Candyman: Be My Victim (VIDEO SCRIPT)

I wanna talk about Candyman

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/Candyman is a 1992 horror movie written and directed by Bernard Rose. Based on the short story The Forbidden written by Clive Barker, it tells the story of Helen; a grad student attending the University of Illinois Chicago doing her thesis on urban legends. The urban legend she’s currently researching -- the figure known as Candyman -- brings her to the infamous Cabrini-Green housing projects, where his myth has the entire residency under his spell. But once she plants the seed of doubt in their minds, Candyman comes after her and everything she holds dear in order to make sure he continues to live forever./

Candyman was always one of those movies I only remembered watching bits and pieces of as a kid and teenager.

It really didn’t become relevant to me again until I found out Jordan Peele was executive producing and co-writing an alternate timeline sequel to it, completely ignoring the two that came before it the same way the new Halloween films from Blumhouse only factors the events of the original John Carpenter movie into its canon.

Because of that, I decided it was time to watch this movie in its entirety, and I decided to do so with the intention of just doing a full-fledged Film Friday analysis video for it.

Then I watched it... and WHOO BOY do I have some thoughts!

And not like, “This movie is terrible” type thoughts. But more along the line of “This would be so much better if it focused on the right things” type thoughts.

Because as much as they went out of their way to shift the source material to fit an American setting, and establish said setting in a location that was as famous as it was infamous, Candyman 92 only scratched the surface of the issues it brought up in its social commentary, and instead at times felt like a romanticization of one thing at the expense of bringing light to something that’s even more important.

But before I share what that is, let me start at the beginning.

URBANIZING THE LEGEND

Incoming truth-bomb, Readers; Candyman wasn’t always black.

/He was originally a blonde haired white dude from England in the short story The Forbidden, written by Clive Barker who also wrote The Hellbound Heart; the novella he would later adapt to film and direct with the title Hellraiser.

It was initially published in an anthology collection of his short stories titled Books of Blood, and was the first story in the fifth collection.

Like the movie, it focused on the character of Helen doing research on urban legends and stumbled on Candyman who pretty much made life a living hell for her once she did a few things around the neighborhood that started making the residents doubt his existence./

When it was opted to be made into a movie -- more than likely due to the success of Hellraiser in 1987 -- Clive Barker’s story received a bit of a transformation as far as setting and character races.

Instead of keeping the movie in Liverpool, it was shifted to Chicago.

Instead of a white dude, Candyman the entity was made into a black man in order to better reflect the new setting, after first receiving the blessing of the NAACP.

And of course I can’t forget about how Tony Todd -- the actor who portrays Candyman and is now a household name in horror because of it after the studio failed to cast Eddie Murphy -- was the one who gave the titular character his “son of a slave” backstory that’s now just as associated with the character as he is.

With the obvious exception of the origin story, these changes to the short story The Forbidden that made it to the Candyman script were done by the writer and director of Candyman Bernard Rose.

He pretty much informed Barker of the changes he wanted to make when he had a chance to discuss them with Barker upon meeting in London in order for Rose to properly acquire the film rights.

/“We shared an agent at CAA and I’d enjoyed Paperhouse - I thought it was tremendous, a smashing picture...His favourite story was The Forbidden, because he wanted to deal with the social stuff. He liked the idea of taking a horror story with some social undertones and making a movie of it...We agreed that it needed to be relocated to the United States because it was American money and they weren’t going to be interested in a story set in Liverpool. But the Cabrini Green setting I think worked perfectly well.”/

And the Cabrini Green location DID work well. Especially considering that the “social stuff” Barker was referencing in that interview involved Chicago’s own struggle with racism, classism and segregation in the early 90’s.

Unfortunately, it was just the LOCATION that worked well for the story; the “social stuff” he “attempted” to tackle on the other hand, fell a bit short. And in order for us to understand why that was the case, we have to take a better look at Cabrini Green.

