By Jonina Anderson-Lopez.
Racial representation in visual horror fictions have also become a trope in the way that audiences do not expect to see minorities—or at least not very often and not alive for very long. Due to long-standing tropes, minorities in visual horror fictions have become, in a sense, invisible.”
Visual horror abounds with tropes, particularly harmful tropes. Each trope appeals to audiences for different reasons, and how tropes are adopted represents cultural concerns. For instance, the film It Follows is a film about spreading a sex-fueled curse, but the trope of sex and death is explored by director and writer David Robert Mitchell to represent repression, anxiety, taboo, and free will. In Blacula, the Dracula retelling illustrates societal oppression, identity, and slavery. However, a trope can also become a vehicle for oppression, such as the aforementioned bad mother or the Final Girl. While it can be inspiring to see a woman as the final (and sometimes s trong-willed) survivor, this trope also encourages the commercial standard of beauty, which for Hollywood has long included normative Whiteness. To that end, racial representation in visual horror fictions have also become a trope in the way that audiences do not expect to see minorities—or at least not very often and not alive for very long. Due to long-standing tropes, minorities in visual horror fictions have become, in a sense, invisible.
With this next chapter, I will examine racial representation in visual horror and impacts on the latest diversity cycle. As a foundation for analysis, I map out minority lead characters who have survived in horror films from 1941 onward in the form of a Table. The historical assessment is useful in understanding trends of representation. Using a postcolonial lens from Linnie Blake, I argue that visual horror has proliferated opportunities in this latest cycle, such as with Get Out, Us, or It Comes at Night. Racial representations in television have been more prevalent and fast-growing in this latest cycle, as I assess in the Chapter 6 with case studies of The Exorcist, Fear the Walking Dead, The Twilight Zone, and Castle Rock.
BADF: Brothers Always Die First
The lack of racial diversity in horror fictions is so prevalent that is has become a sad but well-known joke in the social consciousness. Black men die first, Asians are annoying, Latinx are hypersexual or comic relief, and Native Americans are only present in the form of angry spirits. Tropes notwithstanding, minorities do not always die in visual horror fictions, but their rate of survival is often outpaced by their White counterparts. Even when a racial minority is included, a common theme is to kill them off quickly, especially if they are a Black male:
As Above So Below, 2014, Benji, the cameraman, and only black person in the group is pushed down a well and killed. In House of Wax, 2005, the only black character is killed with a knife by the murderer. The Lazarus Effect in 2015, kills its only black character Donald Glover in a crushed locker. The 1980, The Shining, has a very small cast with only one on screen death, which is the black grounds keeper. In 2012, the Cabin in the Woods, the token black character is stabbed to death by a zombie [“Why Does the Black” par. 2].
Since racial representations in visual horror fictions are so underwhelming, their appearance and deaths are noticeable. The audience may be more aware of minority deaths because, on the flip side, they are used to seeing White characters live and die. White male and female characters are killed off far more than minorities, simply because they are more likely to be featured. Following this reasoning, displaying minority characters and killing them could be considered a rarity in the larger scheme of horror fictions. Nevertheless, the very fact that racial minorities are rarely depicted (and then when they are, they have a high instance of dying) is a constant which reinforces the perception of them as a “throwaway” facet of society. The trope of “the Black man dies first” implies that minorities are incapable (or worse yet, unworthy) of survival in the first place.
Instead of immediately killing minorities, some visual horror fictions feature them as lead characters. Some of these characters even make it to the end credits. Writer Matt Barone compiled a list to analyze the “Black guys die first” trope. After surveying 50 films, he shares that only “0.1%, or 5 out of 50, of [the films] have black characters who die first” (Barone par. 53). The tally is incorrect, because in actuality, it amounts to 10 percent of the movies surveyed. It’s not clear if the incorrect calculation was intentional or accidental. Another number Barone did not consider is that 26 out of the 50 films (or 52 percent) featured minority characters who died, though they did not die first. I would argue that this points to another trope, that “the Black character is most likely to die,” even if the character doesn’t always die first.
