Speaker 1: Push it. So the new Candy Man movie came out recently, yep, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the one that Nia the Costa directed and Jordan Peele
Speaker 1: co wrote and produced, And we watched it together with
Speaker 1: our wives, not not physically in the same space, but
Speaker 1: we watched it at the exact same time talking to
Speaker 1: one another. You in New Jersey and me in Chicago.
Speaker 1: That's right, and it was. It was fun and frightening
Speaker 1: and absolutely hilarious to hear our wives going bananas when
Speaker 1: when they got really scared about something in the movie.
Speaker 1: Mostly they were grossed out at some parts. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Danielle just said that's gross and Stephanie said that's fucked
Speaker 1: up at the same time. And I had this moment
Speaker 1: of like looking back on ourselves on our various couches,
Speaker 1: watching in our respective places, and kind of reminded me
Speaker 1: of that scene at the top of Thriller. You've got
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson sitting there in the audience having popcorn. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: beautiful array and then the scene when you know, she
Speaker 1: screams and popcorn goes everywhere. Uh, That's that's how I
Speaker 1: imagine this moment with our wives watching this film. It
Speaker 1: was fun. I'm Khalil Dbrad Muhammed and I'm Ben Austin.
Speaker 1: We're two best friends, one black, one white. I'm a
Speaker 1: historian and I'm a journalist. And this is some of
Speaker 1: my best friends are as in I'm not a racist.
Speaker 1: Some of my best friends are dot dot dot fill
Speaker 1: in the blank. In this show, we wrestle with the
Speaker 1: challenges and the absurdities of a deeply divided, an unequal country.
Speaker 1: And just so you know, we will be talking about
Speaker 1: the new Candy Man, So if you haven't seen it yet,
Speaker 1: there will be spoilers. But you should listen to this
Speaker 1: show no matter what, even if you haven't seen it yet.
Speaker 1: You know what a huge fan I am of the
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two original Candy Man. Yeah, man, you've written
Speaker 1: about it. I wrote about it extensively in High Risers,
Speaker 1: my book about Chicago's most iconic housing project, Cabrini Green.
Speaker 1: The nineteen ninety two Candy Man and Nia Da Costas
Speaker 1: are both set there. And these movies, you know, they
Speaker 1: tell us so much about the so called inner city,
Speaker 1: both in the early nineteen nineties and today. That's right.
Speaker 1: We talked about movies in an earlier episode. That's right.
Speaker 1: Inter ratio Buddy Movies. Yeah, it was a great episode.
Speaker 1: Everyone should listen. But we don't want to give the
Speaker 1: wrong impression about our podcast. I mean, you know, we're
Speaker 1: not Ciskel and Ebert, although you know, maybe we could be.
Speaker 1: But our show isn't going to focus on movies every week. Yep,
Speaker 1: that's right. But the two Candy Man movies were too juicy,
Speaker 1: too haunted to pass up. They're the perfect way for
Speaker 1: us to explore not just portrayals of the inner city
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen nineties and in the early twenty twenties,
Speaker 1: but actually what cities in America were like back then
Speaker 1: and how and why they've changed to today. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: these movies are our social commentary as well as cultural
Speaker 1: touchstones of then and now, and I think I think
Speaker 1: that's what we should talk about today. I think so too,
Speaker 1: because when I think about the first Candy Man as
Speaker 1: a groundbreaking, trail blazing horror film, I think about that
Speaker 1: moment when, as we were coming of age in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, there was Freddie Krueger who was terrorizing high
Speaker 1: school suburbanite white kids. There was Michael Myers doing the
Speaker 1: same thing in the Halloween series. Yep, Jason, that's right,
Speaker 1: Jason for Summer Camp. And then what are all those
Speaker 1: horror film monsters have in common that you're getting at?
Speaker 1: They're white dudes, and so so Candy Man. The thing
Speaker 1: that's that's so groundbreaking about Candy Man. It's a weird
Speaker 1: form of representation. But it's a black horror film monster,
Speaker 1: that's right, and an end of a kind that is
Speaker 1: meant to be mainstream white audience. It's not, you know,
Speaker 1: an independent film. It's not black you la, And you know,
Speaker 1: a black monster in America is loaded with all kinds
Speaker 1: of meaning, right, I mean, like that is that's a
Speaker 1: that's just a loaded thing like that, So I like it.
Speaker 1: Can you say that again? Say what did you say?
Speaker 1: A black monster in America is loaded with all kinds
Speaker 1: of meaning? Yeah, and that's kind of what we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about today. Yeah, well, let's get into it, Khalil.
