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Reflecting on the Man in the Mirror: What Lens Should We Use to Critique Candyman?
In the still-growing realm of Black horror, is it possible to distinguish the genre from the trauma?
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‘He Is Both Monster and Hero’: Black Horror Scholars Tell The Root What You Should Know About Candyman
Ahead of the highly anticipated reboot, our virtual roundtable of horror creators, scholars and enthusiasts give deeper context to the legend and its impact.
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The Safe Negro Guide to Lovecraft Country: 'Full Circle'
I have been telling y’all from the very beginning of our journey through HBO’s Lovecraft Country: Genre matters. So (major spoiler alert), Tic and Ruby are dead? Lies from the pit of hell! This is another reason why genre (and the knowledge of its tropes) is important. Ain’t nobody ever really dead in a horror…
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The Safe Negro Guide to Lovecraft Country: 'Rewind 1921'
Did you catch the fire? Sunday’s journey through Lovecraft Country was full of hope—as passed down to us by our ancestors and living elders. It might seem an odd takeaway that an episode beginning with a hexed Dee coming dangerously close to becoming a Topsy twin (uh, triplet? I’m still having nightmares about them damn…
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The Safe Negro Guide to Lovecraft Country: 'Jig-a-Bobo'
Multi-orgasmic sex while molting your white-woman skin? Running from creepy twin pickaninny caricatures? Saved from gunfire by a concrete shoggoth? It must be Episode 8 of HBO’s Lovecraft Country! Last Sunday was a welcome respite from watching The Masque of the Red Death play out in real-time on our nightly news, but you want to…
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The Safe Negro Guide to Lovecraft Country: 'I Am.'
Welcome back to Lovecraft Country! Wow! Talk about the Afrofuture! Talk about Black feminism! Episode 7, “I Am.” hit all of my academic erogenous zones and I can’t wait to dig into it with you. First, I want to address a critique of Lovecraft Country I haven’t addressed in this space, which came up while…
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The Safe Negro Guide to Lovecraft Country: 'Meet Me in Daegu'
Welcome back to Lovecraft Country—we are past the halfway point of the season’s journey! I can totally see Misha Green in her writers’ room, saying, “Give me K-Horror, but make it BLACK!” What I am really enjoying is how the show’s creators are throwing all of these different, well-developed worlds and storylines at us, confident…
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The Safe Negro Guide to Lovecraft Country: 'Strange Case'
Hey! Welcome back to another week in Lovecraft Country! Our fifth week’s episode—the first half of our midpoint in the season, and our most extensive analysis to date—was full of interruptions and metamorphoses (spoilers to follow): Ruby was plagued by interruptions, both as a Black woman and a white one; Tic’s progress seems to be…
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The Safe Negro Guide to Lovecraft Country: A History of Violence
Welcome back to another week in HBO’s Lovecraft Country; our fourth. I want to begin this article moving backward from the largest issue in this week’s episode (serious spoiler alert): the violent murder of Yahima by Montrose. The final scene features a presumably cis Black man slitting the throat of a “two-spirit” Indigenous person in…
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The Safe Negro Travel Guide to Lovecraft Country: 'Holy Ghost'
If you watched Episode 3 of HBO’s Lovecraft Country, you already know: This was a damn near perfect episode. I sincerely believe that the horror genre is where Black folks get to tell truths that otherwise aren’t safe to tell. Horror is an imaginative space for us because so much of our history and experiences…
