Doc Corner: Oh, the horror! 'Scream, Queen!' and 'Horror Noire'
By Glenn Dunks (who is currently counting down my top documentaries of the decade over on Twitter. Follow along!)
Horror movies are obviously an audience-beloved industry-entrenched part of the movie business. Even if the genre hasn’t always gotten the respect it deserves, horror has been a vital part in the cinematic stories for African American audiences and for queer audiences. These are, after all, viewers that have been ignored by the mainstream industry at large for as long as movies have existed. Minority audiences have often found the catharses and long-documented history of othered subtext of scary movies to be rare portals of release.
How great it is then to see two new documentaries Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street and Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror focusing on these elements and offering glimpses into the complicated realm of what it is like to be a viewer and a creator in these spaces...