Last night I watched “It Comes at Night”. I have never before experienced such a strong audience reaction, at the end of a film, as what I saw and heard after this one. Clearly, the film had a powerful and disturbing effect on its viewers, even if they could not quite put a finger on what disturbed them.
The movie would have to fall under the category of “psychological horror”. It did not provide the gratuitous spooky doom that is characteristic of horror flicks that go for cheaper thrills. This movie creates a “slow-burn” fear, where what is most frightening is what goes on in the minds of the characters and the audience.
Because of the nature of psychological horror, I can’t say much about the film without spoiling it for those who might decide to see it. I can only say that I found it chilling to the core. From the beginning of the movie I found myself challenged as my prior reading of medical ethics leaped into my mind. I kept reminding myself of what I should do in the situation that the characters were in. Then I started questioning what I would do in that situation. I wasn't sure. It wasn’t easy.
Not only did this film challenge my assumptions and values, based on medical ethics, it also raised disturbing questions about what it means to be a family in relation to other families and a broader sense of community.
How much are good people, with good intentions, able to wall themselves off from the rest of humanity in order to protect themselves and their loved ones? How much are we able to suppress our emotions in order to survive? What toll does it take for us to live in constant fear of other people as we try to protect ourselves from getting whatever it is that they’ve got -- that is killing them? Is it really possible for families, for human beings, to live that way?
As powerful as the movie was for me, both emotionally and psychologically, I was unprepared for the strong reaction from people in the audience. At the end of the film, a big guy sitting in the row in front of me bolted from his seat and cursed as he paced back and forth while his date tried to calm him down. He was angry and confused at the film while she was saying to him, “use your imagination”.
When I went into the men’s room, after the film, guys literally came up to me -- a perfect stranger -- in frustration and confusion and said, “Did you see that film? Did you see that film? That was some sh*t.”
Later, as I was checking messages on my cell phone and walking to my car in the parking lot yet another guy who was walking with his date ahead of me turned around and said, “Hey, you were in that film. Wasn’t that some sh*t?” His date tugged gently at his arm and said, “Let it go.”
I don’t know how to account for the strong reactions. My hunch is that guys want to believe that we can protect our families by being strong and cutting off our emotions. At a deep and unspoken level, this film seems to challenge that assumption. The women seemed more willing to accept it, and more emotionally prepared to handle it.
Of course, it could also be a simple matter in which the guys who happened to be in the theater that night wanted to see a horror flick where there were creatures that could be destroyed; what they got instead was a contagion, the fear of which makes people destroy each other.
While “It Comes at Night” is a very different film from “Get Out”, which was released earlier this year, both films push the genre of horror to new levels. They do much more than simply titillate the senses; they send the mind and the emotions reeling.
All narratives, and therefore all movies, must speak to a collective imagination or they will not be effective; they will not resonate with an audience. What is a "collective imagination"? The collective imagination of a group is a reflection of how that group perceives social interactions and relationships based on that group's experiences. "Imagination" does not mean that this perception is false; it means that a group's perception is envisioned in its members' minds. It is the story or explanation that we tell ourselves.
"Collective" means that this imagination is not something that is simply in the head of one individual; just as entire groups (tribes, ethnicities, nationalities, etc.) share a common mythology and narrative of history, so do entire groups share a common imagination that enables them to make sense of their world.
Sometimes the collective imagination may be investigated for its truthfulness, to the extent that truthfulness may be verified by numerical data. For the most part, however, the collective imagination must be investigated with an eye toward understanding how groups construct meaning as a means of navigating through social territory and day-to-day experiences.
Collective imagination may be fruitfully critiqued, but rarely is it helpful to be judgmental toward it. Criticism of narratives and imagination arising from group experiences manifests itself as dismissiveness toward the group altogether.
I say all of this as a prelude for my brief comments on the "social thriller" Get Out.
Other people have brilliantly and meticulously analyzed every aspect of this movie, right down to a detailed analysis of the symbolism that is involved. I don't have much to offer that could improve on their analysis. I propose, instead, to discuss how one might think and talk about the movie in terms of what it represents as collective imagination, and how the narratives in our minds affect the resonance of the story on the screen.
