Likely to promote Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Michael Keaton joined WIRED to answer the Web’s most searched questions about himself. Of course Batman, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Birdman, and his early stand-up came up amongst other things.
The Oakland Black Cowboy Association celebrated its 50th anniversary yesterday with a parade and festival: On Oct. 5, the group hosted its yearly Black Cowboy Parade and Festival at De Fremery Park to celebrate five decades of being in service.
Aissa Dearing discussed the ways Afrofuturism can open doors to new worlds and ways of thinking in these difficult environmental and sociopolitical times: Afrofuturist thinking and practice explore futures where white supremacy holds no power, fashioning worlds based on the possibilities of joy, healing, liberation, invention, and freedom for Black people across the diaspora.
Since it’s spooky season, why not make a Halloween-themed cocktail for the occasion? Dini Kodippili aka The Flavor Bender has an awesome recipe for a Witch’s Heart cocktail containing vodka, blackberries, and grenadine with some luster dust for that extra sparkle.
Check out Dini’s full recipe on her website.
And, as always, drink responsibly!
Let’s cut to the chase: it’s Black History Month in the UK and it’s also Halloween season. You’ll probably want to “do your part” by watching Black horror movies (mostly American ones though) and look for definitive lists so you don’t miss the best ones. My list is neither definitive nor an “ultimate guide to Black horror”.
The following movies are just good Black horror movies (predominately Black British ones) that you should check out and I’ll be updating them as and when. I won’t have seen all of them myself but I will put films in the list that I know are good based on friends who have otherwise recommended them to me in the past (or if I see my friends on Letterboxd thought they were good).
The amazing debut from Jordan Peele sees Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) and his girlfriend Rose visit her parents for the weekend but not all is what it seems as the weekend slowly turns more disturbing and puts Chris’s life in danger. I haven’t drunk tea from a china cup since. You’ll see why when you watch it. You can also read a review we published a few years ago.
Another Jordan Peele-Daniel Kaluuya collab, this time seeing Daniel’s character X and his sister (played by Keke Palmer) try to escape a benevolent being in the sky. I could not look up for 3 days after seeing this movie. Epic and haunting.
Starring John Boyega, Attack the Block is a sci-fi horror set in a South London housing estate where a teen gang join together with their community to keep the estate safe from aliens.
This isn’t so much a horror movie but it involves a witch doctor and a magic spell that goes wrong so it’s at least supernatural? The short film sees Funke and Fatima visit Madame Bunmi hoping they can get their dream bodies for their 18th birthday party. Of course, it doesn’t go to plan and the girls have to deal with the consequences and discover more about themselves in the process.
Director Christine Ubochi also won The M&M’S Short Film Festival 2024 for the film.
Described as a zero-budget proof of concept film set in South East London
, My Zombie Apocalypse Team sees Anthony, played by Mzat Indie, find his way through a zombie outbreak to gather a team to take them on. Zombie apocalypse films are far from new but this one has an all-Black cast and, specifically, an all-Black British cast.
And another film from the same director as My Zombie Apocalypse Team (Leon Oldstrong), The Lies of Our Confines is features two youth leaders who take a group of young Black men on a trip outside of their community with the hope of improving their outlook on life. Instead, an unfortunate encounter with a corn doll and a benevolent spirit turns everything upside down.
Bill Pullman plays an anthropologist who goes to Haiti to learn about a mysterious substance that locals claim bring people back from the dead. But wandering through the world of voodoo and zombies lead Pullman’s character down a path he didn’t expect. The film is loosely based on the experiences of Clairvius Narcisse, a Haitian man that allegedly lived as a zombie slave.
Via Black Archives:
The original multihyphenate Bill Gunn directed and wrote this masterful marriage between blaxploitation and horror tropes. “Ganja & Hess” tells the story of an anthropologist (Duane Jones) who is bestowed with the gift of immortality and an indescribable desire for blood.
