Horror Noir(e)

 

Would you describe yourself as a film buff? Well then, ask yourself what is film and what distinguishes a good one from a bad one? In my own words, a film buff is someone deeply fascinated in how film genre, stylistic choice, musical score, plot device and other intricate facets are all sort of amalgamated to create a lasting impression on the viewer. Film then, is a visual art form in which these elements come together in motion pictures. In more elevated terms, a film buff is often referred to as a cinephile, which is a portmanteau for cinema and philia, meaning a lover of film. According to Vocabulary.com, one way of defining the meaning of film can be thought of as “a medium that disseminates moving pictures”. Essentially, film can serve as a form of expression, both reflective of personal experiences and/or historical or current events in society. But if we were to think about the historical makeup of our America, it can be easy to notice that positive media representation of marginalized people–such as Black Americans and the African diaspora at large—is terribly scarce. So in this article I want to delve into the genre of horror, more specifically looking into the psychological connection between fear and the grotesque, the ‘noir’ subgenre, and the 2019 documentary entitled Horror Noire. The documentary seeks to explore the relationship between the horror genre and Black folk across a century’s worth of film, beginning from as early as 1915 up until the contemporary period of our millennium. For this reason Xavier Neal-Burgin’s film is meant to analyze the role that Black people have played in terrifying stories, backlit by our highly stratified, racialized American foreground. 

As previously mentioned, this article will look briefly into the history of the horror genre before pondering upon why we enjoy things that are supposed to frighten us. For starters, 2017-18 data showed that horror movies had the best rate of return at the box-office. This simply means that the films that make more money also provided a greater return in profit for investors. This may seem shocking, considering the fact that averaged movie ratings have favored against scary films steadily between the 1960s and recent years according to this article. Some of these similar sentiments are also lightly mentioned in the 2010 documentary, Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy (which can be found here). But what exactly constitutes what can be classified as horrific?  How did we reach this conclusion? In the book Danse Macabre (which means the ‘dance of death’), written by famed horror literature author Stephen King, he states that, “If movies are the dreams of the mass culture…horror movies are the nightmares”. And horror is really as simple as that: our fears are socially constructed by social taboos, extremities in science and technology, trauma, and our own imaginations. Horror films give us an opportunity to face our fears head-on and decode what intellectual properties lead monsters to do what they do—and in some way, appeals to human’s innate survival instincts. In addition, the genre of horror is pretty diverse, comprising subgenres such as gothic, slasher, and psychological to name a few. One of these subgenres also include ‘noir’, the French word for ‘black’. To clarify, ‘noir’ itself isn’t exclusively a horror category; actually, it’s a style. However there can be ‘noir’ elements in a scary movie and hence, is ‘horror noir’. Film noir can be characterized by “cynical heroes, stark lighting effects, frequent use of flashbacks, intricate plots, and an underlying existentialist philosophy” according to Britannica. With this in mind, let’s look at what purpose Black people have served in the film’s long history, as explained in Neal-Burgin’s documentary. 

The 2019 documentary Horror Noire exposes the tumultuous nature of the portrayal of Black men and women in horror genre films, beginning with the highly controversial film, The Birth of a Nation. What makes this particular movie horrific is its blatant racism that accurately represents conditions rampant in volatile vintage America, a film once endorsed by former President Woodrow Wilson. In fact, The Birth of a Nation was one of the first films screened in the White House—specifically it’s claimed to be the second film ever shown in the White House! In this film, no actual Black people were used but were rather portrayed through blackface and thus, perpetuating problematic stereotypes of the hypersexual/ Mandingo black man and therefore, justifying lynchings. Besides that, Horror Noire also looks at other periods in film such as the monster era of Black re-interpretations of classics such as Blacula for example. Film experts in the film also explain the insidious undertones of many mainstream horror classics in which the ‘monster’ or ‘alien’ acts as a metaphor for Black people. This comes as no surprise given that historically, classic film and literature (as a consequence of our American political system) have depicted Black men and women as subhuman, deviant creatures possessing mystical powers, accelerated sex drives, and an overall lack of self control or are painfully stupid (i.e. as shown in minstrel shows). Noire then spends time pointing out common characteristics of Black characters such as the sacrificial negro and the vodou queen among a few other outdated tropes. Finally, the documentary looks at more recent examples of Black horror such as the popular 2017 movie Get Out by Jordan Peele. Essentially, what I’m trying to convey is that the myths that Black people don’t like scary movies simply aren’t true: we just haven’t often been given the platform to enter the mainstream until recent years. It’s my hope that as socio-political, socio-economic conditions of the world continue to change, that film will too and more diverse stories can be told. 

For anyone interested in figuring out how you can write Black horror, check out this blog post here. 

 

• black people
• documentary
• entertainment
• film
• Horror Movies
• movies
• review
• scary movies