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Ep. 8: Toni Morrison's 'Beloved' and the Bloodline of 'Sinners'
18 Plays11 months ago
In this episode, Nate and Chris dive into Toni Morrison's 'Beloved,' unpacking its harrowing portrayal of slavery, generational trauma, and ghostly reckoning. They explore Morrison's literary genius, the controversial 1998 film adaptation starring Oprah Winfrey, and draw compelling connections to 'Sinners' — Ryan Coogler's new box-office phenomenon about Black vampires and blues music. With themes of memory, identity, and systemic horror at the core, this discussion considers 'Beloved' not just as a novel or film, but as a foundational text for the entire epic lineage of Black horror.
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Hosts: Nate Day, Chris Anderson
Producer: Nate Day
"Adaptation Theme"
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- Performed by: Chris Anderson, Jem Zornow, Nate Day
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Introducing 'Adaptations' and 'Beloved'
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today.
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I'm
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Welcome to Adaptations, the book to movie podcast.
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I'm Nate.
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And I'm Chris.
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And today we are talking about Toni Morrison's Beloved, a very important and heavy, heavy text.
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But before we dive into the conversation, Chris, how are you?
00:01:06
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Yeah, good, good, good.
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How are you today, Nate?
00:01:08
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I'm doing pretty well, thanks.
Exploring 'Silences' and Historical Contexts
00:01:10
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What have you been reading lately?
00:01:12
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Just finished this very interesting one.
00:01:15
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It's called Silences.
00:01:17
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And the subtitle is a novel of the 1918 Finnish Civil War.
00:01:25
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Yeah, that sounds right up your alley.
00:01:27
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Did you know Finland had a civil war?
00:01:29
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No, of course I did not know.
00:01:31
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I had never heard of it.
00:01:32
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Yeah.
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Found it in a cute little bookstore last March when me and my buddies went up to Thunder Bay to watch some hockey.
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And it sounded interesting.
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And it was.
00:01:44
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Good.
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What did they fight over?
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It was right after the Bolshevik Revolution.
00:01:52
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And I also did not know this.
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Karl Marx was briefly exiled to Finland.
00:02:00
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Oh, I didn't know that either.
00:02:02
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Right.
00:02:02
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Same, same.
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So he was there, kind of riled up some communist sentiments, went back, successfully revolted and killed the famous last czar, Nicholas II.
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And essentially that spurred enough workers and people who leaned his direction in Finland to try to take over as well.
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Finland has famously been...
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Well, none of this is history we need to get into.
00:02:32
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Yeah.
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Anyway, I had no idea that they had a civil war.
00:02:38
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Yeah.
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And it's actually a writing style that I am typically not fond of, but this one I enjoyed tremendously.
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It's a, as I said, the subtitle, a novel of the Finnish Civil War.
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So a tremendous amount of historically accurate details, but ultimately the entire story is fiction.
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Oh, okay.
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And you're not a huge fan of that style?
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Yeah, usually not my thing, because I want it to be either a novel novel and I'm just having fun, or history, facts, and all facts.
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So this was a curious kind of anomaly for me.
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Really enjoyed the style in this case.
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That's great.
00:03:18
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Who wrote it?
Film Discussion: 'Sinners' and Blues Themes
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A gentleman.
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It was a local author, too.
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A gentleman named Roy, I'm going to say Blomstrom, and I could be wrong.
00:03:27
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Well, that sounds Scandinavian.
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Well, there was a huge, we went to a really cool Finnish sauna there called Kongas.
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And I didn't know this.
00:03:36
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Clearly, I mean, this has to, I didn't do any looking into him because we're not discussing this book for the podcast.
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But I have to imagine the second half of the book is all these Finns who came to Canada after this civil war.
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And I'm very curious if this is a certainly community-based, perhaps even personal family-based story.
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Interesting.
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You know, when you go in and they've got like the local author section, I always like to buy one of those.
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I think it's fun, you know.
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Totally.
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Yeah.
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What's been going on in the world of TV cinema movies?
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It's been an exciting couple of weeks for movies.
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The movie Sinners came out.
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By the time this episode comes out, it will be out for nearly two weeks.
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Breaking all kinds of records.
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It's one of the best reviewed movies of the year.
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It had one of the lowest reviews.
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second weekend drops at the box office for a major film in history.
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It's making buku bucks.
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And it's a really, really incredible movie.
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And actually, I'm really excited that this episode fell when it did because it's actually very closely tied, I think, in a lot of ways to Beloved.
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So I'm really excited to talk more about that on the back half of the episode.
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Interesting.
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I'm very curious to hear about that.
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And have you seen it already, Sinners?
00:04:58
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Yes, and it's fantastic.
00:05:00
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It's like a 9 or 10 out of 10 movie.
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It's really, really good.
00:05:05
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And you would love it, Chris.
00:05:06
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A lot of it is about blues music.
00:05:09
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There's several people that play blues musicians and folk musicians in the movie.
00:05:15
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So definitely one that you need to check out.
00:05:17
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:05:18
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I've had you are not the first person to tell me that I would enjoy it.
00:05:22
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I've actually this is probably a good example.
00:05:23
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I've always wondered this for you in particular.
00:05:27
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Is this the sort of movie like no matter what the critical response
Content Warning and Introducing 'Beloved'
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was?
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Did you know I'm going to go see this myself?
00:05:35
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Yes, I did.
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Because it's written and directed by Ryan Coogler, who I like a lot.
00:05:39
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He did the Black Panther movies.
00:05:41
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Fruitvale Station, the first Creed movie.
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He's a super talented filmmaker.
00:05:46
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It would have taken a really, really low Rotten Tomatoes score to get me to skip this movie.
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And for what it's worth, it's a movie about vampires.
00:05:53
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And that's not really something that's all that interesting to me.
00:05:56
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But I was my butt was going to be in that seat even still.