Inspired by Barone, I created a chart in consideration of minority leading characters that survive until the end. For the sake of the list, “minority” means any leading character that falls under the definition of person of color, LGBTQ, or character with disabilities. Even as minor characters are important, like writer Malinda Lo, I believe that “characters of color, LGBT and disabled characters deserve to be the heroes of their own stories” (par. 10) instead of expendable stereotypes. For this reason, the list mostly cites film protagonists, while sometimes citing other films for their inclusion of minority co-stars. The included film titles in Figure 18 were compiled from horror recommendations from Barone’s work, fan websites, John Muir’s numerous texts on horror films, Robin Coleman’s horror text, and lists from The New York Times and Vulture.
Table of Horror Films Depicting a Surviving Minority. (Created by the author with data from various sources.)






The chart, Figure 15, includes over one hundred and fifty films and so only encompasses a fraction of horror. For a third of the films, the surviving racial minority characters are not the stars and instead might be titled “ co-stars,” in the sense that their names do not appear first, second, or third on the casting list. However, based upon character involvement, the audience may feel so invested as to categorize Oscar Isaac of Annihilation (2018) or DeRay Davis of The Fog (2005) as main characters. Notably, these co-stars experience a definitive moment of survival in the narrative (meaning, though they are not main characters, they survive in a very noticeable way), and so I included them (and c o-stars like them) on the list. I avoided other films in which minor (minor, as in not a lead or co-starring character) racial characters survive until the end (like Beware! The Blob) or in which minorities play the lead only to die (as in 2007’s I Am Legend).
While Figure 15 spans multiple decades, it does not feature every horror film made in the United States. Over the century, thousands of U.S. horror films have been made. I reviewed films based on popularity, as this improves their likelihood of joining the horror canon. My measure of popularity included several factors, including distribution, quality, and the race of the main characters. For instance, I left films off the chart that lacked distribution (like Night of the Cobra Woman) or were plagued by issues of quality (like The Supernaturals). I excluded many films that starred a White cis woman, not because they are not a minority but because their White and heterosexual status have become normative standards in horror. Thus, White cis women are over-represented when compared to other minorities. As the previous section explored, women have a presence in horror fictions, but only how and where men want them, and this largely includes featuring White heterosexual women as sexual objects, characters to be killed off, or as Final Girls. Since I have already discussed these issues and disparities, I chose to focus on other minorities with this chart, on the basis of characteristics like race, culture, sexual orientation, and disabilities.
The chart (Figure 15) points to several trends. Among the films, Latinx, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, Asians, LGBTQs, and characters with disabilities are the least represented. Overall, minority women have the smallest presence on the list before 2013 but experience an increase afterward to more than fifty mentions. Before 2004’s Blade III: Trinity, “Black man” is the leading minority to survive, with over thirty-five mentions. After 2004’s Hellbent, “Black man” is outpaced by other minorities, only being mentioned over thirty times. From Hellbent to the end of list, more than ninety films with minority leads are produced over eighteen years, compared to over seventy minority-lead films over sixty years. From 2013 onward, there are over seventy films with minority leads (or co-leads) that survive the narrative. One more thing of note is that when minorities co-star in a film (The Omega Man, IT, The Cloverfield Paradox, The Fog, and Annihilation), the budget and production quality run high. When minorities star in a film (Unsullied, Abby, Frankenfish, Jacob’s Ladder, Spell, Dr. Black, and Mr. Hyde), the film seems less likely to have a big budget, and so production quality is lower, perhaps resulting in a higher number of negative reviews. There are exceptions to this, with low-budget films like Get Out, Bones, and Grindhouse: Death Proof (but despite a large budget, Bones met with poor reviews).
Among the trends, there are more than twenty mentions of Latinx characters from 2013 onward, and some are Puerto Rican (though I did not make these distinctions on the chart). Before 2013, there are few mentions of Latinx characters. This reveals under-representation of leading Latinx characters to survive in horror fictions. There are exceptions to this, like Alone, Fantasy Island, The Devil Below, Wrong Turn, and Scream. With none of those examples being critically or a udience-acclaimed, the list reveals expanding roles for diverse characters over the last ten years, picking up heavily over the last five—although, many of the minority opportunities leave them listed as c o-star rather than as the titular character. After 2020, the number of minorities starring in a film and surviving has increased, although this “increase” is based only upon the films I curated based on a minority star or c o-star and their survival. This left out other films, like X (2022) or Escape the Field (2022) that co-starred a minority (with Escape the Field even featuring a minority c o-star on promo posters) only to kill them off. For each year on the chart, there were several more horror films released that included a minority star or co-star that did not survive until the end. On the surface, creators are acknowledging inclusion for what they consider to be a diverse cast, at least for co-stars and minor characters. Though, maintaining a majority of lead characters as White reveals a failure to fully address the diversity issue. This also demonstrates that while minorities are not omitted in recent horror fictions, there is room for improvement concerning inclusion and assessment of minority-helmed films as “valid.”