“GOOD TIMES”

Cabrini Green was a housing project in Chicago. It was built over the course of 20 years between 1942 to 1962 thanks to the Chicago Housing Authority.

/And although it was never mentioned by name, it was heavily implied by the footage used of it during the opening and closing of the show that it was the main residence of the Evans family in the TV sitcom Good Times in 1974, which accurately portrayed the neighborhood as poor and predominately black./

Now a lot of things happened that helped caused people to remember Cabrini-Green for the negative implications that were attached to the housing projects that survived the first two decades of the 21st Century.

/When the first set of row houses were constructed as part of the housing projects back in 1942, there were only three years left in World War II. Soon after the war ended, the factories that employed a lot of the residents nearby closed up shop and laid off a lot of people./

And along with situations that I’ll talk about in a little bit, the city of Chicago -- already strapped for cash as it was at the time -- decided to pull back the housing projects caregiving budget as a result.

/It’s further proof that the Evans family on Good Times stayed in one of the Cabrini-Green high-rises despite never referring to these specific housing projects by name, considering how often they referenced the malfunctioning building they lived in/

But while the characters on Good Times always did their best to make light out of the bad situation they were in as far as STAYING in “Cabrini-Green,” the lack of maintenance caused the real-life equivalent of the high-rises that came after the first set of row houses to blight over time. And anything new that was built on the property since then pretty much had the budget that a contestant couple had on an episode of Trading Spaces on TLC.

And when I mean the Cabrini Green projects became a blight, I mean a BLIGHT.

/Once the 80’s and the 90’s hit, gangs started to move in on some of the buildings in the Cabrini-Green projects, defacing the property with graffiti and constantly displaying acts of violence. The neglect of the property from the city of Chicago caused certain buildings and units to damn near become uninhabitable with barely working water electricity and critter infestations. Trash heaps piled as high as the 14th floor because the city wouldn’t go out to collect it. Balconies were fenced off to keep people from tossing others or themselves off high story floors in lots of the mid-to-high rise buildings. It may not have been one on paper, but the Cabrini-Green housing projects literally became like a prison to the poor citizens of Chicago who were forced to live there and had nowhere else to go./

More on that in a minute.

But while Cabrini Green’s history definitely attracted Bernard Rose, it wasn’t THIS housing project that made him want to film Candyman in Chicago.

It was the housing project Grace Abbott Homes of ABLA Homes that did the trick, when he read reports about someone murdering 52 year old Ruthie Mae McCoy, entering her apartment through the medicine cabinet in the bathroom of her apartment.

Police ARRIVED at her apartment when someone called 911 upon hearing the initial gunshots, but never ACTUALLY entered inside the apartment to check on her. They didn’t actually enter until 2 days later and saw her decomposing body on the floor.

(They Came In Through The Bathroom Mirror, Steve Bogira, Chicago Reader)

Now if you’ve seen Candyman 92, you’ll find both that story and the bit about the medicine cabinet very familiar.

And while both actually tie into how the social issues the movie tried to tackle were handled, the movie KINDA fell short in that regard at the same time.

Which is a shame, because I feel that if they shined a proper light on the facts, the horror of Candyman and the control he had over the residents of Cabrini-Green would’ve brought the movie to a whole nother level for me.

And it all could’ve started with a proper explanation of redlining.

“I MUST SHED INNOCENT BLOOD”

Redlining is the systematic denial of multiple services -- city, state and country-wide -- to the residents of specific neighborhoods. Right now, the most common use of redlining is in the form of home ownership or the lack thereof and how its presence affected the crime rates, property value and the financial stigma of neighborhoods that are predominately black.

Now the stigma is only the way it is when it comes to black people in urban residential areas because once the Residential Security Maps were made of pretty much every major city in America thanks to the Home Owners Loan Corporation, black and brown people -- along with poor whites -- that were grouped in certain neighborhoods were marked - as the name entails - in red as hazardous neighborhoods during the National Housing Act of 1934 after America came out of The Great Depression.

