With the critical and box office success of Get Out, A Quiet Place, and Hereditary, as well as the ongoing success of shows such as The Walking Dead and its offshoots, horror has been making its way from the shadows into the mainstream gaze. The Purge franchise — known for its brutal films and social commentary — even has a 10-part miniseries made for network television on USA Network. Horror narratives are having a pop-culture moment for sure. But why? Why are more and more people drawn to such dark visions and on-screen violence? Why do those of us lifelong fans of horror stories keep coming back for more? Is there a “pleasure” in horror?  

For me, certain kinds of horror movies serve a therapeutic function to help me deal with trauma. From the safety of my home or home library, I watch these movies and descend into someone else’s worst day. Through their journey, I go on my own all the while knowing I am safe and protected. The films that are most effective for my self-therapy tend to be trauma-of-the-home films. These stories feature someone who needs to return to the scene of a childhood trauma or loss, and how they cope with that dark history. Favorites like Pascal Laugier’s Martyrs, Flowers in the Attic, and the 1990 IT miniseries have been some of my biggest collaborators on this road to healing.

Because I had a nomadic upbringing around the world, it’s not possible to return to any of my original sites of trauma. These trauma-of-the-home narratives give me an opportunity to join others as they return to houses and places haunted in different ways, and confront my own demons along with them. I’m also a rare female fan of the rape-revenge genre. The more feminist installments of these films like Revenge and M.F.A. have helped me process and move beyond terrible events. Horror films have been indispensable for maintaining my mental health.

Writer and professor Kate Durbin also uses certain kinds of horror movies in this unusual way to help confront and heal past trauma from the safety of her own home. For Durbin as well, the “pleasure” in watching horror movies is in direct correlation to how it helps confront and heal past trauma.

“I find stories of hauntings and possession films to be up there at the top for me. Trauma possesses and haunts us; we may try and escape it but it never fully goes away. It leaves traces in us and in the environment,” Durbin says. “I like films like The VVitch and Jennifer’s Body, films that deal with the trauma of being in a woman’s body in a misogynistic world. I like that the women in these films turn into monstrous demons/witches both as a result of their trauma and in defiance of it.”

Durbin first discovered this strange healing power of horror when she began developing college courses on the genre 10 years ago. She tells me, “I realized I found horror therapeutic sometime in the early years of teaching it. I feel horror is a safe space in which to process trauma (at least for me, I know a lot of people find it the opposite). And I’m talking about collective, cultural trauma as well as my own personal trauma.”

For Graveyard Shift Sisters founder and lifelong horror fan Ashlee Blackwell, one of the pleasures gleaned from horror involves centering the faces and voices of Black and other POC. Both on and offscreen, these faces are often hideously marginalized in horror movies and the broader horror production industry. In particular, Black women in horror tend to get the brunt of the worst treatment and focusing on their experiences suddenly becomes an act of social and political subversion.

In an interview with Remedial Horror Blackwell writes, “I spent my entire life feeling like the only Black woman who had a deep interest in horror, and that only doubled my frustration because I didn’t want to believe such an irrational musing.” In fact, it was Blackwell’s series on Black Girl Horror Nerds in October 2014 right here on BGN that helped lead to Graveyard Shift Sisters.  

Beyond this important de-marginalizing aspect of her work, Blackwell’s enjoyment of the genre is also deeply personal. The worlds created by horror storytellers as well as relatable characters to empathize with — people who remind you of friends or those you love in terrible situations — draws her back into the genre again and again. Blackwell tells me, “Regular, complex people in these extreme circumstances who you mourn for and cheer on to survive is an important element of the human condition. That instinct to survive is probably our most primal, and the best filmmakers have the unique ability to make us believe in the supernatural, dystopia, etc. and pull us in with a reflection of ourselves.”

For Dread Media founder Desmond Reddick, part of the pleasure of horror is the fan community. It builds around the genre as well as being able to promote and discuss indie creators and their projects in the industry. On an individual level, Reddick also sees horror films’ endings as giving a virtual middle-finger to happy Hollywood finishes. Doing so is like taking pleasure in the dismantling of the “all’s well that ends well” notion, which is rarely true in real life.

Reddick says, “It’s also inspiring to see someone put into harrowing circumstances and coming out the other end stronger. And there’s something profoundly comforting in an unhappy ending as well. The pure gall to do it says, ‘F*ck Hollywood’”

Reddick also sees lifelong horror fans as a special breed of pop culture consumers. He tells me, “Monster Kids are different, I think. We look at the world in a different way. We can see something beautiful in a film or book that ends horribly and know that life is often exactly that.” I agree that there is great comfort and pleasure in being able to examine a situation in a movie and know that it would play out similarly in real life. That can be the scariest thing about horror. And also the most meaningful, and pleasurable part.

When it comes to theories of horror, Durbin’s and my method of horror movies as self-therapy corresponds with Julia Kristeva’s notion of “the abject.” This involves the often-painful and uncomfortable exploration of the physical, social, cultural, and psychosocial spaces where a rupture has occurred. We find solace in those spaces as we simultaneously try to repair them. Durbin’s process also involves Barbara Creed’s notion of the monstrous feminine and reclaiming a female body abused by patriarchal forces.

In many ways, Blackwell and Reddick’s enjoyment of horror relies on Laura Mulvey’s notion of the gaze — and its power — in horror films in particular. Blackwell has shifted what is the traditional white male gaze in horror movies to that of Black women, and this opens up an entirely new framework through which to enjoy and analyze horror stories. Reddick and his community appreciate horror as a kind of collective, examining horror movies from a group gaze as well as a personal one.

In these contexts, the “pleasure” in horror is not necessarily an enjoyment of being frightened or scared, but rather a chance for personal and communal development through specific types of narratives. Horror, then, becomes more than just pleasurable entertainment even through its discomforts: Horror becomes a place of power, both personal and communal.  

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The potential split of Bill and Ted’s friendship in this cruel way sends out a massive shockwave into the universe that portends the apocalypse. Rufus (George Carlin) is a most righteous emissary from the future sent back in time to help make sure Bill and Ted pass their history presentation, for the benefit of the world.

With the assistance of Rufus’ time-traveling phone booth — a sweet nod to Doctor Who’s TARDIS — Bill and Ted go on a bodacious journey from San Dimas into history as they collect historical figures for their final presentation. From ancient Greece to the American wild west, Bill and Ted kidnap Socrates, Napoleon, Billy the Kid, Genghis Khan, Joan of Arc, and Beethoven, bringing them back to San Dimas as time runs out for their presentation.

But it isn’t just the Circle K where strange things are afoot in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. While this absurd film holds up surprisingly well in HD, the remastered visuals don’t temper some of the problematic sexism and homophobia. Ted’s dad isn’t the only creepy dude in this story. Bill’s father (J. Patrick McNamara) has married Missy (Amy Stoch), a former classmate of Bill and Ted’s who is only three years older than them. Gnarly. And while the two princesses Joanna (Diane Franklin) and Elizabeth (Kimberley Kates) eventually get some agency by the sequel, in Excellent Adventure they are basically used as props and eventually given to Bill and Ted as gifts for completing their mission and saving the world. That’s a totally egregious violation of women’s rights, man.

