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Blog Post #1

In the past two weeks of class, I feel as though I have learned quite a lot about the history of black horror films as well as the various stigmas and stereotypes that have been so heavily associated with these films. Previously to this class, I was unaware of the oftentimes racist and/or disrespectful meanings toward the black characters involved in many horror films. The topic that we discussed that particularly caught my attention and shocked me was how oftentimes people, specifically African Americans, enjoy watching horror films so much because it actually relates to them and any possible past traumas in which they have experienced in their life. For example, as Professor Due shared during lecture, a comparison can be drawn between the interest that is seen in horror films containing monsters to the traumas that are associated with police brutality. As mentioned in her example, zombies are fictional monsters used in horror films. However, people are appealed to these zombie films because while the zombies are not actually real, they tend to represent and demonstrate the same type of horrors associated with police brutality. This connection between horror films and African American’s real-life traumas is something that I had not ever considered, however, after discussing this phenomenon in class, it very much opened my eyes to the intricacy that the background of these films contain. Something else that I found particularly interesting was the different roles that African American characters typically are given when they act in horror films. For example, the way in which the black characters are most times the first ones to die, how are seen as ‘magical’, and even seen as sacrificial. The topic of them usually being one of the first to die off in the film is one that I found to be very intriguing because this is something that I have actually heard about quite a lot. I remember especially while I was growing up, when I would go on the internet to watch funny videos, there would oftentimes be jokes about this exact phenomenon. For example, the popular app from quite a few years ago ‘Vine’. I recall always seeing Vines making jokes about how the black characters were always the first to die in horror movies. I never really thought anything of these jokes back then because I was so young, however, I still remember it very clearly. This stood out to me a lot in the lecture because I now see the much darker side of these ‘jokes’ and why the black characters die first. The film adds African American characters to make it seem more diverse, however, they portray these characters as the less important ones, making them easily dispensible and able to kill off early in the story.