Escaping Racial Stereotypes in the Escape Room Franchise
In my first post, I asked you to think about your favorite horror movie. I bet you that the sole survivor of that movie was a woman. Well, I want to issue another bet, double or nothing. The person that survives is a white woman. If I am wrong, let me know what movie you’re thinking of. I would love to watch it. In this post, we will be talking about final girls of color and the racial stereotypes that have become associated with them. Horror has a long standing history of killing their characters of color, quite brutally and swiftly. So much so that a common media trop is the “black dude dies first,” referring to the regular occurrence of a character of color dying early on in a film’s runtime. This trope arose from filmmakers having a token minority in their project to check a box, but limiting their role by killing them off as soon as possible. Tropes like this in horror are an extension of society’s beliefs of who they believe is worthy of life. The United States of America is...