Jacqueline Luqman on the U.S. State Controlling Hollywood

A scene in Nia Dacosta’s film, “Candyman” (2021), might go unnoticed, but it signifies the theme of representation appearing throughout the film. Representation refers to oppressed people being seen in media and politics, but it does not mean they wield power in those sectors.

Actor Yahya Abdul-Mateen II plays the central character “Anthony McCoy,” whom we aren’t sure can be called a protagonist or an antagonist, even by the movie’s end. In the aforementioned scene, he stands at the intersection of a long-abandoned neighborhood, which is composed of former row-house apartments that used to surround the high-rise tower of Cabrini-Green, a public-housing project in Chicago. The street he is facing is empty of typical neighborhood life—adults going to and from work or errands, kids playing, teens hanging out. But remnants of their neighborhood, including the doorless, windowless apartment units that offer nothing but a foreboding darkness, stand as empty, haunting reminders of a people who used to live there but are long gone. The street is marked by a sign for “Mohawk St.”, and as he walks around the corner, another street sign reads “Locust St.” These are actual streets in the Cabrini-Green neighborhood in Chicago, lending credibility to the storyline by anchoring the tale in the actual remains of the infamous neighborhood, whose residents had been long displaced through gentrification.

But the street names seem to also juxtapose the disappearance of Indigenous tribes, like the Mohawk. They are relegated to outposts that are out of sight, out of mind for the rest of us. The impetus behind the mass displacement of both the Black and poor residents of Cabrini-Green and Indigenous people is the locust-like swarm of gentrification, which could be argued is a modern day form of settler-colonialism. It might be a stretch to make this kind of observation of this scene. It might not have been one that DaCosta might have been intending to make. But it is a connection I couldn’t help making, considering “Candyman” is less of a horror film than an indictment of white supremacy and the terror that it inflicts upon the communities it ravages.

I will try not to provide many spoilers in this review. I will say seeing the first “Candyman” (1992) is critical to understanding the expansion of the story and themes in the current iteration. But those themes that are outside of the conventional horror narrative are as important to the experience as continuing the urban legend of “Candyman.”

Abdul-Mateen is convincing in his portrayal of “Anthony,” a young Black aspiring artist struggling to make his mark on the art world. Ebulliant actor Teyonah Parris plays McCoy’s partner, “Brianna Cartwright,” also a young Black up-and-comer working as a curator at the gallery where her partner’s work is being shown. 

The characters live together in one of the trendy, expensive apartments in the gentrified Cabrini-Green neighborhood, long after the towers had been torn down. Brianna and Anthony appear to have a loving, committed relationship, a lovely expression of Black Love that we all enjoy seeing so much, and we need to see more of. That is until Anthony learns about the legend of Candyman from Brianna’s brother, “Troy,” played by actor Nathan Stewart-Jarrett. Anthony is fascinated with the legend and pursues inspiration for new art by visiting what is left of the old Cabrini-Green neighborhood. He meets one of the last remaining residents, seemingly neighborly “William Burke,” portrayed by veteran actor Colman Domingo. 

Here is where I’ll leave off describing the timeline of the movie, because how things happen almost take a backseat to what some of those things seem to represent. 

Anthony slowly transforms into… something, and his physical transformation coincides with what seems like the fraying of his mental state. Anthony attempts to protect his partner, Brianna, in a pivotal scene that exposes something far more sinister in real life than a horror movie boogeyman: The horrifying and lasting effects of trauma and the unaddressed mental illness among Black people, particularly how Black men are misunderstood or ignored when they suffer mental health crises and trauma.

The tendency for many of us to dissociate ourselves from mental illness and trauma is touched on in a seemingly disconnected flashback that Brianna has of a traumatic childhood experience with her father. No, it’s not sexual abuse, but it is traumatic. But because she never confronts what happens, when her partner, Anthony, begins to display behavior that suggests his mental health is fraying, Brianna responds with less and less understanding, and more and more hostility. Focusing more on moving up in her career than her partner’s obvious growing difficulties, she ultimately leaves Anthony alone to face whatever he is experiencing.