When it comes to matters concerning race, black Americans and white Americans -- as groups, not necessarily as individuals -- have different experiences and perceptions of social reality. It is not surprising that these two groups also have different collective imaginations when it comes to race. We should pay attention to these differences if we hope to ever understand each other.
A film is a collective imagination projected for an audience. Film images, that most white males find affirming and heroic are off-putting to many white females and to non-whites, whether they are male or female. The reverse is also true, as is evident from complaints about "political correctness" when films and other images feature non-whites and/or females as protagonists in heroic roles, rather than in their usual role as peripheral characters or villains.
Clearly, there are movies and stories that draw on racial topics but do not get a divided response in terms of the group narratives of black and white Americans. These films tend to focus on the nature of virtue and character. That will have to be a topic for another blog post because it is important. It may be a key to how we may transcend the racial divide.
Horror and terror films often resonate with an audience because this genre is a metaphor for something that is plausible, according to the collective imagination and experience of that audience. These films are effective because they tap into a group experience and a shared narrative. When it comes to matters of race the things that seem plausible, and therefore horrific, to black Americans often seem implausible, and therefore nonsensical, to whites.
Some of my friends, with whom I go to movies, are white American males. They almost always want to see films where white males are in heroic and benevolent roles and receive the gratitude and appreciation of the rest of the world. If some of the non-white and non-male characters in the film do not appreciate these heroes it is usually because these people are villains and need to be eliminated.
Some of my friends, with whom I go to movies, are black American males and females. They almost always want to see films where what they see as being the hypocrisy and untrustworthiness of white people is "exposed," and the audience learns, once again, a lesson that cannot be repeated enough: "Stay Woke."
When Jordan Peel's hit movie, "Get Out", was released I knew I would have a problem finding people with whom I could watch and discuss the film. My white movie-going friends tended to avoid films that presented a narrative from the perspective of an African American, arguing that such films were not "universal" enough and that they did not do well in ticket receipts or win many major awards. Moreover, my friends argued that their own selection of films for us to see was purely "objective", based on critical acclaim and sales at the box office.
They would tell me, fraternally, "Nobody wants to see the movies you want to see, bro."
This reasoning, however, did not explain why they chose to take a pass when it came to seeing "Moonlight," which won the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture, the Gotham Independent Film Award for Best Independent Film, and 22 other major awards for outstanding acting, directing and cinematography. It also failed to explain why they would not even consider seeing "Get Out," which so far has achieved critical acclaim and has dominated box office sales.
My black movie-going friends, on the other hand, who were eager to see the film were not likely to discuss the film's story arc, its characterization, or to critique how it reflects the collective imagination that resonates well with black Americans and not so well with whites. They were unlikely to step outside of the black American narrative, critique the film, and contrast and compare our narrative and collective imagination against that of white Americans.
On the broadest level, "Get Out" will mostly be viewed for its entertainment value; for people such as myself, who grew up within an African American cultural frame-of-reference there is much in the film that they will find entertaining, and that will receive knowing smiles of self-recognition and nods of the head. There is also, for me, deeper significance to the film. It is that the film is a metaphor that projects the collective imagination and fears of black Americans on the screen.
It is significant that we, as a nation, continue to have such sharply different narratives about race, we continue to experience race in the United States so differently, and we continue to find it difficult to have an informed and substantive conversation with those who do not share our imagination and our narratives. We continue to find it difficult to examine and discuss what these different narratives about racial experience mean.
Out of the Cave
By C. Matthew Hawkins
Spring, 2017
Baltimore
Image Credit: WBaltTV
After what seemed like more than a lifetime
in dimly-lit rooms where the musty smell of unwashed clothes
and stale cigarette smoke still lingered in the air
something drew you to the door.
You stumbled through narrow hallways cluttered with empty soda bottles,
greasy boxes of half-eaten pizza, and large plastic bags filled with trash,
waiting to be emptied.
You bumped against smudged walls as you made your way to the door.
You reached for the knob and turned up your nose when you smelled the rotten wood.
The door gave a painful whine when you opened it.