Speaker 1: Let's focus first on the nineteen ninety two film The Original.
Speaker 1: Here's the premise of the movie. All right, so it's
Speaker 1: said in Chicago and there's a white graduate student named
Speaker 1: Helen played by Virginia Madsen, and she's doing her research
Speaker 1: on urban legends an entire community starts attributing the daily
Speaker 1: horrors of their lives to a mythical figure. And one
Speaker 1: of the urban legends she's been hearing about is of
Speaker 1: the candy Man, a monster that everyone is talking about
Speaker 1: called candy Man, and candy Man is sort of like
Speaker 1: this Bloody Merry ghost story legend where if you say
Speaker 1: his name five times, he appears and you know, he's
Speaker 1: a hook candid apparition and then he kills you. You know.
Speaker 1: So Helen is hearing these stories and it's it's interesting
Speaker 1: that the story of the candy Man, it sort of
Speaker 1: works in two different ways. He is said to live
Speaker 1: at Cabrini Green, which is this large public housing complex
Speaker 1: in Chicago on the near north side, Cabrini Green Candyman Country,
Speaker 1: and early in the movie, Virginia Madsen is doing research
Speaker 1: and interviewing people about this legend, and a cleaning woman
Speaker 1: at the university or black woman overhears her and says,
Speaker 1: are you are you talking about the candy Man? Huh? Yes,
Speaker 1: have you heard of him? You doing a study on yes, an,
Speaker 1: what have you heard? Everybody scared him wants to get dark. Well,
Speaker 1: one of the things that I really like about the
Speaker 1: first film, and I remember being sort of surprised by
Speaker 1: when I saw it for the first time is how
Speaker 1: much it borrows from in comments on the real world.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, they use a murder that actually
Speaker 1: happened in Chicago in nineteen eighty seven as the inspiration
Speaker 1: for the whole film. A woman is in her apartment
Speaker 1: in another public housing development in Chicago and she calls
Speaker 1: the police because somebody is trying to push through the
Speaker 1: mirror in her bathroom. Someone is trying to come in
Speaker 1: from the apartment next door into her bathroom, and somehow
Speaker 1: the construction is so shoddy that you could just push
Speaker 1: right through and come in and be in there. It's
Speaker 1: like a home invasion. And she calls the police, the
Speaker 1: police don't come, and she's eventually murdered. There's actually a
Speaker 1: great Chicago Reader story about this by Steve bagheera they
Speaker 1: came in through the bathroom mirror that captures the both
Speaker 1: both how terrifying this is and also really like the
Speaker 1: state of public housing at that time. Yeah, but that's
Speaker 1: crazy as shit, right, I mean, not only crazy, was
Speaker 1: super scary because then you're thinking, like anybody could come
Speaker 1: literally through the walls and kill me at any moment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the stuff of horror. I mean so, and the
Speaker 1: stuff of horror is you know that didn't happen a
Speaker 1: hundred times, but if it happens once, and it's a
Speaker 1: story that gets told around And what you just said
Speaker 1: of how terrifying that is that that someone could just
Speaker 1: come into your space inside your own home. You know
Speaker 1: that if you're in a dark room, that there's an
Speaker 1: entrance that someone else could come in. And so this
Speaker 1: film picks up on that real killing and plays with
Speaker 1: it in a way that it is sort of fueled
Speaker 1: by these fears that outsiders have of Cabrini Green anyway,
Speaker 1: Like that's like the real truth that then fuels these
Speaker 1: nightmares that people imagine, like there's just death and destruction
Speaker 1: and murder and mayhem around every corner. So the Candy
Speaker 1: Man works in two ways as a legend, as an
Speaker 1: urban legend and an urban myth. It's something that people
Speaker 1: within the Cabrini Green community tell themselves, and it's also
Speaker 1: a way that outsider see the community. Yeah, but then
Speaker 1: like you said, like yeah, there's also a way that
Speaker 1: public housing and actually Cabrini Green at this time is
Speaker 1: almost the personification of the scary image of the inner city,
Speaker 1: and so setting it there is really captures this idea
Speaker 1: of how outsider see the black ghetto. And so in
Speaker 1: the movie that means like Helen goes from the library
Speaker 1: and she's like, well, I gotta go to Cabrini Green.