Certain decades within the chart (Figure 15) show more instances (or cycles) of diverse films than others. The 1990s have twenty-seven films, while the 1970s have ten. John Kenneth Muir describes the fears and worries of the 1990s as changing to “transmit tales of economic woe and social inequality” (5). The 1970s was also a decade indicative of change, but film studios took advantage with Blaxploitation. While the genre introduced strong leading Black characters, they were “mainly the product of white studios, writers, and directors” (Coleman 122). Still, this era birthed Blacula (1972), which utilized a “generic form [i.e., Dracula] for more overtly political goals to critique the white power structure” (Coleman 121). Even with the low-budget and stereotypical fare put forth by Blaxploitation, the media prophesied change concerning cultural interactions. The Washington Post commented that the rise in Black characters “portrayed [them] as human beings— good and evil, rich and poor, smart and dumb” (qtd. in Coleman 126). Despite the optimism, the momentum of the 1970s horror film, however flawed, would not carry over into the 1980s. As Coleman notes, “blacks and their horror films were left in the cold as the genre shifted attention more exclusively to White, m iddle-class fears” (126). It wasn’t until the 1990s that another cycle of positive minority representation came to fruition.
The 1990s horror film market created social horror like The People Under the Stairs and The Silence of the Lambs. These films comment on everyday fears like racist landlords and the degradation of Middle America. Muir posits that “art does not exist in a vacuum” and is “inextricably bound to the time period in which it was created” (3), so a new cycle of horror fictions proliferated in the 1990s, at least so far as film was concerned. The shifting “fears of the popular audience [demanded] change,” and the 1990s horror film did not disappoint. Coleman suggests that “‘black horror’ was back with a vengeance (pun intended) in the [’90s] decade, with a force that had not been seen since the 1970s Blaxploitation-era horror cycle” (4). The 1990s spawned more social horror, like Beloved (1998), Candyman (1992), and Vampire in Brooklyn (1995). Even as many of the canonical 1990s films like Silence of the Lambs (1991) or Wolf (1994) starred White protagonists, a space for inclusion was carved out and carried over into the early 2000s.
It’s in 2013 and onward that the cycle of diverse characters hits an ascent, particularly after 2016, or the year of release for Get Out (2017). The social concerns of 2010 and beyond could have inspired another renaissance of diverse horror fictions. According to Wesley Morris, the United States is “in a midst of great cultural identity migration. Gender roles are merging. Races are being shed. In the last six years or so, but especially in 2015, we’ve been made to see how trans and bi and p oly-ambi-omni- we are” (par. 4). Over sixty films from the chart were released after 2010. P ost-2010 culture is wracked by identity politics, and horror can provide a platform to showcase, mitigate, or even mock this issue—or some might categorize it as a fear. The “merge” and “shed” of which Morris speaks sounds similar to slipstream, which seeks to merge the genre identities. To me, however, slipstream is about shedding traditional confines of genre because there are some stories in which m ulti-genre labels fit just as well. The popularity of allegorical horror stories, such as Get Out and The First Purge, may be indicative of a slipstream-like attitude that echoes the anxieties of post–2010 U.S. culture. The following section will detail how postcolonialism clarifies this latest rise of diversity in the cycle by examining work from scholars like Linnie Blake and Ania Loomba.