It made it difficult for people within these communities to buy or refinance homes not because black people and other minorities didn’t have the means to pay off the loans, but because the discriminatory acts of the HOLC made it incredibly hard for said minorities to gain access to them.

Now double this up with the story of the suburbs and how white people were allowed to build wealth with repeated home ownership.

They were able to buy and refinance homes in blue and green areas, which caused the property values to increase. And because the property values increased, that meant better funding to nearby schools and hospitals. And in order to cut off people of color from having this opportunity, some suburbs established covenants that lasted until the Fair Housing Act of 1968 was passed by congress.

Meanwhile, poor whites and people of color up until then were stuck in the yellow to red zones created by the HOLC. They decreased in property value so much to the point where nearby schools were barely funded the same way as suburban schools were, landlords leaf behind their properties to become blighted over time, and public transportation constantly got cut.

It got to the point where the only thing generated from these yellow and red zones was crime, which in turn feeds the school-to-prison pipeline due to the increased surveillance of said zones by the police in order to keep the privately owned correctional facilities properly funded.

And while an effort was made to put an end to Redlining thanks to the Fair Housing Act, the effects can still be felt and seen to this day in the neighborhoods that they affected in the past.

In Detroit, you can clearly see the difference in blue and green zones and yellow and red zones just by crossing 8 Mile road. Which some people probably only know about because you listen to Eminem.

What? It’s TRUE!

/The same can be said in Candyman 92, when Helen finds out that her condo was originally created to be a housing project that mirrored the layout of Cabrini Green./

(Explanation scene)

Cities may not actively participate in mapping out projects according to the Residential Security Maps of yesteryear anymore, but that doesn’t mean they don’t subconsciously follow it to a certain degree. ESPECIALLY when it comes to gentrification.

Back when I lived in Midtown Detroit in 2012, my under 700 square foot one bedroom apartment cost me $540 a month. Ever since the great suburban migration hit the midtown and downtown areas in the past 3 years, the price damn near doubled since I moved out.

Meanwhile, there are PLENTY of neighborhoods in Detroit that have been ignored by this “city-wide” rejuvenation because they’re in areas that were previously red zoned.

And while my example is in Detroit, I assure you that the same thing happened over in the Cabrini Green housing projects with the scenario that was given in the movie. How do I know that?

/Because I lined the Residential Security Map of Chicago up to the coordinates of where Cabrini-Green used to stand according to Google Maps, and WOULDN’T YOU KNOW IT, IT WAS IN THE RED!/

So yes. There are in fact accurate social issues that are referenced and utilized in the movie, and most of them branch from the racism and legalized segregation that was brought about by redlining. The REAL question, however, is...what does the movie DO with them?

“SCARED OF SOMETHING?”

Because of the decision to use the Cabrini-Green housing projects as the main setting for Candyman, the movie had to -- in one way or another -- address the issues of gang violence, racism, wealth and privilege that were brought upon the area thanks to what redlining did to Chicago after the Great Depression.

Unfortunately, I say “in one way or another,” because in a lot of ways it doesn’t utilize the set up the movie gave itself to the fullest. Instead, it sacrifices all of the potential messages the movie could tell about racism, segregation and classism for the sake of being a 95% direct adaptation of Clive Barker’s “The Forbidden.”

I say 95% because there were only two or so things Bernard Rose really changed when adapting the short story to the screen.

/The major ones were setting Candyman in a housing project in Chicago instead of Liverpool, giving Candyman his “son of a slave” origin story, and the toddler Kerry from the short story being split into two character in the movie; the baby Candyman kidnaps named Anthony, and the young boy Helen befriends named Jake. With those being the exceptions -- along with some stuff I’m going to be mentioning in a little bit because of said changes -- “Candyman really follows the plot of ‘The Forbidden’ to the proverbial ‘T’.”/

(Candyman vs The Forbidden, Mark Pellegrini, Adventures in Poor Taste)

And that, in my opinion, is the movie’s biggest flaw.