Speaker 1: But but even going back to the director, he's British
Speaker 1: and he has this Clive Barker short story set in Liverpool,
Speaker 1: and the idea to put it in Chicago and in
Speaker 1: Cabrini Green in sort of this idea the scary image
Speaker 1: of the inner city is both like problematic but also
Speaker 1: super interesting because like in the history of horror, if
Speaker 1: you think about how horror had always worked up to
Speaker 1: this point, it always happened in outsider places. It's places
Speaker 1: that are beyond society. So The Woods is like the
Speaker 1: most you know, traditional historical one, or like the Haunted
Speaker 1: House on the Hill, or like you know, for much
Speaker 1: of our youth, they've like set it at there were
Speaker 1: these horror movies set in the suburbs, which is a
Speaker 1: funny dynamic and even if you think about it, you
Speaker 1: know that's what Jordan Peel exploits and get out, like
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's the suburbs, the place where you
Speaker 1: wouldn't expect it. But then you think, like, so in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two, where are what are people most afraid of?
Speaker 1: And you know, for this director to think, like, okay,
Speaker 1: the thing that people are most afraid of are actually
Speaker 1: in a crowded inner city and like the most the
Speaker 1: center center of the inner city, in these sort of
Speaker 1: isolated spots of public housing which you are built in
Speaker 1: a certain way of like many many towers surrounded by
Speaker 1: by huge plots of land with no through streets. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, so they're like islands of poverty, of black poverty,
Speaker 1: and and that's that's really interesting. He actually goes to
Speaker 1: Cabrini Green when he gets to Chicago to sort of
Speaker 1: scout the locations. Didn't you interview the director? I'm a journalist. Yes,
Speaker 1: I reached out to him, Bernard Rose, who wrote and
Speaker 1: directed the first film. And the thing that he sees there,
Speaker 1: this is what he told me, is that he actually
Speaker 1: just sees real people, Like it's scary as fuck when
Speaker 1: you go in there. He said, like, you know, you
Speaker 1: go into the hallways and the lights are out and
Speaker 1: the stairwells smell of piss and you know, the elevators
Speaker 1: don't work in his graffiti. But also just like a
Speaker 1: lot of real people like having you know, you know,
Speaker 1: living their lives, and to him that actually was made
Speaker 1: it more powerful to set the story there, because that's
Speaker 1: that's a difference when myth and reality like have this
Speaker 1: this distance, you know, when people are terrified of a
Speaker 1: place that isn't necessarily even always terrifying. Yeah, that's where
Speaker 1: you got people. Yeah, So what you're really saying is
Speaker 1: a lot of this movie helps to tell the bigger
Speaker 1: story that you tell in your book High Risers, Right, definitely, Yes,
Speaker 1: High Risers is really a history of Cabrini Green, But
Speaker 1: because Cabrini Green as an as both a place and
Speaker 1: an idea is so important in Chicago history and an
Speaker 1: inner city history and an American history, it's really a
Speaker 1: much larger story of America and about how we imagine
Speaker 1: poverty and ray and how it plays out over time. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, when I used to teach history of urban America,
Speaker 1: I used to point out that when public housing was
Speaker 1: first conceived in the early days of the Great Depression,
Speaker 1: it was really truly conceived for white people. And in fact,
Speaker 1: if I have this correct, the urban historian Tom Segrew
Speaker 1: estimated that for every one public housing built with black
Speaker 1: people in mind, twelve public housing units were built for whites.
Speaker 1: So it's a far cry from say, the late thirties
Speaker 1: and forties to the seventies and eighties and nineties with
Speaker 1: a conception of public housing itself. Let's go back to
Speaker 1: the film's version of Cabrini Green in nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about one scene in particular, Like
Speaker 1: the movie focuses on public housing. Like Helen and her
Speaker 1: graduate student partner they go into public housing. They go
Speaker 1: to Cabrini Green. They're scared. Uh. They get there and
Speaker 1: they're they're guys out front, the lobby boys who were
Speaker 1: taught you know, maybe selling drugs or hanging out um,
Speaker 1: and they pretend that they're police in a way to
Speaker 1: to sort of, you know, protect themselves. They walk up
Speaker 1: the stairwells. It's scary, um, you know. But what they
Speaker 1: find there, you know, they they find graffiti and then
Speaker 1: they find some evidence of sort of this myth. But
Speaker 1: like really what they're looking into is just like it's
Speaker 1: just like how how this place plays in the civic imagination,
Speaker 1: in the public imagination, and you know, I want to
Speaker 1: talk about one scene in particular. All right, So, so
Speaker 1: after Helen goes there, she meets a little boy and
Speaker 1: he says, you know, uh, do you want to see
Speaker 1: Candy Man, and like that's all she wants to see.