It would also be a major bummer of an oversight if I don’t mention the most unfortunate homophobic language uttered by our heroes Bill and Ted after Ted’s death scare. For most of the movie, Bill and Ted appear to be performing non-toxic masculinity. They have emotional intimacy and their physical contact is regular and nurturing. When Bill thinks Ted’s dead (heh heh) he rightfully freaks out. When Ted isn’t dead they embrace as best friends who truly love and care about each other. And then they drop the other f-word right after. This is a reminder that even though Bill and Ted seem to be innocent and almost completely without guile, they are still enmeshed in the kind of toxic masculinity demonstrated by their dickhead dads. Bill and Ted can’t help but be products of their time, just as the historical figures they bring into the present can’t help but be products of theirs too.

These issues do inject a stain on Bill and Ted’s legacy that might make it difficult for some to revisit now. Part of me wishes they’d at least edit out the homophobic slur. I can spin it so it makes sense in context, but it’s quite simply unnecessary and would only improve the film’s longevity without it. Thankfully, there is some great representation in the first installment of Bill and Ted’s adventures to make up for these other lapses in writing. Bill and Ted’s history teacher Mr. Ryan (Bernie Casey) as well as the supreme of the Three Most Important Important People in the World (Clarence Clemons) are both Black men, and are not presented in any kind of stereotype or caricature, unlike just about everyone else in the film. This aspect was rather ahead of its time, and for it I’m grateful. Most righteous indeed.  

But let’s also not forget that Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure is absolutely absurd and still funny as hell. Reeves and Winters have remarkable chemistry together. In a world as dark as ours has become, seeing Bill and Ted with their beaming smiles and air guitar nonsense feels like rays of light and hope. Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure is a reminder all these years later that there is a time and place for absolute silliness. The news gets even more triumphant as Keanu Reeves and Alex Winters teamed up once again for a third installment of the franchise, Bill and Ted Face the Music, released in August 2020. Until then, be excellent to each other. And party on, dudes.

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In 1968, George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead hit cinemas, the first of its kind and a piece of art that continues to affect the entire landscape of American film even now 50 years later.

Night of the Living Dead was so far ahead of its time, Hollywood is still trying to catch up. Romero cast a sympathetic Black male lead as the hero of the story — whose tragic end at the hands of a white vigilante mob resonates on so many levels, even now. Ben (Duane Jones) is strong, but also sensitive and vulnerable, and he’s not here to take any crap from anybody even though the entire rest of the cast is white. Back then (and even to some now) a Black man in this kind of role was an act of open rebellion and revolution. In Eli Roth’s History Of Horror, horror scholar Tananarive Due says, “I might contend that for some viewers that was as scary as the child eating her mom in the basement!” Romero forced white audiences, in particular, to identify with a Black man as an equal, not a slave or “the help”.

This movie was the first to overtly show how horror stories could be used to expose social and cultural commentary with an openly political message. In many ways, the medium of horror itself — one that transgresses social and cultural boundaries with wanton abandon—was the perfect vehicle for an allegory about the American civil rights movement as well as the gruesome war in Vietnam.

Over the years when asked about this casting decision, Romero insisted he cast Jones because he gave the best audition. But when we look at Romero’s follow-up Dawn of the Dead in 1978 and his open criticisms of consumer culture as reflected in the sequel, I wonder how honest he was about that.

Where Night of the Living Dead is shrouded in the shadows of black and white film, leaving so much to our imagination, Dawn of the Dead is quite the opposite. Like Dorothy opening the door from her humdrum Kansas life into the technicolor of Oz, Dawn of the Dead displays its zombies in the glaring light of day and mall fluorescents. The social commentary also ramps up from subtle to right in your face.

Dawn of the Dead opens in a low-income apartment complex, inhabited by mostly Black residents. The complex is under attack by police because of suspicion residents are hiding zombies in their midst. Which they are. They don’t want their family members killed. They don’t understand the threat, because nobody has properly explained it to them. And from this structural violence that ends in a barrage of gunfire, we move to a group of survivors held up in a shopping mall that is slowly overrun by zombies.

Romero’s scathing critique of mindless consumerism and how the Baby Boomer generation sold out all their values — is as brilliant as casting a Black hero in Night of the Living Dead. While the gore and shock value have exponentially increased in the 10 years since the first, so did the social commentary. Special effects legend Tom Savini got his start in Dawn of the Dead and used his skills as a combat photographer to create the first photorealistic zombie attack scenes ever put on film. A product of the Vietnam War that Romero slyly critiqued in Night of the Living Dead, Savini brought a new level of intensity to this social and cultural allegory about the end of American civilization as we know it in Dawn of the Dead. We no longer wonder what those zombies would look like in real life. Their grey skin, exposed wounds, and shark-like black eyes are on full display. The seemingly-innocuous backdrop of a shopping center serves as a stark contrast to the social breakdown evidenced in the zombie hordes going up and down the escalators as they would have in life.   

By 1985’s Day of the Dead, Romero’s apocalyptic trio reached an apex. Seven years later and the zombie wars have been waged. And lost. The remaining humans live in bunkers under a violent military rule as scientists still try to find a cure. Once again, Romero’s social commentary is on point. The monsters in this film are no longer the zombies, who are being tortured and experimented on. The villains of this story are the sadistic soldiers who clearly enjoy inflicting pain on anyone they can, not just zombies.

I first saw Night of the Living Dead when I was five or six. It wasn’t my first horror movie, but it was the first horror movie that wrapped social commentary into a scary story. And that notion sparked my imagination like nothing else. Even now when I write a scary story or horror novel, the first thing I consider is: What is the social justice message wrapped in this parable? What social issue(s) am I critiquing? And are there solutions I can offer the problem(s) within my story? I call it The Romero Test. When I’m watching movies and television — not just horror — I always apply this test. Stories that don’t have a strong and well executed social justice message won’t resonate with me. This is thanks to George Romero’s exceptional films.

It’s been 50 years since Night of the Living Dead. Since Dawn of the Dead another 40. Yet these movies feel as alive now as they were back then. Without these two seminal horror movies, we certainly would not have other zombie phenomenons like The Walking Dead and upcoming Overlord. We also wouldn’t have so many other non-zombie horror movies that specifically exist to examine social justice issues within the framework of monsters, terror, and societal upset, like Blade and Friday the 13th Part 7: The New Blood.

For half a century, George Romero deconstructed American society through zombie allegory. He put up a mirror to the ugliness that simmers under the surface of this nation, and he dared us to keep looking. He encouraged us to see the truth behind the fiction. The zombies of Night of the Living Dead reflected those times, just as their descendants in movies and television now reflect how much has changed — and those same pressure points of race, class, and politics that haven’t in all this time. Maybe in another 50 years, they finally will. 