Brianna’s brother, Troy, is also pointedly critical of Anthony as the Black Man Living Off a Black Woman. But Troy himself is settling into a relationship with his new partner, “Clive” (played by Brian King), who Brianna accepts and notes is a welcome change from her brother’s usual unsavory choices. It is another interesting play on the trope of listless Black men being leeches on successful Black women that doesn’t sting any more or less because the one employing it in this case is a gay man. Rather it seems that this represents the pervasiveness of the deadbeat Black man stereotype—even other marginalized Black men believe it.

Much of the first third of the film revolves around Anthony’s transformation. That is where the trauma of centuries of racist violence against Black men emerges.

Much of Anthony’s transmogrification occurs in front of mirrors. That is obvious to the storyline and the myth of Candyman, but it doesn’t quite apply to Anthony because he isn’t sure if he is hallucinating or not. When he realizes that what he is seeing is real, the scene conveys less horror movie scare than a deep reflection into what happens to Black men’s souls living in a white supremacist system that loves their culture, their swag, their art and anything else from which society can profit. But this society doesn’t love them, and it will not hesitate to express its disregard for Black men in the most violent, inhumane ways possible.

That long history of racist violence against Black men is told in cleverly laid-out shadow puppetry, which simultaneously removes the physical gruesomeness of the acts portrayed while delivering their inhumane brutality. Each shadow-puppet story relates to a different iteration of Candyman, and the collective trauma of centuries of violent racist brutality against Black men turns the Candyman figure into something other than a villain. Terrifying in his visage and actions, certainly, but the question emerges as the connections are made between this history and the urban legend come to life: Is Candyman the monster, or is the monster what created Candyman?

As viewers hopefully make this connection, they are invited if they are thinking further to ask a larger question: Are Black men, who lash out at a society that finds every way imaginable to destroy them, the monsters society says they are, or is the monster really society?

Indictments of white supremacist society and privilege, and the impact of the trauma of community having been erased, are woven throughout the film, reflecting ways Black people are either dismissed or used before being discarded.

The contempt and condescending paternalism of society’s gatekeepers is represented by the gallery owner and the art critic—and even the Black major-gallery curator—as they have little regard or use for Anthony as he struggles to produce content that will elevate his profile. They do not hesitate to disregard him when he is no longer of use to them.

The ease with which an oblivious white society appropriates Black culture, traditions and even urban legends—believing no consequences exist for that appropriation because they have no connection to the community those things come from—is reflected in a scene that is on the surface typical horror-movie, high-school kid hijinks.

The crushing trauma of surviving the systematic eradication of one’s community, and the desire to get back or revive what was taken or destroyed, is an underlying aspect of the actions of neighborly-seeming sole survivor/resident of Cabrini-Green, William Burke. 

The way society is more accepting of a Black women’s efforts to climb the ladder, and how easily they dismiss Black men as they fall down it—even as they watch—can be extrapolated as we witness Anthony’s growing instability as it manifests itself when he and Brianna are trying to court a renowned gallery owner.

The way that our parents may have been doing the best they thought they could by moving their children out of the ‘hood and into “better” neighborhoods, encouraging them to forget where they came from in an effort to give them a better life, seeps through the cracks as Anthony confronts his mother about a past she has kept from him. The toll of keeping that secret trauma seems to have weighed heavily on his mother, as well, as family secrets are wont to do…  

The running theme of racist police violence in the film—from beginning to end—is reminiscent of… well… every story we know about racist police violence. Brianna is ultimately put in a horrific situation, and then cynically used against Anthony in a way that shouldn’t be unfamiliar to our real-life experience with racist police terrorism. Brianna realizes then who she is, who Anthony is, and that he is the only one who can save her.