***
Although the air outside was fresh you tensed,
flexing the muscles in your arms,
and tightening your fists into knots,
and scowling as you stared down the street,
nursing fear concealed as anger.
You thought anger would protect you,
but it suddenly dropped away like an unreliable bodyguard.
All that was left was your fear.
In that brief moment, you were exposed.
Light passed through the summer mist, which rose from the sidewalk after the rain.
The air was sweet.
All things were new again.
***
Sunlight cut across your eyes;
You squinted with a pout, trying to turn away
but you could swear you caught a glimpse of the very figures of love, truth and freedom
strolling through the haze.
You snapped your head back to where the figures were, but they are gone.
***
You shook your head to clear it of thoughts and feelings that could not be trusted.
The feeling was strange and new, yet it had shadowed you for years.
Comfortably familiar, yet disturbingly unexpected, you searched for traces of the elusive figures
and you knew this search was reckless.
***
As reckless as kids on dirt bikes in city streets dodging in and out of traffic,
cutting across alleys strewn with broken glass and across vacant lots overgrown with weeds.
They scraped their knees and blood rose to the surface of wounds too fresh to form scabs.
If you had hung on for the ride no telling where you would have ended up.
You could not trust the feelings that drew you out of the cave.
You tried to retreat into the safety of darkness but stubborn fascination insisted on more than just a glimpse.
You heard the roar of an approaching dirt bike, almost inviting you to hop aboard,
but you wouldn’t even think of riding along because you could not afford to lose control.
Image Credit: 12 O' Clock Boys Film
You could not see the face of the rider, whose ragged, blood-stained bandanna covered everything below the eyes.
How could you trust that which was partially concealed?
Yet above the tattered bloody cloth that flapped in the breeze as he zipped past,
the rider’s piercing eyes looked you dead in the face, and in an instant, he was gone.
Burning, soul-piercing, youthful eyes older than all the centuries
peered beneath a scar across his sweat-soaked brown forehead
and he disappeared as suddenly as he came.
Image Credit: 12 O' Clock Boys Film
It didn’t matter where the feeling came from that drew you into the sunlight,
your impulse was to turn away.
The feeling that drew you out refused to explain itself or to give you answers to all of your questions.
It was a moment of encounter that refused to be confined by your logic.
Your tongue felt like sand against the roof of your mouth and it reminded you that you thirst.
Gradually it dawned on you:
Mystery is not your inability to know; it is your inability to exhaust your thirst for what had been revealed.
Even as you tried to turn away revelation tightened its grip, cutting through layer upon layer of encrusted belief that you had woven over the years to hide you from yourself.
What can we learn from the history of Homewood’s development? Several lessons suggest themselves: Developers, contractors, and business owners argue that many young people and adults should prepare for the rigorous requirements for certification in the trades as electricians, plumbers, HVAC technicians, auto repair technicians, and carpenters. Other young people should continue to prepare for white collar professional and paraprofessional work in legal services, medicine, health care, dentistry, accounting, etc. Meaningful and sustainable economic development cannot take place without creating an environment in which residents have access to good jobs with good wages and residents have the commensurate job skills and experience to gain employment.
Administrators for city government and program officers for private foundations argue that it is also necessary to pursue development strategies that emphasize the economic integration of neighborhoods that now have high concentrations of poverty and that are socially isolated from opportunities to enter the economic mainstream. In addition to designing neighborhoods where there will be an integrated mix of subsidized and market-rate housing, it will be necessary to protect neighborhoods such as Homewood from over-concentration of transitional housing for those who are being eased out of mental health or correctional institutions. Typically, low-income neighborhoods have become the "dumping grounds" for such housing because residents lack the political clout to prevent this from happening. Such housing should be spread out so that there will not be an excessive burden on a few vulnerable neighborhoods.
I would add that it is necessary to develop a national strategy for re-industrialization of the United States along with rebuilding and upgrading U.S. infrastructure, including ports, locks, dams, public drinking water, rail systems, power generation and electricity transmission lines. Rebuilding public infrastructure on a massive scale would create jobs, raise the standard of living and increase the nation’s productive capacity. These “external” factors are inseparable from sustainable community economic development at the neighborhood level.