Speaker 1: So she says, take me there, and he takes her
Speaker 1: outside the high rises. There really aren't a lot of
Speaker 1: people there. There's just you just see buildings, and there's
Speaker 1: a public bathroom that he says to go enter, and
Speaker 1: he says, you know, candy Man killed someone in there.
Speaker 1: I got killed in Who was he? He sure trying
Speaker 1: to tell me where this is? Like this really is
Speaker 1: like the haunted house of this place that like only
Speaker 1: the most ridiculously naive person would walk into. Yeah, like yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, like like my wife would never use
Speaker 1: a public bathroom anywhere, and you can imagine about like
Speaker 1: this public bathroom in public housing that's abandoned but also
Speaker 1: completely on view. So Helen is outside his bathroom and
Speaker 1: the boy is like, you know, I'm not going in there,
Speaker 1: and of course Helen goes in. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: the story of every horror movie, and of course she
Speaker 1: goes in all alone, right, right, and and she goes
Speaker 1: in there and it's it is disgusting, Like she finally
Speaker 1: goes into the last stall, and you know, it's like building, building, building,
Speaker 1: and there's this whole weird motif of bees, which we
Speaker 1: you know, maybe more than we get into here, but
Speaker 1: she sees lendly all these bees and then she turns around.
Speaker 1: There are men standing there, and there's a guy in
Speaker 1: a long leather trench croat and he's holding a hook
Speaker 1: in his hand. The guy isn't candy Man, but he
Speaker 1: is dressed exactly like candy Man, and he says, I
Speaker 1: hear you looking for candy Man, bitch, Well you found it,
Speaker 1: and then he hits her in the head with the hook,
Speaker 1: and it's The story is really powerful. It's amazing, actually,
Speaker 1: because it pushes against the idea of monsters. Crime is terrible,
Speaker 1: people get hurting and people commit crime. People die, and
Speaker 1: people die. And yet that's different than saying something is
Speaker 1: a monster and that divide these are just there's something
Speaker 1: very mundane in how this is depicted. It completely cuts
Speaker 1: against the monster image of criminals, of somebody who commits
Speaker 1: a crime they you see them sauntering off at the end, slowly,
Speaker 1: with just sort of like the grayness of Chicago in
Speaker 1: the background. There's not nothing amazing or or you know,
Speaker 1: supernatural has happened the exact opposite, right, And and maybe
Speaker 1: that's a moment where the film crosses over into a
Speaker 1: kind of social realism, which is to speak to a
Speaker 1: kind of um senselessness of the mundane, everyday violence that
Speaker 1: happens there. Um yeah, that that you know, anybody at
Speaker 1: any moment could show up and do you harm. And
Speaker 1: that's that's that's the part of the film that is
Speaker 1: the social commentary of the of the period in which
Speaker 1: this film is me. Yeah, I mean, I totally see
Speaker 1: your point, and you're right that you know, here we
Speaker 1: are a black man attacks a white woman. It triggers
Speaker 1: all these responses. And yet the movie does something when
Speaker 1: it makes it so much less sensational, and it pushes
Speaker 1: back against it in all these ways. And I know
Speaker 1: this is kind of a leap, but like when you
Speaker 1: think about the moment of that time when we're in
Speaker 1: a sort of hysteria about black males committing violence, and
Speaker 1: this movie doesn't engage in that in the same way
Speaker 1: you mean, the movie wants us to see their humanity
Speaker 1: and wants to position the response as something about Cabrini
Speaker 1: Green as a public housing project that's been failed, rather
Speaker 1: than a place where monsters are around every corner. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's exactly right. Yeah, And in that sense,
Speaker 1: what comes in the actual real world with these kinds
Speaker 1: of racis stereotypes is actually about eliminating monsters. So this
Speaker 1: is a moment when the image of the black quote
Speaker 1: unquote criminal as monster is sort of taking off all
Speaker 1: over the place, Like Rodney King is beaten so badly
Speaker 1: because the police imagined him as a brute, a monster
Speaker 1: with superhuman power who could, with superhuman power destroy eight
Speaker 1: armed cops with guns and billy clubs with one fell swoop,
Speaker 1: and and and the same thing. You know, if we
Speaker 1: think back to nineteen eighty nine and the Central Park
Speaker 1: jogger case, the sensational case, these five youths are you know,
