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Black Guy Dies First launched as Black Dude Dies First Discussion: From YKTTW
Wiki: Just hate that. I got a whole mess of examples built up over years of watching and complainin bout the trope, but when the time comes to use em. Eh.
Seth: Samuel L Jackson is a name to run away from really fast. I literally laughed out loud.
Daibhid C: Many years ago I saw, on some late-night show or other, a spoof movie trailer which combined this trope with meta-Genre Savvy:
Silent Hunter: This is Black Dude Dies First. This implies guy with speaking part- or extra. In some cases, others die first... Daibhid C: Does anyone have a copy of the novelization of the Deep Space Nine episode "Far Beyond The Stars" (the first "Benny Russell" episode)? ISTR an afterward in which (amongst other things) Steve Barnes discusses the Black Dude Dies First phenomenon, mentioning an occasion when he sucessfully predicted the death of the black guy, and his (white) girlfriend told him he was being ridiculously cynical, but I can't recall what the movie they were watching was. Filby: Does Roy in Order Of The Stick even count? Yeah, he's technically dead... but he's still in the story. I'm taking it out. Austin: Is the trope title really accurate? I've watched a fair share of horror movies and I can't recall this trope popping up this much. It's even listed as a Unicorn trope, a trope that actually never existed in the first place, but for whatever reason people think it did. Given how antsy people get about racism, I can imagine that a handful of horror movies had the black character die first, causing people to scream racism. A friend of mine pointed out that's it not so much Black Dude Dies First, but Black Dude is guarenteed to die. Trouser Wearing Barbarian: Not to mention that at least half of the "examples" listed here are either parodies, aversions, or subversions. Your friend is pretty on the money here. Aquillion: I think the problem is mainly that the lead left out the primary (and most logical) reason for this trope, which has nothing to do with direct racism. Basically, for a variety of reasons there historically haven't been very many big-name black actors, and until recently, outside of blaxploitation films it was extremely rare to have a black in a leading role unless the film was specifically focused on race. The fact that blacks were delegated to minor roles led naturally to them getting killed off earlier, sometimes (while not always) as early as 'first'. The Token Minority trope plays a role here, too — if a black character is only added for racial balance and to try and draw in black viewers, they probably don't play a big role in the script, so it's logical for the writers to kill them off first. This may also explain why this trope is dying out (to the point where some people might not think it's real) — with more and more big-name black actors, and studios more likely to cast blacks in major roles, the forces that were really driving it have weakened. Trouser Wearing Barbarian: That's a pretty solid explanation. Anonymous: Does the spanish guy die in vantage point? This troper thought it seemed like he was just badly beaten. And while there is a black guy in the film, he gets one of the happier endings. I'm not sure if this should stay in. Naram-Sin: Every Spanish character worth of note (Eduardo Noriega, Edgar Ramirez, Ayelet Zurer, Said Taghmaoui) with the exception of the little girl dies. By the way, while the Black tourist is given a happy ending the Black female reporter is indeed the first person to die on screen and the only American character to do so, making this movie a perfect example of the trope. |
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