In this Horror Joy episode, Jeff and Brian discuss the 1992 film Candyman as the final entry in an “academic horror” course, focusing on how the movie links urban legend, the university, and racialized violence.

They follow graduate student Helen Lyle’s dissertation research into the Candyman myth at Chicago’s Cabrini-Green, highlighting how academic distance and the “white gaze” turn Black suffering, especially Daniel Robitaille’s lynching, into an object of study.

Drawing on writers such as Zayla Crocker, George Yancy, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Robin R. Means Coleman, they argue the film reflects its early-1990s moment (including Rodney King and the Los Angeles uprising), critiques systemic racism and misogyny, and frames Helen as both privileged researcher and exploited academic.

They Will Say: Ritual Naming and Living beyond the Pale with Candyman

Horror Noire A History of Black American Horror from the 1890s to Present

Bernard Rose’s Candyman and the Rhetoric of Racial Fear in the Reagan and Bush Years