Speaker 1: talked about as wilding teams, and you know, they're they're
Speaker 1: like packs of wild animals, wild dogs. Like a super
Speaker 1: predator is not that different than a monster, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like supernatural power of these of these black kids,
Speaker 1: and and these things. You know, these lead to to
Speaker 1: actual real policies, right right, These policies, these stories, these
Speaker 1: these fuel both in the popular imagination, journalistic coverage, actual
Speaker 1: crime statistics, and the political ratcheting up between first Republicans
Speaker 1: and then Democrats and Bill Clinton and Joe Biden, who
Speaker 1: at the time was the Senate and had long by
Speaker 1: that time been leading various crime bill efforts from nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: are going to write the biggest, baddest, most punitive crime
Speaker 1: bill and in US history in nineteen ninety four and
Speaker 1: pass it. Yeah. So I asked at the beginning, you
Speaker 1: know what role do monsters play in American society? And
Speaker 1: so here we have this monster is Place Cabrini Green,
Speaker 1: And you know the thing that happens is you said,
Speaker 1: you get things like the crime Bill, and you get
Speaker 1: truth in sentencing, and you get mandatory minimums, and you
Speaker 1: get super aggressive policing, but you also get the erasure
Speaker 1: of this neighborhood, of this community, because if it's a
Speaker 1: monstrous place and it doesn't really have humanity, then the
Speaker 1: only thing to do, and even only the only responsible
Speaker 1: thing to do, is to get rid of it. And
Speaker 1: so across the country, starting in the nineteen nineties, two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand units of public housing end up
Speaker 1: being demolished. And at Cabrini Green, this neighborhood on the
Speaker 1: near north side of Chicago, it's completely All the high rises,
Speaker 1: all twenty three of them are torn down. At its peak,
Speaker 1: Cabrini Green had twenty five thousand residents are pushed elsewhere
Speaker 1: in the city. Yeah, and so that community doesn't exist
Speaker 1: in the same way today as it did back then. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's really Uh, it's really fascinating for this reason
Speaker 1: because the second film picks up exactly where that leaves
Speaker 1: off the remake. Uh. And so this theme about erasure,
Speaker 1: this theme about gentrification, this theme about um, what do
Speaker 1: you do when you disappear a community and what are
Speaker 1: the lingering effects of that? Let's talk about let's let's
Speaker 1: talk about Candy Man jumping forward in time twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: That's right, and even the idea that you know, if
Speaker 1: if public housing can evolve, maybe monsters can't evolve too.
Speaker 1: So in Nia Dacosta's remake of Candy Man has just
Speaker 1: come out recently. One of the most striking things that
Speaker 1: we see early on is not even something to be seen,
Speaker 1: it's to be heard, and it is the remake of
Speaker 1: the Candy Man, the original song from the Willy Wonka
Speaker 1: film about the chocolate factory, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,
Speaker 1: which of course for generations has been particularly for our childhood,
Speaker 1: has been this delightful movie about a fun house of candy.
Speaker 1: And the parable is, you know, be careful that you
Speaker 1: get too much of what you wish for, and it
Speaker 1: is a kind of house of horrors. And so this
Speaker 1: song is playing and like you know, lyrics like who
Speaker 1: can take a sunrise sprinkle it with do covered with
Speaker 1: chocolate in a miracle? Or two the Candy Man, Oh yes,
Speaker 1: the candy Yeah, like Sammy Davis Thing's version, which is
Speaker 1: what I love. That's right. So there, So in this
Speaker 1: moment of this film coming on, before we see anything,
Speaker 1: we hear this song, um, and he goes from being
Speaker 1: kind of in a in a major chord uh with
Speaker 1: happy notes to being distorted. So that opening totally plays
Speaker 1: with that idea of inside or outside or horror stories,
Speaker 1: right yep, Because there's a guy that residents are talking
Speaker 1: about being the candy Man and and the and it's
Speaker 1: basically a lesson don't take candy from strangers, right he
Speaker 1: You know, there's a story going around that he put
Speaker 1: razor blades in candy, that's right, which which I was.
Speaker 1: I was so happy to hit for you to bring
Speaker 1: that up because I wanted to tell you I have
Speaker 1: the distinct memory of the first Halloween when I was
Speaker 1: a little kid in Chatham on the South side of Chicago.
