 1980s is “fairly fleeting or nonexistent.” With major horror films in settings that reflected the “white flight” from “urban” (read: poor/working class, people of color) spaces, the reality of camps, suburbs, and modern, renewal terrains is where supernatural forces found a home away from the reality-based, city horrors. Of course, you had both non-White interlopers as insignificant, stand-in characters (actor Richard Lawson as Ryan in Poltergeist comes to mind) and the fly in the buttermilk characters I often mirror with the trend of the Black middle class during this time.

With sparse African American presence on this foundation, “Black characters’ value was confined to their ability to affect an assimilable air in cross-racial, interpersonal encounters,” often reduced to tokenized roles that saw them “blend” in with the group with no discernible interest in fleshing their characters out, making them just as multi-faceted, whole individuals as their white counterparts. However, I do thoroughly enjoy and sometimes defend 80s horror and the Black (female) characters I can find, but it’s crucial to examine the narrow confines of their characterization. While it was important for them to be “seen,” it’s disheartening that they were left to our imaginations to assess their merit.

Below are three of note, as they are as diverse in characterization as they are in setting. Within the realm of Black women in 1980’s horror films, they are standouts and widely recognized; funny enough because they are amongst the few.

Grace Jones as Katrina in Vamp (1986)

There’s one self-indulgent wish I have: to go back a few years to the pop culture conference I attended and to not have another meeting conflict with one graduate student’s presentation on Grace Jones’ vampiric performance in this film. I’m still wildly interested in the author’s thoughts on the dynamics of this character. There’s a lot to say about a significant character who does not speak. Your understanding comes from Katrina’s movements and reactions to those with whom she interacts. Katrina is feared, respected, and desired as any head vampress of a seedy strip club should be. Regardless of the film’s camp, it’s sort of an original step with Jones’ personae bringing to life such art and terror to a memorable character.

Toy Newkirk as Sheila Kopecky in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988)

It’s not without surprise to those in-the-know that this character is a personal favorite. Sheila is the first casualty of the barrier broken between the “Elm Street children” and the “fresh meat.” She is the Black friend who her white high school co-horts depend on for math tutoring and bug zappers. She is a part of the white female protagonist’s (Alice) arc in avenging her fallen friends and defeating Freddy. And in step with this particular Elm Street franchise installment and the famed sentiment, she proves the rule loosely solidified in this decade that the Black person does die first.

We don’t learn much about Sheila: we don’t see her at home, with family, taking interest in anyone romantically, or alone with her thoughts. To be fair, that’s not the tone of this film with a clear focus on Alice vs. Freddy. A small grace that Sheila offers is the fact that she strays heavily from caricature often associated with Black women in mainstream films. She wasn’t a “sassy, eccentric, magical servant,” a trope long associated with Black women in horror films long before the blaxploitation period in the 1970s. In fact, she was an extroverted nerd. Because this is a character so rare, if arguably non-existent for Black women on screen, it makes A Nightmare On Elm Street 4 revolutionary.

Lisa Bonet as Epiphany Proudfoot in Angel Heart (1987)

An ethereal presence in a surreal mystery, Epiphany provided both distraction and information to Harry Angel (Mickey Rourke), a private investigator who travels down to the American south to find the whereabouts of a musician named Johnny Favorite. The story was Angel’s; Epiphany’s presence had its share of significance considering the structure of the story. Bonet’s role was of a mystical practitioner of voodoo, more inclined to offer Angel rather cryptic facts about her mother, Evangeline who was the deceased lover of Favorite’s. Angel Heart‘s place in genre as a period mystery has me refraining from revealing too much of the story, but the beats that addressed matters of race are much better for analysis than the prior two films mentioned.

It is difficult to separate artist from the art here. Bonet was on a highway to super stardom during the film’s release, and her explicit love scene with Rourke’s character, considering their age difference and grisly imagery accompanying, sent a tizzy of rumors spiraling, citing this role as possibly being one of the reasons she and Bill Cosby were infamously at odds which Bonet has disputed.

In what may be considered more cult than mainstream, Angel Heart has earned its stripes as being one of the more bold and richly dark thrillers of the decade.

With a significant absence of Black filmmakers creating work in horror during the 1980s, representation was scant. Black characters were villains, supportives, and ultimately, victims just like other disposable characters. The problem lies in a lack of consideration for non-White actors to receive fulfilling, leading roles, not matter how slashery a horror film in the 80s was. It took the renaissances of Black cinematic genre storytelling of the 1970s and 1990s to bring more compelling roles back to these characters, Black women in particular. They have set the tone for what mainstream and independent horror filmmakers of any background are slowly but steadily doing today.

However, the 80s opened up a dialogue about where Black women’s place was not only in society, but in horror. Katrina demonstrates a stark fear of “the Other” who dwells beyond the parameters of the safe, White institutions, Sheila is a marker of assimilation and the rise of the Black middle class with a Huxtable like allure, while also being a Black girl nerd we like, and Epiphany is rooted in a past that Reagan’s message to America desired; a return to the good ‘ole days when miscegenation was taboo if not illegal. This may not have been a time to necessarily celebrate representation and diversity in the genre. But there’s enough open for much discourse that, whether intended or not, these films have left for its consumers to chew on for years to come.

References:

*Additional information and references not linked are from Dr. Robin Means Coleman’s book, Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from the 1890s to Present. New York: Routledge, 2011.