Problematic Faves - Blog Posts

Your favorite childhood Fantasy movies were racist. Let's talk.

Sinners, White-washed fantasy, Systemic racism, Interview with the Vampire and Sinners, Chaotic fantasy, Historical Erasure, Music and spirituality

By now, most of y’all have probably seen the new Movie “Sinners” by Ryan Coogler.

What could be better than a fantasy-horror-vampire movie set in the Jim Crow era of 1930s Mississippi, with Afrocentric, spiritual themes, ancestral vengeance, and Black Southern gothic dripping from every frame?

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Meet our lead, Sammie, a wonderfully talented musician and preacher’s boy who is inadvertently bestowed with the gift of a “Griot,” which translates to poet-musicians, oral historians, preserving archives of BIPOC peoples, history, genealogy, and value. These marvelous storytellers have existed for centuries, since Ancient times, African indigenous people have been sharing their history through various forms; music being one of the most spiritual, soul-moving, universal languages known to man.

Music is magical. It can bind nations, tell stories, heal souls, and even curse those who dare to listen.

It has a way of bringing people together, dead or alive. Everyone knows when a good song comes on everybody’s shaking ass (unless they don’t have one).

I don’t wanna be that person—but I guess I must🤭

After seeing all the white people who entered that theatre, either to thirst over Michael B Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, or hoping to indulge in a gothic horror movie, might’ve unknowingly stepped into a trap.

For most black people, the movie was thought-provoking, uplifting, spiritually evoking, hauntingly beautiful, and spectacular. Fuck, I can’t even begin to describe as a writer, musician and singer hearing Miles Canton sing “I lied to you” I swear the angels descended into that damn theatre, had my toes curling the second that delicious music filtered through my ears. EARGASM.

I have to say the surplus of black, queer dark skin actors, artists, and musicians gaining traction and spotlight this year heals my inner child in ways I never thought possible.

Short to say “Sinners” was a hit.

Probably one of the best things to come out of 2025. I can’t even put it into words, just how amazing it was, but seeing how many people obsessed over the movie weeks after its release, it gave me a bit more hope for the future of black cinema.

Safe to say I will commemorate the movie as one of my all-time favorites.

Now you’re probably wondering what “Sinners” has to do with today’s topic? Well, lemme put it plain and simple;

I recently got to thinking of how the narrative of “Sinners” unfolds into the beautiful masterpiece it is, how Sammie inadvertently summons the ancestral spirits and unknowingly attracts the story’s main antagonist: The vampires.

The movie itself was giving very much:

“When your ancestors send you a mixtape from the future” or “Get Out": "Except the white people are locked out” LOWKEY, I kept thinkin of that one scene when Smoke asked Remmick if him and his crew were KKK members and Remmick stuttered as if that was the most ridiculous thing to hear, “S-sir, We believe in equality”—meanwhile he’s a white man in 1930s missisipi with white supremacist vampires beside him.

It never fails to impress me how white people will choke when you assume they're racist, as if racism hasn’t been embedded in their DNA like potato salad, pumpkin spice, and unseasoned chicken…like ash clinging to their lungs after a thousand burned crosses.

Just a bunch of racist white "Jehovah's Witnesses"—tryna spread the gift of “immortality” except you still don’t have rights and it’s a random white man tryna make u his mind-slave.

I almost sided with the vampires until I remembered that’s basically how white people colonized us in the first place 😭.

“We’re all united” proceeds to steal land, eat our children, force feed us their religion, and steal our culture (and gods and whitewash them).

You can’t tell me Sinner's wasn’t a black revolutionary movie. For once, a full black cast, fantasy horror movie with a dark-skin goddess priestess (we love you Wunmi Mosaku) and one where we aren’t murdered immediately or treated like bottom feeders.

Any white person sitting through that movie was fooled into a false sense of security, and Ryan Coogler, genius that he is, hit them with the classical “This is actually about the black revolution and Pan-Africanism. But let's just ignore that and focus on the gore and vampires.”