Because the movie follows the beats of the short story so closely, we’re not really allowed to look at the horror of Candyman through the eyes of the individuals his presence and legend haunts the most; the residents of Cabrini-Green.

With the constant deterioration of the high-rise due to the upkeep neglect brought upon it by the city of Chicago

The police barely showing up to actually protect the residents and only showing up to either make arrests or be called in under dire circumstances

The extremely limited amount of low-income housing options that were available to them

And their inability to move into better neighborhoods because of the racist impact the HOLC left in the city in the mid-1930’s, seeing Candyman through the eyes of the people who had no choice but to endure his terror would’ve been a better choice.

Instead, we mainly look at the horror of Candyman through the eyes of Helen; a white graduate student whose thesis she’s writing is centered around urban legends, and focuses on Candyman and his legend’s relation to the Cabrini-Green murders -- specifically one that was inspired by the real-life murder of Ruthie Mae McCoy at Grace Abbott Homes in ABLA.

/She’s extremely privileged considering her upbringing, her skin tone and her at-the-time social status-slash-connections thanks to being married to Professor ProJared. And because she SOMEWHAT knows how privileged she is, the actions that she makes up until her initial introduction to the true Candyman come across as intrusive (white folk line), instigative (Heard you’re looking for Candyman, bitch), and downright disrespectful (a woman died here).

A great example of this is how the film portrays the relationship of those who live in Cabrini-Green -- and even the gangs that patrol the housing project -- with Chicago PD.

/Because the movie doesn’t really convey it in a way that shows how redlining affected how zones that were previously in the red were policed, we don’t necessarily understand the distrust the residents of Cabrini-Green have with the police, which was reflected on when Helen met Jake for the first time./

Well, allow me to explain that disconnect.

Due to the little to no upkeep of the Red Zones in certain cities thanks to landlords abandoning their properties and contributing to the “blight” of neighborhoods, cities that are better off tend to send police to these neighborhoods more often than suburban ones. Minorities in suburban areas on the other hand are more likely to get pulled over by the local police because they don’t “fit the bill.”

You have no idea how many times I’ve been pulled over on my way to work in one of the predominately white Metro Detroit suburbs -- along with friends and associates of mine -- had a cop look at my ID back when I lived in Detroit proper and ask me “So what are you doing all the way out here, Mr. Readus?”

Sometimes you’re like me and you’re lucky. Yes, you got racially profiled because you’re a black man from Detroit driving to his job in the suburban city of Livonia in 2013, 2015 and 2016.

Yes you got out of the confrontations with a ticket, but you also got out of them with your life. And not every black person can say the same -- regardless if they’re outside a red zone or not.

Because let me tell you; this movie might’ve been set in 1992, but the actions of the Chicago Police Department over the course of the 90s as a whole were a trip and a half when it came to racially charged conflicts.

I’m talking about police brutality, falsely reported statements by CPD; the whole nine yards.

And while some of these instances were among their own, others that were targeted were in the heavily patrolled red zones of Chicago, like the one the Cabrini-Green projects were in.

The one in question having a heavy gang problem at the time, as depicted in the movie. But considering how most minority gangs are formed due to the inability of trusting the local police department to protect and serve them when they need help instead of looking at them as the enemy, you can kinda see where they’re coming from in forming those gangs to begin with.

/This brings us back to Helen arriving at Cabrini-Green for the first time to inspect the apartment of Ruthie Jean; the fictional counterpart of Ruthie Mae McCoy. Both her and her friend Bernadette are approached by gang members wondering why a white woman dressed like she belonged on the other side of the freeway was there, and immediately came to the understandable conclusion that they were cops./

Maybe the gang exists because the neighborhood schools lack the proper funding to host proper activities to keep them off the streets due to the Cabrini Green projects being located in a red zone previously established by the HOLC and said individuals have to resort to crime in order to get by.

Maybe it exists because due to the privately owned prisons that rely on the School-to-Prison Pipeline that the systematic racism of redlining helped establish that they help enforce, the Chicago Police Department had and still has a history of police brutality within these marginalized neighborhoods, resulting in the black folk living in them to distrust police and form these gangs for safety to begin with.

