“How much did you pay for this place?” Fear, Entitlement, and Urban Space in Bernard Rose's Candyman

Briefel, Aviva; Ngai, Sianne

doi:10.1215/02705346-13-1_37-69

Cited by 4 publications

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“…I was first alerted to the idea of entitlement to fear by a paper by Briefel and Ngai () on American horror movies, and in particular the film Candyman (Bernard Rose, 1992). During the past two decades, they suggested, the victims in such films are consistently white suburban residents engaged in middle‐class routines such as moving to a new home or going on a vacation.…”

Section: Fear As a Propertymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A scene of normalcy is played out and then these people are gripped with fear as a sinister threat gradually becomes evident. The characters having most claim to be afraid are established in the films as owners or future inheritors of property, ‘as if the entitlements of material ownership automatically extend to the psychological or affective realm’ (Breifel and Ngai : 71). The authors' ingenious claim is that because all horror or Gothic narratives derive from this point of private proprietorship, which produces anxieties about ownership in general, such narratives establish anxiety as a form of emotional property.…”

Section: Fear As a Propertymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The authors' ingenious claim is that because all horror or Gothic narratives derive from this point of private proprietorship, which produces anxieties about ownership in general, such narratives establish anxiety as a form of emotional property. It is ‘as if fear itself were a commodity included with the total package – just as sophisticated alarm systems and security guards have become standard components of the purchase of an upscale home or condominium’ (: 71). The fear‐provoking figures emerge through a territorial struggle between those who own the property and the ‘others’, the cooks, janitors and maintenance men – often black – who only work there.…”

Section: Fear As a Propertymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…She starts to stalk the precinct, already as ‘one of them’. Thus she gains the territorial knowledge and the psychological property previously demarcated as that of the Other or the underclass (Breifel and Ngai : 90). However, although this film shows the substitutability of the haunted and the haunter, it retains elements of the slasher formula (Helen is a version of the ‘Final Girl’, Breifel and Ngai : 89) and it remains racist (the violent black rapist image of the Candyman is all we see of him).…”

Section: Entitlement To Fearmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Fear as a property and an entitlement

Humphrey¹

2013

Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale

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Dominant approaches to fear in the social sciences and humanities tend to consider fear as a negative and disempowering emotion. Such analyses conceptualise fear as an indistinct mass phenomenon, a characteristic of an abstraction, such as 'risk society' or 'culture of fear' or 'dictatorial power'. By contrast, this paper examines the structure of the experience and management of fear by individual subjects, and relates this to questions of morality and self-reflection. Using the cases of omens and horror movies, it is shown how fear is evoked and 'managed' within assemblages, which might include other people, frightening objects, ghosts, animals, diseases, technologies, or monsters. One is conscious of one's own fear and hence fear itself can become another 'thing', a property, which somehow must be dealt with. The theoretical proposition here is that fear need not be conceptualised as all-embracing. An emotion such as fear is 'mine' / 'ours' and contained within an identity; and yet, being a relation, it puts into question the connection between this passing element of what we think of as 'self' with the world outside. Such an approach opens the possibility of examining the management of fear, its coming and going over time, the evaluations that are made of it (as noble, despicable, justified, irrational, etc.), and the entitlements it provides in society. In particular, it raises the question of attitudes towards other humans as objects of fear, and the circumstances in which they are repudiated or, to the contrary, embraced. I n t r o d u c t i o nFear may grip us directly in a myriad of very different circumstances: a creaking footstep in the house at night, being flung about in a plane during a thunderstorm, dreading a nuclear attack on our city or closing our eyes in terror during a horror movie. It is now widely accepted in socio-cultural anthropology that despite such diversity of situations, fear is always a relation, if only a relation we have with an imagined future disaster (Furedi 2007a(Furedi , 2007b. This paper suggests that fear is evoked and 'managed' within relational assemblages, which might include other people, frightening objects, ghosts, animals, diseases, omens, technologies or monstersand fear itself. One is conscious of one's own fear and hence fear itself can become like another external 'thing', 1 which somehow must be dealt with along with the object or situation that is perceived to make one afraid. 2 What are the implications of this? In anthropology and the humanities in general, emotions, like fear, love or ragemore so than affects, like 1 This can be seen most clearly in techniques to control emotions. In modern Thai Buddhism, for example, behaving 'emotionally' is understood to detract from merit. A central meditation technique practised by nuns consists of developing mindfulness of each posture and each emotion as it comes up (these are often the 'defilements' of boredom, guilt, fear, anger…), the aim being consciously to purify the mind from these attachments and realise thei...

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Section: Fear As a Propertymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Fear As a Propertymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Fear As a Propertymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Entitlement To Fearmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Fear as a property and an entitlement

Humphrey¹

2013

Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale

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“…The film is partially a blaxploitation homage that criticizes conditions in the postindustrial hood. Scholars have differed on whether the horror genre is appropriate for addressing concerns about social equality (see Briefel and Ngai; Benshoff). Movies such as Blackula (1972) and Candyman (1992), both featuring supernatural badmen similar to Bones, can be read as both subverting and justifying dominant racial dialogues 8 .…”

Section: Spooking the Ghettomentioning

confidence: 99%

Snoop's Devil Dogg: African American Ghostlore and Bones

Ravalli

2007

J of American Culture

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Candyman and the Afterlives of Slavery

Mollenthiel

2023

Pop. cult. rev.

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The 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.

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“How much did you pay for this place?” Fear, Entitlement, and Urban Space in Bernard Rose's Candyman

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Fear as a property and an entitlement

Fear as a property and an entitlement

Snoop's Devil Dogg: African American Ghostlore and Bones

Candyman and the Afterlives of Slavery

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