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See, that's why I was curious.
00:06:01
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I knew nothing about this movie until someone recommending it yesterday.
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And they said it's about vampires.
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And I was like, I am almost certain Nate said he's going to see this.
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And that is not a genre that I think, oh, boy, Nate's going to love it.
00:06:17
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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It's something, I mean, like, I don't dislike vampires necessarily, but there isn't the, you know, some people are really, really drawn to it.
00:06:24
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And I just don't feel that strongly about it.
00:06:26
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But yeah, this movie was phenomenal.
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And the vampirism is sort of used as a historical symbol.
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It's largely about black vampires.
00:06:35
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So when you consider the history of blues music and what that means, it's really interesting to tell the story through it.
00:06:42
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vampires very cool and this was this was not based on a book right this is an original no this is completely original yeah oh cool i'm gonna have to see it stuff yeah i i definitely think you would like it with that being said let's talk a little bit about tony morrison and beloved
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A quick note before we dive in.
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Beloved is a text about the horrors and deep systemic and emotional impacts of the enslavement and abuse of black people in America.
00:07:09
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The book and movie both contain graphic and violent sequences that some people may find triggering and very upsetting.
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Chris and I recap a number of these scenes and events that feature depictions of gross racism and interpersonal violence.
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Please be advised as you listen and do whatever you need to protect yourself and your mental health.
00:07:25
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Thank you.
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Chris, you want to kick us off?
Toni Morrison's Impact on Literature
00:07:28
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Yes, let's.
00:07:30
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Okay, we, I think we very much were both thinking this when we first made the decision.
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But shocker, it has borne out fully.
00:07:38
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This was definitely the hardest one that we have done.
00:07:42
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Yeah, yeah.
00:07:43
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I've, this book, I don't know, I think I've told you this, I tried to read this book once, maybe a year or two ago, and I couldn't finish it.
00:07:50
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I couldn't get through it.
00:07:51
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I had to put it down.
00:07:53
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This was not the first time I attempted to start reading this book.
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It's a toughie.
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This was the first time I finished reading it.
00:08:00
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Wow.
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Yeah.
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I mean, deliberately so, right?
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So let's talk about her.
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So born Chloe Ardelia Wolford.
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In 1931 in Lorain, Ohio, obviously known very famously now as Toni Morrison.
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This was interesting.
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This comes up almost every single time, so I was curious how much this would be the case in terms of likeness of the story to the author's life.
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Her father...
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was born and lived in the South and came to Ohio after seeing two black businessmen who lived on his street lynched in town.
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And she famously described him as hating white people so much he would not let them in the house.
00:08:43
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Wow.
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Did not find anything of any character specifically modeled after family or specific events in her own life, but certainly a part of her experience of her childhood growing up.
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She was the first member of her family to attend college.
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She went to Howard in D.C.
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for her undergraduate and then Cornell for her master's before returning to Howard to teach a number of colleges in the New York area.
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And around the U.S. She kind of worked in that line for some time before beginning to publish her own fiction novels, which were all along these
Reception and Themes of 'Beloved'
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lines.
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Blue Eyes about an African-American woman who wishes she had blue eyes.
00:09:28
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Tar Baby.
00:09:30
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I haven't read that one yet, but it sounded like very similar themes of...
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The one character who is very much not comfortable in their own skin in a relationship with a man who is and kind of that dynamic.
00:09:43
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And then Song of Solomon, also critically acclaimed.
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Very famous.
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All sort of these, this discussion around the two, what are kind of considered the two main themes of this, certainly, but all of her writings, this discussion of the still felt and still being dealt with
00:10:04
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impacts in life of African Americans in this country today from slavery, as well as this kind of, I don't even want to say secondary, I would be so curious, you know, how she would describe it, but sort of what is accepted as this journey of self-discovery.
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How do individuals deal with those very real impacts?
00:10:25
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Right.
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How, you know, how does that, how is that borne out in their life and how do they...
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you know, the acceptance, the her father's own response, essentially, I just want nothing to do with white people.
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I want to have my job and have my family and just not be under attack, which is very reasonable.
00:10:43
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Yep.
00:10:45
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And all of her characters very much dealt with that theme in different ways.
00:10:50
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She continued working in publishing, putting out her first four major novels and a screenplay that she was commissioned to write about.
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Oh, gosh, the killing of.
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Emmett Till.
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Emmett Till.
00:11:05
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Yes.
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Yep.
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She was commissioned to write a screenplay about that.
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And then finally decided to stop all of this work to write full time.
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And that's when she put out Beloved.
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Not until 1987.
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So really, really did come out sometime later.
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Huge success right away.
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Stayed on the New York Times bestseller list over half a year.
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And caused some major backlash when she did not win the National Book Award.
00:11:35
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Many, many, I think it was like 48 or 50 black authors in her, you know, contemporaries of hers, wrote and published a letter basically just saying this is her fifth novel, the most important one yet, and she still has not won the National Book Award.
00:11:52
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What the heck is going on now?
00:11:53
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Famously including Maya Angelou.
00:11:56
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I mean, this list was massive and hard-hitting.
00:11:59
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And I did not see if there's a full connection between them or not, but two months after, she did not win the National Book Award.
00:12:06
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This letter is very publicly published and circulated.
00:12:11
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She wins a Pulitzer for Beloved.
00:12:13
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Wow.
00:12:15
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Yes, he does.
00:12:16
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Pretty cool.
00:12:16
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Pretty cool.
00:12:17
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Yeah.
00:12:17
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And then ultimately went on to even receive the Nobel Prize for Literature.
00:12:21
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I mean, I do not find it difficult to suggest this is probably the most important author we've discussed yet.
00:12:29
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Yeah, I would agree.
00:12:30
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Social connection, contribution to American literature, contribution to the discussion at large.
00:12:36
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Mm-hmm.
00:12:37
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It is.