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There are many firsts in Blade. He is the first Black movie superhero. Blade is the first film to include a website puzzle tie-in that deepened the story. It was also one of the first portrayals of the underground 90s American rave scene. That culture has since morphed into the festival circuits and EDM events that eventually took over what we once called “clubbing”. Nearly 30 years later, Blade is still singularly iconic.

The Backstory

Blade’s mother (Sanaa Lathan) was bitten by a vampire just before giving birth. The bite created a genetic anomaly in Blade. He has all the vampire’s strength but also a core humanity they lack as well as the ability to go out during the day. He uses his power to exterminate vampires, penance for the guilt he feels for being sort of one of them. Unfortunately, his dark gift comes with a terrible price: he cannot escape the vampire bloodlust and must take regular doses of a serum in order to keep those pangs at bay.

As a Black man, Blade began life marginalized. As a Black human-vampire hybrid, he is further on the margins of both human and vampire societies. His hybridity is powerful, but Blade has no place except on his own. His nemesis Deacon Frost (Stephen Dorff) is similarly on the fringes of vampire society. Having been bitten instead of born vampire, Frost is constantly looking to prove his worth to the Vampire Council led by Gitano Dragonetti (Udo Kier). Frost is also looking to crack the code of an ancient vampire bible with a ritual to bring about the human apocalypse and the rise of the reign of vampires.  

These old versus new world orders clash when Frost finally deciphers the La Magra ritual, while Blade also tries to help hematologist Karen Jensen (N’Bushe Wright) find a cure for the vampire disease. Continuing its biblical metaphor, Blade turns out to be the chosen one prophesied by the ancient text who will bring about the vampire takeover of the planet. Like a Black vampire Jesus, Blade’s blood is the key ingredient to unlock the power of the beast La Magra, whose next vessel will be Deacon Frost.

The Importance 

Blade was one of the first good examples of positive representation, and in particular Black inclusion. Seeing a sci-fi horror movie with such a stellar cast of color was a first for me in 1998, and in some ways it still comes as a surprise now 27 years later. The most recent UCLA Anenberg study found in 2017 that 70% of speaking roles in films were white actors. Even by today’s standards, Blade is an outlier for representation and diversity.

But the film doesn’t stop there with its allegory-heavy hybrid human-vampire daywalker. There are so many ways to interpret Blade’s struggle with his genetic makeup and broader identity. He is a man stuck between worlds. Frances Gateward interprets Blade as a critique on miscegenation in “Daywalkin’ Night Stalkin’ Bloodsuckas: Black Vampires in Contemporary Film”. She equates vampirism to whiteness (even though the vampires in the film are indeed diverse), and in particular because of Frost’s desire for world domination through genocide.

Blade and Me

As someone who is mixed race, Blade was one of the first on-screen appearances of a “mixie” like me. Being half white and half Sri Lankan (both Tamil and Sinhala), but raised all over Asia and Africa during my childhood, like Blade I also existed on the margins of the margins. I relate to his identity crises, and his struggle to come to terms with the totality of who he is. Monsters as metaphors have always resonated with me. Being a perpetual “Other” no matter where I go in the world, I couldn’t help but relate with on-screen outsiders like Blade searching for their role and their place.

By the end of this film, Blade comes to terms with himself and finds a kind of peace. He stops trying to force himself into one or the other group, and instead accepts both his faults and gifts for what they are. He stops letting his identity issues and guilt about who he is — in particular that side he considers monstrous and hateful— control his life. I can finally say that 27 years later, so have I. This is, in part, thanks to witnessing Blade’s personal social and cultural negotiations for all these years, from the first film and beyond. Decolonization is a process, and for some it takes longer than others.

Long Live the Legend of Blade

What’s most impressive about Blade though is how well it has held up over the years, and even under the sometimes-harsh glare of the high-definition TV. The blood rave is as creepy and thrilling as ever. The fight scenes a beautiful flurry of sound and martial arts. The high-speed chases and comic-book-esque camera tricks only look crisper. In so many ways Blade was made for today: for today’s politics, for today’s television screens, and for today’s marginalized audiences. We now have platforms to share our own experiences as Others and outsiders.

In over 20 more years, Blade will still be as socially and culturally relevant as it’s been all this time. Hopefully by then Hollywood will have had time to catch up with Blade‘s equitable representation and inclusion. 

You can stream Blade on Netflix.

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For years after the deaths, Pamela roams the camp and its surroundings, setting fires and poisoning the water in order for that haunted space to never be open to the public again. But by 1979, even her best machinations aren’t enough to keep Camp Blood closed, and she resorts to stalking and killing the new crop of camp counselors one by one until she is vanquished by our final girl Alice (Adrienne King).

If this doesn’t sound like the movie you remember, that’s because nobody talks about Friday the 13th from the perspective of its serial killer, Mrs. Pamela Voorhees (Jason and his machete don’t appear until the sequel), a profoundly damaged character brought to painful life by the inimitable Betsy Palmer.  

When well-established screen and stage actress Palmer agreed to do this gory slasher movie, she thought her performance was meant to be a campy soap-opera style since that was the order of genre films back in the day. But director Sean Cunningham gave her an interesting note to not play it over the top, but rather as if it were a dramatic role. Palmer was intrigued and dialed back her performance, ultimately giving us one of the most compelling serial murderers put to screen. Through Palmer, Pamela Voorhees becomes a complicated woman whose psychotic break is deeply rooted in multiple traumas, only some of which we know about. 

Watching Friday the 13th from Pamela’s perspective makes it an entirely different movie that asks a lot of questions, which actually add a great deal to the depth of the plot. For example, where was Jason’s father? Who was he? We never hear a peep about him. Does his absence have something to do with why Pamela and Jason were so closely bonded?

As I watched from Pamela’s point of view, I started filing through some different scenarios. Mrs. Voorhees really resents young people having sex, even aside from the accidental death of her son. Is it possible that Pamela had been assaulted as a young woman, resulting in a pregnancy, possibly explaining why she is so triggered by seeing other young folks in that act? Or was she simply bedded young, knocked up, and abandoned? Whatever the case was, something major happened to Pamela Voorhees that not only resulted in Jason, but also contributed to an eventual deep psychotic break after losing him.

The sad truth of the world is that women lose their children every day and don’t become serial-killing mass murderers. There is something profoundly damaged in Pamela Voorhees that suggests a much deeper and darker back story than the film presents on its surface. 

Through this alternative gaze, I also couldn’t help but notice that as Pamela moves through the beginning of the movie when we don’t see her, the first murders are all her attempts to stop people from going to the haunted Camp Crystal Lake. The dialogue is only presented from the side of the victims, so we don’t hear Pamela asking them (probably very politely) to not go to the camp, but we do hear the youngsters insisting on going, provoking her to stop them. It’s almost as if she wants to protect these kids like her son wasn’t protected, and when she can’t convince them not to go to camp her twisted brain shifts to murder as protection. Pamela is here for revenge, but I also started to think she might even be trying to save them from themselves, potentially because she herself had a trauma at a similar age. This is the twisted logic of an abuser, or someone who experienced a lot of abuse, or a terrible combination of both dynamics.

