Perpetual Victims: An Adapted Thesis Inspired by Candyman (1992)
Candyman © 1992 - TriStar Pictures
Urban legends are integral to every culture and help create the basis for a society's moral compass. Tales of monsters that ravage those who have thrown their values to the wind have long been whispered on the playground. It happened to a friend of a friend, a distant cousin, a local babysitter the next town over. Always detached enough to make the listener feel safe but just gruesome enough to make them think twice. Enter, Bernard Rose's Candyman (1992). For protagonist and Master's candidate Helen Lyle, these horrific narratives might also be used as a coping mechanism. Her urban legend thesis explores the connection between a legendary monster and the unfathomable reality of Chicago's poverty-stricken community inhabiting Cabrini-Green.
However, despite Candyman's popularity as an African-American urban legend, the film is primarily focused on establishing Helen's journey to urban legend status as Candyman's victim. Her transition from tormented non-believer to transcendent white savior denotes a certain level of appropriation. It begs the question: Why is a white savior the only chance for salvation in this black narrative?
Foundations of the Legend
The film introduces Candyman as the rare product of post-Civil War era black wealth. He was a renowned portrait painter whose reputation would eventually lead him into a contract with a wealthy landowner for his daughter's portrait. The pair soon fell in love and became pregnant. The father flew into a rage and hired a local group of men to punish Candyman.
The men chased Candyman down to Cabrini-Green, beat him, and sawed off his hand with a rusty blade. They then stole the honeycomb from a local apiary and smeared it all over his naked body, and watched as thousands of bees stung him to death. The mob burned his body and scattered his ashes over the grounds of Cabrini-Green.
Over time, the legend evolved to include a summoning ritual: say his name five times in the mirror, and he will appear behind you, breathing down your neck, his stolen hand replaced with a hook that is poised to rip his latest victim from groin to gullet.
In the film, this shortened version of the legend is initially introduced in middle-class suburbia. A young, white babysitter challenges her boyfriend to say Candyman's name five times in the mirror. They stop short, but she decides to say the name one last time. Candyman appears and makes her his victim.
It isn't until Helen speaks to a pair of cleaning ladies that we get the darker, less gossip-worthy side of the legend. One night, a young Black woman residing in Cabrini-Green named Ruthie Jean calls the police, convinced that someone is coming through her walls. The police brush her off. She calls again, pleading for rescue. No one comes. Ruthie Jean is found later in a pool of blood, carved from groin to gullet. Police and media attribute the brutality to a product of the rough, crime-ridden area; perhaps the stereotypical drug deal gone awry or a domestic dispute turned deadly. But the locals know the truth: it was Candyman.
Why Cabrini-Green?
It's necessary to look at the dark, systemically racist history of Cabrini-Green itself to understand the significance of this setting for a modern African-American urban legend.
Established initially as a 10 section housing complex in the late 1930s, Cabrini-Green was initially a mixed-income community located in Chicago, associated with poverty and organized crime nicknamed "Death's Corner." Following WWII, the community gave way to economic turmoil when the surrounding factories that residents relied on for work closed. Simultaneously, the area would experience a decline in essential services, including police patrols, public transit, and routine building maintenance. The landscaping was paved over with concrete, and units damaged by fire were boarded up, rather than mended. Residents would eventually turn to the gangs that conquered the varying sections of the complex for protection.
Over time, the complex would gain a nationwide reputation for its crime and decayed appearance, eventually becoming the face of the presumed issues associated with the U.S. subsidized housing program. The day-to-day lives of Cabrini-Green's inhabitants were undoubtedly riddled with fear and violence. This is why Helen's thesis from the film shifts focus from the cheeky suburban nightmare to the genuine fears of a long ignored and tormented community. One that "starts attributing the daily horrors of their lives to a mythical figure."
A White Savior Emerges
The film takes heavy influence from the source material, Clive Barker's "The Forbidden." In Barker's tale, a young Master's candidate, also named Helen, focuses her thesis on graffiti and the coded narratives within the writing on the wall. When she stumbles upon the legend of Candyman and tries to coax validity from the impoverished inhabitants of the housing project, she unknowingly invokes him to commit a heinous act to prove his viciousness.
A major aspect that sours the concept in the cinematic depiction is the concept of White Saviorism. In Barker's story, Helen reflects on the practice of high class individuals, particularly in the academic sphere, inserting themselves into communities and environments where they don't belong and forcing their presence upon the natives. She suggests that the idea that an outsider's assumption that they could gain genuine insight into the lives of the inhabitants of the foreign space is laughable. They don't belong, and they never will. And, who are they to try?
In Bernard Rose's adaptation, Helen inserts herself and forces her disbelief upon the residents of Cabrini-Green. Her insistence that he isn't real at the beginning of her journey casts a shadow on his validity within the community. Without believers, Candyman can't exist as an urban legend. In retaliation for Helen's questioning, Candyman comes for her. However, he doesn't just come to kill her. He also offers her the opportunity to be immortal. As his victim, she could gain her own legend and become his predecessor of sorts.
Helen's resistance only makes her a stronger candidate in his eyes, and eventually earns her the respect of the entire Cabrini-Green community. She becomes the beautiful martyr that took down Candyman and is deserving of a mural in his former lair, a phoenix rising from the ashes. Her rise to oblivion suggests that, without her, Candyman could have lived on, feeding off the complex's fears. There would be no martyrs found among them, no Black man or woman willing to face the nightmare plaguing their home. A white savior is their only chance of salvation, a notion all too familiar in horror narratives.
An Adapted Conclusion
For a narrative like this to feel genuine and exploratory, it is imperative that it comes straight from the source. A modern African-American urban legend where the cinematic universe is completely void of an African-American hero perpetuates a level of victimhood in a society already so rife with similar spheres of thought. Candyman has a legend rooted deeply in the suffering of Black Americans. He is a supernatural entity that embodies that suffering and reigns brutality on the inhabitants of his resting place. It's a fictional black story. No fictional white savior should be necessary.
Nia DaCosta's 2020 adaptation is described as a "spiritual sequel" to Rose's Candyman, introducing a new cast of characters to a now gentrified Cabrini-Green with the legend buried deep beneath the modernized infrastructure and upholstery. The film is set to release on October 16, 2020, and will hopefully manage to connect the dots Rose's legend failed to see.
Despite these criticisms, I do believe that Bernard Rose's Candyman is groundbreaking, and does shed light on glaring societal issues that remain prevalent to this day. It's an essential screening for horror fans and folklorists alike. At its core, Rose's adapted Candyman is a tantalizing legend, worthy of playground whispers for years to come.
Sources & Further Reading
Cabrini-Green Neighborhood Profile (2017)
“Candyman” Returns to a Transformed Cabrini-Green
Creepiest Urban Legend in Every State
Gullah Geechee Storyteller Preserves a Painful Past
In the Flesh: Books of Blood Vol. 5: The Forbidden by Clive Barker
Urban Legends: How They Start and Why They Persist
About the Writer
Mercedes K. Milner is a Co-Founder and Administrator of the Write or Die Chicks and the Writers Group Coordinator. She is a staff writer for the WODC Blog, heads the Reading on Writing column, and co-hosts two original WODC podcasts: Script to Screen Podcast and Conversations with The Write or Die Chicks.