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The Zamacueca is a colonial dance and music that originated in Peru by enslaved people in the 18th century, and influenced by Spanish and Andean rhythms. The dance involves seductive movements with handkerchiefs and represents the courtship of the man and woman as they advance and retreat.
It was so daring that the dance was banned in its native country but found its way to Chile and as far as California during the Gold Rush in the 19th century.
For JSTOR Daily, Natalie Kinkade traced the history of cats and their involvement in American presidential elections, through a series of sexist political postcards. There’s a lot to go through here but I found this excerpt—from the modern day—interesting in its own way:
When JD Vance questioned why a childless person would want to be a teacher or a leader, infamously calling Kamala Harris and her ilk “miserable” and “childless cat ladies,” he was invoking old, sexist stereotypes. The Harris campaign responded by selling “childless cat lady” merch. This tactic of reclaiming an insult and turning it into a badge of honor also has rich historical precedent.
JD Vance’s rhetoric is disgusting but unsurprising. Kamala Harris’s repackaging of someone else’s work in the form of merch and her own rhetoric (see also: the Brat Summer stuff) is also unsurprising. I just wish cats weren’t used as political pawns in all this mess, and that it wasn’t so historical. Leave those cats in peace!
For Fodor’s Travel, Rosie Bell wrote about her experiences at Sekishoin, a modern Buddhist temple in Kōyasan, Japan:
Was it a Rolex? I couldn’t get close enough to tell what was dangling on the wrist of the 83-year-old monk teaching us. I’m not enough of a timepiece aficionado to make out the brand, but it was bold, gold, and rattled on his wrist as he gesticulated gingerly while talking us through the temple’s 1,100-year evolution.
The octogenarian in question was one of the resident monks at Sekishoin, an unexpectedly modern Shingon Buddhist temple in Koyasan or Mount Kōya, a sacred temple town that became Japan’s 12th World Heritage Site in 2004. Prior to the trip, my supposition about monks was that they eschewed material things, lived chaste lives, were sober in temperament, and worshipped in pared-back shelters.
Not here.
Dressed in a mustard-colored samue–the traditional garb of Buddhist monks–the monk graced us with his presence during an orientation session and over dinner when he regaled us with jokes and frank tales, revealing the intricate hierarchy of the temple where he holds the rank of the eighth oldest.
A monk with gold on his wrist? And beer-stocked vending machines? Maybe I need to get into Buddhism!
Open Democracy published an excerpt of Farrukh Dhondy’s book Fragments Against My Ruin: A Life, discussing his life as a British Black Panther in the 1970s.
The Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool is set to host an exhibition of work by 38 Black British women and non-binary artists. The exhibition will be called Conversations and run from 19th October 2024 to 9th March 2025.
Through the powerful artworks on display, the exhibition aims to provide a platform for crucial conversations to take place, asking poignant and necessary questions about today’s culture and society. The exhibition takes place in the wake of the distressing acts of violence, hatred and racism seen across the UK in recent months, demonstrating the timely and vital need for discussion and understanding.
Apparently, this is the first exhbition of its kind in a national UK art gallery which can go onto the pile of other firsts for Black people which shouldn’t have taken so long. But putting that aside for the moment, this is an important exhibition and if you can get to Liverpool between October–March, you should go visit!
(via Culture Liverpool)
Jamaican poet Valerie Bloom wrote a beautiful poem about autumn called Autumn Gilt and you can hear her read it on The Children’s Poetry Archive’s website.
Valerie Babb’s latest book The Book of James: The Power, Politics, and Passion of LeBron puts a spotlight on Lebron James and his cultural impact away from basketball. And, by doing so, Babb also scrutinises the contrasting views of Blackness from that perspective.
This is a line from the book and it’s as sharp as a tack:
I am lucky to know a lot of sharp people I can share ideas with. It is interesting, though, that when I say “LeBron James” to some of them, I receive a dismissive I’m-not-into-sports response from those who tend not to mix Serena Williams with William Shakespeare.