I have noticed among online fan reviews wildly divergent reactions to this movie, almost strictly along racial lines. If the reviewer is a white person, they almost unanimously and unequivocally hate this movie. I see these people as those who do not want to face the traumas and horrors of the history and continuing legacy of racist violence against Black people, which I believe this film effectively expands upon from the original “Candyman.” Although, I find it odd some who have seen this film say they loved the original, but hate this one because it’s “too political,” because they clearly missed the political history of Candyman in the original. They’re mad Candyman only kills certain people, but aren’t bothered at all by the historical track record and legacy of the broken bodies and souls of Black men, women, and children that created Candyman. So they do not see the connection between real life reflected in the film’s themes. But selective memory is what this society is great at, so this response is actually not a surprise at all.

But for others who understand what DaCosta’s “Candyman” is trying to say and why, it may not be scary in the traditional slasher/spine-tingler sense, so it’s hard to say whether or not the movie is “good” as a traditional horror film. However, the real-life nightmares and horrors reflected in this film are what many Black viewers will be all too familiar with.  

As Brianna’s brother, Troy, says early in the movie, “Black people don’t need to be summoning shit.” 

We don’t have to summon supernatural boogeymen. The horrors we live are real.

Jacqueline Luqman is a radical activist based in Washington, D.C.; as well as co-founder of Luqman Nation, an independent Black media outlet that can be found on YouTube (here and here) and on Facebook; and co-host of Radio Sputnik’s “By Any Means Necessary.”

Australian embassy officials in Peru were surprised when they met Dr. Rodrigo Acuña’s revolutionary Chilean parents. They wondered how the both of them had managed to escape the 1973 U.S.-backed coup unharmed. But before approving their refugee application, embassy officials isolated Acuña’s mother, asking her to promise she wouldn’t engage in political activities in Australia. Later, on the flight to Sydney, his father ended up having what Acuña describes as a “post-traumatic stress disorder episode.”

“When he arrived at Sydney International Airport, he had to be placed on a stretcher and given medical attention,” Acuña told Toward Freedom. “That’s how my family arrived in Sydney, Australia.”

Now, Acuña, an academic, is part of a group representing Chilean exiles in Australia. The group has written an open letter to Minister for Foreign Affairs Marise Payne, expressing its dismay at revelations Australia may have collaborated with the United States in the events that led to the removal of democratically-elected Chilean socialist President Salvador Allende. 

🙏🏽 @GreenLeftOnline for sharing the letter lawyer Navarro (@Adriana22974030) & I wrote to @MarisePayne @ausgov. It was signed by 70 🇨🇱-🇦🇺 citizens who fled #Pinochet’s regime of State terror which #ASIS & the #CIA helped install. https://t.co/EZcIip9wt8

— Rodrigo Acuña (@rodrigoac7) September 20, 2021

 

What Documents Reveal

The letter includes several demands, the most controversial being files be fully declassified and details about Australia’s involvement with the CIA and the Pinochet regime be made available to the public. 

Declassified documents already reveal the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) were complicit in undermining the government of the sovereign Latin American country in the run-up to the military coup.

Documents prove ASIS installed offices in Santiago, Chile, from 1970 to 1973, with the sole purpose of undermining Allende’s socialist project, leading up to and even after the coup. For example, Australian parliament member E. Gough Whitlam stated in 1977, “… Australian intelligence personnel were still working as proxies and nominees of the CIA in destabilizing the government of Chile.” However, ASIS could not be reached for comment.

The fall-out that followed the coup was devastating for the normally politically stable country that, until then, had enjoyed a tradition of democracy. Allende was voted into presidency in 1970 with a social-justice agenda that included nationalizing its assets, including its lucrative copper mines, in which U.S. copper conglomerate Anaconda held a huge stake. Chile’s incoming radical agenda threatened the markets and international investors, so the United States began pouring huge sums of money into destabilizing Allende’s Popular Unity administration. Tactics included public relations smear campaigns via CIA-funded right-wing newspaper El Mercurio. 

It’s estimated the United States spent $8 million on misinformation campaigning during Allende’s three years in office. Though much is known about the U.S. role in Allende’s ouster, what Australia’s surveillance agency did is much less widely understood.

