These essays are part of my creative foundation—written during my formative years. They’re offered here as moments of thought, still resonant and still becoming.
Written during my undergraduate studies in Communication, this essay analyzes the film Candyman (1992) by Bernard Rose through a sociological lens, examining its racial, socioeconomic, and gendered implications. It reflects my interest in how media, myth, and power intersect within cultural storytelling.
A Mosaic of Mirrors, Honey, and Blood: How Polarized Figures Connect Through Suffering and Mythmaking in Candyman (1992)
“I am the writing on the wall, the whisper in the classroom. Without these things, I am nothing. So now I must shed innocent blood,” declares Candyman. This line provides the chilling, nuanced tone for the horror film Candyman (1992) by Bernard Rose. The story begins with the inquisitive Helen Lyle, a white graduate student studying the origins of the Candyman folklore, as she investigates disturbing incidents at the Cabrini-Green housing projects. Rose packs one emotional punch after another with images of urban decay, racial ghettoization, and societal neglect. Intensifying the story is the bloodthirsty Candyman looming over the residents, determined to perpetuate the same violence that was inflicted upon him. Through Helen’s journey, she descends from a position of privilege and comfort into violence and chaos. Candyman was released against the backdrop of the Rodney King incident in 1991 and the Los Angeles riots in 1992, with the film being shot on location at the real-life Cabrini-Green housing project, which Rose used to reflect “what real horror is in America.” By weaving together the fates of the Cabrini-Green community, Candyman, and Helen, the film explores the real-life connections between oppression, societal degradation, and lore, tying marginalities together across lines of socioeconomic standing, gender, and race. In this paper, I will analyze how Candyman illuminates the common threads of myth and oppression between marginalized society members in its portrayal of Cabrini Green’s stark racial destitution, Candyman as the ultimate figure of racial trauma perpetuating communal anguish, and Helen’s metamorphosis from highbrow examiner to degraded victim.
In addition to representing the psychologically dark and disturbing atmosphere in Candyman, Cabrini-Green was a real housing project in Chicago that came into public view in the late 1980s for its significant level of destitution, crime, and systemic neglect. The film used its graffiti-laden infrastructure, broken-down elevators, and sinister stairwells to reflect the city’s neglect and isolation of the Black community. Deepening the tension within the community is the ominous presence of Candyman, whose existence is sustained through storytelling. Crocker (2024) describes this scenario as a form of “ritual naming” that not only keeps Candyman alive but also helps the community turn their pain into a type of transformative lore. In the film, Helen hears of Candyman from Anne-Marie, who expresses her fear of the villain while also telling her about wanting a better life for her baby away from the dismal Cabrini-Green atmosphere. Later, a little boy named Jake tells Helen about the stories he knows, and his fears that Candyman will “get him”. This storytelling provides community members with a sense of catharsis; rather than targeting their anguish toward the system to which there is no actual point of contact, they’re able to harness their terror toward a source they can easily identify. This fusion of systemic neglect, anguish, and mythmaking creates the conduit for Candyman himself to manifest, bringing with him an unblinking account of racial violence that continues to echo into the community and into the country.
In the film, Candyman was born from the experience of Daniel Robitaille. He was a Black portrait painter who was lynched for his relationship with a white woman. His painful, violent murder transforms him into Candyman, who perpetually terrifies and slays those who speak his name, symbolizing how historical racial injustices and brutality remain in the collective psyche. Hawkins (1992) explains that his desire for infamy comes from his need for acknowledgement. This can be seen when Candyman comes to Helen for the first time and he uses memory and language to hypnotize her to tell her his story, rather than attacking her violently. Through this process, his duality emerges and audience sympathy for him is contradicted while also exploring how trauma perpetuates itself. Coleman (2022) notes that Black monsters in the horror genre often represent white people’s fear of Black empowerment in addition to symbolizing internalized rage and historical prejudice. Taking these points into account, Candyman presents a talisman that represents America’s difficulty taking accountability regarding the racial sins of the past and the burden of inherited trauma of those who must continue to endure the cycle. Furthermore, Candyman utilizes the power of myth to shed a harsh light on these unsavory realities, while also connecting another outside figure to hidden truths- Helen’s journey to uncover the origins of Candyman brings her into a brutal cycle that obscures racial and gender boundaries by the end of her experience.
Helen begins as a graduate student working on her thesis, within the warm comfort of institutional support and material stability. She learns more about the legend of Candyman from the university janitors, to which she maintains an amused type of fascination that carries forward to her and Bernadette’s exploration at Cabrini-Green. Helen’s relationship with the Cabini-Green residents is heightened when she discovers that her apartment shares the same architecture as their buildings. Hawkins (1992) explains that Helen’s perceived separation from the community is more tenuous than she thought. Helen’s continued investigation further erodes this separation, especially from the point when she first encounters Candyman. This is where her mental health deteriorates; she finds herself at the scene of various violent crimes, and she becomes virtually devoid of all credibility and status. She is left abandoned by academia, the police, the medical system, and her husband (who appeared to be courting a younger woman before her downfall). This fall from status reflects the disempowerment of the Cabrini-Green community, as noted by Hawkins (1992), dissolving the differences which divided them as privileged investigator and oppressed subjects. By the end of the film, Helen is burned alive while saving Anne-Marie’s baby. This leads to a “reversal of the gaze” according to Coleman (2022). The white woman is no longer just an observer of Black trauma, but a part of it.
