I select a thematically appropriate horror movie for each day of the year and tell you about it.
Why?
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
How do you get to decide what qualifies as a horror movie and where each one goes on the calendar?
I am the Mayor of Horror Movies.
Are all these movies good?
Oh gosh no. But I recommend all of them to the adventurous viewer.
What’s with the CWs?
In horror movies, disturbing material is part of the entertainment package. But for some viewers, elements like sexual violence or bigotry ruin the fun. For those folks, I include content warnings. That said, the warnings are based on my personal reactions and should not be expected to cover all potential cinematic skeeviness, so proceed with caution.
Who are you, aside from the mayor?
I’m Shaenon K. Garrity. I’m mostly a cartoonist. I watch a lot of scary movies while I draw cartoons.
I only read the first book in the trilogy so I didn’t realize that the books ever gave much of a physical description for any of the characters. I kind of felt like the movie should have stuck with the convention of the first book and only referred to the characters by their job titles. Spoomier that way. Also, I kept expecting to see the tower, which was the spookiest part of the book. Oh well, the lighthouse scenes were interesting.
So, I haven’t read the books at all, so I’m honestly curious… the characters played by Portman and Leigh… Is the fact that they were Asian and Native American in the books actually relevant to the story, or was it just an incidental detail? In other words, did their race in the books have any bearing on anything in the plot, and did the movie producers therefore have to change the plot to have them played by caucasians?
I mean, when The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was made into a movie in 2005, people had a royal fit because Mos Def played Ford Prefect. But aside from the fact that doing so departed from the book because Ford was actually described as white, his race had no bearing on the story at all.
Their race isn’t important to the plot; it’s just a question of how much non-white representation you want in your movie. That’s an important question though!
Today, non-white characters are underrepresented both in books and in movies, which exacerbates a bunch of problems that non-white people face in real life (for example, did you know that watching TV tends to increase self-esteem for white males, and decrease it for everyone else?). So when a filmmaker takes the opportunity to make a character black, that’s great! When they go the other direction, it’s, uh, not so great.
Non-white characters have always been under-represented. It just seems a bit presumptuous to label it “whitewashing” if their race was otherwise irrelevant — especially considering the reviews were quite good for the movie. I’m Native American myself, and I didn’t think of it as being anything negative, even with learning that they weren’t white in the books.
Yes, I’ll admit I don’t know anything about the background on the decision to cast those particular actresses, or if they were chosen over Asians or Native Americans. I don’t know anything about the director’s history regarding choosing white vs. non-white. So maybe it really is “whitewashing”, but I just didn’t see that in anything else I read about the movie.
I think this is actually one of the most common forms of whitewashing: the character’s race doesn’t matter to the plot, and the director doesn’t bother to think about race at all. They just need a good actor and hey, Natalie Portman is available! So she gets hired.
But non-white people are underrepresented in acting, too. So even if you do perfectly race-blind casting, you won’t end up with a balanced mix of races — you’ll get mostly white people! It’s not a deliberate attempt to turn characters white, but that’s the effect it has, and it ends up perpetuating the underrepresentation we have today 🙁
It took 4 months in the library cue, but I finally got to see this one. Visually stunning, with good performances all around and some truly horrifying body horror going on (I don’t usually go for the gory stuff, but this was amazing and chilling). The scientist in me can’t help but wonder about what exactly was going on, but it wasn’t really that kind of horror movie, so I let that slide.
I only read the first book in the trilogy so I didn’t realize that the books ever gave much of a physical description for any of the characters. I kind of felt like the movie should have stuck with the convention of the first book and only referred to the characters by their job titles. Spoomier that way. Also, I kept expecting to see the tower, which was the spookiest part of the book. Oh well, the lighthouse scenes were interesting.
Very saddened to learn about the whitewashing though. That’s not cool.
So, I haven’t read the books at all, so I’m honestly curious… the characters played by Portman and Leigh… Is the fact that they were Asian and Native American in the books actually relevant to the story, or was it just an incidental detail? In other words, did their race in the books have any bearing on anything in the plot, and did the movie producers therefore have to change the plot to have them played by caucasians?
I mean, when The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was made into a movie in 2005, people had a royal fit because Mos Def played Ford Prefect. But aside from the fact that doing so departed from the book because Ford was actually described as white, his race had no bearing on the story at all.
Their race isn’t important to the plot; it’s just a question of how much non-white representation you want in your movie. That’s an important question though!
Today, non-white characters are underrepresented both in books and in movies, which exacerbates a bunch of problems that non-white people face in real life (for example, did you know that watching TV tends to increase self-esteem for white males, and decrease it for everyone else?). So when a filmmaker takes the opportunity to make a character black, that’s great! When they go the other direction, it’s, uh, not so great.
Non-white characters have always been under-represented. It just seems a bit presumptuous to label it “whitewashing” if their race was otherwise irrelevant — especially considering the reviews were quite good for the movie. I’m Native American myself, and I didn’t think of it as being anything negative, even with learning that they weren’t white in the books.
Yes, I’ll admit I don’t know anything about the background on the decision to cast those particular actresses, or if they were chosen over Asians or Native Americans. I don’t know anything about the director’s history regarding choosing white vs. non-white. So maybe it really is “whitewashing”, but I just didn’t see that in anything else I read about the movie.
I think this is actually one of the most common forms of whitewashing: the character’s race doesn’t matter to the plot, and the director doesn’t bother to think about race at all. They just need a good actor and hey, Natalie Portman is available! So she gets hired.
But non-white people are underrepresented in acting, too. So even if you do perfectly race-blind casting, you won’t end up with a balanced mix of races — you’ll get mostly white people! It’s not a deliberate attempt to turn characters white, but that’s the effect it has, and it ends up perpetuating the underrepresentation we have today 🙁
It took 4 months in the library cue, but I finally got to see this one. Visually stunning, with good performances all around and some truly horrifying body horror going on (I don’t usually go for the gory stuff, but this was amazing and chilling). The scientist in me can’t help but wonder about what exactly was going on, but it wasn’t really that kind of horror movie, so I let that slide.