Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on rockin’ flatscreen
I like horror movies. I’ve liked horror movies for a long time, and I’m fascinated not just by the movies themselves but by the stories behind them. For a long time, my favorite horror documentary has been Nightmares in Red, White and Blue about the American horror movie industry; I recommend it without reservation. So when I heard that there was a documentary about the relationship between Black audiences and actors and horror films, I was very much intrigued. Well, thanks to my wife’s love of the show Dexter, we have the AMC add-on for Amazon, and this means I finally got a chance to watch Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror.
What makes this topic so interesting is that this relationship has for a long time been one-sided. Black audiences have often loved horror but have not been loved in return (a sentiment expressed almost immediately when the film begins). There are many tropes relating to the Black experience in horror movies. Black characters are the first to die, or will sacrifice themselves for white characters, for instance. Black characters are also often fonts of ancient wisdom and are similarly the source of danger. In many older movies, Black characters are comic relief, and in horror movies without Black characters, the monsters themselves are often coded to be at least non-white (just as many movie villains in general are queer-coded). In that respect, the relationship between Black audiences and their representations on screen has been almost abusive.