00:12:38
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Although I said again, I didn't find any specific connections to her family, her own experience.
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It is based on the real life story of an African American who was in slavery and escaped.
00:12:49
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Margaret Garner was chased to the north by slave catchers and chose to kill her infant child rather than have them grow up in slavery.
00:13:00
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Return.
00:13:00
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Yeah.
00:13:00
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Yeah.
Analyzing 'Beloved's' Themes and Style
00:13:01
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Yes, exactly.
00:13:02
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Exactly.
00:13:02
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Live that life.
00:13:03
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And that's the, I mean, grossly oversimplifying here, that is the story of the novel.
00:13:08
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We haven't even gotten to that yet.
00:13:09
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A slave named Setha who escaped, is chased down and kills her infant daughter.
00:13:17
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And then the titular character is beloved.
00:13:21
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What we find out later, the ghost of her baby returned.
00:13:25
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Mm-hmm.
00:13:26
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Yeah, that's such an oversimplification.
00:13:28
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Incredibly in-depth and uniformly, all of the literature reviews, critiques, not criticisms necessarily, but discussion by others of her work, is the unique and powerful combination of this incredible prose.
00:13:48
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So intimate, somehow simultaneously accessible, and yet incredibly complex.
00:13:57
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Right.
00:13:57
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You know, I would often consider the mark of brilliant writing is to take, this is by anyone's standards, a...
00:14:06
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gargantuan topic to say, I'm going to write this novel and discuss the interpersonal and community ramifications of the horrific institution that was American slavery.
00:14:18
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Right.
00:14:19
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Yeah.
00:14:20
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Oh yeah.
00:14:20
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And rather than doing it in a simple, not dumbing down, but you know, clear, I always tell all of my students when they're writing, the more clear you can be, the better your writing is.
00:14:32
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Right.
00:14:33
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Right.
00:14:33
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Yep.
00:14:33
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And
00:14:34
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And I am certainly not going to say Toni Morrison is known for clear writing.
00:14:41
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It is brilliant.
00:14:43
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It is complex.
00:14:44
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You need to stop, go back to the beginning of that sentence again, read it again, sit down, think, read it again, nearly constantly for the entire book.
00:14:58
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That's exactly why I gave up on this book.
00:15:00
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I was actually listening to the audiobook and it is too heavy and I am skimming over this at 1.25 times speed and I'm not getting what I need to be getting.
00:15:10
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Yes, you absolutely cannot do that.
00:15:12
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You cannot turn your brain off for a page and get through a little bit of light dialogue, jump from one scene to the next.
00:15:20
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There is never a break.
00:15:23
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There were so many quotes I loved.
00:15:25
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I chose to just kind of have one as an example.
00:15:28
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Sethe says, me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody.
00:15:32
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We need some kind of tomorrow.
00:15:34
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You cannot just read that and continue.
00:15:37
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You need to stop and go, wait, what?
00:15:41
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And this is truly, truly the entire book.
00:15:43
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Constantly this is happening.
00:15:45
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One of the sentences that like etched into my brain, it was like,
00:15:50
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The drive that drove the driven.
00:15:53
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And I'm just sitting there and I was like, wait, what?
00:15:56
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The drive that drove... And then once you... Like, the writing is there.
00:16:01
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It is flawless.
00:16:02
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It's your brain that needs to catch up to make it make sense, right?
00:16:06
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The personification of things like the heaviness of this sorrow and guilt and shame of...
00:16:19
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Yeah, she described sorrow and loneliness as a shadow crouching in the corner watching you.
00:16:27
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It just makes exactly her point, which was how brutal and horrific a situation this was and still is.
00:16:34
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It's still being felt and lived with, but tells it in an intimate and beautiful, beautiful way.
00:16:43
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You just cannot look away, but you do need to work through it.
00:16:49
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The reception, I think, really speaks a lot for it.
00:16:51
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Very immediately placed on many schools' required reading lists.
00:16:56
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Wow, that's a lot for kids.
00:16:58
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Yes, mostly colleges.
00:17:00
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Mostly colleges.
00:17:02
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But then still, I found one case as recently as 2013, so just 12 years ago, still being argued and battled in courts to ban and remove from schools.
00:17:14
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Yeah.
00:17:15
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Which at this point for us, you know, 2025, it's almost its own marker of brilliance if you land your book on a banned books list, right?
00:17:23
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Yeah, no kidding.
00:17:24
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Because that means you were saying something real.
00:17:26
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And the overwhelming response to this somewhat consistent, continuing to pop up banning of her book is exactly the challenge she was approaching.
00:17:39
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It is people who like the status quo.
00:17:42
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and feel challenged, essentially, in white supremacy, feel challenged in, if we talk about this, and just how horrific it was, people will realize, maybe we need to be doing more to change it.
00:17:57
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And I think that she would agree.
00:17:59
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That's exactly the goal.
00:18:01
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Oh, yeah, totally.
00:18:02
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Yeah, incredible book, incredible, incredible book, outstandingly difficult.
00:18:08
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Very.
00:18:09
Speaker
Yeah, it's certainly not an easy topic to broach.
Challenges in Reading 'Beloved'
00:18:12
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And I think that the way that Toni Morrison worked that topic sort of into the DNA of this story is sort of, that's the brilliance of it all, right?
00:18:21
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This is a story that could exist in really no other form.
00:18:24
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There is no...
00:18:26
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lighter version of beloved or a version that's easier to read or a book you could read instead and get the same memo absolutely not yes um no you you hit the nail on the head you simultaneously know exactly what it is about and her goal as an author and yet for me personally i always felt some percentage in the dark
00:18:50
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It was so complex and almost distracting in a way how detailed and developed an idea would be and suddenly we move on to the next thing.
00:19:01
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There were no throwaway details.
00:19:04
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Why...