“Did I kill it?” Postcolonialism and Minority Alienation in Horror Films
Postcolonialism is a helpful lens in deconstructing the minority alienation in horror films. The horror genre is known for delving behind the curtain of reality to assess anxiety, which often mutates into the grotesque (whether literal or not), and this anxiety can establish feelings of disassociation through a postcolonial lens. For, as Linnie Blake has argued in The Wounds of Nations: Horror Cinema, Historical Trauma and National Identity (2008), the horror genre “can be seen to fulfill a function that sets it apart from other more ‘respectable’ branches of the culture industry, providing a visceral and frequently non-linguistic lexicon in which experiences of cultural dislocation may be phrased” (189). Greater facets of the unexplainable, weird, and horrific everyday are exemplified through terror and suspense, further lending a platform for isolation, identity, and trauma. As such, “certain horror sub-genres do seem to be capable of offering a trans-historical and trans-cultural critique of dominant ideologies of race, class, and gender” (Blake 188). Yet, the unconscious parts of horror (violence and sexuality) often become the most marketable aspects, and there is little room for anything else, let alone diversification. However, by infusing postcolonial narratives across a wide range of cultures, a sort of revolution of definition can occur, for literary genres and for people. Instead of being beholden to the traditional definitions of horror that, again, may encourage stagnation, a postcolonial analysis of horror fictions can spur new perspectives
Researchers such as Ania Loomba assert that the term postcolonial is steeped in binaries and even negative implications. The term post connotes the end of a concept—in this case, the end of colonialism. As is the case with many words, postcolonialism has many derivatives. As Loomba states, “The term p ost-colonial has been contested on many grounds” (1103). While some critics interpret it literally, others like Anne McClintock apply new connotations. McClintock’s believes it implies “linear progress” (85), mainly in terms of the “post” part and not the “colonial” part. She imagines that moving forward and then looking to the afterward is what is needed to change things for the better. Despite the variances, a popular perspective on postcolonialism is synonymous with liberation, as McClintock notes. This does not negate the long-standing historical traumas of postcolonialism on a global scale. Still, the term does underscore the various classifications and how they compete, giving way to newer definitions, like McClintock’s.
Postcolonialism, a term that masquerades as a simple thing, only to be wrought with negative undertones, is analogous to the base of the horror genre. Through the lens of the incongruous and unseemly, what is viewed as innocuous by some is seen as horrific to others. For instance, parenthood is an oft-repeated theme in horror, and for many, it’s an innocent, if tiring, occupation. Yet stories like Hereditary (2018) or A Quiet Place (2018) mutate this everyday experience into something awful, playing off the very real fear of losing a child. As stated by Dorothy L. Sayers, “in nothing is individual fancy so varied and capricious as in its perception of the horrible. To one person a story is terrible beyond all imagination: to another, it’s merely grotesque” (“Table of Contents”). An examination of identity through the macabre can reveal and confront the vulnerabilities experienced not only by parents but also by minorities, allowing for catharsis or inspiration or simply an acknowledgment of the continual problem.
This leads to the value of visual horror films and what they engender for the increasingly diverse audience. Moldenhauer uses two movies, Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) and The Spirit of the Beehive (1973) to illustrate the usefulness of diverse storytelling in the horror genre. While the characters in the films experience r eal-life terror, they seek to construct fantastical horrific worlds that enable them to better understand and escape the real-life terrors (Moldenhauer 76). Interestingly, the horror genre provides space to discover definitions of identity and, perhaps, imagines ways in which to overthrow them. As early as 1960, Leslie Fielder was confident that American gothic could distance itself from the British tradition, essentially building a new subgenre “marked by its historical, psychological, internalized, and predominantly racial concerns” (qtd. in B. Edwards 18). Other film makers are recognizing that psychological and fantastical terrors create the perfect playground against which to deconstruct internal fears, more specifically identity and racial concerns. Three case studies emphasize the need to belong while coming to grips with self-identity: It Comes at Night (2017), Get Out (2017), and Us (2019).
It Comes at Night
A deterioration of power and a longing for self is a constant theme in It Comes at Night. Seventeen-year-old Travis Wilson (played by Kelvin Harris, Jr.) lives in the woods with his parents. They have survived away from others due to a supposed pandemic. The sickness infects its host, creating a zombie-like creature. Travis is biracial; his mother is Black and his father his White. However, his need to belong is deeper than racial difference. As outlined by Aja Romano, “It Comes at Night is a terrifying, uncomfortably relevant horror masterpiece” (par. 5). The nature of the post-apocalyptic setting ensures that Travis’s future is fixed, and his identity as a lone teenager is predetermined. It’s possible his biracial background is only one part of his loneliness, underscoring his half-in and halfout status in two identities.