That’s why Acuña said it’s important to denounce Australia’s role in the violent 1973 coup. 

“How dare Australia interfere in the internal affairs of a sovereign state in a region as far away as Latin America to please a request from Washington,” he said. “The Allende government was far from perfect, but it was democratically elected by the people of Chile.”

The documents released to Dr. Clinton Fernandes, former intelligence analyst and Australian academic, are just the tip of the iceberg. His repeated requests for further declassification have been denied on grounds the revelations are far too damaging and “must remain secret.” But Chilean coup victims strongly disagree.

“This denunciation of ASIS’ role in the 1973 coup in Chile must be made because we, as first-, second- or even third-generation Chileans, have the right to express it,” Acuña said.

 

Australia’s Double Talk

Australia is no stranger to taking in Chilean political exiles. The first one was ex-Chilean President General Ramón Freire in 1838. In the aftermath of the 1973 coup, between 100,000 to 500,000 Chileans were expelled from the country or displaced across the globe.

Many sought refuge in the United States and in Europe (Sweden, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom), while around 6,000 were taken in by Australia. The newly arrived refugees experienced severe trauma, because their friends and family members had been disappeared, and the majority had been tortured. 

However, alongside refugees, Australia also took in a number of former Chilean secret-service agents responsible for the torture, interrogation and possibly the disappearance of left-wing activists in Chile. For example, Bondi Nannie Adriana Rivas is fighting extradition to Chile, where she will face charges of crimes against humanity. She worked at Cuartel Simón Bolívar, the infamous interrogation center in the capital of Santiago, as secretary to Manuel Contreras, the notorious head of operations for Chile’s secret police, Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA). Rivas is accused of participating in the torture and kidnapping of seven members of the Communist Party, including Victor Diaz, who, like many of Pinochet’s victims, remains missing. 

Lawyer Adriana Navarro and Acuña state in the letter that unknown agents harassed many Chilean political exiles in Australia because they supported the return of democracy to Chile. Their political activities included writing letters to local parliament ministers and staging protests in cities like Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Canberra. Acuña said he suspects that like how Australia’s intelligence organizations have a close relationship with the CIA to share intelligence, the ASIS likely also has a close relationship with U.S. allies like Chile.

“That is the only logical explanation as to how someone with such a profile like Rivas even made it into Australia in the first place,” Acuña said. “We Chilean-Australians would not have any dignity or self-respect if we did not denounce in the harshest language Australia’s role in the violent coup in Chile in 1973, demanded an apology and asked for a full declassification of ASIS activities in Chile in the 1970s.”

However, the official state position that revelations may severely harm Australia’s reputation means campaigners may face a lengthy legal battle to uncover the truth.

Carole Concha Bell is an Anglo-Chilean writer and Ph.D. student at King’s College London.

Editor’s Note: This review contains spoilers.

“Don’t Look Up” uses satire to magnify the outrageous responses of fictional U.S. politicians, media, corporations and the population to a fictional comet that is about to collide with Earth and wipe out all life. But the film’s depiction isn’t too far from reality, considering how the real-life U.S. government has failed to address climate change, which could cost all of us our lives.

Leonardo DiCaprio effectively plays astronomist “Dr. Randall Mindy,” mentoring younger female doctoral student “Kate Dibiasky,” played by Jennifer Lawrence. Mindy is portrayed as a typically dull and bland scientist type, with a dull and bland wife and family life. This reflects the stereotype of scientists being boring and uninteresting, and helps to set up for the drastic change Mindy undergoes later in the film when he is exposed to the limelight.

Dibiasky on the other hand is the stereotypical hip, loner Geek Girl, rapping along with Wu Tang Clan’s “Wu-Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthin’ Ta F’ Wit,” while she scours the stars in her school’s observatory and discovers the comet. But, as brilliant as she is, Dibiasky is portrayed as socially awkward and unsophisticated, with a demeanor that is actually direct, especially considering the circumstances, but is characterized as sullen and snarky, and used against her later in the film.