00:19:05
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grandma's name is baby Suggs instead of the name on her ticket when she was sold, which is what they suggested for trying to, you know, go out and make a life after slavery.
00:19:18
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Yeah.
00:19:19
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It's just every single detail is so, so, so.
00:19:22
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And it almost reached a point, not almost, it reached a point for me fairly quickly where
00:19:28
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where I was constantly stopping and like double and triple checking, is this a metaphor that I am missing?
00:19:37
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Because it is so rife with these, and I just the mental capacity to write at this level, I cannot understand.
00:19:46
Speaker
There will be what seemed to be just a slight detail, and it is not expounded upon for another 40 pages.
00:19:54
Speaker
And there's a lot of jumping around locations and timelines and characters.
00:20:00
Speaker
And I just found myself constantly, oh, why is the woman who found Setha's hair red?
00:20:06
Speaker
What is that symbolizing?
00:20:08
Speaker
Like, stuff that I absolutely would not question in any other way.
00:20:11
Speaker
But I kept having to go back and realizing when I was missing stuff that I started to look for it and frequently find it everywhere.
00:20:19
Speaker
It's just...
00:20:20
Speaker
It's crazy.
00:20:22
Speaker
Probably about two thirds of the way through, I felt like I was understanding there are no more new characters being introduced and I could move at a reasonable rate.
00:20:34
Speaker
It reminded me a lot, I felt this right away and it kept coming up, this magical realism.
00:20:40
Speaker
Clearly not fantasy.
00:20:41
Speaker
No one is assigning otherworldly magic to this, right?
00:20:45
Speaker
Right.
00:20:54
Speaker
in telling the story and just continuing one heavy hitting scene after another is such that you don't question.
00:21:04
Speaker
It's like the ultimate suspension of reality.
00:21:06
Speaker
At no point are you removed from the story because you go, that doesn't sound realistic.
00:21:11
Speaker
You just say, yes, and continue.
00:21:14
Speaker
Tell me more again as you read.
00:21:17
Speaker
These brutal, brutal tellings of, yeah, the scene, the scene where she murders her small child, where, you know, these men are escaping, they're all chained together, and they start drowning in these cages and have to escape together just on a realistic level.
00:21:35
Speaker
very, very heavy content and somehow being told in such a way that you cannot ignore it.
00:21:41
Speaker
You don't feel that this is being excused or glassed over.
00:21:48
Speaker
but you're still enraptured with, I don't know.
00:21:51
Speaker
I've never read anything like it.
00:21:53
Speaker
I can see why it was received so well.
00:21:56
Speaker
Yeah, that's the book.
00:21:58
Speaker
And it really, I've been wrestling for a week now about how to even discuss it.
Discussing the Movie Adaptation of 'Beloved'
00:22:03
Speaker
Because obviously, as we talked about when we were preparing for this, this is so far from the life that either of us have lived.
00:22:11
Speaker
You know, I feel not hesitant to critique, but I don't,
00:22:15
Speaker
It's so unfamiliar.
00:22:16
Speaker
I don't even know necessarily which parts going into it are most important.
00:22:21
Speaker
She makes it quite clear.
00:22:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:24
Speaker
You know, she gets you there.
00:22:26
Speaker
Yes, exactly.
00:22:27
Speaker
Exactly.
00:22:28
Speaker
What was your experience with the movie?
00:22:31
Speaker
Very similar.
00:22:32
Speaker
Very similar.
00:22:33
Speaker
The movie, it's kind of an interesting one.
00:22:35
Speaker
It was the first movie produced under Oprah's production company, which is Harpo Productions.
00:22:40
Speaker
Wait, so Oprah produced this?
00:22:43
Speaker
Oprah did produce the movie and starred in the movie.
00:22:45
Speaker
Oh my gosh.
00:22:46
Speaker
And it's actually pretty much her only leading role in a film ever, because we'll get to this a little bit later, but it didn't do very well at the box office.
00:22:54
Speaker
Interesting.
00:22:55
Speaker
And did she play Setha?
00:22:57
Speaker
She was Setha, yeah.
00:22:58
Speaker
Okay, okay.
00:22:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:59
Speaker
I do wish that this was a little bit better movie because it is such a titanic story and a titanic text that I think it really would have benefited from a better movie.
00:23:08
Speaker
But they did everything that they could have to set themselves up for success, which included the movie being directed by Jonathan Demme, who is the director of Silence of the Lambs.
00:23:18
Speaker
So tried and true horror director, right?
00:23:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:23
Speaker
Yeah, oddly fitting.
00:23:26
Speaker
I'm guessing that this one was mostly just some budgetary things that sort of make it feel a little bit schlocky.
00:23:32
Speaker
The horror elements, this is through and through a horror story.
00:23:35
Speaker
Yes.
00:23:36
Speaker
But some of those elements sort of don't come across very well on screen.
00:23:40
Speaker
Like they just kind of fell flat or they were done in an odd way?
00:23:45
Speaker
I would say they like it takes the movie opens I don't know if this is a sequence in the movie or or not or I'm sorry in the book before seth's sons run away the event that causes them to run away is that the family dog is being flung around the house by you know an unseen poltergeist and the dog at the end falls on the floor and is whimpering and one of its eyeballs is popped out of its head and
00:24:08
Speaker
I'm going to have to go back and put a disclaimer on this episode, I think.
00:24:12
Speaker
I think we knew that was coming.
00:24:14
Speaker
And yes, that's all.
00:24:15
Speaker
That's exactly what happened in the book.
00:24:17
Speaker
Down to each detail.
00:24:18
Speaker
Okay.
00:24:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:19
Speaker
And that's the ghost of Beloved before she comes as a physical ghost, which is not clear for a long, long time.
00:24:27
Speaker
I don't know if that was similar in the movie.
00:24:28
Speaker
Right.
00:24:28
Speaker
And I don't think in the movie it becomes super clear either because they also I don't think they represent Beloved's rage very clearly.
