135 Search results for "black horror"

by Andrew Keahey This essay contains some spoilers for The First Purge. Catharsis is important. As marginalized people, every day that we’re alive and drawing breath in this country, we are bombarded with things that infuriate and sadden us. The news not only traumatizes us by showing us the seemingly incessant violence perpetrated against us, […]

by Andrew Keahey Black horror films have a consistent combination of factors that make them successful in the public eye: relatability and catharsis. The elements in our horror movies meant to frighten and upset are often familiar to us, and are scary because the fear is something we have felt before, and often. When the […]

by Andrew Keahey Jordan Peele is really killing it lately. First, there was the unprecedented success of his horror opus Get Out, for which he won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Now, he’s been announced as the showrunner for a new, updated Twilight Zone. His next horror project, Us, will star Winston Duke and […]

by Andrew Keahey I can remember the exact moment that hip-hop and the horror genre intersected for me. I was spending the night with a friend. We had played some games and listened to the local chart-topper radio station, then he suggested we watch The Fly (1986). I recall telling him that I wasn’t sure […]

In the years between Victor Halerpin’s White Zombie (1932) and Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017), Blackness in the horror genre has largely been a myriad of hidden slavery narratives featuring gendered anti-Black violence and racist dehumanization. Excepting the stories that include Black characters as tokens or magical negroes who ensure the survival of white characters—usually […]

by Juahl Ganaway In a scene ripped from The Sugar Shack, the character Pearline (played by the stunning Jayme Lawson) stalks across the stage purring the lyrics to “Pale, Pale, Moon,” the Brittany Howard-penned song that feels more like an invocation than a performance.  “I wanna sing Like I hear the crickets do I wanna […]

This essay contains spoilers for See You Yesterday, Siempre Bruja, Mortal Kombat 11, and Kindred, as well as discussions of sexual violence and anti-Black state violence.    I was eighteen, a freshman in college studying film and visual arts, and deeply interested in the history of both. A film studies professor asked the class one […]

Editor’s Note: This month at BYP, we will be exploring Education & Schooling, and we are interested in publishing works that address these topics. What are the implications of charter and private schools in communities of color? How do we counteract anti-Black textbooks and teachers in our childrens’ education? How did you heal from bullying […]

By Najya A. Williams Throughout my childhood, my mom always scheduled early morning dental appointments to accommodate the remarkably busy lives we both led. Once I was old enough to schedule my own visits, I unsurprisingly fell back into this familiar routine. I normally don’t think twice about my check-ups, especially if I’m not experiencing […]

By Monika Estrella Negra The majority of the Black punks I have talked to were drawn to (or got lost in) the Punk scene in order to escape the rigidity and heteronormative idealism of traditional Black political organizing. This is not to infer that all Black punks identify with far leftist views, nor does it […]

I imagine that I would be a historian, a social librarian of sorts, whenever Black liberation is realized, and I imagine that my role wouldn’t look much different from the work I am already doing: Helping to keep Black histories. For as long as I’ve been aware of my Blackness as a threat to whiteness […]

This essay contains discussions of racialized sexual violence and mentions r/pe and molestation.  by Mekleit Dix The Handmaid’s Tale is a wildly popular American Television show based on a novel of the same name by Margaret Atwood. It portrays a dystopian nightmare: sterility in women becomes a widespread epidemic resulting in a break down of […]