When Pamela stalks Annie (Robbi Morgan) through the woods, it is a brutal chase. Picturing the perpetrator of such heinous acts as middle-aged Pamela Voorhees adds an entirely new level of horror. Pamela has trauma strength in her psychosis, and she is far scarier to imagine than her son ever would be in future installments. She’s also quite a tragic figure, so wrapped up in her pain and sadness that she turns to external violence.  

Also, as someone who didn’t grow up in American camp culture, it’s wild to me that someone so protective of her young son would entrust him to a group of teenagers and assume he’d be safe. In this regard, Pamela was a failed mother who likely internalized that terrible decision, contributing to her eventual psychotic break. The final girl Alice, as lead camp counselor, ends up being a failed surrogate mother to the other counselors as she is unable to protect them from Pamela Voorhees’s pure wrath. In the film’s final confrontation between Pamela and Alice, it’s mother versus surrogate mother, and even though Alice prevails, by the end she has extreme PTSD from killing a woman in self-defense. Worse, by the sequel the woman’s son stalks her to her home miles away and murders her in her safe place. Actual and symbolic motherhood go hand in severed hand with trauma in Friday the 13th. 

It’s truly remarkable that in all the many follow-ups of the Friday the 13th franchise, there has never been an origin story for Mrs. Pamela Voorhees, the original killer. The ambiguity of Pamela’s story is ripe for mining. She’s such a unique killer in slasher movie history — the first woman to pick up a weapon and start using it on unsuspecting youngsters. 

“His name was Jason,” Pamela Voorhees says. “I am Jason. Jason was my son. And today is his birthday.” For 21 years, Pamela was consumed by the grief of losing her son as well as the unknown and possibly traumatic circumstances that led to Jason’s birth in the first place, leaving her a single mother. Unable to process her grief or her trauma, Pamela’s mental illnesses descended into a pure psychosis that got at least a dozen innocent people killed.

On its 40th birthday, let’s use Friday the 13th as a cautionary tale about what happens when we let our sadness, grief, and trauma rot us from the inside out, instead of confronting and healing it. Don’t be like Pamela Voorhees, whose pain turned her into a mass murderer. Be like Jason and wear a mask. 

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Now dubbed “copaganda,” there are thousands upon thousands of hours of movies, television shows, and reality TV that paint American law enforcement as heroic forces here to save the day, as we see in such shows as Law & Order: SVU, Southland, and 9-1-1. Often, copaganda treats police as antihero figures who do what needs to be done in order to get the bad guy. Media like The Shield, Dexter, True Detective, and Brooklyn 99 show cops regularly breaking the law — but for the greater good even (or for laughs), though their actions are illegal. The so-called thin blue line becomes a full-on gray area as law enforcement are painted in visual media as quite the opposite of who and what they are in real life. The crime, action, thriller, and even horror genres are rife with narratives of hero or anti-hero bad apple cops we are supposed to root for even as they often target minority communities and function with almost complete impunity. 

But there is a gap in knowledge here in the bad apple narrative. The full idiom says, “One bad apple can spoil the bunch,” and this is exactly the case of American police departments as cellphone cameras have allowed the greater public to see what really goes on when cops switch off their bodycams. What we have seen is pervasive and systematic racist abuse of Black and Brown people in particular, and these bad apples seem to way outnumber whatever “good” apples might be left. The racist and misogynist power structures inherent in American law enforcement suggest that there might not be good apples at all. 

Let’s look at two unlikely copaganda stories: The delightful romcom Bridesmaids and intense ensemble drama Magnolia. Both of these stories feature self-proclaimed good cops with narrative arcs central to the stories. In Bridesmaids, Officer Rhodes (Chris O’Dowd) is a Wisconsin state trooper from Ireland who lets Annie (Kristen Wiig) out of a broken taillight ticket. When she thanks him for cutting her a break he says, “We’re not all bad. Actually, the rest of them are. But not me,” he laughs. “I’m the best of them.” But Officer Rhodes is far from the best as he goes drinking with Annie while on duty and wearing his uniform. Because he lets Annie go without the ticket, she doesn’t get her taillights fixed and eventually gets into an accident that becomes a hit and run. He lets Annie ride up front with him in his patrol car as he follows through a speed trap.

And as Annie breaks every single road rule trying to get his attention, he doesn’t even cite her for ramming her own car into his trooper vehicle. There is white devilry on all sides of this. While on the surface it’s meant to be funny, in the bigger context of police abuses of power, what Rhodes does is actually really disturbing. He is far from the good apple in the barrel that he claims to be. 

In the same vein as Officer Rhodes, we have Officer Jim Kurring (John C. Reilly) in one of  Magnolia’s sweeping plot lines. Jim Kurring the man is sweet, unassuming, with what seems like a gentle spirit as we overhear his recording for a dating service. But when first meet Officer Jim, that voice recording of what he’s looking for in a partner rings false as we watch him unnecessarily pull a gun on a Black woman Marcy (Cleo King) after entering her home for a noise complaint without knocking or announcing himself. He feels justified in these illegal acts when he discovers a dead body in her closet, but he did not follow procedure. When speaking with a neighborhood kid Dixon (Emmanuel Johnson), who might be a witness, Officer Jim pulls a number of strange power plays on the child, including using racist language, before dismissing the kid entirely. His contempt for both Marcy and Dixon is palpable. 

Later, when answering another noise complaint call, Officer Jim follows the rules this time in waiting for Claudia (Melora Walters) to answer her door even though it takes her a really long time and once she opens the door it’s clear she’s coked to high heaven. Like Officer Rhodes in Bridesmaids, Officer Jim develops an instant crush on Claudia and soon finds a way to invite himself for a cup of coffee. He doesn’t notice the cocaine dusting on her table or the fact that she even goes and tops up a line while Officer Jim is still in her kitchen. Yikes. These are all abuses of power enacted by this good cop who goes on to add sexual harassment to the pile of infractions by asking Claudia out on a date for later that night.

After Claudia and Jim’s date goes terribly, Officer Jim comes upon Quiz Kid Donnie Smith (William H. Macy), who’s in the middle of robbing his former place of employment but bungling the entire thing. Does Officer Jim arrest this thief? No. Officer Jim goes with Donnie to put the money back. Jim’s portion of Magnolia ends with the following alarming and problematic monologue for a member of law enforcement: 

“People think if I make a judgment call that it’s a judgment on them. But that’s not what I do and that’s not what should be done. I have to take everything and play it as it lays. Sometimes people need a little help. Sometimes people need to be forgiven and sometimes they need to go to jail. And that’s a very tricky thing on my part…making that call. The law is the law and heck if I’m gonna break it. But you can forgive someone? Well, that’s the tough part. What do we forgive? Tough part of the job. Tough part of walking down the street.”

