Candyman and the Afterlives of Slavery

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe near absence of the horror genre in Black Studies scholarship about the afterlives of slavery can be attributed to the fact that scholars are discussing the “afterlives” of slavery in a non‐mystical way while the horror genre traditionally presents “afterlives” in supernatural forms. While these connotations of afterlives certainly mean different things, they converge in Candyman demonstrating the potential harmony between the two uses of the term. In this paper, I place both versions of Candyman in conversation with recent Black Studies scholarship as well as national discourses about racial inequality and white violence in order to argue for Candyman's relevance to contemporary debates about slavery and its afterlives as a conceptual framework. In addition, I zero in on the 2021 remake to demonstrate how Nia DaCosta's Candyman (2021) clarifies the legend's relationship to the afterlives of slavery and operates as a corrective to Bernard Rose's 1992 film. The intersection of the supernatural afterlife and the afterlives of slavery as understood by Black Studies scholars comes forth in DaCosta's sequel that centralizes the operations of white supremacy and resulting Black trauma.