Excerpt via Inside Hook
If you’d rather not use the Amazon affiliate link referenced above, you can use the following links to get a copy:
For Cosmopolitan, Lola Akinmade Åkerström examined the culture of cultural erasure in Sweden from a Black female perspective:
I often describe living in Sweden like being married to the most attractive man at a party. One who turns heads the minute you walk in with him on your arm. No one wants to know how it feels to be his wife or how he treats you at home, simply being with him is considered achievement enough.
I have lived in Sweden for 14 years, since I moved here for love. Statistically, it is one of the happiest countries on earth.
And yet, as a Black woman I must ask myself, happiest for whom?
As she notes, Sweden is often noted as one of the happiest places to live and other Nordic countries often rate highly. That kind of biased surveying suggests that, because people are happier, bigoted behaviours are close to zero. But nowhere in Europe is immune from racism towards Black people and the numerous cultural and religious intersectional identities that they hold.
Beneath the glossy social veneer of idealism and utopia lies a lot of resentment, deep pain, unexpressed desires, and repressed trauma from trying to integrate versus assimilate. Integration means I accept all parts of my blended identity, including my new additional culture, Swedish. Assimilation means identifying only with your host country’s culture and letting go of your heritage. And assimilation is an impossible thing to ask of anyone. It’s one thing embracing cultural traditions such as Midsummer and learning the language to integrate better, but it’s another to feel like I have to be less Nigerian in order to be fully Swedish.
For HuffPost, Candice Frederick chronicled Freaknik, an yearly festival held in Atlanta, a Black female sexual liberation renaissance-of-sorts that came from it, and how sexual violence impacted it all:
“Women down here dress like hoes with the short skirts and all that,” says one woman. “They don’t have any respect for themselves. They want that negative attention. I’m sorry — you’ve got a mind, you’ve got a brain, you’re intelligent. You don’t need to act and dress that way.”
Gwen, the “classy hoochie” seated nearby, is quick to defend herself: “I had on less clothes. But that didn’t mean I was less intelligent. That didn’t mean I was asking you to grab my ass.”
Then a man in an Iota Phi Theta sweatshirt brings this debate to a near end. “If you were dressed inappropriately, I don’t care how much intelligence you got,” he says. “I don’t see intelligence. I see your naked flesh. Now, I would not grab your body. But there are people that will. So, you should dress appropriately.”
A statement like that reflects rape culture and undercuts the very notion of freedom of sexual expression. As does this one from the same person: “If you walk around naked and you get grabbed, don’t come crying at the end and saying, ′Oh, I didn’t know I was going to get raped’ or ′I didn’t know I was going to get fondled.’”
You can watch a trailer for the Freaknik documentary referenced in the essay as well.
Atlas Obscura on the origins of vampires and their relationship with spreading diseases:
In many respects, the vampire of today is far removed from its roots in Eastern European folklore. As a professor of Slavic studies who has taught a course on vampires called “Dracula” for more than a decade, I’m always fascinated by the vampire’s popularity, considering its origins—as a demonic creature strongly associated with disease.
The first known reference to vampires appeared in written form in Old Russian in 1047, soon after Orthodox Christianity moved into Eastern Europe. The term for vampire was upir, which has uncertain origins, but its possible literal meaning was “the thing at the feast or sacrifice,” referring to a potentially dangerous spiritual entity that people believed could appear at rituals for the dead. It was a euphemism used to avoid speaking the creature’s name—and unfortunately, historians may never learn its real name, or even when beliefs about it surfaced.
[…]
Scholars have put forth several theories about various diseases’ connections to vampires. It is likely that no one disease provides a simple, “pure” origin for vampire myths, since beliefs about vampires changed over time. But two in particular show solid links. One is rabies, whose name comes from a Latin term for “madness.” It’s one of the oldest recognized diseases on the planet, transmissible from animals to humans, and primarily spread through biting—an obvious reference to a classic vampire trait.