10/28/2023 There Was a Farmer Ha(lloween)d a Dog...
In October 302,020, I began what I thought would be a fun little game when Adam and I were watching horror and Halloween themed films during the month of October that year. I revisited it each October since then, and it took us a few years to fill out all 25 squares, but we finally did it. This year, in 302,023, I decided to digitize the little scrap of paper on which I originally drew the bingo board. The little scrap of paper was folded, softened, worn around the edges and torn from three years of traveling in a backpack and being taken out and handled for a month every year. I thought, "well, it'll last longer as a digital file," and so I set to work in the image manipulation program GIMP.
You'll notice on the horror film board the addition of two antiquated racist tropes: that of the "magical negro," and the "indian burial ground." The idea for the "mystical negro" square came about when we noticed a commonality of supporting characters with mystical powers who both happened to be black. The title was inspired by the Key & Peele sketch "Dueling Magical Negros" (which may not be its official title and whose show we still enjoy on a regular basis) in which they critique the "magical negro" trope. As for the "indian burial ground" trope, it came up as a result of being in a handful of the films we watch during October. At first, I had "mystical negro" and "It was built on indian burial ground" as squares on the main board, but I felt uncomfortable publishing it partly because I am white and as such it is not generally acceptable for me to use the word "negro," and partly because I thought it could be construed as racist--and me along with it. I decided to look up Key and Peele's "magical negro" sketch so as to learn more about it. Down a rabbit-hole from there, I learned what the magical negro trope is and that it is common and widespread, and I decided that it has no place on my bingo board as a square to check off as if it is a necessary part of the game or necessary to the horror genre. I then realized, "if magical negro is racist, then so is indian burial ground." So I decided to remove that from the main board as well. Afterwards, I looked up "indian burial ground" and learned that, of course, the trope is well removed from any basis in reality. North American indigenous cultures have a variety of beliefs regarding the afterlife. Certainly, it is disrespectful to desecrate the land that others hold sacred, and the xenophobic European belief that the living descendants would raise evil spirits as some sort of retribution for disturbing the remains of their ancestors is completely fabricated. I have decided to keep the two racist squares adjacent to the main bingo board as an educational acknowledgement of their existence and of how their use has been a detriment to their respective cultures. I highly urge anyone reading this to research "magical negro," and "indian burial ground" as an antidote to ignorance as to how these cultures have been exploited and falsified as cheap plot tools in horror films and literature. As I was working on the horror film board, Adam had the idea that it would be fun to do the same thing but for Halloween candy. I immediately created a new layer for the candy board, and that one took about 10 minutes to fill out as we both starting naming candies. You'll also notice that at the center of both the horror and candy boards is not the free space, but a comically common horror-film occurrence or candy that is a given in any film or halloween candy tour, respectively. I thought it was funny. Further, I thought it would be funny to also add a free space just to accentuate the fact.
I have also included blank boards for candy and horror so that people may fill in the squares as they please, and there is also a blank "halloween film" board for the less horror-leaning fans among us or perhaps for the kiddies who haven't yet discovered a love of horror fiction. Perhaps over the coming years, I will make a filled in version of that board which caters more to the non-horror halloween movies. To obtain one of these boards for yourself, simply right-click (Apple+click, I think, on a MAC; or long click on a mobile device) the desired image and choose "download image" or "save image" from the options that appear as the case may be. When the download is complete, the image should then be available in your "Downloads" folder or perhaps somewhere in your "Pictures" folder, and you can move it to wherever you please and use it however you like to accompany any Halloween festivities in which you choose to participate.
Enjoy!! Explanation of the less obvious "horror" squares: -- "I shot him 6 times" is a line from Halloween 2. In Halloween, SPOILER ALERT: the killer's psychiatrist ends up shooting him 6 times, the killer falls out a window and is seen lying on the ground below. The shot cuts away and a few more lines are spoken at which point the shot cuts back to the ground where the killer had fallen, only he isn't there anymore. END OF SPOILER. So the square "I shot him 6 times" can be fulfilled anytime there is a villain who doesn't seem to die after experiencing something inflicted upon them that certainly, you would think, should have killed them. -- "WARNING" is a reference to when a warning is issued by (usually) a supporting character to (usually) a main character about certain dangers which just so happen to be central to the plot. The warning inevitably goes unheeded. Initially I thought of putting "unheeded warning," but then agreed with Adam that the fact that the warning goes unheeded is a given. -- "seems to be scared of cameraman" is a funny one Adam came up with and is my favorite one on the board. It's a photographic style in which a character is frantically fleeing directly from the camera which continues to directly follow them. The camera is supposedly the point of view of the menace or killer. Naturally, women are camera operators as well but have been lumped in under the term "cameraman" with no disrespect implied. I just thought the rhythm of the word, "cameraman" was funniest when considering various options. -- "it has >6 sequels" just to be clear, it must have 6 or more sequels, for a total of 7 or more films in the series. It's up to you whether reboots count for this square ;-) -- "the animals know" may be an obvious one to horror fans, but examples include the dog barking at the basement door in Paranormal Activity 2 or the cat yowling and hissing at the lamp in Amityville Horror 4. The animals can sense the evil: "the animals know." Comments are closed.
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