Where to even start with this mess? Officer Jim breaks the law by not bringing in Donnie for stealing. He sexually harasses a civilian (who is committing actionable drug offenses in his face) and justifies it through a completely inappropriate romantic lens. And Marcy? Marcy was a Black woman protecting her son from the white man who was abusing them both. Where was Officer Jim’s or any other officer’s help for Marcy before her domestic violence situation escalated to murder? But still he’s presented as rather simpleminded, innocent, and even likeable in spite of all his blatant criminality and not-so-quiet racism.

As in the representative cases of Bridesmaids and Magnolia, the bottom line at this point in American history is there simply are no good apple cops when the system itself is rotten to the core, pun intended. Anything that is built on a foundation of maintaining white supremacy, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, misogyny, and impunity for criminal acts taking place while wearing a badge and blue uniform has no redemption arc unless it is fully dismantled and rebuilt. The copaganda industrial complex promoted in far too much visual media needs to hit the dumpster as well.

The post When Good Cops are Still Bad Apples: The Unlikely Cases of ‘Magnolia’ and ‘Bridesmaids’ appeared first on Black Girl Nerds.

“Five billion people died in 1996 and 1997, almost the entire population of the world. Only about 1 percent of us survived,” opens the credits of Terry Gilliam’s 1995 time travel pandemic sci-fi noir 12 Monkeys. Thirty years ago this sounded very dramatic, but it’s not really until now as the globe battles a pandemic that these numbers really hit home. 

12 Monkeys follows James Cole (Bruce Willis), a convict turned time-traveler sent from 2035 to 1996 in order to help a team of scientists isolate exactly who released the virus in an attempt to rewrite history. The only problem is they can’t seem to get science to work in their own time as they send Cole back to 1917, 1990, as well as 1996, scrambling his brain while creating multiple timelines where different versions of Cole all exist simultaneously. As the movie moves back and forth between the future and various pasts, Cole begins to uncover a variety of layers at work involving the virus that sparked such a horrific pandemic he survived as a child. 

On his journey, he meets Dr. Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe), who feels she knows him from somewhere and who eventually writes a book about people in the present who have claimed to come from the future to try to prevent plagues. Cole is only one example she uncovers from history. Even though she doesn’t at first believe in her own theory, she eventually does as she gets caught in James Cole’s tragic loop. 

Cole also connects with Tyler Durden’s unofficial precurser, Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt), whose famous father Leland (Christoper Plummer) is a world famous virologist. Jeffrey and Cole meet during a stint in a mental health facility in 1990, when Cole had been sent back to the first wrong year. Because of Jeffrey’s agitated but articulate rants about germs, consumerism, capitalism, and more, Cole eventually comes to suspect Jeffrey and his animal liberation group the Army of the 12 Monkeys is responsible for the pandemic — a belief Jeffrey allows both Dr. Railly and Cole to fixate on as his real plan had nothing to do with viruses at all. He and his crew wanted to liberate all the animals from the Philadelphia Zoo. 

One of the particularly fascinating things about 12 Monkeys that distinguishes it from other pandemic and virus stories like Contagion is the fact that it focuses not even a little bit on what the actual virus does, just the world it’s left behind. It causes a “weird fever,” as Cole describes, and kills quickly. We never see the virus in action, even though we do “see” it at the end when the virus-obsessed doomsday prepper Dr. Peters (David Morse) opens up the vial that starts the world on its path of decimation. This horrifying void of information, in particular since it’s one that caused the deaths of five billion people, is one of the most chilling aspects of 12 Monkeys. 

However, what’s arguably more intriguing about a virus movie that doesn’t really feature the virus is the notion 12 Monkeys presents that the past is static and cannot be altered. Every time Cole goes back in time, it’s as if a copy of himself is made. Even if he was already in that time, another version has appeared. The same applies to his cell neighbor in prison José (Jon Seda), who has left an imprint on multiple timelines as well without actually changing anything. The film’s ambiguous ending can imply a number of things, and the main one is that history proceeded just as it did. Five billion people died and the rest went to live underground. The clear message here among so much timeline obfuscation is simple: The past is fixed and only prevention in the present can and will prevent a virus spread as we see in 12 Monkeys. Time travel is futile when it comes to a pandemic.

Putting this into our current context 30 years later, we can already map certain moments where action wasn’t taken in time and the virus spread faster than it should have. Instead of quicker preventative action, too many non-medical folks would rather re-evaluate the recent failures in the current timeline rather than refocusing on the present to further curb and hopefully stop the pandemic before it can reach a critical mass. But instead, much like the scientists in Cole’s 2035, imaginary fixes like injecting disinfectants and shooting ultraviolet rays into a human body are being touted as preventions and cures when there is absolutely no evidence these things work. All of this because a certain segment of the population would prefer to get their hair cut than do the social/physical distancing required that is a known and effective method of not spreading viruses. 

Another disturbing thing we see reflected in 1995’s 12 Monkeys to life two and a half decades later is the fact that prisoners and convicts are still being used as guinea pigs for social experiments. Outbreaks of today’s virus in prisons across America show just how inhumane conditions behind bars are. While the American justice system and prison industrial complex is primed to incarcerate disproportionate numbers of Black and Brown Americans to provide cheap prison labor, these same systems are sitting back and just watching as they get infected, suffer, and die alone in their cells. 

In 12 Monkeys, the scientists in 2035 were trying to figure out a way to return to how things were before the 1996 pandemic. As we learned in 2020, it’s going to be impossible to go back even to how things were in 2019 since the virus continues to expose virtually every weakness in America’s economy, government, industry, healthcare, and even socio-culturally. 12 Monkeys understands that nothing can go back to the way it was, no matter how many times they try to fix the past. We need to catch up to this knowledge right now before our real-life numbers of lost lives starts catching up with 12 Monkeys.  

The post 30 Years Ago ’12 Monkeys’ Taught Us the Futility of Time Travel in a Pandemic appeared first on Black Girl Nerds.

It’s been over three decades since Field of Dreams first appeared on the big screen, yet its quiet magic still resonates. The film may have started with a baseball diamond in the middle of an Iowa cornfield, but it became so much more—a story about reconciliation, hope, and the enduring bonds of family.

Until one day out in the fields he hears a voice with its now-iconic statement: If you build it, he will come. These ominous words coupled with a story about the ghosts of baseball history could set the stage for a horror movie, instead, Field of Dreams is comfort food for the soul. Audiences were drawn into a place where dreams come true. This wasn’t just about old ball players getting one more chance to step onto the field; it was about mending broken relationships, chasing second chances, and finding grace in unexpected moments.

James Horner’s score remains one of the film’s most beloved elements. Mixing orchestral swells with the delicate plucking of an acoustic guitar, Horner crafted a character-specific theme for Ray that captured both his longing and his wonder. That gentle melody, combined with the film’s baseball theme, lingers in the mind long after the credits roll.