The horror of It Comes at Night may really result from the looming sense of loneliness and death. Travis is a young person who will never belong, who will never achieve a career or family, and yet who desperately wants to call something “his” (Romano par. 3). Yet Travis will never be able to own anything until his parents die, a prospect made more real given the threat of constant deadly infection. Once his parents pass, Travis will only own the farm upon which they reside. He will have to manage the farm alone. Even as owning the farm may ensure a sense of self, for Travis, it also ensures a lack of connection. His parents are the sole people in his world, and the idea of meeting others is quashed due to the infection brought on by touch. Travis’s sexual prospects are void—until the day strangers arrive, a White family of three. Although the newly arrived mother, Kim, is married to Will, Travis cannot help but dream of her.
Isolation is another recurring theme in It Comes at Night. As mentioned, Travis’s family lives on a farm, isolated from anyone for fear of contamination. Both fears (contamination and isolation) are symbolized by the red door in the house. All other doors in the house remain unpainted, except for one door leading to the outside, which is painted red. The color is stylistic and emblematic of what the family cannot control: isolation and contamination. These threats are visualized with the red door in the frame, “whether it is a slow tracking shot that leads down the hallway to the door, pounding from an unknown source on the other side, or later in the film, it being left open with severe consequences” (Grafius 76).
The red door may also align with the historical significance of the Trump presidency during the time of the film’s release. As Brandon Grafius notes, the post–Trump era of 2016 and onward included “attempts to isolate ourselves as a nation […], foregoing [sic] compassion for anyone who is not an American” (85). The definition of the term American is subjective, contingent on the political sentiment of a particular decade. For the post–Trump era, the term American mostly referred to the White heteronormative population. In this way, isolation was a mainstay of the Trump presidency, and the impacts of such a policy reflected in the anxieties of films like It Comes at Night. Ruth Goldberg examines how audience appeal to films may stem from cultural and social reflection. In reviewing horror like Donnie Darko and American Psycho, she notes the relevance of how the movies were made in the 1990s and 2000s, yet they’re set in the 1980s (R. Goldberg 49). When a particular period is marked by political or cultural issues, art may reflect these issues like a mirror for audiences to peer in on. Goldberg’s review of films set during a particular decade is “a belated exploration of how we arrived at the current crisis of violence and apathy in American culture” (49). The story of It Comes at Night expands on the cultural violence and racism of the time at which it was released, 2017. In Travis’s world, the violence and lack of apathy are congruent with the isolationist policies of the Trump presidency, like the “America First” slogan and immigrant family separations at the border (Grafius 78). The film addresses the consequences of isolation. Goldberg suggests that characters from such horror fictions display “unresolved cultural trauma” (59). The presence of the red door only seems to confirm the Wilson family’s unresolved cultural trauma.
The entire movie seems to be Travis stretching out his hand, only for him to be cruelly rebuked. Romano believes that from Travis’s perspective, the new world order lacks permanence and acceptance and has harshly established rules that do not include much hope (par. 5). The hopelessness is established from the first scene in which Travis’s father (played by David Pendleton) executes his f ather-in-law because he became infected, implying a similar fate for the remaining characters. As Grafius points out, there are other horror fictions with themes of isolation and hopelessness: Night of the Living Dead (1968) and The Thing (1982), (89). However, It Comes at Night is an example of from the latest cycle, congruent to the sense of isolation (and perpetual longing for acceptance) experienced by many minorities. Blake describes how “genre films can be seen to enact what Freud would term Trauerabeit or the work of mourning; exploring trauma by remembering it and repeating it in the form of diagetically mediated symbolizations of loss” (3). Travis is repeatedly exposed to trauma, with his journey a larger symbol of the loss he anticipates in his dreams. Isolation breeds unspeakable despair, a feeling captured and scrutinized in horror fictions like It Comes at Night.
Get Out
Jordan Peele’s Get Out is another film steeped in representation of self, but mostly when viewed by others. As Hegel believes, to truly realize self, one must measure individuality when confronted with others (46).
