Ethnicity and Horror

Could the killer represent our patriarchal society to a certain extent? What does the killer do in these movies? As a general rule, he punishes those who violate societal morals. The out-of-wedlock sex. The drug use. The boozing. We all know that any person engaging in these activities near good ole' Crystal Lake or Springwood or a dozen other locales is apt to end up kicking the breathing habit. We also know that the victims are generally going to be between the ages of 17 and 25 (guesstimating here), a.k.a. those who are most likely to be rebelling against the restrictive pressures of upstanding society, as well as the onset of their own adulthood and accompanying responsibility. Thus, the Killer is best represented by a white male who, in turn, is most representative of those "proper" morals and society embodied by our largely Protestant and patriarchal society.

probably is more simply because a vast majority of serial killers and famous famous murderers are white males

Didn't Chris Rock have something to say about the differences between black and white murderers? Something like a black guy will shoot and kill you for two bucks, while a white guy will cut off your head and eat your body.

"Black people murder like this, while white people murder like this!"

In the U.S., at least. Although I'm not sure if realism is the guiding principle as much as thematic relevance, as Mattioli suggested.

There's also the basic fact that white, suburban teens probably comprise a high percentage of the horror audience (as they have more disposable income than their more racially diverse urban peers), and audiences tend to gravitate toward movies with characters like them, so the characters will probably be white teenagers. And if the victims are young and white, there are some obvious racial problems with making the killer black, Latino, etc. At the very least, there will be some disquieting subtext (which can be used consciously and effectively - see Candyman) that might override the more visceral appeal of seeing young people victimized in a setting without obvious racial overtones. Because of the race-based relative positions of power in society, the message becomes more inherently politicized when it's a killer in a minority preying on members of the majority.

DaveB said it.

Maybe not all racial overtones (in fact, you can probably read racial overtones into movies with white serial killers if those serial killers are "coded" in the right way), but most filmmakers would tend to shy away from something as overt as "big black guy in hockey mask kills nubile young white teenagers."

I dunno. Slasher movies of the 70's were hardly PC. I just don't see any of those producers being racially sensitive. These same studios were also producing action movies chock full of stereotypical black and latino criminals getting wasted by Jan Michael Vincent and Charles Bronson.

I'm more inclined to believe the only-white-folk-go-that-crazy theory. After all, the earliest slasher films came after Psycho, which was based on the true tale of a crazy white guy. Then they followed the white stereotypes through to having most slashers being backwoods hicks (bolstered by the practical advantage that it's cheap to film in the woods). It wasn't until the 80's that slasher origins started to become more diverse and by then the white die was cast.

Well, when you pry up that rock and look at the dank underbelly of society, you find that a lot of the appointed (self or otherwise) watchdogs of social mores are "tainted" or fail to lead "normal" lives.

The "twisted morals" of a white slasher also plays into general bigotry.
Perhaps filmmakers assumed that a white man driven to murder is much more terrifying than a black man because black men are already predisposed to murder. If they assume that blacks are all criminals and killers than a black slasher isn't all that shocking.
But if a white guy is driven to it?! That's some crazy scary shit!

Sadly, there's probably some truth to this, too.

Don't Look In The Basement had as its surprise-reveal slasher a black (spoiler) retard. Blacks like slashers, but tend toward the supernatural themselves...

T-Minus 10 seconds until someone posts a Leprechaun in Da Hood poster.

The only Leprechaun sequel to get ITS OWN SEQUEL. Conclusion: BLACK PEOPLE LOVE HORROR.

Very neat question, HBarr. Kudos. and no, I hadn't yet thought of this one. But seeing as things have been a little dead around here (no pun intended), I am very glad you did.

Anyway, on to the topic, not to get all cynical an' shit, but I agree w/ DaveB's point that the audience makeup of mostly white teens is what drives this trend more than anything else. Dovetailing with that, perhaps, is the image our society seems to have of other races. By that I mean, the tough, no-nonsense image black characters are portrayed on TV as having. Whether this is an image black people themselves subscribe to or the image white America chooses for whatever reason to view them as having is probably open to debate. The end result would be the same, but for different reasons.

If black people see themselves in this manner (The "Oh no you di'in't!" spouting, furious black woman or the gangsta/hoodlum like tough guy male, with anyone embracing "traditional", "white" middle class values or attitudes being viewed as an "oreo" - white on the inside - for instance), they won't buy a black serial killer because that's not the reaction to trauma they would realistically expect from one of their own; they'd be more likely to bust a cap in their tormentor's ass. So films with black serial killers/slashers as the protagonists wouldn't fly with them, & studios won't try making them. They might also like on some level to point & laugh at the "weakness" of white society because that (murderous insanity) is the reaction they expect from white people.

One could also, I suppose, that particularly in depressed urban areas, black people live in abominable conditions in many cases (poverty, rampant drug use & gang violence, single motherhood, etc.) that the fact they HAVEN'T gone crazy despite all this societal abuse makes it a bit less likely they'd buy someone from a similar background snapping and turning into the black Jason Voorhees. "You gotta do better than that!", they'll think, before they buy into a black serial killer.