Being city folk, Ray was already an outsider in their small town. But when word gets around that not only is he hearing voices, but also decides to plow under his corn to build a baseball field, his reputation takes another huge nosedive. Ray thinks that by building the field he can bring back he and his father’s hero Shoeless Joe Jackson, the disgraced ballplayer who was accused of throwing the 1919 World Series.

While Field of Dreams was a studio production with all the polish of Hollywood, it carried a sincerity rarely matched in sports films. The main themes—faith in the unseen, the power of belief, and the importance of family—were delivered with a tender authenticity. Even now, watching the night mists curl across the field as Shoeless Joe Jackson and his teammates disappear feels as moving as it did in 1989.

Unfortunately, building the field bankrupted him and Annie and they are suddenly on the verge of losing their home. Even worse, Ray’s baseball field sits empty amid the cornfields, taunting him with this huge leap of faith he’s made that is about to land him smashed on the floor with his family also in financial ruin. His mid-life crisis has worsened his feelings of inadequacy and his fear that he’s turned into his emotionally withholding father. But what reads as this mid-life crisis turns into something far more profound.

There are specific scenes that remain unforgettable: Ray’s emotional drive home after meeting Terence Mann, the first time the ghostly players emerge from the corn, and the heart-wrenching moment when Ray finally plays catch with his father. These moments are the film’s soul, carrying both optimism and the bittersweet weight of regrets.

On the brink of foreclosure, Ray’s field finally receives its first visitor. Emerging from the corn like a specter, Shoeless Joe Jackson (Ray Liotta) appears. He talks about his wasted life after he was kicked out of baseball. His pure love for the game. How nothing else ever came close to those hours on the field. He asks Ray if the other seven who were also kicked out of baseball for cheating could come to visit, too. “I built this for you,” Ray says, to which Shoeless Joe responds with a secret smile.

But The Voice isn’t through with Ray just yet. His next message — “Go the distance” — takes him from Iowa to Boston to find Terence Mann (James Earl Jones), a James Baldwin-esque author-activist who has become disillusioned with the state of America and retired from the public eye. Ray thinks he needs to take Terence to a baseball game in order to receive his next instructions. Which takes both Ray and Terence on yet another journey to Chisholm, Minnesota and then back to the farmlands outside of Iowa City, Iowa as the Kinsella’s are on the eve of foreclosure.

With its haunting and melancholy score by James Horner, Field of Dreams is a perfect example of magical realism artfully executed on screen. Relying on Phil Alden Robinson’s beautiful writing rather than flashy special effects, the moments of time travel are realistic and absolutely enchanting. I’ve been watching this film for 30 years, and I never fail to get chills when Doc Graham (Burt Lancaster) and later his younger self Archie “Moonlight” Graham (Frank Whaley) show up, existing outside of time and death in ways that are totally believable even for the sci-fi and ghost story aspects.

The film earned several Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, cementing its place in cinema history. But its true legacy lies in the way it blends a baseball theme with universal human truths.

With the exception of Kevin Costner, whose wooden performance is the weakest link of this film, the acting is superb. Amy Madigan steals every scene she is in with a huge range of emotion and lots of tongue-in-cheek fourth-wall breaking that makes Field of Dreams sometimes feel like a play. Annie’s shutdown of neo-fascism when a racist mother at Karin’s school proposes banning books like The Wizard of Oz and The Diary of Anne Frank is perfectly relevant to today, and it remains absolutely badass.

James Earl Jones shines as Terence Mann, a rare moment of a three-dimensional and complicated Black man on the screen that was ahead of its time in 1989 and still is in some ways now. His arc is nuanced and authentic. His embodiment of this disillusioned and cynical man on the road back toward faith is nothing short of masterful. He was robbed of an Oscar nomination for this role.

And seeing Ray Liotta in one of his rare nice-guy roles is such a treat. He brings humor, pathos, and heartache to his portrayal of the wounded Shoeless Joe Jackson. I wish he’d had more opportunities to play roles like this rather than quickly getting pigeonholed as a villain.

Themes of family, faith, and redemption are not the only batters on deck in Field of Dreams. The complicated dynamics between fathers and sons and the generational differences that define them are handled with a compassionate touch. This is nurturing masculinity at its finest, and so unique for a sports movie in particular; sports often tend to rely on toxic masculinity on screen and in real life.

Field of Dreams is also about ghosts and their unfinished business, as well as that of the living. A story about those unfulfilled dreams and the sometimes elusive opportunities to seize those moments and do them over right. It’s about making peace with the mistakes of our parents and finding ways to heal those fundamental wounds.

It is about the good kind of nostalgia, those happy moments from childhood that seem so far away and impossible to recreate, that the field of dreams accomplishes just by existing. This is a story about passion, not just for baseball, but also a passion to do something with our one precious life even if people think it’s crazy. Field of Dreams also reminds us how faith can appear as madness to those not in the loop.

Field of Dreams is also about penance. “I can’t bring my father back,” Ray says to Terence after telling him about the awful last time they spoke. Terence replies, “But at least you can bring back his hero.” The intimacy between men in this film is arguably the most exceptional thing about it. The only thing that dates it is baseball as the all-American sport, which has been waning in popularity for decades now due to uneven distribution of team resources, unlike the systems that have helped American football thrive.

In the end, Ray brings back far more than just Shoeless Joe, realizing that his quest wasn’t for his father after all, but rather to fix the things broken in himself that he couldn’t forgive until now. And Terence finds his new path, too, as well as remembering his writer’s soul that he had been repressing for too many years. In so many ways Field of Dreams remains pitch perfect. As timeless as the ghosts who emerge from Ray’s field, one by one, batters up and ready to play ball.

The post Why ‘Field of Dreams’ Continues to Resonate After 30 Years appeared first on Black Girl Nerds.

“Inspired” by the southern gothic horror Sharp Objects and its monstrous child-poisoning mother Adora Crellin, here’s the short list of visual media featuring similar women. And it’s remarkable just how short this list is, pointing to an ingrained sexism promoting a myth that all mothers love their children unconditionally and are incapable of anything but fiercely protecting their brood. These movies and television shows suggest otherwise.

The Iconic

In so many ways the various screen adaptations of V.C. Andrews scandalous Flowers in the Attic and its four follow-up novels are the quintessential stories about mothers who abuse and the cycles of violence that get passed on from generation to generation. After eloping with her uncle, Corinne Dollanganger is ostracized from her wealthy family. Tragedy befalls her and her four children, who are forced to move into Corinne’s family attic while she tries to win back her father’s graces and wealth. When Corinne realizes she can’t, she begins poisoning her children with arsenic to make it seem they never existed at all.

