Two guys walk into a bar in a scary movie, one's a black guy, the other's the white
main character. The white guy says "man, I sure hate scary movies" and then the black
guys says (gunshot). He dies within the first couple of seconds of this video. Get it? If
you don't get the joke, don't worry. Find out more on my first episode of "Where Do
Clichés Come From?" This week we talk about how black guys die first in horror movies.
Growing up, horror movies were always my favorite genre. I didn't have cable for an extended
period in my childhood and the horror genre were the only films TV stations could censor
and still keep the film entertaining. I've had it with this mother f#cken snakes on this
mother f#cken plane! (audio). I, like most movie buffs will constantly yell at the screen
and give advice to characters before a fatality (audio). I'm willing to bet, if the main
characters were like me, 75% of horror movie victims would still be alive today. Or would
they? See, the thing is, I'm black and apparently, we don't always die first in horror movies.
According to this film trope, no matter how fast I could run, or how smart I am, I'll
die in the first 15 minutes of a film. False! As I stated earlier, I watched horror movies
a lot. This includes the popular ones and the ones no one remembers. Out of all the
horror movies I've watched, occasionally, a brother would be the first one to say goodnight,
but most of the time, they survived or were killed outside of the first five fatalities.
Those stats look pretty good in my book. Where did this trope come from? Who would invent
such a rumor? To find out, we're going to go back in time (audio). See back in the day,
when films were black and white, there were barely any black people in them. If you did
see black people, they usually served as comic relief (laugh track audio). Hollywood had
more restrictions on what they could and couldn't show in major productions. So the good news
was, you'd rarely see anybody die in scary movies. Maintain Moreland for example, would
constantly be placed in the face of danger and he would constantly laugh at it like Simba
did. Whether you were black or white, you were safe in horror movies. To find out where
things started getting dangerous, we'll have to go back into our time machine. In
1967, Mantan Moreland, who had survived countless horror movies before, his luck ran out. In
the beginning of 1967's Spider Baby, he became the first black man to die within the
first 10 minutes of a movie. Cinema would never be the same again. His death sent shock
waves throughout tinseltown. After that point, if you were black, an actor and wanted a gig
in Hollywood, you had better been good at dying, like really really well or they didn't
want to see your resume. Due to the lack of respectable roles in Hollywood, this ushered
in the blaxploitation film era or the 1970s. The era received a lot of criticism for perpetuating
black stereotypes. In these films, black men were pimps, black women were hoes, but the
good news, black people didn't die first in horror movies. Black people had a healthy
alternative than just showing up to work for a day to die within the first 10 minutes of
a film. If you remove this decade from any alternative time line, the only roles that
would be available to black people are the types of roles like Moreland's in Spider
Baby. In the 70s, it wasn't all about blaxploitation, in fact, it was all about the Benjamins. Low
budget gore films like Rosemary's Baby became huge box office successes and this gave Hollywood
a blueprint. Spend the least amount of money you can, kill the most amount of people you
can and you could make the most amount of money you can. This formula would give rise
to countless slasher movies. Leading this renaissance was a film titled Alien. This
is the earliest film I could point to that best defines the horror genre as it is today.
Put your main character in the center of a lot of characters that the audience doesn't
care about. These throwaway characters almost always includes the infamous black man (Now
you know he dead audio). Yes, the black man will definitely die, but he doesn't always
die first. In fact, in Alien, the black guys were 2 out of the 3 of the last survivors.
Parker makes it all the way until the end before he says night night (you ever go night
night audio) and the last one to die is the alien which by the way is played by a black
man, so technically black men die last in horror movies. Well not really because then,
the 80s happened. The 80s were a happy time for black people, the number one sitcom in
America was Cosby Show, the number one recording artist in the world was a black man, and Hip
Hop entered mainstream. As a race, black people were winning in real life, but in movies,
we couldn't stop dying. It was like some sort of disease. See if you're going to
get screwed by Hollywood, it's best you wear a condom. In 1980, we witnessed Dick
from the Shining get killed. What was so bad was he was the only person Jack killed in
the whole movie. In 1986, Frost died first and it was so embarrassing because he didn't
even put up a fight. And the worst one of all, the biology teacher from Gremlins went
out like a sucker. And you want to know the worst part of that? Years later, 27 years
to be exact, you would think black people would come a long way and have better roles
in Hollywood, but no, no, no, look at good ol' Roy Hanson, almost playing the exact
same dude in Super 8. There he is, dying first again. That's racist. No, my friend, that's
Hollywood. Damn. My bad y'all. Sorry to get so sensitive, but stuff like that hurts
my feelings. I'll admit, black people die first sometimes in horror movies, but out
of all the horror films that came out in the 80s, I was only able to find 9 examples and
I was only able to find 28 total examples of black people dying first since the beginning
of time. So always is a strong word. So when did this cliché become a thing? I thought
you'd never ask and even though you didn't, I'll still tell you. Remember that movie
you don't remember? Yeah, that's the one. Way back in time, 20 years ago to be exact,
Roger Ebert reviewed that movie and his words were as follow. At this point, we could easily
predict the death of the assistant. He's an African American, and so falls under the
BADF action movie rule. The brother always die first. This just goes to show, you can't
trust everything a man says especially when said man doesn't even like Usual Suspects
or Gladiator. Without doing any fact checking, Ebert's audience ran with the quote. He
couldn't take it back, no one could. The world would never be the same. Maybe, just
maybe, that's what Ebert had intended all along. Actually, the idea of black people
dying first in horror movies isn't exactly Ebert's fault. If you pay attention to his
quote, he never suggested black guys always die first in horror movies. He suggested black
guys always die first in action movies, which by the way is totally false also. Ebert's
quote had a snowball effect and became the punchline to every rapper's 16th bar in
a freestyle. This ish is a horror flick, but a black guy doesn't die in this movie (8
Mile audio). It also didn't help that 3 months after Ebert's quote, Scream 2 was
released and Omar Epps and Jada Pinkett Smith set a record for the quickest black people
to die n a horror movie back to back. Before Ebert said what he said, from 1967 to 1997,
there were 14 reported cases of black guys dying first in horror movies. From 1997 to
2017, after his quote, there were 14 instances where a black person died first. That means
half the cases of black people dying first in a horror movie happened in the last 20
years so it's tough to credit Ebert for that quote. 28 black people dying isn't
a low number, but it's way less than sluts that die first, jocks that die first, or first
person on the screen that dies first. So you can't consider it a trope if it rarely happens.
There's approximately 1800 American horror films and with the 28 cases we found, no,
it's not true black people always die first in horror movies. In fact, black people only
die 1.3% of the time (Do the Right Thing audio). Hey guys, thanks for watching the whole video.
I pay attention to tropes and movie clichés a lot and this one was especially fund to
research. If you have a trope in mind you would like me to discuss in a future video,
share the trope below. Click the like and subscribe button to keep up with my future
videos and if there's a horror movie where the black guy dies first that I left off the
video, feel free to comment below.
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