The Candyman is a Ghost of America’s Dark Past

Myths and urban legends are self-perpetuating. That self-perpetuation is what makes myths and urban legends powerful. If people believe in something then that makes it present in someone’s mind. in the 1992 horror film, Candyman, the title character is a myth who gains his power through people believing in him and ultimately fearing him. To feed the film’s racial subtext, Candyman is a symbol of how slavery and the racism in America it spawned is a ghost that keeps haunting Americans regardless of their race.

Candyman centers around Chicago grad student Helen Lyle (played by Virginia Madsen) who’s doing a thesis paper on urban legends and how black people, especially in ghetto areas use urban legends as excuses for their poverty and lives of crime. She enters Chicago’s infamous Cabrini Green projects and learns of the Candyman myth. She soon believes in the myth and that’s when her life takes a turn, and in typical horror/slasher film fashion, the body count starts rising.

Candyman is first and foremost a supernatural ghost story that is rooted in reality. Bernard Rose adapted Clive Barker’s short story, “The Forbidden” and links the supernatural to modern race relations in America. Race is something that people try to ignore or deny, and Candyman acts as a symbol to remind people that race is a very real thing. The film subtly implies that Candyman made the black people of the ghetto commit crimes. His wrath mirrored the wrath of black people, and the cycle continues.

The racial element of the film concerns the immortal racism of America, and how the macabre past of slavery haunts Americans. The Candyman acts as a vessel of anger because of his gruesome death at the hands of racists during the later part of the nineteenth century. He is a symbol of the anger that black people in ghettos like Chicago’s Cabrini Green projects featured in the film. In a way, the film suggests that the black people of Cabrini Green keep the myth of Candyman going because he’s a link to the past that. Some people try to forget the horrors of slavery and act like it doesn’t exist or just doesn’t matter. The fact that the urban legend of the Candyman ends up being real is meant to prove to nonbelievers that the horrors of slavery and racism are real. It proves that the struggles of being a black person in America are real and that black people are not just using their race as an excuse for being poor or committing crimes.
When Helen first arrives in the Cabrini Green projects with her colleague Bernadette, she interviews a black single mother living in her apartment.

Bernadette is a light-skinned black woman, while the single mother is of a darker skin tone. Bernadette can barely look the woman in the eye. Bernadette’s been around upper-crust and highly-educated people who are mostly white that she’s kept herself at a distance from the ghetto. When she’s face-to-face with the ghetto, it scares her. From the moment Helen and Bernadette arrive in Cabrini Green, Bernadette acts nervous and scared as if the boogeyman is going to pop out at any moment. In reality, she fears that a gun-toting thug will attack her, rape her and probably kill her. Even if when someone visited the ghetto and they didn’t see any violence or anything particularly menacing, they’d still hold onto a stigma of the ghetto. That stigma represents the violence and fear associated with black people. The stigma concerns beliefs about the way black people look physically to stereotypes of black people being violent and oversexed, which makes the fact that Candyman is a black man interesting.

The Candyman (played by Tony Todd) was the son of a slave who was educated the best schools because he had a talent for painting. He was killed because of his relationship with a white woman and the fact that she was pregnant with his child. Tony Todd plays Candyman as a man of breeding with his carefully enunciated words and deceptively authoritative voice that hums like bees. For a character who’s meant to be scary, Candyman is nonthreatening, save for the bloody hook that replaced his severed hand. The inclusion of Candyman’s back-story shows that Candyman is not even really a villain, but a victim.

Candyman uses his voice to hypnotize people. His voice is an instrument that haunts with its deep, melodic tone that is just as romantic as the interaction between Candyman and Helen. The reason Helen tears up pretty much every time she sees Candyman is because her belief in him is such a real thing; she believes in him with her soul.

Candyman is a ghost and as a ghost, he wanders from decade to decade, era to era. In Lafcadio Hearn’s prose-poem, “A Ghost,” he sums up the concept of a ghost well. “I refer to the civilized nomad, whose wanderings are not prompted by hope or gain, nor determined by pleasure, but simply compelled by certain necessities of his being,--the man whose inner secret nature is totally at variance with the stable conditions of a society to which he belongs only by accident.”

The piano music that plays while Candyman asks Helen to become immortal, a feeling of haunting is summoned, as well as mystery. This scene is made up of intense seduction and eroticism. The piano music tinkles as if it’s concerning a taboo subject, which the scene is. The interracial chemistry between Candyman and Helen is apparent. Although interracial romance is viewed as still somewhat taboo, the combination of Candyman and Helen is perfect. Candyman’s hook-for-a-hand acts as a direct phallic object and contributes to the film’s eroticism. The hook is direct because Candyman strokes Helen’s thigh with the hook and proceeds to grope her groin, implying penetration.

The murals on walls, including the mural of Candyman on a building’s wall suggests the importance of storytelling and oral tradition, which is very common in black culture. The past haunts minorities living in America more than non-minorities.

Helen’s realization that the Candyman is real is meant to be the equivalent of a white person accepting and realizing the difficult plight of being a black person living in America. Candyman is an allegory that intends to communicate that racism is still alive and kicking in America, despite the America having its first black president. As sad as it sounds, racism in America is immortal, just like Candyman.