In Get Out, the main character Chris (portrayed by Daniel Kaluuya) struggles with how White normative characters seek to define and use him. Hegel describes how the power of the other (the dominant other) can manipulate the way we interpret self (46). Critics and audiences praise creator Jordan Peele for the unique meld of identity exploration and horror themes in the film. However, John Squires of Bloody Disgusting points out how horror has been the genre of social commentary for centuries, offering examples like Dawn of the Dead (1978), which is a commentary on consumerism, and The Purge film series (2013–2021), commentaries on the rich treating the poor as dispensable. Like It Comes at Night, Get Out dispenses social commentary. Through a postcolonial lens, Blake cites horror cinema as “a portrait of ourselves and of the kind of life we have chosen to lead” (7). In this way, Get Out is formative to the latest cycle because it addresses diversity as a portrait of modern U.S. life. As noted by fellow Bloody Disgusting writer, Zachary Paul, the film also discusses the theme of being “the only one in the room” (par. 1). The awe behind Get Out is not based on its being a socially conscious piece: its social relevance concerning race has pushed the film from horror circles into larger discussions (Paul par. 2). Arguably, this elevates horror for audiences who had assumed it was only the genre of slasher films featuring screaming women with heaving bosoms. Therefore, Get Out is exemplary in the way that it displays the best of horror, of what horror is and can be.
Arguably, the most important part of Get Out is the diversity of characterization. Horror is, like the other speculative subgenres, capable of producing worlds that display social fears reflected to the viewers. The issue is that most of those worlds are blinding in their adherence to normative Whiteness. Get Out shows what it feels like to be “the only one in the room” because, according to Paul, we’ve all felt alone or out of place (par. 1). Still, not everyone can understand the trials and loneliness associated with being Black (or any other minority). Paul contends that the prejudice Chris experiences in the film is similar to his experiences as a gay man in the South (par. 4). The lead character, Chris, is judged, assessed as alien, marveled at, and caricatured. Only one person he meets appraises him for his abilities as a photographer, and that’s because he is a White man who plans on stealing Chris’s body to inherit his artistic abilities. Furthermore, it’s his artistic merit that leads to Chris being auctioned off to a group of rich White patrons (Figure 16).
The White characters in Get Out seek to exert control over Black characters like Chris, which illustrates is a fear in the status quo. Despite breakthroughs during various cycles, horror is generally a genre of White middle-class characters. However, Get Out is openly demanding and giving leading roles to Black men and women. Instead of serving as the sidekick, as comic relief, or as the first character to die, Chris evolves into as

Final Girl as he is captured and all alone. He prevails by taking out his White oppressors quite violently. When carefully considered, his actions echo those of the Haitian revolt of 1791, which was also met with White fear. Ultimately, Get Out established the current diversity cycle precisely by satirizing racial fears and horror tropes.
Us
Building off this momentum, in March of 2019, the film Us premiered. The narrative centers around an upper-class family vacationing at their beach home, until their plans are halted at the appearance of masked strangers who turn out to be evil doppelgangers. Such a premise is not new to horror, with several fictions like Funny Games, Misery, and The Last House on the Left featuring protagonists caught in the midst of a suburbia-inspired nightmare that leads to the unifying theme that home is not always a safe haven. Because Us is about a Black family and the film is written by a Black man, Jordan Peele, it may be classified as a retelling of the “family horror on vacation” trope.
More notable is the social class of the family in Us: upper-middle class. Much as with Get Out, the audience is exposed to a middle-class main character who is also a minority. In a vast number of horror films, main characters are often financially stable but are usually White. What that unconsciously relays to the audience is the idea that being White equals having money. This leads to a central purpose of horror: to overturn the natural order. For the “normal” White family with money, there’s also nothing more natural (in a very American and consumerist sense) than taking a vacation. In Us, the family vacation is taken by the Black, middle-class family, the Wilsons. Their lives are upended when the mother, Adelaide Wilson (played by Lupita Nyong’o), is confronted by her evil twin, Red. The audience is allowed to experience the mind-numbing reality of their m iddle-class lives being turned inside out.