One way or another, we’re changing the narrative, one fantasy/horror movie at a time. Black people do look Great in fantasy movies… no matter how many times y’all try to erase, colonize, dehumanize, sexualize, or put us in the back of the bus.

For today's topic, I wanna focus on black fantasy cinema.

Interview with the Vampire: The TV series with our beautiful black king Jacob Anderson and our gorgeous queens, Delainey Hues and Bailey Bass, deludes the notion that black people aren’t made for fantasy, and as a fantasy author, I OBJECT. With the transgenerational trauma conjured by systemic racism it’s important to note that just because most fantasy we see is centered around white privilege, stolen culture, and European themes doesn’t negate to the fact that the only reason why people believe we don’t belong in fantasy cinema is because we would devour the roles, completely.

Y’all aren’t ready for a full black fantasy cast, and it shows, and y’all are so used to the same white-cishet-wet-dream fantasy books masquerading as “Prime literature,” but the female protagonist is just an alter ego persona of the white author fantasizing colonialism, in a world where they can sexualize BIPOC.

These are the themes and tropes y’all claim are beautiful and juicy literature, but in reality, they’re highly insensitive and discriminatory. Y’all aren’t reading/watching dark fantasy-romance, y’all are reading/watching radicalized, highly transgressive white fascism.

“Damsel in distress,” but…

Everyone’s sole purpose in the book is to save the white maiden

“The chosen one” and “Lost queen” trope, but it's just white women with savior complexes.

Weaponized white female fragility...

The white heroine tames the monster.

Not like other girls (but she’s just but she’s just deeply internalized misogyny with a side of unresolved father issues and shittone of racist undertones)

Her emotions and trauma are prioritized above all else.

She is a symbol of purity, redemption, and desire.

Men of color (or coded as such) are valuable when loyal to whiteness. Their wildness is only acceptable when tamed by white femininity.

Meanwhile, BIPOC struggles are sidelined, tokenized, or used to prompt “White heroine growth.”

Black characters are CONSTANTLY fetishized.

Black women are constantly portrayed as evil when they are strong.

Even queer characters get fetishized/killed off or villainized.

The author always tries to elude their ethnicity using code words like “copper-skinned” and “sun-kissed.” Like, can u just say black or brown? Because we both know that the love interest is just a “beautiful-chocolate-man” or a dark-skin POC or mixed-race.

Some of the most popular dark-romance-fantasy books are made by white women, and constantly fetishize black people and POC. They dehumanize black people, over-sexualize bisexual men, and villainize black women or AFAB POC. I won’t be naming names, but y’all know who you are…

I know how many of y’all will die-hard for a sexy, racially ambiguous man of color, especially with the whole “beast tamed by beauty trope, especially books where the MC is constantly the victim. Like girl… didn’t you just murder that white man’s bestie and instead of HIM murdering you rightfully so, he decided to wife you…?? UH...Ok😐

Your favorite tropes from childhood movies kinda suck

Frozen (2013-2019)

Elsa, oh, how I loved Frozen once in a blue moon, until I realized that she’s celebrated for her dangerous magic (even after freezing an entire kingdom)

“Let it go,” but her powers are treated as “misunderstood” and go unpunished.

Do y’all TRULY believe if Elsa were dark skin, black, and openly gay, she’d be celebrated in the same regard?

AND you think that if she were just black, powerful, wild, and free, she’d be getting the same appreciation and love? Really??

The Princess and the Frog (2009)

Everybody loves Princess Tiana, but she had to work hard for everything she wanted, no prince in shining armor for our black queen, no... that mfk was a BUM I’m sorry. AND SHE SPENT THE MAJORITY OF THE MOVIE AS A FROG! Like, ok just say you hate black women and end it there (don’t get me wrong, I loved the movie, but it was poorly made to an extent.) For once I’d love a fantasy animated movie with a black female lead or black queer lead that isn’t dehumanized or villanized and gets the fairytale she DESERVES.