00:24:37
Speaker
Interesting.
'Beloved' in Black Horror and Cinema History
00:24:39
Speaker
But anyway, in this opening sequence, I was immediately taken out of the movie because like the dog, obviously it's fake.
00:24:45
Speaker
Yes.
00:24:45
Speaker
But it looked like the stuffed animals that I had growing up, you know.
00:24:48
Speaker
Oh.
00:24:50
Speaker
And there's a few times throughout.
00:24:51
Speaker
And like Oprah's a good actress.
00:24:53
Speaker
She's not a great actress.
00:24:54
Speaker
Maybe not the choice for Setha.
00:24:56
Speaker
But this was her movie, so she can do whatever she wants.
00:24:59
Speaker
So there's just a few things where it could have maybe been better.
00:25:02
Speaker
Is there any amount of that that's just a product of like how long ago this was made?
00:25:07
Speaker
You know, like the effects that just haven't aged well?
00:25:09
Speaker
I think it's a little bit of both.
00:25:11
Speaker
And OK, it wasn't particularly well received when it came out either.
00:25:15
Speaker
It was a big bomb at the box office.
00:25:17
Speaker
People were not super into it.
00:25:18
Speaker
And then add to that.
00:25:19
Speaker
what is this, 27 years, I guess.
00:25:22
Speaker
This movie came out in 1998, so it's a little bit of both.
00:25:26
Speaker
This movie was written mainly by Akusa Buja, a black woman.
00:25:31
Speaker
She was helped in some capacity by Richard LaGraveness and Adam Brooks.
00:25:37
Speaker
who are credited as co-writers, but she has said that they did little more than sort of proofreading and a little bit of script doctoring.
00:25:45
Speaker
So there's some controversy around who wrote this movie, which could be one of the reasons that some things don't really hit home either.
00:25:52
Speaker
If two white guys came in and kind of bulldozed some things.
00:25:55
Speaker
Uh-huh.
00:25:56
Speaker
I ain't saying, I'm just saying, you know?
00:25:58
Speaker
But this movie, like I said at the top of the episode, is a really prime movie to talk about this week because it's a great example of black horror, which is a subgenre of horror that focuses on black characters and almost always is created by black people.
00:26:12
Speaker
So in this case, Toni Morrison, Oprah Winfrey, Akusa Bhuja, and black horror also often but not always contains some political or social commentary as well, you know, mostly about racism.
00:26:23
Speaker
This is a sort of a fairly new genre in film.
00:26:27
Speaker
Well, not fairly new, but it's not as old as cinema itself because usually horror movies did not feature black characters, but if they did, they were mocked, like they were portrayed as just stereotypical figures.
00:26:41
Speaker
And these days we see black people in horror movies more often being the first people to die.
00:26:46
Speaker
And that's kind of a problematic joke that we see in horror movies.
00:26:51
Speaker
But black people became more prominent in the horror genre through other sub genres like creature features, which is kind of what you would call movies about monsters.
00:27:00
Speaker
Okay.
00:27:01
Speaker
And then also, there was a period of time where movies about hoodoo and voodoo and, you know, again, some pretty horrific stereotypes about witch doctors and things like that.
00:27:13
Speaker
Those kinds of movies became very popular for a short time.
00:27:16
Speaker
And often black people were cast in those roles.
00:27:19
Speaker
All of this sort of took a turn in 1968 when Dwayne Jones, a black man, was cast as the lead in Night of the Living Dead.
00:27:25
Speaker
And he was kind of the first black person to lead a horror movie as a true protagonist that's sort of heroic, and he's resourceful, and he's knowledgeable, and very active as a character.
00:27:36
Speaker
And again, this movie featured some political commentary, because at the end, he is killed by a white mob.
00:27:42
Speaker
And
00:27:43
Speaker
Like I said, that movie came out in 1968.
00:27:45
Speaker
What also happened in 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was killed.
00:27:49
Speaker
So it was a really huge turning point for really black representation in cinema, but especially this subgenre of black horror movies.
00:27:58
Speaker
which continued to grow throughout the 70s through blaxploitation horror movies.
00:28:02
Speaker
And then in 1992, again, we had another really big step forward in this genre, the movie Candyman.
00:28:08
Speaker
I'm sure you've heard of it, but probably not seen it.
00:28:10
Speaker
I've actually seen pieces.
00:28:13
Speaker
Really?
00:28:13
Speaker
He hides razors in pieces of candy, right?
00:28:17
Speaker
I don't know.
00:28:18
Speaker
I have not seen this movie yet.
00:28:19
Speaker
I've seen bits of it.
00:28:21
Speaker
But it featured a black villain, which is a first as well.
00:28:24
Speaker
And the themes of the movie were based around systemic racism, particularly housing inequity in Chicago specifically.
00:28:33
Speaker
So then that movie is so popular that it really spurs this explosion of black horror films to be made.
00:28:39
Speaker
Among them is Beloved.
00:28:41
Speaker
Like I said, they were really trying to set themselves up for success by hiring Jonathan Demmey.
00:28:46
Speaker
whether or not it panned out is sort of a moot point.
00:28:49
Speaker
Beloved's status as a proper horror movie has sort of been debated because it also falls sort of into the Southern Gothic genre.
00:28:57
Speaker
I would almost entirely say the latter for the story as a whole, not for the film, but...
00:29:03
Speaker
Right, exactly.
00:29:04
Speaker
And one of the reasons that people have this debate is because the horror in the movie is slavery, right?
Connecting 'Beloved' and 'Sinners'
00:29:13
Speaker
There's sort of supernatural elements, and you could call it a ghost story.
00:29:17
Speaker
But what we're really talking about is something that really happened to real people.
00:29:21
Speaker
Yes.
00:29:22
Speaker
So it's sort of this metaphysical horror story in a really unique way.