HBRDC thrived under Mayor Richard Caliguiri, a man who built his image based on empowering the city’s neighborhoods. Caliguri was a forward-looking mayor whom the political and business leadership in Pittsburgh thought could help the city make the transition from an old industrial steel town to a modern and diverse commercial environment. In 1988 Caliguiri suddenly died in office, however, and was succeeded by a senior woman by the name of Sophie Masloff. Masloff had previously been the president of Pittsburgh’s city council, as a compromise candidate who was acceptable to younger ambitious factions within the council. Almost no one had expected Masloff to play a leadership role while in office. Young political upstarts saw her as a placeholder until they could build a strong enough power base to replace her.
While many Pittsburghers saw Masloff’s unpolished speech and mannerisms as endearing characteristics of Pittsburgh’s traditional blue collar ethnic communities, others felt that she was too old-fashioned, unimaginative and out-of-touch to steer the local economy into the post-industrial era. Young professionals in Pittsburgh found Masloff’s gaffes comical. When Bruce Springsteen came to town, she gushed about how thrilled she was that the city would be hosting “Bruce Bedspring.” Not knowing much about fans, known as “Deadheads,” who followed a band called the Grateful Dead around she warned the group that when they came to Pittsburgh, they had better keep their “Deadenders” under control. Homespun wisdom saturated Masloff's plans to revitalize Pittsburgh's economy. She promised to post street signs on every corner so that "no one will ever get lost in the city of Pittsburgh again."
By the time the mayoral election rolled around, in 1989, Masloff was determined to build a political power base and make her mark on the city. In 1992 she sought to combat the image that she was out-of-touch by tapping HBRDC’s executive director, Mulugetta Birru, to run the city’s primary agency responsible for urban planning, the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA). Deprived of its leadership, and stymied by several executive directors under whose stewardship foundations and funding agencies raised questions about the organization’s missing money, HBRDC eventually closed down all of its operations. This was in the mid-1990s.
Pittsburgh historian Roy Lubove, in his book 20th Century Pittsburgh: The Post-Steel Era, argues that the rise in violent crime, during the early-through-mid 1990s, and increased concentration of poverty, made it difficult for businesses to function in the neighborhood. Lubove also argues that the inexperience of new business owners, even under the best of circumstances, have high rates of failure and that these were the primary factors that accounted for the undoing of HBRDC.
The internal weaknesses within the organization, along with steep challenges posed by the concentration of poverty, rising crime rates, and new small business owners with little experience, all contributed to the decline of Homewood’s business district following the brief success experienced during the hay days of the CDC.
There is another factor. Many developers, contractors, business owners and teachers pointed out that while it is possible to use grants and other subsidies to build or rehabilitate housing and refurbish commercial space the residents of a neighborhood must have disposable income to sustain commerce. Raising the minimum wage alone, they pointed out, will not provide this income because to the extent that they are capable of doing so, businesses will find ways to work around this, either through increased automation or by demanding higher productivity from a smaller workforce.
Business-Oriented Approach to Community Development
Image Credit: University of Pittsburgh Archives Service Center
HBRDC’s strategy distinguished it from its predecessors. Unlike HBCIA, the new organization would engage in comprehensive economic planning. Their primary focus would be on the development of small businesses, but they knew they would have to rebuild the neighborhood’s housing stock to have a consumer catchment area that business owners and their lenders would find attractive. Unlike OBB, the new organization required a higher level of technical skill in their staffing. They would have to work in close collaboration with city planners, private financial institutions, developers, and entrepreneurs. When HBCIA realized that OBB saw the new organization as a threat, they realized that HBRDC could be used to vindicate their conservative strategy for community improvement. HBCIA agreed to have their director sit on the board of HBRDC.
Not all of Homewood businesses, however, were happy with HBRDC’s approach to development. Homewood’s bar and tavern owners were determined to remain a force in the community. The decline of traditional family-oriented businesses in Homewood, along with the exodus of most of Homewood’s black middle class left the tavern and bar owners as the dominant business activity in the area. They knew that Homewood’s middle-class residents and family-oriented businesses were wary of them. Homewood’s middle-class families and family-oriented businesses associated the tavern and bar owners with organized crime, public drunkenness, fights, and violence.
