ABSTRACT
For Black Americans, generally, the horror genre continues to be a study in anti-Blackness, exoticism, gender oppression, and neocolonialism in which Black people are portrayed as outside of Western images of enlightenment while being subordinated to a system of primitive images-political, economic, cultural, religious, and social. Black horror antagonists frequently have a sympathetic, almost antiheroic backstory involving them being wronged. Black horror is also a curative to so-called color-blindish casting, in which a multi-cultural, “one of each,” crew of young horror victims is assembled. In the past, Black characters have been the source of “the funny” in comedy-horror, putting on full display their incredible talents while being denied their humanity. Today, “Black horror” says that Black people no longer need to be assigned "saint-like goodness to counteract the racism, automatically directed toward a Black character on screen".
