From Punchline to Protagonist: Black Horror and the Monsters Who Hunt

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There’s something fascinating about horror. The darkness that hides darker monsters. The creaks and gore and jump scares. The jokes. The unearthing of fears.  Whenever I’m in the mood for a campy, scary movie, I’ll go for a man-eating shark or a haunted house, or any of the Scream movies. For the longest time, it didn’t matter what movie I watched, if there were Black people in the film, they were usually the first to die, quickly and mercilessly dispatched and with dramatic effect. It became a well-known horror trope and running joke. Deep Blue Sea was one of the first movies I saw where a Black person, LL Cool J, makes it to the end of the movie (and a shark movie at that) without becoming fish food.

Movies like Deep Blue Sea marked a subtle push against a genre historically centered on whiteness. Many of our favorite cult classics were created by white men and center masculinity in a dominant social structure, which has led to a stubborn gatekeeping that has remained at the forefront of the genre, both on screen and in modern literature.

Contemporary horror highlights a shift to include more women and nonbinary writers and authors of color, who are breaking through the traditional models and subverting the horror genre in delightful ways. There is a decentralizing of whiteness which has given breath to more stories that answer the question: What are you afraid of?

Modern Black horror turns the mirror inward, putting the lens on societal dread and the monsters hidden in plain sight. It asks the reader to think critically and to reexamine the world from a different perspective. It is inclusive, acknowledging horror stories outside the Western gaze and more importantly, Black horror considers the humanity of its characters and who gets to survive and triumph.

Shark movies, things that go bump in the night, haunted houses, and aliens who invade from space all make for good horror–this fear is universal. But what about the kinds of fear that strike at the heart of members of a minority community? For Black people, some fears are primal, because the probability of certain scenarios playing out in real life aren’t that farfetched at all. Buying candy at a corner store and being stalked by a self-appointed vigilante, seeing the flashing red and blue lights of a police cruiser in the rearview mirror, or being murdered at home because of a botched execution of a no-knock warrant, this is horror too.

Black creators are using social horror as a vehicle to tell stories that confront racism in all its insidious ways. We are uniquely positioned to observe and reflect on the dangers of existing in this unfavorable power dynamic. Black horror in the same way, cuts through the euphemisms and examines the everyday psychological trauma that people who look like me experience while chumming the waters of a dominant, supremacist culture.

What I love most about Black horror is that it doesn’t always have to be serious. Its function isn’t limited to resuscitating and poking at trauma but also to give us a chance to laugh at ourselves, while exploring and defining the spectrum of Blackness on its own terms. Heavy issues can be unpacked with hilarity and satire.  The movie The Blackening is hands-down the funniest horror I’ve seen this year. The majority Black cast and its genius tagline “We Can’t All Die First” taps into a certain Black consciousness with its satirical take on our culture and takedown of racist horror tropes.

In my debut novel, There’s No Way I’d Die First, I turn the lens inward on white liberalism and how despite its commitment to dismantling inequality and white supremacy, can be performative and perpetuate harmful ideologies rooted in stereotypes and classism.

Noelle, the main character, is a teen girl whose parents have managed to get past social barriers and established themselves as successful Black businesspeople in America. However, they make sure Noelle knows that wealth and the passing down of generational wealth looks different for Black people.

As a horror movie buff, Noelle observes that Final Girls have always been white, and Black girls have always had to save themselves. In this era of Black Final Girls in YA fiction, they are changing and disrupting the horror aesthetic. There is a long-overdue, unraveling of pejorative perceptions when it comes to Black people in horror.

As an author of Barbadian descent, living in a multicultural city, I am writing experiences into these stories in a way that is nuanced and layered. I am asking important questions before I put pen to the page: who is this art for, and what is it supposed to do?

I am centering voices who have historically been relegated to the margins (and meat hooks) in horror. As an author, I can give my characters agency by celebrating the messy Black girls, the ones who have it all together, and those still figuring things out. I can have them face down monsters (human or otherwise) and fight back on their own terms beyond their racial marginalization. I can have them survive.

In There’s No Way I’d Die First, the Black protagonist stands in the spotlight, flaws and all. She claims a survivorship that has always been there but is now going mainstream with the broadening of Black representation in YA horror.

Noelle’s favorite movie of all time is Get Out because it ushered in a seismic shift in the genre and set a new standard.

If Black horror is a social and cultural commentary of the Black experience, then it must also include the unpacking of racial terrors and the perpetrators of this violence. Racism and any kind of bigotry is a horror and should be treated as such. In telling these types of stories, Black pain is unequivocally unavoidable, and the genre must balance the slippery slope of daring to tell ugly truths and exploiting Black fears for entertainment.

However, Black authors should not be limited to telling a single story of the profundity of racial violence. We are free to imagine and delve into other aspects of the Black experience and explore diasporic stories that challenge genre borders. There is room for all types of horror stories.

There’s No Way I’d Die First casts a critical light on society, wealth, and privilege. I wanted a Black Final Girl to be the last one standing after facing down a monster of society’s making.  A key question as I drafted was: how do I consider authorial intent and engage with horror as a medium for processing fears and trauma while engaging with real life horror in the news and daily life?

Black horror is emerging from its invisibility and perceived unattractiveness to take center stage.  I’m thrilled to see so many horror books written by Black authors thriving in literary spaces. This should go without saying, but Black protagonists are as deserving of empathy as anyone else. They must be allowed the full breadth of their humanity—to be complex and messy, to giggle and cry, to go to hell and back and live to talk about it.

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