⁍ ‘Lovecraft Country’ is set in 1950s Jim Crow America.
⁍ Towns were created to bolster racial segregation.
⁍ Jordan Peele’s ‘Get Out’ was a perfect fit for the Trump era.
– Jordan Peele’s Get Out has been hailed as the start of a “golden age” for African-American horror movies, and the Los Angeles Times looks at how Peele’s film has changed the face of the genre. Before Get Out, “you had the sort of wide-eyed coonery and the cowardly, childlike nature,” writes Ta-Nehisi Coates. “Later, you had the very comforting image of the Sacrificial Negro, who will give their life to save you, dear White person, for absolutely no reason pertaining to their own story.” But Peele’s film changed that. “It was fresh,” he writes. “It was in people’s faces about racism as the monster. And it gave us—creators, executives, academics—the missing piece of the puzzle to help people realize the power of this subgenre.” Before Get Out, “there were a lot of notable and powerful Black horror projects before ‘Get Out,’ but they didn’t get the recognition that they deserved, and those directors didn’t get opportunities to go on and make Black horror movie after Black horror movie.” Now, with Peele at the helm, there’s “a renaissance in Black horror storytelling” and “the treatment of Black characters in White creators’ horror yarns and the genre’s power to help Black viewers cope with the world around them.” Read the full column here.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/18/politics/lovecraft-country-black-horror-trauma-jordan-peele/index.html