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Should ‘Beloved’ Be in the Black Horror Film Canon?
An interview with two Black women horror creators, Tananarive Due and Robin R. Means Coleman
On October 16, 1998, the film adaptation of Toni Morrison’s Beloved was released in theaters. Co-produced by and starring Oprah Winfrey, the cast also included Danny Glover, Kimberly Elise, and Thandie Newton as the titular character. The story is about a former slave named Sethe (Winfrey) who kills her daughter rather than see her live a life of servitude. Her daughter, Beloved, then comes back to haunt her in the form of a fully-grown woman with childlike mannerisms.
The film opened to mixed reviews. CNN called it “one of the worst films of 1998,” while the Washington Post was more favorable and referred to Winfrey’s performance as “a blaze of genius.” Upon its release in the month of Halloween, Beloved was slated as a horror film, although the novel is rarely included in the genre. Because of this, viewers may have been confused about its message. On the 21st anniversary of its release, and with the recent passing of literary giant Toni Morrison, now is the perfect time to revisit Beloved and examine its place in the Black horror film canon.
To assist in this examination, I spoke with two women about their thoughts on the film. Robin R. Means Coleman is the author of Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from the 1890s to Present. In it, Coleman investigates Black representation in horror films over the course of several decades. The documentary Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror, the first original documentary feature from AMC Networks’ streaming service Shudder, is also based on Coleman’s book. The documentary includes interviews from filmmakers such as Jordan Peele (Get Out and Us), Rusty Cundieff (Tales from the Hood), and Tina Mabry (Mississippi Damned).
The executive producer of Shudder’s Horror Noire is Tananarive Due. She is an award-winning author and professor of Black horror and Afrofuturism at the University of California, Los Angeles. As a leading voice in Black speculative fiction, she’s won an NAACP Image Award…
