Candyman 2021 — Where Culture Vulture Knows No Color
In my last write up, in which I discussed my take on 1992’s Candyman,
I wrote that both Helen Lyle and Bernadette Walsh, a black and white duo of graduate students:
“Carelessly seek ‘truth’ in the wrong part of town, at the darkest hours of night, disrespectfully appropriating a way of life they cannot grasp, claiming the legacy of its pain for their own selfish financial and academic pursuits, and intruding into spaces uninvited, as if people didn’t live there — But rather were inanimate objects in a museum.“
Simply put, they are pseudo-ethnographers who feign to care about their subjects, but use their stories for their own gain.
It’s interesting that this socioeconomic dynamic isn’t as explored as much. For even in the 2021 film, the theme of writers, or in this case, artists, who steal artistic and cultural narratives from urban communities in order to make a profit, is still front and center.
