Candy Prep

-

 Okay, everyone, I switched my movie to the 2021 version of Candyman, so that I could explore more of the themes of race in horror films. For preparation, I'm going to watch Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror, a documentary based on a book by the same name.  I think that will provide a good context in addition to the readings we're doing and some other outside sources. Another good piece I found to read is from The New York Times, "How Black Horror Became America's Most Powerful Cinematic Genre," by Gabrielle Bellot. This article should be useful because it discuss Candyman, as well as some other films we've viewed so far in this class. I will go back to the podcast list I posted as well to see if any of them review Candyman. 

I'm particularly drawn to this movie because it's set in the Cabrini-Green housing projects on the southside of Chicago. I lived in Chicago for five years in my early twenties. My section of town was on the Northside near Lake Michigan. For three years, I had a one bedroom apartment that cost something like $450 off a small street called Hazel. Chicago at that time (and still?) was a highly segregated city.  I never went near Cabrini-Green, though I thought the city was fairly diverse. I worked with Black people, I took classes at DePaul with Black people, but I had no close friends who were not white. I'm not sure if this is relevenat at all, but it's why I'm interested in seeing this film. 

Here's the trailer for Candyman. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Candyman: Race, Class, Sexuality, Gender, and Disability

-
Candyman hits on almost all of the sections we discussed over the last six weeks. Let's start from the most obvious and move from there.   Race: A large part of Candyman confronts the anger and rage of the Black community after years and years and years and years of systemic racism. Candyman is an embodiment of all of the men who have suffered at the hands of whites (white police man, the white community, white systems that have set them up to fail such as the housing projects of Cabrini-Green). The monster of Candyman is a tornado of retribution, a hive of bees swirling angrily and containing the men who have been lynched or tortured by whites, starting with the original death of a Black male painter who dared to fall in love with a white woman whose portrait he painted. This monster, like the original, can be summoned by anyone who dares to say his name out loud in front of a mirror five times. Until the very end, the only people who do this are white--and every one of them is
Read more

Short story by Lauren Groff, "At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners"

-
Image
You have to maintain a much more focused attention when reading a good short story versus a novel, because if you skim, you might miss something.  For this reason, I find it a little more difficult on my brain to read short stories.  But if you're going to write in the form, you should read in the form (and others--I have yet to memorize a poem as was suggested in my workshop last week), so I've been trying. Lauren Groff has a story called "At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners" in Best American Short Stories, 2014. You might have read her novel The Monsters of Templeton, or her other short story from a previous Best of collection, "Delicate Edible Birds" (also the name of her book of short stories), I have a vague recollection that that story was about World War II or possibly World War I and a dinner party where the people invited are living it up . I seem to also remember a line about the crunching of tiny bird bones. The Monsters of Templeton
Read more

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

-
Image
It’s all about the recaps. It’s a show made of recaps from previous shows. I purposefully skipped the first 40 minutes. These guys are all a bunch of idiots. They are turning on one another. Wes has not shown up, because he will probably come in at the very end for some kind of surprise. They are all trying to humiliate Jake because he is too perfect and too sweet (however, he just referred to himself in the third person; kind of irritating). I don’t remember any of these guys, to be honest. Who are these women in the audience? Oh, okay time for a short break because the show has been on now for three minutes. You know what, I’m going to go ahead and time the difference between the commercials and the actual airtime of the show. >Show returns at: 8:47 p.m. Don’t forget the 20 minutes of clapping in between the scenes. I can’t tell you how much hair mousse has been used in the making of this show. Dave is the crazy dude who has decided to grow a beard for the recap Juan is being atta
Read more