00:29:27
Speaker
So people have debated whether it's horror or not.
00:29:30
Speaker
But I think in the context of...
00:29:32
Speaker
Black people on screen interacting with supernatural entities and leading those stories.
00:29:37
Speaker
I think it very much fits in that vein.
00:29:41
Speaker
And then after the 90s, there was a pretty long break in black horror until Jordan Peele came around with Get Out and Us and Nope, which is sort of
00:29:50
Speaker
really reinvigorated that genre.
00:29:51
Speaker
It's even seeped into TV now.
00:29:54
Speaker
And that brings us to a couple weeks ago now when Sinners came out.
00:29:58
Speaker
And I think Beloved is actually a really great comp for Sinners because there is a little bit of a Southern Gothic angle in Sinners as well.
00:30:06
Speaker
The first, I don't know, 20 or 30 minutes of the movie, you forget that it's a vampire story.
00:30:10
Speaker
It's just a good story set in the Mississippi Delta.
00:30:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:13
Speaker
And then they throw vampires into it.
00:30:16
Speaker
And like I said, there's that sort of metaphysical, the horror elements of the movie are a representation for a real life horror.
00:30:22
Speaker
And something else that I just felt really grabbed me about Sinners and Beloved is the way that they center female characters.
00:30:29
Speaker
as well just makes the concepts that they're trying to put forward really accessible to audiences.
00:30:35
Speaker
And it's an extremely popular genre.
00:30:37
Speaker
Like I said, Sinner's only dropped 6% in its second weekend at the box office, which is one of the smallest box office drops for a major movie in all of history.
00:30:46
Speaker
It's very common for a movie of the Sinner's caliber to drop between 45 and 55% in its second weekend, just because most people that are
00:30:56
Speaker
going to see it see it in the first weekend yeah so it makes sense so it's a super popular genre and this movie and its success are a hotly discussed topic in hollywood right now people are waiting to see you know how it's going to change things what stories we're going to get because of this
00:31:13
Speaker
I think this movie couldn't exist without Beloved, which is a fact that I'm really excited to share because up until two weeks ago, I was like, man, Beloved is sort of a forgotten film.
00:31:23
Speaker
I don't know exactly what to say about it.
00:31:26
Speaker
And then Sinners fell right in my lap and it was just incredible to see that they share such a tight lineage.
00:31:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:34
Speaker
Oh, that's very cool.
Deep Dive into 'Beloved's' Narrative
00:31:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:35
Speaker
The entire horror aspect was lost on me until I was really trying to dig through and get through this book a second time.
00:31:44
Speaker
I thought it was a story about slavery.
00:31:49
Speaker
period, done, you know, in the way that you think of how it's retold and discussed in a school history class, you know what I mean?
00:31:56
Speaker
And this is just a totally different, I don't want to say approach, but for me, approach, for my intent.
00:32:02
Speaker
And I was reading too, that the book has sort of a subplot where there is a woman missing from a nearby town that Beloved sort of
00:32:10
Speaker
matches the description for so it's sort of even more grounded in that maybe we're experiencing like a ghost has come to life or maybe it's just the lady you know from this other town that's not in the movie so the horror stuff is a little bit more prevalent but i think if that storyline exists you know within the context of the larger story then i think that changes too that you
00:32:33
Speaker
you probably wouldn't catch on to the horror elements necessarily until reflecting.
00:32:37
Speaker
And you're like, oh, yeah, got it.
00:32:39
Speaker
I did not understand at all.
00:32:41
Speaker
And this lends to what we were talking about before, you know, trying to see is there more to each and every line and subplot than what I'm getting initially.
00:32:51
Speaker
No, I could not put together that this was the ghost of horror of her murdered infant.
00:32:58
Speaker
Until very, very late.
00:32:59
Speaker
That storyline is in the book and it's as creepy as can be.
00:33:04
Speaker
Oh yeah, there was this town, a couple towns over.
00:33:07
Speaker
This woman was being held by a man and his son who were both...
00:33:12
Speaker
sexually abusing her and then she escaped and you wonder if that's who this is.
00:33:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:16
Speaker
And there, and that's exactly it.
00:33:18
Speaker
There's enough other details.
00:33:20
Speaker
First of all, incredibly graphic descriptions going on around it.
00:33:24
Speaker
That's what I meant by there was almost never a point where I felt 100% certain I was understanding the
00:33:29
Speaker
What was happening?
00:33:30
Speaker
Right.
00:33:31
Speaker
Even the ghost in the house being what drove away the kids and then Paul D coming in and scaring it off.
00:33:37
Speaker
And then everybody's fine for a while.
00:33:40
Speaker
You're like, okay, was it really the ghost?
00:33:42
Speaker
Was it something about this obviously abysmal and frightening experience their family's gone through that caused the boys to run away?
00:33:51
Speaker
Did they ever exist?
00:33:52
Speaker
I'm just sitting there constantly wondering and wondering, which led to the mystique.
00:33:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:58
Speaker
I found that quote I was looking for earlier.
00:34:00
Speaker
Okay, great.
00:34:01
Speaker
This was something that came up before I was done reading.
00:34:03
Speaker
You and I were discussing Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid's Tale, because she has famously discussed, hey, a lot of people, you know, ask me how crazy my imagination is because I've come up with these horrific things.
00:34:19
Speaker
I haven't come up with any of them.
00:34:21
Speaker
They all happened in history.
00:34:23
Speaker
I put them together and that's
00:34:25
Speaker
In my opinion, exactly what's happening here in Beloved.
00:34:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:29
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:34:29
Speaker
These horrific, gruesome scenes, the scars on her back and what was done to her.
00:34:35
Speaker
No one made this up.
00:34:36
Speaker
This is just what actually happened to so many people.
00:34:39
Speaker
Right.
00:34:40
Speaker
And this is how she described.
00:34:41
Speaker
I mean, this is so good.