The 1987 adaptation of Flowers in the Attic sees justice for the children in the eldest daughter Cathy (Kristy Swanson) killing her mother. Lifetime’s version follows the books more closely, and instead Cathy (Kiernan Shipka) and her surviving siblings escape the attic. But the trauma they survived in that attic never truly leaves them. This cult classic dramatizes the nightmare of being locked away in a closet, where children endure unspeakable acts of abuse at the hands of their grandmother—a twisted stepmother figure. Here, orphans grapple with betrayal, turning their attic into a fragile refuge. The cruel punishments inflicted resonate with themes of dysfunctional family, where abusive childhood results fracture innocence and breed despair.

The Perfectionist

Like Flowers in the Attic, Faye Dunaway’s Mommie Dearest is the classic overbearing, alcoholic, and perfectionist actress mother who takes out her own career and other frustrations on her adopted daughter through a series of horrific acts.

Cinema often borrows from reality. In the same way that competitive ice skater Tonya Harding rises through the ranks against impossible odds, abusive family dramas lean on the endurance of survivors. Christina, the adopted daughter of Joan Crawford, immortalized the brutal “no wire hangers” punishments in Mommie Dearest, cementing the story as both cult classic and case study in the impact of a toxic mother daughter relationship. The film captured how an abusive childhood results in lasting scars that psychology still struggles to unpack.

I, Tonya follows suit with a mediocre mother LaVona Golden (Allison Janney) whose drive for fame must be channeled through the true story of a young woman, her talented ice skater daughter Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie). LaVona’s abuse quickly escalates from verbal, to physical, and then psychological, breaking her daughter to the point where that foundation of abuse follows her into new abusive relationships, including the one that led to Nancy Kerrigan’s knee hit.

Similarly, in Peter Haneke’s The Piano Teacher, The Mother’s (Annie Girardot) verbal abuse and career demands of her daughter Erika (Isabelle Huppert) are so profound that it physically manifests in Erika becoming a masochist and sadomasochist, a cutter, paraphiliac, and voyeur. I give this film an extra content warning.  

The Religious

Religion drives mothers’ cruelty in both Carrie and The Sinner, as these moms use their religious beliefs to physical torture, lock up, and otherwise abuse their daughters. In The Sinner’s case in season one, religious abuse leads to sororal incest, the death of one daughter Phoebe (Nadia Alexander), and the eventual psychological breakdown of the other daughter Cora (Jessica Biel) leading her to kill. In Carrie, the abuse causes the titular character played by Sissy Spacek, Angela Bettis, and Chloë Grace Moretz in different adaptations to develop telekinesis and pyrokinesis from the long-term trauma. Carrie White kills dozens when she finally snaps.

While Dark Touch doesn’t feature overt religious abuse, it does take place in a small Irish town where religion is a driving force in the social and cultural arena. Niamh’s (Missy Keating) entire family, including her baby brother, are found dead and she claims it was their house that killed them. But when she moves in with a neighbor, the violence in the walls continues. The abuse Niamh suffered at the hands of her mother also provoked telekinesis from the trauma, and many more go on to die before anyone realizes the truth.

The Unspeakable

Child molestation in families by male members happens almost too often on screen. Mothers who sexually abuse their children are far less common, evidenced by the fact there are only two movies I could find where mothers enact this heinous crime on their girl and boy children. There’s also physical abuse endured by the character in the film.

In the case of Precious, Precious (Gabourey Sidibe) is being physically (including food abuse), verbally, and sexually abused by her mother (Mo’nique). To survive, Precious escapes into her vivid imagination. Set in Harlem, New York City, Precious portrays the life of a 16-year-old teenage daughter suffering at the hands of domestic abuse by an abusive parent. Mo’Nique’s character, a single parent, embodies pure evil, subjecting her daughter to relentless punishments and child abuse while reinforcing a toxic mother daughter relationship.

Our “Scream Queen” Jamie Lee Curtis is chilling as a sociopathic mother sexually abusing her boys in Mother’s Boys. It is particularly grotesque seeing such a beloved actress do these things on the screen, which makes the casting choice rather excellent for maximum horror effects.

The Beater

Extreme physical and verbal violence drives some monstrous mothers, to monstrous results. Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy) in Split develops dissociative identity disorder in order to protect himself from his mother’s coathanger beatings.

Mickey Knox (Woody Harrelson) in Natural Born Killers fended off his mother’s fists and screaming abuse from the time he was a toddler.

The Fratelli Brothers (Joe Pantoliano, Robert Davi) including Sloth (John Matuszak) in The Goonies similarly cower under their mother’s (Anne Ramsay) beatings, even as adults. Sloth is physically deformed from having been dropped so many times — and is kept chained up and beaten in a basement.

In the 2009 Norwegian film Hidden, physical violence such as being dunked with boiling water by his cruel mother leads KK (Kai Kross) to develop a violent alter-ego who terrorizes others.

In each of these cases, the long-term effect of physical violence leads the survivor to a life of crime and murder.

The Psychopath

What do you do when your mother is an actual psychopath? In White Oleander, Astrid (Alison Lohman) is forced to call the police on her psychologically abusive mother Ingrid (Michelle Pfeiffer) who also happens to have a penchant for poisoning her lovers when she’s done with them. Ingrid goes on to destroy Astrid’s life from a distance, including driving an adopted mom (Renee Zellweger) to suicide. This film examines a young girl navigating foster homes after the sudden death of her mother and her imprisonment. Michelle Pfeiffer’s character represents the charismatic yet abusive mom, her manipulations rivaling the scars left by an ex-husband or unstable aunt Ruth. The protagonist’s journey across homes in California feels like a second time wound each placement, forcing her to balance friendship, survival, and mental illness in a world of strangers.

In The Grifters, Lilly Dillon (Anjelica Huston) is a textbook psychopath who turns these dark “gifts” into a lucrative life as a long-con-woman. Estranged from her son (John Cusack) for years, she gaslights him into joining her newest plan, all of which ends in many deaths — including her son’s after she tries to seduce him. Yuck.  

The Broken

These wicked mothers can curry a bit of favor from us since they are in the midst of psychological breaks provoked by extreme trauma and grief. In The Babadook Amelia (Essie Davis) is trying to cope with the unexpected loss of her husband, and this trauma manifests in a strange creature terrorizing her precocious son Samuel (Noah Wiseman) in particular. We come to understand the creature is actually her, and the film ends rather beautifully with Amelia confronting and learning to live with her inner demon.

Set in a quiet suburban town, The Babadook presents a mother and son trapped in grief and isolation. Following the sudden death of her mother, Amelia becomes an unintentional abusive parent, lashing out at her kid while battling a monstrous allegory for depression. The plot dives deep into trauma and mental disorder, exploring how abuse can come not only from violence but from neglect, exhaustion, and untreated pain. It also reflects how streetwise teen and adults alike carry baggage from past wounds.

Hereditary’s mom Annie (Toni Collette) is already reeling from the death of her own abusive mother when her daughter is killed in a terrible accident caused by her son Peter (Alex Wolff). As Annie breaks down, so does her relationship with her son, and her psychotic break puts her entire family at risk. While I wasn’t a fan of this film, it is a horrifying and excellent example of how intergenerational trauma is passed down.