The city frequently cited many of the owners for building code violations. The owners accurately suspected that HBRDC had tipped the building inspectors off to shut down their shops. They were also aware of the fact that there was money available for business development and the tavern owners wanted to get their share of the “action.” Unable to compete with the technical skills of HBRDC, the tavern and bar owners used their strong social network, superior organization skills, and sheer numbers to take over the Homewood Chamber of Commerce.
In an attempt to placate the tavern and bar owners, HBRDC offered the Chamber of Commerce, free office space and access to some of the organization’s resources. The owners continued to feel excluded, however, by the Community Development Corporation (CDC), charging HBRDC with favoritism toward richer blacks over poorer blacks, blacks who benefited from intergenerational wealth over blacks with newly acquired wealth, and lighter-skinned blacks over darker-skinned ones.
Meanwhile, OBB, HBRDC and the Chamber of Commerce each pursued different strategies for neighborhood development, putting them on a collision course. HBRDC fought to preserve abandoned housing so that the CDC could acquire such dwellings and rehab them for re-sale. OBB, on the other hand, lobbied the city to demolish these structures, arguing that they were eye-sores and had become targets for vandalism, havens for drug addicts, and infested with vermin. While all of this was happening HBRDC and the Chamber of Commerce fought each other over building code enforcement and HBRDC’s persistent efforts to identify and close down “nuisance bars” associated with public drunkenness and fighting.
By the late 1960s, the population of Homewood had changed; the neighborhood had become overwhelmingly black and working class. The younger generation of Homewood residents had little patience for the “bourgeois” concerns of HBCIA; they wanted to form a new community organization. HBCIA’s focus seemed out of touch with the needs of residents who believed their most immediate concern was for community mobilization and political empowerment. Young people also thought it was important to be in a position to take advantage of federal funds which were now available to address urban poverty. HBCIA could not exploit these changes.
In the activist spirit of the late 1960s and early 70s, younger residents formed Operation Better Block (OBB). A coalition of Homewood organizations called “Forever Action Together” initially ran the agency. OBB emphasized a strategy of empowerment through block-by-block mobilization and coalition-building across Homewood’s institutions, human services, and community-based organizations. HBCIA saw OBB as an impatient young upstart that was moving in on their territory.
From the 1970s through the early 1980s Homewood continued to deteriorate. The Fair Housing Act enabled middle-class black families to challenge discriminatory housing policies in nearby white middle-class neighborhoods such as North Point Breeze and Penn Hills. Many of Homewood’s businesses closed due to the rising crime rate and the drop in potential customers in the immediate area. In addition to all of this, federal funds dwindled under a series of fiscally conservative Republican and Democratic administrations.
The remainder of Homewood’s businesses could not compete with newer and flashier malls that were opening in nearby suburbs. Two developments, in particular, put pressure on small businesses in Homewood: the Monroeville Mall in 1969 and the Waterworks Mall, near the Allegheny River, in 1982. The development of the Shakespeare Street Giant Eagle in nearby Shadyside, as a huge multi-service grocery store, put competitive pressure on plans to revive smaller neighborhood stores in Homewood.
OBB, which once had leverage through its ability to mobilize grassroots voters and through its political connections, no longer fit the anti-poverty strategies of the 1980s. While the city continued to access federal block grants for blighted areas, community-based organizations were being pressured to come up with sustainable plans for economic development. These strategies had to include plans for business district revitalization, market-rate and subsidized housing and the ability to attract funding from local and national private foundations. With OBB’s focus on mobilization for political empowerment, many of Homewood’s strongest black-owned businesses did not believe that the organization was up to the task. In 1983 these owners pulled together to form a new entity called Homewood Brushton Revitalization and Development Corporation (HBRDC).