00:34:42
Speaker
I just want to tell you.
00:34:43
Speaker
And obviously, Margaret Atwood's.
00:34:45
Speaker
Way more famous than me, so don't take my word for it.
00:34:49
Speaker
So she describes Toni Morrison's prose as, it is by turns rich, graceful, eccentric, rough, lyrical, sinuous, colloquial, and very much to the point.
00:35:05
Speaker
And that's exactly right.
00:35:06
Speaker
And this idea, if you told me this writing is going to be rough and sinuous and also right to the point.
00:35:13
Speaker
What?
00:35:14
Speaker
Those sound like they should not.
00:35:17
Speaker
Those should be mutually exclusive.
00:35:18
Speaker
Right.
00:35:19
Speaker
Right.
00:35:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:20
Speaker
And she said, it above all recognized slavery as one of the most viciously anti-family institutions human beings have ever devised.
00:35:30
Speaker
Yeah, it's very apt.
00:35:32
Speaker
I think you can't talk about Beloved and its themes or its narrative in small terms.
00:35:38
Speaker
These are really big ideas that you have to spend a lot of time digesting and really, you know, kind of letting it wash over you.
00:35:46
Speaker
That's exactly it.
00:35:48
Speaker
And even though they are big themes that are heavy, we like to find fun facts about the books and movies to share.
00:35:55
Speaker
Did you find a fun fact to share with us, Chris, about Beloved?
00:35:59
Speaker
Yes, I did.
00:36:00
Speaker
I found two of them.
00:36:02
Speaker
The first one was just very curious to me.
00:36:05
Speaker
Again, as we heard at the very top of my description, my brief description of her life, she was born Chloe.
00:36:13
Speaker
And she chose to become Catholic at age 12.
00:36:18
Speaker
And Tony came from her patron saint that she chose.
00:36:24
Speaker
Anthony of Padua is who she chose her baptismal name after.
00:36:28
Speaker
And it's just, it's unique to me because I've never, obviously we've seen pen names before.
00:36:34
Speaker
all over in the authors we've discussed.
00:36:36
Speaker
And I've never heard of one being, yeah, this incredible author, Pulitzer Nobel Prize winner.
00:36:44
Speaker
We call her Tony because of Anthony of Padua.
00:36:46
Speaker
That's just...
00:36:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:48
Speaker
I literally laughed out loud when I read it.
00:36:50
Speaker
Yeah, it's so interesting.
00:36:52
Speaker
First of all, at the top of the episode, when you said that her name was Chloe, it came to my mind to ask you if you knew anything about her pen name, because often, like these days, especially pen names are chosen for commercial accessibility.
00:37:04
Speaker
And I just was like, I don't know that that was like her number one concern when she was writing.
00:37:09
Speaker
So I was curious about that.
00:37:11
Speaker
Also very interesting to me in the context of this story that she...
00:37:15
Speaker
became Catholic because I very much saw the figure of Paul D. in the story as sort of a representation in some ways of a godly figure.
00:37:25
Speaker
He shows up and he banishes a poltergeist in this... Interesting....home that is inhabited by a family that's sort of rudderless, right?
00:37:34
Speaker
Because they've lost a few people and...
00:37:37
Speaker
And because Hallie never came back.
00:37:40
Speaker
Right.
00:37:40
Speaker
And Seth is a little bit on the fritz.
00:37:42
Speaker
And so at least in that moment, well, and he's also kind of, he is also kind of the conscience throughout the movie too, at least where he's like, although he does get pretty manipulated.
00:37:53
Speaker
I was gonna say, yeah, maybe the guilty Catholic conscience once he finds out about the baby and just says, all right, I'm out.
00:37:59
Speaker
Yeah, that's a bit rough for a God figure.
00:38:02
Speaker
Yes, it is.
00:38:03
Speaker
But at least in that beginning portion of the book, I thought it was very interesting the way that he sort of shows up and banishes the evil spirit and sets the family on.
00:38:11
Speaker
Yep, I see what you mean.
00:38:12
Speaker
I see what you mean.
00:38:13
Speaker
A positive path.
00:38:15
Speaker
I was going to say more interesting.
00:38:16
Speaker
I think they're both interesting.
00:38:17
Speaker
So not a more interesting secondary fun fact here, but pretty crazy.
00:38:23
Speaker
She described Bill Clinton as our first black president.
00:38:29
Speaker
That's really what?
00:38:31
Speaker
Why?
00:38:32
Speaker
Why?
00:38:33
Speaker
After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness, single parent household, born poor, working class, saxophone playing McDonald's and junk food loving boy from Arkansas.
00:38:44
Speaker
She did eventually clarify that people were misunderstanding and taking it out of context and clarified.
00:38:51
Speaker
So this was in 2008, a little bit later on, that she was describing the way he was being treated.
Toni Morrison's Legacy and Insights
00:38:59
Speaker
So she said he was being treated like a black on the street, already guilty, already a perp.
00:39:06
Speaker
So she did clarify a little bit more.
00:39:08
Speaker
But yeah, that's I mean, that's a strong statement.
00:39:11
Speaker
Yes, it is.
00:39:14
Speaker
Very interesting.
00:39:15
Speaker
And to me, a very fun fact.
00:39:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:19
Speaker
All right.
00:39:19
Speaker
Tell us about the movie.
00:39:21
Speaker
Fun fact.
00:39:22
Speaker
The movie stars an actress named Tandaway Newton.
00:39:25
Speaker
That's the name of the woman that plays Beloved.
00:39:28
Speaker
And she's been around for a while.
00:39:30
Speaker
She only a few years ago started going by Tandaway.
00:39:32
Speaker
Previously, she, again, for commercial accessibility, had changed her name to Tandy, which is a much more common British name.
00:39:41
Speaker
Recently started going by Tandaway again, and I actually reported on that back in the day.