In The Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Siddalee (Sandra Bullock) is still trying to heal from the day her mother (Ashley Judd) beat her and her siblings within inches of their lives during a violent bout of postpartum psychosis, after which she simply walked out on her family. But it’s more than just family problems. This event shapes Sidda and her art for the rest of her life, even after she has a tenuous reconciliation with her mom (also played by Ellen Burstyn).

In the Mexican cannibal horror Somos Lo Que Hay (We Are What We Are), the mother Patricia finds herself in an unexpected emotional breakdown after her husband died of food poisoning. On the verge of a breakdown of self-destruction for some time due to her husband’s penchant for prostitutes, Patricia takes out her extreme rage on her children as well as the women they kidnap to eat.

The Co-Dependent

Quietly abusive co-dependent mothers also cause long-term psychological damage to their children. In Hitchcock’s Psycho and its television offshoot Bates Motel — the relationship between Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins, Freddie Highmore) and his mother (Vera Farmiga) leads to Norman’s overidentification with his mom and a personality split that leads him to murder women. Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho flips the script by exploring the warped influence of a domineering mother figure. Norman Bates, once a young boy, becomes consumed by her after-death presence, revealing how unresolved trauma, narcissistic mothers and personality disorder create horror. His closet of secrets, hidden corpses, and fractured psyche stand as symbols of how mental health collapses under abuse. It’s no surprise that critics still analyze the psychology of Norman’s bond with his mother daughter relationship inversion.

Eddie Kaspbrak’s mother Sonia in both adaptations of Stephen King’s IT (played by Sheila Moore in 1990, Molly Atkinson in 2017) also demonstrate a destructively co-dependent relationship as well as the Munchausen by Proxy in Sharp Objects that inspired this gruesome listicle.

A side-story in Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense involving a mother poisoning her step-daughters to get closer to her new husband is also relevant here.

The Murderer

The mothers in Shutter Island and Atrocious take psychotic breaks to the next level by murdering their entire families. The mom in Shutter Island Dolores (Michelle Williams) drowns her children when she is unable to cope with postpartum depression. In Atrocious (2010), the mother (Ann Sanz) takes an ax to her entire household, while the events are being filmed by her children. Also, the self-discovery of Grace Stewart (Nicole Kidman) in The Others learning that she smothered her children during a bout of post-traumatic psychosis after the death of her husband. The presentation of events in these three films, while totally different, pack huge and horrifying wallops.

The post A Short List of On-Screen Mothers who Abuse and Kill appeared first on Black Girl Nerds.

While queer superhero stories aren’t necessarily getting on screen as much as they should, over the decades there has been a growing cadre of superheroes across comic book universes who are openly LGBTQIA+, including storylines with same-sex romance and relationships, both long and short-term. In honor of Pride month, here are five queer superheroes who have brought the rainbow into a variety of multiverses. 

Batwoman

While Batman and Robin’s special relationship continues to be up for debate (with the third iteration of Robin, Tim Drake, being openly gay), there is no doubt about Batwoman’s sexuality as this out and proud lesbian has moved from page to screen and back again. Played by Ruby Rose and then Javicia Leslie on the CW Batwoman series, Batwoman is one of the highest profile queer women in any superhero universe, and for that we give thanks this Pride month. The CW took her even further when they cast a Black woman to take up the bat mantle, giving us some vital queer woman of color representation on screen that’s among the first of its kind despite its cancellation after only three seasons.

The television show has an entire host of other queer women in her orbit, including canon LGBTQIA+ characters like Poison Ivy (Nicole Kang) — whose relationship with Harley Quin is the stuff of DC legend. Batwoman is an absolute trailblazer, and hopefully we won’t have to wait too long before her story picks back up on the big or little screen.  

Deadpool

Arguably one of the highest profile queer superheroes at the moment given the ball-busting, I mean blockbuster success of Deadpool & Wolverine’s absolute box office domination last year is the one and only Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) whose pansexual antics are canon in the comic books and just getting revving on screen. Created by  Fabian Nicieza and Rob Liefeld, Wade’s sexual fluidity is part and parcel of this character even though some claim that his screen adaptation has heterofied his character more than they should have. It doesn’t change the fact that Deadpool is openly lascivious toward anyone — and sometimes anything — that moves, the “epitome of inclusive” according to one of his creators Fabian Nicieza. 

And since Wolverine will be making Marvel movies until Hugh Jackman is 90, there’s plenty of time for Mr. Pool to have an onscreen male or nonbinary love interest. Maybe even with Wolverine himself, gods willing. Which we can all get behind, on International Women’s Day or any day of the year. 

America Chavez

As one of the first queer Latina superheroes, America Chavez and her dimension-punching abilities certainly filled a huge void in the multiverse of Marvel — and beyond. While her background began as an alien being from an alternate dimension known as the Utopian Parallel, she was retconned into a more believable and fully human back story with scientist parents on a hidden island where she and her sisters were experimented on, resulting in a superpowered cadre of badass chicas. 

America’s queerness only gets a small nod on screen in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness evident in her updated Pride flag pin that includes the trans flag and the stripes for queers of color, she is very much openly gay in the comics, her love life in Young Avengers being a huge part of her story and identity. Since she hasn’t had her own feature film or show yet, we can hope that when Miss America gets her moment, her queerness will have plenty of room to shine front and center. 

Jon Kent, Son of Superman

Superman has always been seen as a symbol of American masculinity. Despite the fact that he’s an alien from the planet Krypton, his flyover country upbringing and meek alter ego of Clark Kent adds to Superman’s enigmatic persona. But his son with Lois Lane, Jonathan Kent, has joined the rainbow brigade in recent comic book storylines that have him not only out as bisexual, but in a relationship with another man. 

Jon Kent was introduced by Dan Jurgens in 2015, but it’s not until Tom Taylor and John Timms got their story on him in 2021 that his bisexual identity becomes a major plot point, earning Superman: Son of Kal-El a 34th GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Comic Book. Jon Kent is also notable in the queer superhero canon as he is unequivocally a hero figure, not an antihero like many of the others in this list — and in the collection of LGBTQIA+ characters more generally. Queerness is often coded with Otherness, and Jon smashes that stereotype to bits, but politely like his dad. 

Mystique

No superhero list of any kind is complete without queer icon Mystique, because she is everything. Literally. Mystique’s gender and sexual fluidity are part and parcel of her character as she shapeshifts into whomever she needs to accomplish her goals. Mystique hit the pages in 1978, and one of her writers revealed in 2006 that part of her original storyline was she and Destiny were supposed to be Nightcrawler’s parents, with Mystique in male form when Destiny got pregnant. But the Comics Code Authority expressly forbade the portrayal of any gay characters so the juicy plot development was closeted — pun intended — until Mystique as Nightcrawler’s father was finally made canon in 2023. Better late than never, right?

The post Happy Pride! 5 Queer Superheroes You Should Know appeared first on Black Girl Nerds.