If, on the other hand, the above images, rampant on UPN sitcoms and such, are more aimed at white people (this is what they think of African Americans, think the ever cynical - and probably white - studio execs. So let's give 'em what they want to see & feed into those stereotypes we spawned), this plays into the aforementioned audience makeup argument. White folks are the largest segment of the population spending money on movies, so let's cater to them & their expectations.

* It should be noted I do not make any representations as to which of the above views is correct. I really have no idea if black people see themselves in the manner their characters are depicted in places like "In Living Colour" (which I acknowledge is comedic exaggeration to prove a point, and an equal opportunity offender) or "Martin." But even if they do, white people are just as bad. See the stupid,browbeaten men, completely cowed by their much more sensible wives, that are the central characters of such shows as "The King of Queens" and "Yes, Dear".

I don't know if your two theories exclude each other, Iggy - wouldn't it be fair to say that tons of people from either ethnicity surscribe to these stereotypes (probably on a less than conscious level)?

Also, just to expand a bit further, and again going from a very stereotypical viewpoint, whiteness represents the Status Quo, so yer average white guy's gonna be interested mostly in standing out to some extent - thus the mythology of rugged individualism, the lone cowboy, the cop who doesn't play by the rules, the masked vigilante. The serial killer is in a way just another variation of that - he's cut himself off from all regular society, he's built his own moral code, and he's got everyone's interest.

The black experience is quite different - you're already typecast as The Other from the get-go, standing out isn't really a problem. And since you know the odds are stacked against you and everyone who's the same skin colour as yourself, so you learn to rely on ideas of community and solidarity, because it's the main way to survive. So even a character like Shaft, who technically adheres to a lot of Rugged Individualist stereotypes, will be characterized as taking care of his own. Black villains will be gang members, not serial killers, because that's the other side of the coin.

Of course there's no shortage of counter-examples here, and by and large my analysis refers to pretty outdated circumstances (there's no shortage of Rugged Individualists in current Hip-Hop, for instance); but since the movies we're talking about here are pretty old too, I don't think that invalidates it completley.

Where are you guys getting this from?
Slasher films have a huge black audience. Granted I have no hard statistics to back that up, but I've been going to horror movies most of my life and guess who I see a lot of in the audience? And this spans from low to high income area theaters.

No doubt black viewers like slashers a lot, I'll grant, but they still make up, I'd argue, a smaller percentage of the moviegoing public in all but the most urban of areas in the US. No insult intended, but they are considered an ethnic minority in terms of the population. It follows that there will be fewer of them that consume almost any product or service than the majority white population. I thought of another ethnic oddity in horror films on my ride home, and its existence supports this conclusion: the "brother always dies first" phenomenon. For a long time, it was almost a rule in slasher films that if there's a group of potential victims, and one of them is a black male, he'll be one of the 1st ones killed. If the filmmakers were truly aiming these films at a black target audience, would that be the case? I doubt it. It can be construed as a condescending bone thrown to those filmgoers; a form of tokenism. "See? We had a black guy in the film!" Whether black audiences appreciate this more than they would an all white cast getting killed is an interesting question. Frankly, unless my "token" theory pans out, I am at a loss to explain this latter "rule". Any ideas as to its origin from the rest of the class?

No offense, Iggy, but now you're kinda pulling things out of your ass.

Ted Bundy loved the ganja. The very model of an industrious stoner.

This.

Also, I theorize that by making your killer a white male, you can really have him go to town and people can't be offended because he's an evil white male and we all know they're all evil anyways.

A good example to me is Jon Doe from Seven. You knew that was a white dude, long before you saw his face.

Candyman is a good example in my opinion of the dichotomy. I mean, sure, you can have a black killer, but he better be sexy and sophisticated and totally justified to be out killing white women, or else.

There were more black folks than whites at my opening weekend screening of Drag Me To Hell. Conclusion: BLACKS ARE BETTER HORROR FANS THAN MOST O' Y'ALL.

Everyone of my generation knows that when you wanted to find the best horror rentals you didn't go to the video stores in the white 'burbs.
Just sayin.

I've worked for too many movie theaters/video stores, and it doesn't take a degree in anything to notice that black folks like their horror movies. This is not me stereotyping or trying to be derogatory in any way.

I don't really see the point you guys are making about black people liking horror movies...

The thread is about "why are the killers usually white guys?"

I guess you could argue that it's because the supposedly massive black audience that Hollywood panders to prefers the killer to be a white guy, but I don't think you are trying to make that point, so I'm a little confounded.



P.S. I joined a film forum and the first two threads I get into are about the racism in horror and the racism in Michael Bay.

We were responding to this theory:

My bad.

It is just a supposition. I admit I have no hard data to back it up. But it does make logical sense, I think. From a srtrictly numerical standpoint.

In fact, isn't The Exorcist suppose to be the movie to convince movie execs of the idea that they didn't have to create movies specifically catered to black audiences, they would go see movies regardless.