00:39:45
Speaker
Anyway, Tandaway, it translates to beloved.
00:39:48
Speaker
Whoa.
00:39:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:50
Speaker
Interesting.
00:39:51
Speaker
It's just super cool, and she's quite good in the movie, too, so really interesting that it's like a weird full circle.
00:39:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:59
Speaker
That's... I just got goosebumps.
00:40:02
Speaker
Really cool.
00:40:02
Speaker
Oh, that's cool.
00:40:03
Speaker
Man, you found the more fun fact this week.
00:40:06
Speaker
Well, maybe.
00:40:07
Speaker
I don't know.
00:40:07
Speaker
The Black Bill Clinton thing is pretty crazy.
00:40:10
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:40:11
Speaker
It is.
00:40:11
Speaker
It is.
00:40:11
Speaker
It is.
00:40:12
Speaker
Both are.
Conclusion and Next Episode Preview
00:40:14
Speaker
Wow.
00:40:14
Speaker
This was very cool.
00:40:15
Speaker
I'm really happy with this pick.
00:40:17
Speaker
What a book.
00:40:18
Speaker
So looking at just the movie, you said the 27-year-old movie, right, came out in 98?
00:40:22
Speaker
Yep, correct.
00:40:24
Speaker
Let's go me first.
00:40:25
Speaker
Just for me, would you recommend I see this movie?
00:40:29
Speaker
um having read the book you know you having read the book i think you're probably okay without like i said there's in some form that most people should consume right and like i said really let it wash over you and digest it so knowing that a lot of people would probably struggle with the book i think i would go ahead and recommend the movie to like a general audience
00:40:51
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:40:51
Speaker
That makes sense.
00:40:53
Speaker
How do you feel about the book?
00:40:54
Speaker
Would you recommend that I finish it?
00:40:56
Speaker
That I try again?
00:40:57
Speaker
Yeah, that's interesting.
00:40:59
Speaker
I think it's probably going to be the same answer.
00:41:03
Speaker
And this is kind of going against what I think I've previously said is the code that I follow.
00:41:08
Speaker
Both for you and the public, I think that struggle is
00:41:14
Speaker
makes it all the more worth getting through because you struggle and it is difficult for good reasons.
00:41:21
Speaker
Totally.
00:41:22
Speaker
And I am almost always not a, yes, this is required reading.
00:41:28
Speaker
Everybody has to read it sometime.
00:41:30
Speaker
Right.
00:41:30
Speaker
Right.
00:41:31
Speaker
Right.
00:41:31
Speaker
And this is.
00:41:32
Speaker
And actually what you said earlier was very insightful and exactly why.
00:41:35
Speaker
There is no other fictional or otherwise depiction of the institution of slavery in this country that I've experienced that really combines that visceral, intimate aspect with an accessibility.
00:41:53
Speaker
That is to say, because it's a fictional tale, because the writing is so good, you're going to struggle.
00:41:58
Speaker
Mm hmm.
00:42:00
Speaker
You're not going to have a good time in the sense that The Hobbit is just a good time to read.
00:42:06
Speaker
But in this case, I think that's a good thing and makes it more worthwhile.
00:42:09
Speaker
So, yes, I do think you should take that second crack at it.
00:42:13
Speaker
Okay.
00:42:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:14
Speaker
Great.
00:42:15
Speaker
And does the same go for general audiences as well, probably?
00:42:19
Speaker
Yes, exactly.
00:42:20
Speaker
I can see why so many colleges have it on required reading lists.
00:42:25
Speaker
I can see why so many ignorant high school parents don't want their kid to read it.
00:42:31
Speaker
The quote that I saw that was so funny about that was, and we have to wonder if the parents have read it entirely themselves.
00:42:39
Speaker
Yeah, for you, for everybody.
00:42:42
Speaker
I think it's a very good candidate for...
00:42:45
Speaker
Like had you and I read it together and had that time to digest and talk about it, I think that would really enrich the experience.
00:42:52
Speaker
Yeah, I think this is a classroom book club type of book, reading it on your own.
00:42:58
Speaker
There are definitely parts, depending on how much you're consuming at one time, that it gets pretty dark and you start to feel like you're kind of being bashed over the head with these heavy, heavy content areas.
00:43:09
Speaker
Sure.
00:43:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:10
Speaker
Sure.
00:43:11
Speaker
Well, what an interesting text.
00:43:12
Speaker
What a fantastic text.
00:43:14
Speaker
Book and movie.
00:43:15
Speaker
I'll definitely work on getting my hands on a physical copy because I am just not, you just can't audiobook this one, unfortunately.
00:43:23
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's a good call.
00:43:24
Speaker
Thank you so much for joining us for our conversation today about Toni Morrison's Beloved.
00:43:29
Speaker
We look forward to next week.
00:43:31
Speaker
We will be talking about Ian McEwan's Atonement.
00:43:34
Speaker
I keep, who is Obi-Wan?
00:43:40
Speaker
you and McGregor.
00:43:41
Speaker
They do sort of sound like opposites of each other.
00:43:43
Speaker
I keep mixing them up when I'm telling people that this is the book I'm reading.
00:43:46
Speaker
It's like 50-50, I get it correct, or I refer to Obi-Wan.
00:43:51
Speaker
Wow, that's incredible.
00:43:53
Speaker
Well, you'll have to tune in next week to see whether it devolves into a conversation about Star Wars.
00:43:58
Speaker
Thanks, everybody.
00:43:59
Speaker
Thanks, guys.
00:44:00
Speaker
Bye.
00:44:02
Speaker
That's the show for today.
00:44:03
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in.
00:44:04
Speaker
Let us know in the comments what you're reading, what you're watching, and what adaptations you'd like us to cover.
00:44:09
Speaker
Be sure to follow us on Instagram at adaptation underscore pod and on Twitter at adapt pod.
00:44:14
Speaker
See you next time.