But Call Me Betsy

To start, I have really enjoyed this class. This is not me sucking up--it's been totally fascinating to watch quite a few films that would never have occured to me to watch (namely Scream IV, Seeds of Chucky, Feed ). And truthfully, I might not have gotten around to Us or Nope so quickly if I hadn't rewatched Get Out for the class. In these lazy summer nights, it gave us something to look forward to and analyze. I also feel like the readings around gender, race, class, capitalism, heteronormativity, body, and disability have made me more literate in both discussing these issues and applying the different lens to films and readings.  But to finalize my return to Candyman in relation to the readings, just a few things to note:  1. In her analysis of Kristeva's "Power of Horror" within "Horror and the Monstrous Feminine," Barbara Creed outlines the monstrous feminine as it relates to the child's relationship with his mother ("the mother and chil

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

The Rotten Tomatos critical consensus of the 2021 version of Candyman are somewhat mixed. Before watching the movie, I'm reading four reviews from top critics: Salon.com, Bitch Media, Rolling Stone, The Chicago Reader , and The Observer . Just a side note, I had no idea that Jordan Peele was a co-writer and co-producer on this film. I have not seen the original 1992 version with Tony Todd and Virgina Madsen, and have not (before now) read anything about the movie though I also like that the director is a Black Jamaican woman, Nia DaCosta.    The first negative review is by Melanie Flanders in  Salon. She pinpoints the problem areas in the title of her piece, " No sweets for the New Sweet in Candyman, which neglects the legends seductively scary legacy."   Overall, the criticism is that the movie focu ses too much " around messages about over-policing and state-sanctioned brutality alongside incisive critiques about gentrification, both geographic and artistic."

We saw Nope at the Princeton Garden Theater, and, probably because I recently watched Jordan Peele's Get Out and Us , I sat at the edge of my seat, ready to interpret and understand the threads that would tie all of these pieces together.  But the pieces didn't quite go together; at least not in the way I thought they would.  The film opens with a scene of carnage on a sitcom where the chimpanzee has gone beserk and killed or maimed many of the actors on the set. The chimp will return, most notably in a scene where he fist bumps to the child actor who survives. I didn't get it. I still don't get it. At least not in relation to any of the racial themes we've been discussing in class. Unless it connects back to the horses--who also figure largely in this movie because the main character, OJ Haywood, is an owner of a ranch that lets out its horses for Hollywood films. His great grandfather was the first human figure in the original first ever recorded film (this is fi