Ever since the first Great Migration of blacks to Pittsburgh, from 1916-1922, the Hill District had been the core African American neighborhood and cultural center in Pittsburgh. At that time the Hill was racially integrated and a diverse cultural mix of many working class ethnic groups, including Jews, Poles, and Syrians. By the 1940s the Hill was primarily African American. The destruction of houses and business in an area, during “urban renewal” in the 1950s, displaced approximately one-third of the total community. Urban renewal scattered Black residents and businesses from the Hill District throughout the city, many relocating in the East End, including Lincoln, Lemington, Larimer, and Homewood. The mix of new and old residents created tension in the neighborhood.
Meanwhile, Homewood had been a racially mixed community. Black residents lived on a few blocks in southern Homewood. They mostly worked in the mansions of affluent whites in Point Breeze and were regarded in the Black community as being middle-class. They were socialized and acculturated in upper-class ways and far removed from the scraping and desperation of the recent migrants from the south who lived in the Hill District.
Many of Homewood’s blacks lived in Pittsburgh for several generations. They had seen the days when black people worked in the service industry as barbers and tailors, with white clients. Although African Americans clustered in blocks within predominantly white neighborhoods there was little segregation until the southern migrants arrived during the first migration (1916-1922). Northern blacks became concerned that Southern migrants would “bring Jim Crow with them” to Pittsburgh and tried to socialize and “acculturate” the new residents by establishing organizations such as the Urban League.
When blacks from the Hill District moved into Homewood, by the late 1950s, they faced derision from the more established black families who were already there. HBCIA had positioned itself to reflect the interests of the older and more bourgeois black residents. Moreover, the 1950s was a conservative time for community organizing and social services. The conservative atmosphere was a reaction against the social activism of the 1920s and 30s. It also reflected intimidation and suspicion of such activism which the Army-McCarthy senate hearings embodied. The only “safe” form of community organizing during the 1950s encouraged conformity and reflected the values of private property-owners.
As residents of Homewood Brushton plan for the community’s future development, they can learn a lot from previous initiatives. Between the mid-1950s and the mid-1990s Homewood Brushton underwent a series of development efforts. Sometimes these efforts were complementary to each other, other times they were at odds. A different set of assumptions and values informed each development effort. Each effort also reflected changes in local and federal policy. On top of that, the differences reflected the diversity within the African-American population of the community; not all African American stakeholders in Homewood had the same interests.
From 1986 through 1988 I had an insider’s seat in the development process in Homewood; I was working at that time as the associate director of Homewood Brushton Revitalization and Development Corporation (HBRDC). I continued to follow Homewood’s development, through its ups and downs, in my capacity as a board member and later as a consultant for the Pittsburgh Partnership for Neighborhood Development (PPND). As a faculty member at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Social Work, I continued to be involved in Homewood’s economic development. I have donated a collection of material from this period to the University Library System (ULS) of the University of Pittsburgh. The collection is titled "Homewood Brushton Revitalization and Development Corporation Records."
When I became the associate director of HBRDC in 1986, there were three other community-based organizations. Each group saw itself as having an interest in community development. They were The Homewood Brushton Community Improvement Association (HBCIA), which Ruby Hord ran, Operation Better Block (OBB), run by Carrie Washington, and the Homewood Brushton Chamber of Commerce, led by a tavern owner by the name of Vivian Lane. The executive director of HBRDC was Mulugetta Birru, who went on to become the head of the Urban Redevelopment Authority of the City of Pittsburgh.
The approach that each of these organizations took to community improvement reflected their history and their key stakeholders. HBCIA was the oldest of the four groups. It had been around since the 1950s and was part of the conservative “community improvement” movement that was characteristic of that era. Property owners founded HBCIA in reaction to the relocation of former Hill District residents into Homewood Brushton, following the demolition of the lower Hill during Pittsburgh’s “Renaissance One” program. By the late 1960s, HBCIA reflected the anxieties of older, black middle-class Homewood residents who were afraid that the arrival of younger, working class blacks would lead to increased racial segregation and deterioration of the overall community.
While “It Comes at Night” is a very different film from “Get Out”, which was released earlier this year, both films push the genre of horror to new levels. They do much more than simply titillate the senses; they send the mind and the emotions reeling.