This seems to be a question with a complex answer. As others have already remarked upon, there is the racial aspect, in that the idea of a black slasher (as opposed to a more drama/thrilleresque serial killer) lends itself more easily to symbolic rage. The idea of black rage visiting a comeuppance upon The Man, polarized even more, by the focus being on his nubile young lady folk (that have sex no less!). However, I think the concept of a black serial killer when introduced into a more realistic setting, such as in Switchback with Danny Glover, it doesn't carry the same overtones, as the kills would tend to be more controlled, less like the unleashed rage of an entire racial group.

I think there is also the idea that most likely the majority of horror script writers, and directors are white, and as it tends to be in most fiction characters are seen as default white. Write what you know, so they will (intentional or not) have the tendency to write and cast white characters. That's the default person in their head.

I think there is also cynical marketing involved. As I mentioned The Exorcist, which if I recall correctly is the case, a movie producers might consider the idea that there is no benefit in casting a black actor in the role as black audiences will still see the movie, but can the same be said about white population as a whole across the US?

I think also there is something to be said about the idea of a serial killer being predominantly white as something that has sunk into the public conciousness. It may well be that a serial killer/slasher being white is not exlusionary as much as it is an apt observation.

I don't know, I think it is a question with a complex answer, especially when you consider how long horror has been around, and in the many different cultures it has persisted. Can any offered reasoning be applied across the board, could the same reason that might have played a factor in the 70's be the same reason today? Would the racial overtones account for Italian, or French horror the same as it does for US? I don't think so.

Also, I forgot to mention. Laziness. Lazy, unoriginal, hacks. Just fucking rinse and repeating their favorite movies because they couldn't be bothered to come up with an original concept. I mean, how could you make the killer a black guy when you already filled the quota with a black character that has to minstrel it up, and/or point out how black folk don't survive in a horror movies shortly before killing him off, because that's a genre trope?

Another very good point and certainly more supportable than my earlier one about white teenagers comprising a high percentage of the horror audience.

I also like the idea you mentioned that filmmakers have discovered that black audiences have basically been conditioned to see movies starring all white people, while the reverse isn't true. It's similar to how most action blockbusters are basically marketed to all audiences, even though they're generally "guy movies," while romantic comedies are marketed specifically to women in the hopes that they'll drag men to the theater with them. The default is white male - people who aren't white men have been conditioned to accept this and will see movies regardless of whether they're represented.

I will concede that horror fandom is comprised of mostly white guys (and a few of their girlfriends). I can count on one hand the number of black guys I see at a horror con, including Tony Todd.

Definitely. But "fandom" is not synonymous with "the audience". If only fandom turned out for an opening weekend, I'd wait a while for the theater to air out.

Maybe fandom kept all the black people away from Drag Me To Hell.
WE ARE OUR OWN WORST ENEMY!

Nope. I saw DMTH with black people. Fandom was nowhere to be found.

We suck.

She's double-fucked 'cause her exorcist is Blacula.

Yeah, being a vampire (even a blampire) would severely limit you as an exorcist.

Maybe it's just me, but recent slasher movies haven't really been killing off the black guy first, have they?

No, that cliche was outed long ago so they stopped. It was never entirely true, anyhow. Sure black people got dispatched early, but it's usually some noncharacter who gets it first. A hitchhiker or something.

Honestly, I'd rather have Stereotypical Black Badass survive than a boring Survivor Girl.

But then there's no sexual tension with the slasher.

Shit I won't be able to fap

There's clearly no right answer to this question and there are many points here I agree with, but this one gets my vote as the most likely reason you don't often see black killers in movies.

We live in a very PC world and studio execs are constantly walking on egg shells, so even though there are a lot of interesting themes that could be explored with a black killer (like in the aforementioned Candyman) it's not something most people are willing to touch with a ten foot pole because someone could cry racist.

We need more black directors doing horror movies, that's all there is to it. We just need more diversity in general, I think the genre would really open up if it wasn't so dominated by white middle aged males.

I suggest the racism involved goes the other way. Everyone knows the star of a slasher flick is the slasher himself. Outside of Denzel and Will Smith, black people don't get the lead role in a movie unless it's a "black" movie.

There's two facets. One is that the killer is an identification point. If we look at Meyers, Kruger et al. as the protagonist, then going white is useful in America from a box office standpoint. The flip side is the racism of having a killer be of an ethnicity ultimately says something. Especially since the roles are generally sparsely written. And if you factor in the fact that horror films have a strong ethnic appeal, white devil has its appeal as well.

But bottom line: the politicization of have ethnic killers opens doors that most filmmakers want closed. You have to do some heavy lifting to have a black/latino/etc. killer.

Andre and Werewolf Girl,
Your theories, while sound, really only apply to anything made after 1980. Like I said before, the producers of slasher films from the 70's (and the few made in the 60's) had no such sensibilities. Nor would there have been a public outcry if the killer from Black Christmas turned out to be black. Pun absolutely intended.
I still say it's mostly because the roots of slashers are rural area white men. Maybe the ethnicities would have become more varied after Halloween and Ft13 if not for Hollywood's newly forming PC attitude.