Never Stop Filming: 5 Black Horror Characters Who Know The Importance Of Keeping Receipts
This country does not believe women. It especially does not believe Black women. This is why I, and many people like me, are receipt keepers. We know that even with documentation, photos, and witnesses, we’ll be called liars if not outright blamed for whatever the problem is. I was raised with an awareness that men in uniforms were scary. However, until people started posting triggering videos (without warning) on social media, my white friends could not understand. No matter how many times I told them what the cops had done to my siblings, they could not believe it until they saw it on Facebook. Even then, the conversation centered on what the victims were wearing, why they provoked the officers by existing, and everything but the blatant racism that led to the loss of another innocent life.
This bias and need to dehumanize Black people impacts everything, even though social media pretends it doesn’t. Twitter has discovered calling something “woke” makes people feel better about continuing their racist practices. This has also led to films accidentally stumbling into something they cannot fully grasp. My main focus is intersectional horror. I spend a lot of time asking why movies are so white and straight. However, I also notice patterns, and because horror films are forever trying to give Black people the least amount of screen time (when they even remember to cast us), they sometimes accidentally do something interesting.
Too often we see Black men shoved into roles like a cop with two lines or a gaslighting ex who dies in the opening. But through these frustrating stereotypes, some horror films have accidentally revealed something fascinating: Black characters are often a horror film’s receipt keeper. As they hold the camera and film the horrors unfolding, they experience hell while getting almost no screen time. Most of the Black experience is bearing witness to this country’s incessant need to fuck around and find out. We did not ask to be here. However, as unwilling passengers, we are forced to always find out alongside the people who do not want us in these spaces.
As Above, So Below (dir. John Erick Dowdle)
Where You Can Watch: VOD
I noticed this trend last year when covering As Above, So Below on one of my podcasts. Benji (Edwin Hodge) is the caretaker of this group and the sole Black person. Benji is tasked with anticipating the needs of the white leads and being the cameraman. I love this movie, but I always roll my eyes that it’s another title that puts the Black character behind the camera. This move gives everyone else more time on screen while feeling like this respected actor was there so creatives can say they’re not racist. However, that’s a longer rant than we have time for. As the spirits begin terrorizing and injuring Benji immediately, he keeps the camera rolling. They screw up his hands, and he’s still there with the camera as he continues helping people reach the next circle of hell.
Every time he dares to voice a concern, he’s met with pushback from the white woman he works for. He stays in service to this group, continuing to film until he meets his inevitable demise. That’s when his camera is handed off as they forge on without him. Benji becomes another Black guy who dies on the clock in the horror genre. However, his footage lives on.
Grave Encounters (dir. Colin Minihan and Stuart Ortiz)
Where You Can Watch: Fandango at Home, Plex, Pluto TV, The Roku Channel, and Tubi
While we discuss Black cameramen in found footage horror, T.C. (Merwin Mondesir) is another casualty we need to examine. Like As Above, So Below, Grave Encounters puts the Black guy behind the camera. I only realized there was a Black character when the spirits started coming for him. However, he’s there with a camera recording the bad decisions of all of the non-Black folks around him. Again, being Black means bearing witness to atrocities that are out of your control. When T.C. tries to explain the paranormal activity that has left him shaken, his team explains it away. They then get excited when they realize if he’s telling the truth, he has it on tape. The shift from “We don’t believe what you are saying” to “Oh, there might be proof of what you told us about” is one many Black people know all too well.
Against his better judgment, he continues this hellish journey with these people, only to get snatched up later in the movie. We don’t know his exact fate, but we know he did not get a happy ending. We also know that his footage is handed off to the non-Black people who had the most screen time. T.C. is another in a long line of disposable Black characters who died working a gig.
Scream 2 (dir. Wes Craven)
Where You Can Watch: Max
Now, we’re stepping outside of found footage horror but staying with our Black cameramen tasked with recording white nonsense with Scream 2. Joel (Duane Martin) is our new cameraman. He’s also a source of comic relief as he discovers what happened to Gale’s last camera guy. Joel has the good common sense to leave the situation after Ghostface Incorporated leaves too many bodies on the college campus. We all clapped and cheered because this gave us hope he might be one of the few Black men to survive a horror movie. So, there was some confusion when he returned at the end and picked his camera up again. Luckily, for him, the Ghostface Factory had been closed down already. However, I would still love to unpack the Black supporting character’s urge to show up for work as bodies are being carried out of a collegiate theatre department.
