Lucky comes home…

This is our valedictory. The episode in which the Emorys get to fight back. Henry and the girls survive the ending of episode 8 but the cost of that victory is horrendous and despite at all they are still not free. They remain trapped by the house, trapped by the evil which seeks to destroy their souls because it can.

It is Lucky, returning home in a most excellent sequence, who brings the reckoning. She has on her side the power of righteous vengeance and she uses it to good effect. These events have refined her in a way not looked for, nor desired, but nonetheless she emerges strong and defiant. Unwilling to be defined by those who have harmed her and those who would seek her destruction. Lucky arrives as a mother with family to save and enemies to confront. We are once again reminded of the role Black American mothers have played in their communities and it is a role we should not overlook.

And when the confrontation comes each family member is asked important questions about what it is to suffer. With Amiri Baraka’s ‘Who will survive America’ playing in the background our family are asked if they are to blame for their own suffering. They are challenged to relive the trauma which brought them to Compton as if it is their fault, as if they could have changed the world and saved themselves from the evil visited upon them. They are asked if they are really anything except what their suffering has made them.

They’re asked if are they less than human? And they’re asked if they are forced to become the very thing which destroys them, or worse still are they forced into becoming the victim? These questions feel deeply contemporary.

But the Emorys have found themselves. And as they say, ‘we got this’ I rejoice in their strength.

They have found the strength to determine their own fates and they see the pressures bearing down on them for what they are – not blind misfortune but actual malice. They will not back away from being the people they want to be.

The question we are asked remains – is this Black suffering as entertainment?

My problem here is for many people of colour, particularly in the United States where this story takes place, the threats and horrors in this show remain live. If one can walk down the street and be killed because of the colour of one’s skin, by law enforcement no less, how does this show create a sense of horror beyond what we might readily experience after we turn off the television and leave the house?

I do not know. This show has felt timely and compelling even while being skin crawlingly difficult to watch at times. The sense of dread has been there from the opening shots through to the end – even in victory.

Can you make horror about a multicultural United States where racial politics is not present? And who is it really horror for given my concerns above?

The cast here is remarkable, delivering performances which I hope are recognised well beyond the genre. The music, the composition, the structure of the show are all high water marks.

Is this horror? Yes.

Will it stay with me? Yes.

But where does horror go from here? How does one avoid exploitation without it becoming a Sunday school lesson in the bad things White folks did?

I look forward to season 2.

Rating? 9 out of 10.

Stewart Hotston