Horror movies have been my favorite entertainment to consume since I began actively watching them in middle school. They take up most of my thoughts, if I am watching a movie it is most likely a horror film, and I am even writing my honors thesis on them. Yeah, you might say I am a little obsessed, and sure, I like to get scared, but that is not why I enjoy them so much.
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I like to watch horror movies for what they have to say, or communicate through various plot points and cliché tropes. When it comes to representation, horror movies say a lot, and that is sometimes good and other times very, very bad. Photo Courtesy of Amazon
My best example of the crappy stuff this genre can get across to audiences exists in the very recent Netflix release, “Bird Box.” Initially, I thought this was an enjoyable flick about one woman attempting to survive the apocalypse with her two children in tow. After further inspection of the film, one word comes to mind: YIKES.
Charlie (played by Lil Rel Howery) and Tom (played by Trevante Rhodes), the only two black characters in the film, die in the most sacrificial of ways. Charlie flings himself out of a freezer door at someone who had been affected by the invisible monsters. Instead of just helping to close the door, he helps everyone by sacrificing himself. Tom saves our main characters by staying behind and taking out possible threats, which leads to him seeing one of the monsters and shooting himself.
Basically, these characters merely existed to ensure the survival of the predominantly white characters around them.
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We always clamor for representation, and rightfully so, because a lot of media is overwhelmingly revolved around and created by the same cast of characters (again, predominantly white). However, if the representation you choose to include in whatever art you create ends up enforcing damaging tropes about marginalized groups, then leave them out of your art. If you want to comment on these ridiculous tropes (a la “Get Out,” an amazing film) then go right on ahead; open a dialogue. If you are just going to utilize these tropes to advance a plot and get the white characters, unscathed, to the finish line, then maybe scrap the idea altogether. Photo Courtesy of The Ringer