As the scientists’ discovery is brought to the attention of the president of the United States, played with wacky deviousness by Meryl Streep, their warnings are dismissed and spun in ridiculous ways. But when we consider how real-life politicians approach policy—and even science—not from a people-centered approach, but with a primary focus on polling and elections, the scenes depicting the president with her advisors and cabinet members aren’t so ridiculous after all.

The film also takes a very pointed jab at the media; vapid morning talk shows, in particular. Even those that are allegedly political, with their focus on keeping the banter and topics light, rather than focusing on whatever existential crisis humanity is facing, and there are lots of them, but in this case the impending extinction-level collision of a comet with Earth. But print media is not spared, as the lack of journalistic integrity is critiqued when a major print newspaper also goes with the narrative that polls well, rather than the truth of the story leaked to them that the talk news shows and the government ignored.

The stereotype of the sex-crazed, airhead talk-show personality is played boozily by Cate Blanchette, throwing herself at the (arguably) sexy male scientist, Mindy, while insisting that the serious Dibiasky never return to the show. But, in truth, too many female television personalities do play the role of the pretty, bleached-blond giggler anchoring “news” shows that millions watch every day, without delivering an ounce of real, truthful news about any of the issues that impact those people’s lives. And the film presents the misinformation those regular people receive from politicians and the media effectively in rabid “Don’t Look Up” advocates convinced that the comet is a tool being used by “them” to make people live in fear.

Meanwhile, Tyler Perry portrays Blanchette’s male co-anchor. He plays just as much of an airhead as his female colleague, refusing to deal with the seriousness of the comet, but he does so with a strain of vindictiveness as he makes jokes about the comet destroying his ex-wife’s house. I think there’s something to be said for the lengths some Black people will go to maintain the status quo, even when the lives of others are at stake and they know it. Particularly in the media.

Even citizen activism is touched on in the movie, with the fervent efforts to educate and inform people are drowned out by powerful politicians, the media and the military. And even celebrity advocacy is skewered for the feel-good-but-oftentimes-vanity project that it usually is.

Corporations are not spared in this pointed satire, as a creepy/robotic/absentminded professor/evil genius-like tech company CEO with a cult-like following named Peter Isherwell—played by English actor Mark Rylance—floats a truly diabolical idea to the president on how to deal with the comet. Isherwell’s company, BASH Cellular, is an obvious portrayal of the tech behemoths Apple, Google and Facebook have become. BASH is so ubiquitous, the fictional tech company is able to detect people’s moods and present them with visual content to help them feel better. That isn’t out of the realm of reality, because who doesn’t enjoy a great cat video right now? I sure do. But that the government capitulated to him isn’t ridiculous at all in light of the current corporate control of the real-life U.S. government, and viewers should not miss the film’s condemnation of the illogical, insane, life-threatening capitalist greed in the whole plan. What people may miss is the implied imperialism when the fictional U.S. government breaks a treaty with China, India and Russia, and the coincidental (not at all) mysterious (not at all) disaster that befalls the aforementioned countries’ plan.

It is true that the film is co-written by David Sirota, former-Clintonite-turned-progressive. But Sirota and his crew are spot on with much of the political commentary. Where it misses is the film is very… Eurocentric, with only a lone Indigenous dancer near the end, which might signify the people nobody listened to. But I’m not quite sure. That scene honestly seemed like an afterthought. 

Otherwise, “Don’t Look Up” is a funny film because the responses of the fictional politicians, media figures and regular folks are so utterly and breathtakingly ridiculous and portrayed so well by the cast. But I think it also is a horror movie because we know every depiction of the real-life people and institutions those actors play is absolutely true.

Jacqueline Luqman is a radical activist based in Washington, D.C.; as well as co-founder of Luqman Nation, an independent Black media outlet that can be found on YouTube (here and here) and on Facebook; and co-host of Radio Sputnik’s “By Any Means Necessary.”