Themes of subjugation, oppression, violence, and myth connect each figure in the film. Helen’s funeral shows this connection when the Cabrini-Green residents attend and honor her by throwing Candyman’s hook into her grave. This scene illustrates how myth became a unifying force by combining separate stories into one tale of terror and awareness (Hawkins 270). Candyman also uses horror to demonstrate how racism, sexism, and classism build upon each other, such as with Helen’s downfall in relation to the community’s oppression. Both are marginalized and cast down by society. This is described by Coleman (2022) as a dramatization of “intersectional horror” where discrimination permeates demographics. Markedly, this is seen through the police, who neglect the community and imprison and sedate Helen. This can also be seen in the way Helen’s husband is enticed by a younger, newer partner, which mirrors the municipal favoring of building the Cabrini-Green community in a different location to keep a more “desirable” demographic on the “right” side of the river. Additionally, the act of “saying their names” ties into Crocker’s (2024) “ritual naming”, with the modern-day trend of keeping the victims of racial violence in societal awareness with repetitive discourse. The goal here is that such repetitive discourse raises awareness and creates a persistent interest across demographics. The film uses this concept to explore how white feminism tends to exclude racial suffering, offering what Hawkins (1992) hints at as a sharing of marginality that only comes into awareness after white women are personally affected. A clear example of this is how Helen approached the subject of Candyman with hubris and amusement, as the legend was a repetitive topic that had made its way into the mainstream; however, the more she investigated, the more she was drawn into similar systems of oppression that had affected the community and Candyman. Together, the Cabrini-Green residents, Candyman, and Helen inherit trauma and continue to perpetuate the cycle. They all turn from victims to abusers by spreading violence as a conduit for their own pain. The community does this through crime (drug dealing, murder, harassment, etc.), Candyman does this through brutalizing those who practice the mirror ritual, and Helen essentially does it the same way Candyman did as the “new Candyman”. Finally, each figure results in a new generation: the community spawns new residents continuing the violence and crime, Candyman creates a progeny out of Helen, and Helen’s slaying of her husband leaves his new partner as a potential woman scorned, screaming in horror, holding a knife.
Candyman demonstrates that horror is not merely some wild, supernatural spectacle, but that it originates from real terrors and inequalities within humanity. The fates of Helen, Candyman, and the Cabrini-Green community are bound together through shared systems of marginalization and the perpetuation of pain, each becoming a victim and an instrument of trauma. Rose’s use of the horror genre holds up uncomfortable issues like societal neglect, racial violence, and patriarchal domination. Subsequently, the question that lingers is not whether Candyman can be stopped, but whether the society that created him can ever change.
Works Cited
Coleman, Robin R. Means. Horror Noire: A History of Black American Horror from the 1890s to Present. 2nd ed., Routledge, 2022.
Crocker, Zachary. “They Will Say: Ritual Naming and Living beyond the Pale with Candyman.” English Language Notes, vol. 62, no. 2, 2024, pp. 21–35. https://doi.org/10.1215/00138282-11343887.
Hawkins, Joan. “Vanilla Nightmares and Urban Legends: The Racial Politics of Candyman (1992).” Black Camera, vol. 14, no. 2, Spring 2023, pp. 252–274. Black Camera: An International Film Journal, doi:10.2979/blackcamera.14.2.15.
Written in 2013 for a creative writing course, this essay applies sociological and feminist criticism to Jane Martin’s play Beauty. It reflects an early engagement with questions of gender, value, and the tension between intellect and appearance—topics that continue to surface in my thinking and creative work.
Sociological Criticism of “Beauty” by Jane Martin
Feminism can be defined as the promotion of equal rights for women in socio-economic, societal, and political participation. Many controversial and provocative arguments have been generated through the feminist movement among men and women; however, another hot-button issue that has taken form through this movement is the opinions and perspectives women have towards one another. In the tragic-comedy “Beauty” by Jane Martin, the question arises over whether it is right or wrong for women to desire physical beauty over a highly active and capable intellect. Through the interaction of the two main characters, Martin illustrates a modern-day issue centered on the merit of brains over beauty and the underlying issues that create a schism between the two for women.