Speaker 1: Is at my grandmom's house. I was probably six years
Speaker 1: old and about to head out with one of my
Speaker 1: aunts to go trick or treating, and guess what they
Speaker 1: all said, there might be razorblades in the candy. When
Speaker 1: I was reporting for High Risers, real life Cabrini Green
Speaker 1: residents who grew up there in the nineteen sixties and
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, they said adults used to tell them
Speaker 1: to watch out for the witch underneath the Ogden Avenue bridge,
Speaker 1: and it was a way to scare children, so they
Speaker 1: stayed away from trouble and came home before dark. You know,
Speaker 1: imagine how how radically different that is from the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: when their homes in public housing are imagined as the
Speaker 1: actual scary place to stay away from. I mean, look,
Speaker 1: we're really talking about fear, and that fear leads to
Speaker 1: the demolition of twenty three towers, all the towers at
Speaker 1: Cabrini Green, I believe the last one comes down in
Speaker 1: twenty eleven. And these luxury apartment buildings pop up everywhere,
Speaker 1: and there's all kinds of fine dining and stores and
Speaker 1: and everything that you would expect in a place that
Speaker 1: has now erased an entire community, where gentrification is what
Speaker 1: comes next. And in that sense, that's where this new
Speaker 1: film opens up with two of our main characters, Anthony
Speaker 1: McCoy and Brianna Cartwright, a couple who live together in
Speaker 1: one of these luxury apartments. It's not just the inside
Speaker 1: the counts. It's close to the gallery. It's very practical. Okay,
Speaker 1: what is wrong with it? Well? Nothing, As they told me,
Speaker 1: sister many times, the neighborhood is haunted. The bougie they're
Speaker 1: they're living. They're living on the other the luxury apartment.
Speaker 1: The trauma of the nineteen nineties, the trauma of the
Speaker 1: dangerous black community that no one cared about. This is,
Speaker 1: you know, some version of a kind of post racial
Speaker 1: good life. And it is accented by her brother who
Speaker 1: is gay. And happy and loving, and he has a
Speaker 1: white partner, and they make a lot of jokes about
Speaker 1: being this fun, loving couple and so, you know, we
Speaker 1: are in a space that is no longer about the
Speaker 1: horrors and pathologies of a black community. No, and their
Speaker 1: conversations are specifically about real estate, yeah, about the neighborhood
Speaker 1: and about pricing, and you know about their apartments. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, they're they're, they're they're they've sort of adopted
Speaker 1: the ethos of this new world. So in this in
Speaker 1: this opening dinner party scene where we learned that Yaya
Speaker 1: is trying to find his muse and that he's lost
Speaker 1: his way as a kind of metaphor for black man
Speaker 1: that doesn't realize his own history, he learns for the
Speaker 1: first time about the urban legend of candy Man. So
Speaker 1: there's a wonderful interplay between how the character of Anthony
Speaker 1: McCoy learns about candy Man. This this what is now
Speaker 1: being repositioned as an urban legend um that now he's like, hmm,
Speaker 1: I need to study this for myself. And so, just
Speaker 1: like Helen Virginia Madsen's character in the first story, he's
Speaker 1: going to figure out what is this story of candy
Speaker 1: Man for himself. Some of the things that have happened
Speaker 1: to Cabrenia over the years. Violence is just so extreme,
Speaker 1: so bizarre. It's almost as if violence became the ritual.
Speaker 1: The worst part the residents are afraid to call the police,
Speaker 1: a code of honor perhaps. So what's so fascinating hearing
Speaker 1: Anthony do this research and hearing Helen tell this story
Speaker 1: for the first time, is he's finding his muse because
Speaker 1: he's an artist, and this film actually uses the art
Speaker 1: world and the way that art is a vehicle for
Speaker 1: expression and for history telling. And so he's going to
Speaker 1: have a conversation also in another scene with this obnoxious
Speaker 1: and condescending art critic where she's basically going to challenge
Speaker 1: him on how he's telling his story. Oh it speaks,
Speaker 1: all right, speak and didactic nesia cliches about the ambient
Speaker 1: violence of the gentrification cycle. But you're kind or the
Speaker 1: real pioneers of that cycle, you know, excuse me. Artists.
Speaker 1: Artists descend upon disenfranchised neighborhoods, defining cheap rents that they
Speaker 1: can dick around in their studios without the crushing burden
Speaker 1: of a day job. That that process itself as one
Speaker 1: of the characters says in a scene that the city
Speaker 1: cuts off the community and waits for it to die,
Speaker 1: and then invites mostly white artists and promises the whole
Speaker 1: foods if they stick it out for a couple of years.