The second installment of this beloved horror franchise saw Black people enter the conversation, and three of the four did not make it out. Joel was the first Black guy to survive the Ghostface Experience and would be the last until Chad (Mason Gooding) picked up the baton in the Radio Silence era. As a Wes Craven stan account who grew up inhaling Kevin Williamson’s work, it pains me to say that my beloved franchise didn’t really see us until 2022.
The previous horror films feature Black camera guys in the role of passive witnesses. The characters are there to document whatever their white counterparts are getting into. The actors are there, so we can’t say the movies have an exclusively white cast. Another thing the films have in common is that they’re not written or directed by Black people. I appreciate that they stumbled into a part of the Black experience while trying to give their Black characters as little screen time as possible. However, with intentionality, Black folks collecting receipts to keep the record straight could, and should, comment on the society that makes us do this.
Please follow me into Jordan Peele’s The Twilight Zone to see a world where Black people use the camera as defense and offense.
The Twilight Zone, “Replay” (Season 1, Episode 3) (dir. Gerard McMurray)
Where You Can Watch: Prime Video
Nina (Sanaa Lathan) is taking her son to college to begin his first semester of a film program. They stop at a diner and meet the racist cop looking for any reason to murder her kid. Because this is The Twilight Zone, Nina realizes that their camcorder can rewind recent events. She uses this to go back in time, repeatedly watching her son die until she figures out how to save him. This results in her spending a lot of time with this camera and capturing a lot of upsetting footage of her loved one’s demise. Let us not pretend that Black women having to document the murder of a loved one is a new concept. However, because this show wasn’t built to give Black people less screen time, the receipt keeping is given the weight it deserves.
If you take nothing else away from this article, please remember the reason so many Black women document things is because we know even with mountains of proof, we will not be believed. The system is stacked against us, and the media is ready to assume the worst. The people we love are “thugs” and were “probably mixed up in drugs” while “provoking officers”. This is one of the hardest episodes of any incarnation of The Twilight Zone to watch. However, it skillfully navigates police brutality in a way that other shows are still unable to do even today. Because the episode was created by Black people, it also understands that documentation is an inherent part of the Black experience. We keep the record straight because no one else wants to. We keep recording because we know our word is not good enough when the system is stacked against us.
Nope (dir. Jordan Peele)
Where You Can Watch: VOD
One of the things I love about Nope is that Emerald (Keke Palmer) and OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) understand the assignment. They know no one is going to believe two Black people about a hungry alien lifeforce without evidence. They will not be given a podcast or basic cable show because they’re not white. This is an unspoken part of their quest to capture proof of Jean Jacket in action. Again, as Black people, we instinctively know that we must document anything that matters to us. Much like Emerald and OJ’s handshake, it’s part of the culture.
So, it’s unsurprising that they call in Holst (Michael Wincott), an iconic cinematographer, to get the impossible shot. Not only will this give them proof of the attention-loving creature hovering over their farm, but it’ll also give them a witness who people will actually listen to when they are done raking the two Black characters and their Brown friend over the coals. Interestingly enough, the white guy gets the photo and immediately cracks under the pressure. This puts the work of getting the evidence back onto the Black folks. Specifically onto Emerald, as OJ diverts Jean Jacket’s attention. She gets creative and gets the job done because receipt keeping has become second nature for Black women. It is a crucial skill that is part of our survival in toxic workplaces, schools, relationships, etc.
Receipts, Receipts, Receipts
We have to collect the data, file away the microaggressions, and build a folder. Only then can we begin the daunting journey of getting someone to consider listening to us. This is why we’re already tired before we start the actual trial. We live in a world that projects its anti-Blackness onto us and judges us as if those prejudices are facts.
This is why keeping the receipts is vital to our culture. Our ancestors had to keep oral histories and traditions alive to pass on to younger generations. This is why so many of our family trees and histories are as intact as they are. Black people have historically had to keep their own historical records. Meanwhile, the media romanticizes things like the Civil War and slavery. It was not a glamorous time, and your great-grandparents were not the heroes you want to believe they were. It’s time to acknowledge that and start to heal.
So, Black folks are not new to archiving. We live in a country where Black history is barely taught. This new hellish regime would like to erase Black History Month completely because bigots are going to bigot. As usual, it falls to us to record, document, and witness more things we want to avoid. Like in the examples I pulled, we are simply doing our Black jobs.
Categorized:Editorials