When audiences then view all of these formulaic devices through a new lens (i.e., not a White family, but still being terrorized by other-worldly forces), they may experience an “Aha!” moment of like-mindedness. The thought that differences separate us may not be as prevalent because the audience is offered a familiar story with an unfamiliar cast—yet the emotional roller-coaster is still the same. The “Aha!” moment—for example: “Oh look, that Black family jokes around just like my family.”— may transition into the realization that people are not as far apart as outward culture suggests they are. Raymond Williams believes culture is not only about the outward and the common purpose but also about “deep personal meanings” (32). In seeking answers to the baseline questions “What is human?” and “What is right?” there is room for the community (which may be more traditional and thus conservative) and for the individual (who may be more willing to adapt and advocate for change) to co-exist in harmony.
There’s no denying that cultural and racial differences exist. However, in a retelling like Us, the differences manifest not in the form of walls but rather in the form of open doorways. Blake’s postcolonial work chronicles how “horror cinema […] shows that which can not otherwise be shown; to speak that which can not otherwise be spoken and in turn to set about ‘blasting open the continuum of history’” (10). When the family is on a car ride, a rap song comes on and the youngest child innocently asks if the song is about drugs. Even as the song is obviously about drugs, the father shakes his head and dubs the song “a classic,” turning the music louder while reminding his children to “not do drugs.” This scene is illustrative of the perception of rap as a blight on modern Black culture due to the glorification of drugs. In the second stanza of Kenrick Lamar’s song “DNA,” he samples and satirizes a statement from Geraldo Rivera about how hip hop has been more damaging to the Black community than racism. Rivera’s statement perpetuates the myth that all hip hop glorifies drug use and has led to the downfall of the Black community. In comparison, songs from White artists like Johnny Cash’s “Cocaine Blues” or Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” feature heavy themes of drug use but are not cited as contributing to the downfall of White society. During the family car scene in Us, Peele knocks this stereotypical notion of hip hop as destructive music while also asserting that a song is sometimes just a song.
In Us, Adelaide originates from an underworld. She kidnaps her doppelganger, trades places, and tries her best to live a normal human life. Despite the horrific deed she committed, she still struggles to decide on what is good and what is bad. She also seems to question her sense of belonging, her sense of deserving a “normal” life. Yet, even as the doppelganger, Red, was originally a “normal” person, she descended into madness. The madness drove Red to carry out heinous and murderous acts, which she deemed as justifiable. Regardless, she is a sympathetic character, as she is shown struggling to understand what is right and what is wrong, like her counterpart, Adelaide. The film ends on a moment of reflection, of ambiguity, and little in the way of resolution. As stated earlier, unhappy endings are indicative of horror and a nod to the fact that fear, violence, suffering, morality, and death are continual facets of the human condition. What’s more so is how unhappy endings are more common for minorities, like Adelaide and Red.
Summations
Throughout this chapter, the review of race in horror films revealed varying trends, specifically for this latest cycle. Films like It Comes at Night, Get Out, and Us are impactful because of their ability to disrupt expectations. In all three fictions, the expectation of a White main character is upended. Throughout the films, certain tropes and stereotypes are examined, like middle-class characters as minorities, or family vacations for everyone (not just the normative White family as portrayed in several horror fictions). Adichie states, “It’s not that stereotypes aren’t true. It’s that they don’t display the full picture of that culture, and sadly, the stereotype becomes the only story of an entire group or class of people” (12:05 TedTalk). Perhaps to counter the negative and recurring stereotypes in horror, films are making space for diverse characters. Diverse horror films slated for 2022 and 2023 include Nope!, Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, They/Them, There’s Something Wrong with the Children, and Knock at the Cabin, which carry on the resurgence of the latest cycle. Similarly, television creators are also setting the stage for what a diverse cast can mean for storytelling and for positive portrayals of minorities.
The above is excerpted from Chapter Five of All Kinds of Scary: Diversity in Contemporary Horror (McFarland).
Jonina Anderson-Lopez teaches English, writing, and communication courses at the University of South Florida and Joyce University of Nursing and Health Sciences. Her collection, Holding Television Accountable: Essays on Audience Demands in the Social Media Age, co-edited with Allison Christina Budaj, is forthcoming from McFarland.