But because there was little to no exposition explaining Chicago PD’s relationship to the Cabrini Green residents and the gangs patrolling them -- which could have been added to the film just as easily as Helen’s condo explanation was -- and the fact that we’re looking at this story through the gaze of a privileged white woman, we don’t see that struggle.

We don’t see why there’s a disconnect between Chicago PD and the Cabrini-Green residents, and the only light we see the gangs reflected in, is the one of a white woman in a dangerous neighborhood making sure she keeps her purse nearby.

It plays into the notion that their plight is insignificant when compared to the safety and well-being of a white woman.

/This is reinforced later on when Helen is approached by the gang that’s actually violent using the Candyman moniker, and it was the attack on her by said gang that prompted Chicago PD to do anything about it, despite the testimony of Jake.

/To make matters worse? She’s AWARE of it/

It's because of that action, opportunities regarding her and Bernadette’s thesis begin to fall into her lap.

And I say HER lap, because despite it being a joint effort by her best friend Bernadette, those opportunities only arrived due to the news of her assault, which means she would be the one receiving most -- if not ALL -- of the attention.

/If it weren’t for the REAL Candyman framing her for the kidnapping of baby Anthony and the murder of Burnedette, that would’ve happened. Like the movie, she would’ve become the focus. And ALSO like the movie, the residents of Cabrini-Green and the struggles they continued to endure would’ve been looked at as nothing but props in her story./

CONCLUSION

The Cabrini Green high-rises have since been demolished. The only thing left of the housing projects are the original roadhouses; some in decent living conditions, others uninhabitable.

As far as the land occupied by the other buildings, the combination of Chicago’s neglect and the effects that redlining left on it, lowered the property value so much that private developers would’ve been absolutely foolish to miss out on getting a piece of the action once the prices were a steal.

This resulted in building mixed income housing, arts and tech districts for the city, and even a whole-ass Target where they once stood. Those of you who’ve seen “The Itis” episode of The Boondocks know this strategy pretty well.

Meanwhile the residents of those high-rises either allowed the city to relocate them, forced the city to relocate them, or were removed by court orders because they had nowhere else to go.

And with the redevelopment of these previously red zones and others like it have been experiencing, most low income black families are being forced to leave Chicago all together.

(Black Families Came to Chicago by the Thousands. Why Are They Leaving? Julie Bosman, The New York Times)

I was hoping that upon rewatching Candyman that there was a detail I missed about how race, modern day segregation and classism was featured that could help me understand why this movie is so beloved not just as a horror movie, but as one of the original staples for black horror that paved the way to what we have now upon it being revered as contemporary classic horror cinema.

But the unfortunate truth is that Candyman 92 was never our story.

It was one that had no choice but to feature us. Not to show the struggles we face under the debris of systematic oppression and racism due to redlining and what spawned from it

But because in order for Bernard Rose to stay as faithful to the source material as possible outside of what he already changed for it to fit the new location, we had to be there.

/That’s why I’m so happy the alternate timeline sequel Candyman is getting is not only FOR us, but is also being made BY us. Nia DaCosta will be directing it, and Jordan Peele is not only producing it but is also the co-writer. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II playing baby Anthony all grown up returning to what’s left of Cabrini-Green as an artist exploring the urban legend that almost took his life, and it looks like its not only going to put the people of Cabrini-Green -- along with its past and present -- into the spotlight this time around, but also tackle another topic that’s a direct result of redlining: Gentrification./

It’s a shame it took 28 years to get a story that properly shined a light on the real-life horrors the residents of Cabrini-Green had to endure - fictional or otherwise.

It’s also a shame that the closest one we received before then only slightly featured them and their plight just to tell the story of a woman who -- to a certain extent -- used them as a means to an end.

Which begs the question of who Candyman’s TRUE victim is in this 1992 tale of terror. Helen Lyle...or us?