Race Equity Initiative (REI)
Cultural Celebrations
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For this issue of October 2021, we will be exploring how horror reflects our culture and the nuances in how the genre depicts society's attitudes around themes like race, class, patriarchy and more.
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“To know me is to know I love horror, but it’s not just about the thrills and chills—horror is one of the most complex and nuanced film genres that exists, but it’s completely discounted. Each week, we are not only going to examine how horror mirrors culture, you’re also going to get some film recommendations that go bump in the night. Pleasant dreams.” - Melanie Roland, Patients Rights Advocate
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"October Haunts: What horror teaches us about ourselves"
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Why the Scariest Thing About Horror Movies is Us
When you turn on a classic slasher movie, there's a feeling of campiness about it. A dude with a chainsaw running after teens hardly qualifies as terrifying today. In fact, it inspired an entire parody spinoff genre. But in the 1980s, when those...
Read more
www.rewire.org
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What horror films teach us about ourselves and being human
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Dr. Steve Schlozman is an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital. He explores how horror films more profound than they seem.
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What horror monsters can tell us about ourselves
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Horror films and their monsters are designed to scare us, but for Chinese-Australian artist, Louise Zhang, rather than being fearful, instead they are her comfort and safe space. In this talk, she shares her deep passion for cinema horror as an art form and explores the idea of the monster and the monstrous as a way to exorcise her anxieties through art.
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Who Wants to Watch Black Pain?
More Black storytellers are turning to the horror genre to unpack the traumas of racism. But some viewers are growing tired of these stories.
Read more
www.theatlantic.com
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Re-centering the Black experience in the horror genre,...
"Black history is black horror": scholars and creators Tananarive Due, John Jennings, and Robin R. Means Coleman probe the future of horror-with an eye to America's grisly past "White people don't know what horror is."
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www.documentjournal.com
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If you haven’t watched ‘Get Out,’ you are missing out! It may be new to the genre, but it launched Director Jordan Peele as the new face of horror and changed the game entirely. Watch the film and break down all the hidden Easter eggs you may have missed!
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In "Get Out" Jordan Peele Tackles The 'Human Horror'...
In Get Out, Peele unabashedly addresses the politics of racism as he chronicles the story of an African-American man who's meeting his white girlfriend's parents for the first time but she's not told them he's black.
Read more
www.npr.org
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Rent on Hulu, Prime or Apple TV
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WATCH: The People Under The Stairs (1991)
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Don’t let the cheesy 1991 trailer fool you, ‘The People Under the Stairs’ was way ahead of it’s time, tackling subjects of gentrification and class warfare.
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Revisiting Hours: Won't You Be My Neighbor...
Looking back at Wes Craven’s 1991 gimp suits & gentrification horror movie about fundamentalists keeping kids in cages.
Read more
www.rollingstone.com
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Rent on Apple TV, YouTube, Prime
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Not to be confused with the terrible American re-imagining, this film puts a fresh spin on iconic folktale of La Llorona featuring the history of Maya genocide in Guatemala. A fantastic movies, but you may want to leave your lights on for this one.
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In Guatemalan film 'La Llorona,' the horror is closer to ...
In Bustamante's deliberately paced "La Llorona," the trope of the weeping spirit is repurposed to conjure something different. The film, which offers only calibrated doses of magic realism until the haunting first appears an hour and a half...
Read more
www.ncronline.org
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Rent on Apple TV, YouTube, Prime
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This is technically a trilogy, but what's Halloween without a little tricks up my sleeve? Featuring a banging 90's soundtrack, 'Fear Street' was the teen novel series written by author R.L. Stine who also wrote 'Goosebumps.' This Netflix series features a queer interracial couple as the lead, two towns separated by class, and a witch who may be causing killers to rise up to attack the innocent teens of Shadyside! You gotta stick around until the end on this one, but the pay off is well worth it!
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Type “queer horror films” into a search engine and you’ll get a bevy of articles poring over every gesture, sentence of dialogue and subtext in movie history, from “Psycho” to “The Babadook.” While queer characters have, in the last two decades, begun to move to the center in films like “Spiral” and “The Retreat,” they’re still too often merely implicit, made to seem like the other, or simply killed off. Read more
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Law Foundation's REI Workgroup 6 Cultural Celebration is creatively curating content that highlights local heritage celebrations and elevate the diverse cultures represented in our Santa Clara County. Law Foundation has seen that integrating community celebrations as part of the office culture presented an opportunity for our staff to share their heritage and traditions and to better understand and connect with the diverse community we serve.
Kindly,
Anuja, Melanie R., Nuemi, Christine N. & Vicky
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We encourage feedback and recommendations for future celebrations!
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