Speaker 1: I mean, if that isn't a devastating line for this
Speaker 1: moment and a powerful critique of kind of the art
Speaker 1: world itself as a kind of soft underbelly of the
Speaker 1: violence of gentrification, It's just powerful. Yeah. In the end,
Speaker 1: this scene is much about the erasure of Cabrini Green
Speaker 1: as an act of gentrification and violence, but also about
Speaker 1: whether we get to remember that story in the way
Speaker 1: that it happened in a place like Chicago that gets
Speaker 1: destroyed not from the enemy within, but from the enemy without,
Speaker 1: from the violence literally of white supremacy. That is the
Speaker 1: premise of this remake. The interactions that occur in this
Speaker 1: film between Brianna, who is Anthony's girlfriend and her position
Speaker 1: as the person who's introducing Anthony to the art world
Speaker 1: becomes a interplay between whether or not Anthony can make
Speaker 1: art that speaks to the conditions that black people live under,
Speaker 1: or whether his art is an abstraction. And there's this
Speaker 1: wonderful line where where she basically says to him that
Speaker 1: your work is too literal. And this discussion about whether
Speaker 1: black people get to tell their stories about what they've
Speaker 1: experienced becomes a metaphor for forgetting the history of the
Speaker 1: violence that black people actually endured. So that this powerful
Speaker 1: notion of defining what counts for what version of art
Speaker 1: or what version of black people's stories get told is
Speaker 1: what is being positioned as another form of violence through
Speaker 1: the art world itself. And so then the art world
Speaker 1: itself is a kind of monster in the story. It
Speaker 1: is the vehicle for whitewashing. It is using its power
Speaker 1: and prestige to limit the voice of black people in
Speaker 1: such a way that they can't actually tell their stories
Speaker 1: through their art. Yeah. So the movie starts with this
Speaker 1: idea that there's a candy man roaming in Cabre Green,
Speaker 1: ye you know, and the idea that he passes out
Speaker 1: candy and their razor blades in it. And so we
Speaker 1: have this character, a boy who is it goes into
Speaker 1: the laundry room and you know, that's scary. He's all
Speaker 1: alone in the laund room and Cabrini green. And then
Speaker 1: this guy emerges from a hole in the wall, which
Speaker 1: is sort of also HARKing back to the first already, right,
Speaker 1: this is the restroom scene. But then we see that
Speaker 1: this guy comes out and he doesn't have a hook
Speaker 1: for a hand. He has a prosthetic and he has
Speaker 1: this candy, and he seems to be sort of simple
Speaker 1: minded in some way. And the boy is no longer scared.
Speaker 1: He can see that this is sort of an innocent
Speaker 1: and that there's been a mythology that's come around him.
Speaker 1: But he's already shouted and the police run in and
Speaker 1: instead of sort of accepting his view, they they they
Speaker 1: beat this man to death. Yeah yeah, and it literally
Speaker 1: instead of them coming in to see what's wrong with
Speaker 1: the kid and asking questions, they come in and kill
Speaker 1: an innocent man. The film and policing not as saviors
Speaker 1: who are often, as my mama would say, a day
Speaker 1: late in a dollar short, but actually are the vehicle
Speaker 1: of violence in this film. This is a film about
Speaker 1: police violence as a kind of monstrous crime committed against
Speaker 1: the black community. This is a Black Lives Matter film.
Speaker 1: This is a film that wants to reposition the narrative
Speaker 1: of the pathologies of superpetitors and public housing in the
Speaker 1: black community, to a story about the pathologies of structural racism.
Speaker 1: And so in these three ways, from public housing to
Speaker 1: art and a kind of erasure of black stories, to
Speaker 1: police violence and the killing of unarmed people. There are
Speaker 1: powerful scenes in this film that tell a new backstory
Speaker 1: to Candyman, which spoiler alert, really become a play on
Speaker 1: this notion of say his name or her name. Although
Speaker 1: in this rendition, I think all the victims of racial terror,
Speaker 1: whether they are killed by white mobs in Chicago or
Speaker 1: lynch mobs somewhere else, the story of Candy Man becomes
Speaker 1: attached to victims of white mob violence and police violence.
Speaker 1: And so the roster of name calling that is told
Speaker 1: in this backstory in the film is a way of
Speaker 1: saying that the real monsters that the black community have
Speaker 1: been fighting against, our monsters that have been literally killing
Speaker 1: us all this time. Yeah, we have an actual monster
Speaker 1: in the film, Candy Man, who is this killing people.
Speaker 1: And he becomes in some ways, as you're saying, almost
Speaker 1: created by centuries of trauma, that the trauma almost manifests
Speaker 1: in this murderer, this monstrous murderer, this supernatural phantasm. Right,
Speaker 1: And so when you think about what a monsters tell us.
