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A review by dr_dr_olshakes
The Black Guy Dies First: Black Horror Cinema from Fodder to Oscar by Robin R. Means Coleman, Mark H. Harris
informative
lighthearted
slow-paced
3.0
The scope is impressive, both for breadth and specificity. It added dimension to some scholarship I was already familiar with and laid out new ones in an approachable and digestible way.
That said, I think the pop-acaemia bent is an unfortunate detractor. The humor almost never worked and really undercut several of the passages. It's like the book was afraid to take its own subject matter seriously. While there were some arguments made, I thought they lacked much depth and were only backed up by listing yet another crop of movies (or the same movies over and over).
My biggest issue is that there was a lack of internal order. It starts off fairly chronological with the spook and blacksploitation, and then sort of meanders around from topic to topic without really making sense why. Why were villains discussed when they were? Why separate the chapters on voodoo and hoodoo just to keep referencing voodoo in the hoodoo chapter? Again, the breadth is impressive but it was hard to keep the semblance of analysis when it just jumped from trope to trope.
This is a solid pop academia book (an admittedly difficult genre to do well), but it sacrificed a lot of good scholarship practices so that it could make silly jokes that aren't actually funny. This book is a great letterboxed list that overly relies on ceaseless sardonic quips and gives up the ghost of analysis pretty quick.
That said, I think the pop-acaemia bent is an unfortunate detractor. The humor almost never worked and really undercut several of the passages. It's like the book was afraid to take its own subject matter seriously. While there were some arguments made, I thought they lacked much depth and were only backed up by listing yet another crop of movies (or the same movies over and over).
My biggest issue is that there was a lack of internal order. It starts off fairly chronological with the spook and blacksploitation, and then sort of meanders around from topic to topic without really making sense why. Why were villains discussed when they were? Why separate the chapters on voodoo and hoodoo just to keep referencing voodoo in the hoodoo chapter? Again, the breadth is impressive but it was hard to keep the semblance of analysis when it just jumped from trope to trope.
This is a solid pop academia book (an admittedly difficult genre to do well), but it sacrificed a lot of good scholarship practices so that it could make silly jokes that aren't actually funny. This book is a great letterboxed list that overly relies on ceaseless sardonic quips and gives up the ghost of analysis pretty quick.