The original storyline, “The Frog Princess” aka“Maddy the Maid” in the Jim Crow era?? Yea, disney knew wtf they were doing, incredibly fucking racist that was.

Original Prince Naveen was HEAVILY whitewashed. Instead, they gave us a racially ambiguous man from Maldonia(made-up world) instead of a black prince… Disney, why do you hate black people so much?? I’ve yet to see a movie with a black prince and princess.

Dr. Facilier was a voodoo stereotype... always demonizing African religions, the stale-old colonial tale.

You want more evidence of how deeply embedded systemic racism is? Need more evidence that your favorite Disney characters are dehumanized or colonialists?

Ok, here you go...

Pochantas

The original storyline is about a CHILD, yet Disney

decided to make it into a romance story with a white-savior colonizer.

Real genocide replaced by Romanticized colonialism. GREAT

Stop fetishizing Indigenous people, it’s gross. You’re gross.

Thumbelina (1994)

Tiny white girl treated like a literal goddess by toads, bugs, and “foreign” creatures.

Other black or POC characters are coded as wild animals and stereotyped.

Avatar by James Cameron

Used to be my favorite movie, but then I grew up and got educated. Did you know the actual Na’vi are based on real tribal indigenous people?

So this white man just made a movie about colonialism and slavery and depicted BIPOC as aliens, and y’all just...ran with it??

Take a hard look at the way the Na’vi are depicted…. think of their accents, their connection to nature, spirituality, colonialism, their reverence for ancestors, their "tribal" jewelry, their braided hair, their unique language that sounds vaguely African or Indigenous, and tell me that it isn’t about indigenous BIPOC or colonization?

This might be a reach, but How to Train Your Dragon?

Before the live-action even came out, so many people were extremely discriminatory against Nico Parker playing Astrid (A FICTIONAL CHARACTER) like there are hardly ANY movies with black female leads from popular live-action movies, shows, or books.

People were just mad that they didn’t have a full white cast for the live action (even though Nico looks like Astrid, it's uncanny)

"This is a made-up world," but no BIPOC? So y’all can have dragons and mythical creatures, but no black people? Are we that nonexistent?

The dragons, IMO, are misunderstood and can be depicted as black coded BIPOC Think about the fact that dragons are intelligent, superior beings… they were being hunted down like “wild beasts” by a bunch of pre-colonial colonizers. These Vikings wanted to OWN these beautiful beasts (Sound familiar), characterized them as dangerous and savage, but the dragons just had their own culture, language, laws, and were treated like "Savages"

Hiccup tames Toothless, a “savage” “endangered” dragon, basically an allegory for colonialism ifyky.

Hiccup is the white boy genius who outsmarts adults and tames creatures others fear.

Traditional toxic white masculinity depiction, Hiccup’s “better” version of white manhood is emotional, clever, and uses empathy to lead, still supremacy, just rebranded.

Historically, REAL Vikings DID interact with black and indigenous people; North African traders, Arab Cartographers, and Black and brown sailors… u wanna tell me that’s not historical erasure and drenched in white supremacy?

I sat through all those movies believing that I didn't belong in fantasy movies.

That all those depictions, coded BIPOC, were just made-up characters. But fantasy, as proven, is heavily influenced by reality.

No matter what you believe, you can't assume that the media doesn’t love to hate BIPOC, who were either incredibly sexualized, murdered, or silenced. It’s cruel, dehumanizing, and ridiculous considering so much of this world has been influenced by black people.

A revolution is upon us, and it starts with the media. It starts with people recognizing BIPOC as more than just props, beasts, or exotic creatures. We are here, we’ve been here for centuries. WAKE THE FUCK UP.

Remember when I mentioned Griots, why do y’all think black horror movies and black-centered movies ALWAYS EAT? Ryan Coogler, Ava DuVernay, Jordan Peele— natural griots, reclaiming black power in the cinematic universe.

The time for the revolution is now, but are you ready for the Smoke?

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.