Speaker 1: Like you said, it's over a century of extra judicial killings,
Speaker 1: sometimes not even extrajudicial. There's one where we just see
Speaker 1: a little boy being executed, right, um, you know who
Speaker 1: has been tried and sentenced. And and then there's a
Speaker 1: strange way where like the say his name, which is
Speaker 1: you know, you say Candy Man's name five times and
Speaker 1: then suddenly it's tied to uh, you know, like saying
Speaker 1: Rikia Boyd's name or or Sandra Bland or Brianda Ta
Speaker 1: carries the name of the one of the lead characters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so the you know, candy Man becomes a kind
Speaker 1: of form of vengeance. This is almost a you know,
Speaker 1: a tool that's being wielded to get to get h
Speaker 1: to equal the playing field that we see the victims
Speaker 1: of Candy Man in the movie, right, they're all white,
Speaker 1: every one of them. Right. So we started out talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, what does a black monster in America mean?
Speaker 1: Like here we have a black horror film monster, and
Speaker 1: that it's loaded with meaning, and part of the meaning
Speaker 1: is to push back against even the monster narrative itself.
Speaker 1: It's interesting. I don't think I don't think the second
Speaker 1: film is a rejection exactly of the first one, because
Speaker 1: it's sort of like it is playing with so much
Speaker 1: of it and even like importing so much of it.
Speaker 1: But these ideas of the urban legends, which are part
Speaker 1: of how of the comprehension of the state of the
Speaker 1: city and the state of violence, and particularly the state
Speaker 1: of violence and black communities. Um, candy Man is an
Speaker 1: urban legend. Yeah, well I do. And yeah, well, just
Speaker 1: say say one thing about importing because I think, um,
Speaker 1: I think that you're right, but I think it's importing
Speaker 1: for the purpose of correcting. You know, if there is
Speaker 1: such a thing as revision history, this film wants to
Speaker 1: rewrite the history of the original film. This film is
Speaker 1: saying racism never stopped, and racism is more than a
Speaker 1: lynch mob. Racism is more than the clan. Racism is
Speaker 1: built into the built environment of our neighborhoods, and it
Speaker 1: is an ongoing project. It is built into the way
Speaker 1: that our institutions either do or don't acknowledge Black humanity,
Speaker 1: and it is in the ongoing realities of state sanctioned
Speaker 1: violence in law enforcement. And so there's no origin story
Speaker 1: that is separate and apart from the daily lives and
Speaker 1: realities of black people in this version of the film,
Speaker 1: and that's why, that's why I think the film is
Speaker 1: so powerful as a commentary on where we are today. Yes,
Speaker 1: candy Man, candy Man, candy Man, come on, mat, look,
Speaker 1: if you say it, that's on you. I have nothing
Speaker 1: to do with it. Or I'm not the outcome. I'm
Speaker 1: not that kind of person. I'm stopping right there. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: that was a great discussion. I mean, I've been thinking about,
Speaker 1: as I said, candy Man for my book and for
Speaker 1: for those thirty years. So uh, I'm glad we had
Speaker 1: this opportunity to talk. Yeah, yeah, we we should give
Speaker 1: Nia Dacassa and Jordan Pill and other filmmakers a shout
Speaker 1: out for making this film, because what what great they
Speaker 1: should give us a shout now, well what great material
Speaker 1: you know to learn more about about your work and
Speaker 1: uh and and a little bit about mine. So all right, yeah,
Speaker 1: love you man, I love you too. So no, no.
Speaker 1: Some of My Best Friends Are is a production of
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. The show is written and hosted by me
Speaker 1: Khalil Dubron Muhammad and my best friend Ben Austin. It's
Speaker 1: produced by Sheriff Vincent Ken Wood and edited by Karen Shakerji.
Speaker 1: Our engineer is Martin Gonzalez, Our associate editor is Keishell Williams,
Speaker 1: and our showrunner is Sasha Matthias. Our executive producers are
Speaker 1: Lee Taal Molad and Mia Lobell. At Pushkin thanks to
Speaker 1: Heather Fane, Carl Migliori, John Schnars, and Jacob Weisberg. Our
Speaker 1: theme song, Little Lily, is by fellow chicagoan Avery R.
Speaker 1: Young from his amazing album Tubman. You will definitely want
Speaker 1: to check out more of his music at his website,
Speaker 1: Avery Ryung dot com. You can find Pushkin on all
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Speaker 1: Apple podcast subscriptions. Some of my best friends are some
Speaker 1: of my best friends are some of my best friends are.
Speaker 1: If you say it five times in a mirror, Khalil, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what's going to happen. Say say we're gonna
Speaker 1: show up. Say say our names, Say our names. I
Speaker 1: love it.