The story begins with Carla talking on the phone to a suitor who is over-infatuated with her. As Carla goes on to trump the suitors' attempt at a marriage proposal, her friend Bethany comes in holding a lamp similar to that in Aladdin with a visible desire to share some unknown experience. Bethany urges Carla to get off the phone, eager to spill what seems to be something very interesting and unusual, while Carla brings an end to the conversation on the phone. Bethany begins her story about an “encounter” she had on the beach, but Carla is distracted and annoyed with thoughts of all the excessive male attention she has been dealing with. Carla begins to focus on Bethany’s story when unusual details are given. Bethany has been explaining to Carla that upon her walk on the beach, she came across a lamp and out of it came a Genie. The Genie gave Bethany three wishes; her first wish was for money, and her second was for the health of a sick uncle. As Bethany tells her story, Carla expresses annoyance at time constraints and missed appointments with Ralph Lauren for a modeling contract. The last wish, Bethany emphasizes, has to be used on her deepest desire; Bethany wants to be like Carla. She envies the attention Carla gets from men and all the other advantages she has due to her beauty. The two argue over the advantages and disadvantages of beauty and of brains; Carla does not think this is something Bethany should aspire to, as she has to deal with more people who treat her like an object, and her lack of ability to form deeper connections with people. Bethany persists and makes the wish to be like Carla, then an explosion occurs, disorienting the two of them. After interacting, they realize they have switched brains and that Bethany now has Carla’s body. The story ends with Bethany content in the final result that they both have what everybody wants, different problems.
The values promoted by Jane Martin are clearly expressed through the actions of her characters. Carla’s inability to see outside of herself while Bethany begins her story presents her in a negative, one-dimensional frame. Her blase attitude with her suitor and her lack of interest in others reflects Martin’s attitude towards emphasis on physical beauty; by placing beautiful women on a pedestal based solely on the merit of good genetic disposition in that regard, society promotes narcissism and unfounded, over-inflated self-importance in these individuals. The contrast between Bethany’s various concerns, her uncle, money, and her job, and Carla’s singular concern towards herself also highlights this imbalance and has off-putting effects regarding Carla’s disposition. Martin obviously discourages women from aspiring to live life as Carla does, in a self-absorbed, meaningless existence filled with only lavished male attention and booking modeling contracts.
On the other side of Martin’s beauty looking glass is the difficulty of a conventionally attractive woman’s assimilation into the world of human connection. As Carla expresses her unpleasant experiences with men, Martin’s empathy for these women and the externally imposed surface existence of their lives is revealed. Carla’s discontent towards the constant male attention she receives and the lack of worthwhile men in her life signify the author’s feelings towards this aspect of physical attractiveness. Martin knows that beauty might only be skin deep, but it creates an abysmal gulf isolating one of the most universal human desires from fulfillment, the desire to have a unique and genuine place in the world and within the lives of one another.
Another dimension of this discouragement is expressed by Martin through Bethany’s desire to be like Carla. Bethany is certainly indicated as the most intelligent of the two women, and yet she still wishes to encompass all the superficiality and deluded grandeur of Carla’s life for the sake of being beautiful. Here, Martin is expressing two different opinions regarding the battle of beauty vs brains. Through the expression of Carla’s opposition to Bethany’s wish, Martin tells the reader that, despite the virtue of intellectual competence, a woman’s desire to dispose of her own wisdom for the sake of aesthetic appearance is equally as despicable as a woman who lives her life based on her good looks. Martin obviously believes that in this matter, Bethany is at fault because she has more ability and potential to succeed in any way she chooses than any woman with the good luck of well- formed bone structure. However, there is another aspect of this issue in which Martin illustrates her viewpoint. The fact that a woman with a beautiful face has more doors opened for her in terms of opportunity, resources, and adoration has an oppressive effect on women who don’t believe they have these same opportunities. Martin explores this effect through Bethany’s persistence in her decision despite Carla’s pleas. The author wants to express that although women can be intelligent and logical, they still have the desire to be loved and to feel wanted physically. She presents how a woman with knowledge and wisdom can feel undervalued and less important than her more aesthetically pleasing female counterpart.
The last line spoken sums up all of the various viewpoints displayed through the characters in that woman’s struggle, which is subjective. Martin believes that having “different problems” provides more satisfaction than fulfilling the need to be desired or to establish effective human connections because every woman’s fight for equality will always be individually painful and ostracizing. One person can never know what it feels like to be another person completely; therefore, the willingness to take on another’s burdens always appears a fair price to pay for the seemingly superior gifts and talents that accompany them.
The present-day struggle for women’s equal rights has reached a new plateau, which is the conflict between women toward the celebration of feminine beauty and the fight to assert female intellectualism. In many situations, the general consensus is that one must be more present than the other. A recent counterculture feminist movement has formed in which a woman in power is seen as a sexual symbol; this idea has created tensions between women in several aspects. On one extreme of the spectrum, there are women who put their feminine endowments on the forefront, as if to establish some form of superiority over more conservative women. The indications seem to suggest that a full usage of all of a woman's advantages should and could be used, as it is a woman’s right to do so. Perhaps there is room for an ideology that embraces all of women’s virtues, dignity and intelligence alongside softness, elegance, and beauty, where these qualities do not cancel each other out, but deepen and sustain one another.