Moonbat, 2nd Rate
How do we note films where All Black Characters die? Or maybe more generally All The Relatively Virile non-White Straight Men and/or Women die? Because there are films where the The Black Man may not be the first to go, but none of them make it to the end of the film. Last to die is better than first, but still dead is dead and the audience sees the supremacy and survival of an all White world going forward.
The trope would be averted if EVERYONE dies in the end, or the survivors are a relatively mixed set, including both straight men and women. Gay characters surviving is good, but by (film world) convention they won't be having children. Women surviving is good, but who is doing the impregnating (barring some obvious artificial insemination elements).
In the end, who you kill and who lives says who you want to survive and thrive in your make-believe world. All non-white males dead says a very specific thing.
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Who lives to see the end of the movie is not significant to the trope. Only who dies first. If the first person to die is a noted minority, then it is an example. If not, then it is not.
The trope would not be averted if everyone dies in the end.
I believe LGBT characters have their own trope.
You fell victim to one of the classic blunders!
The problem I see with this trope is that it can get confused with "First Black Dude Who Dies", ignoring any possible non-black deaths that may have occurred prior to the black character dying.
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I agree - while black dudes do frequently die, this trope is often mentioned on pages as being 'inverted' because some black dude dies but he doesn't die first, and sometimes not for ages. If he doesn't die first, he doesn't die first.
Should Walking Dead really be on here? This trope is Black Dude Dies First, but that example seems to be more "A lot of black characters die on this show". T-Dog, the first black guy to die, doesn't die until season 3. The first characters to die were Ed and Amy, and they were both white.
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yeah there are a lot of these that don't make any sense. Also TV shows that are murder mysters like Monk shouldn't be on here unless the first person to die in the first episode of the first season was black it shouldn't count.
It completely misses the point of the Trope
Are there any new or old reasons besides things like giving white people more screen time? For instance, I've noticed that some of the stereotypes frequently portrayed to thisday, by black celebrities even, bare similarities to traits in the 4 and 5 area of the Sorting Algorithm of Mortality. For instance, I've heard many black comedians talk about pragmatism and/or a survivalist, confrontational behavior, which would make it easy for a stereotypical black character to fall victim to Death by Pragmatism, Too Dumb to Live and several other tropes on the high end of the scale. If this is the case, while the stereotyping is still racist, the deaths themselves may not be.
Edited by 73.32.145.62
The problem is this trope is actually a myth. I wrote a paper on this while at film school and even if you look at the list of films listed there are very few where the black guy dies first. Even in movies before the 90s it rarely happened. The actual racism is that very few black actors got cast in horror films. I believe the article needs to be corrected.
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I wish I could find an article I read spacificaly pertaining to the Friday the 13th series. While no black characters have made it to the end of any of those movies, none died first. But also...almost every character dies in every friday the 13th movie.
As for saying that black actors don't get cast in horror movies. You are incorrect. I can think of several right off the top of my head... Ken Foree: Dawn of the Dead (lives), From Beyond, Halloween,Texas chainsaw massacre 3,Devil's Rejects
Tony Todd: Candyman 1-3, Night of the Living Dead, Final Destination, the Crow,
Duane Jones: Nighit of the living dead 1968.
There is a whole website dedicated to black actors in horror films.
http://www.blackhorrormovies.com/actorsb.htm
I never said black actors never get cast I said there were very few casts in horror films. If you look at Friday the 13th, Nightmare and Halloween there are only a handfull of black actors in the whole series. Now as we enter the 90s and the 2000's we see that black actors are more commonly cast but we also see that is when this "trope" becomes self aware anyway.
Your video only helps prove my point. Yes the black actors die in the film but very few in that video die first.
In usage on the wiki you'll notice it generally just means "Black Dude Dies". Period.
Edited by 75.17.250.246
Harley Quinn hyenaholic
All the subversions should probably be removed - if the black guy doesn't die first (or something like that) then the black guy doesn't die first.
Do these tropes fit the definition?
- It's traditionally held that the first person to die during The American Revolution was a man of African descent named Crispus Attucks, killed in the Boston Massacre.
- The first SWAT officer to be killed in the line of Duty was a Black man.
- The First man killed in John Browns raid on Harpers ferry was Black man who worked at the Armory.
These are all real life. Doesn't really pertain. Might make interesting Trivia entries, though.
Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty
Sophie Wilder
I'd like to whinge pitifully about the film I saw last night - Peaceful Warrior (yeah, they made a film of a New Age book). Anyway, it's about a team of gymnasts training for the Olympics. One of the gymnasts is black, and he has to drop out early on due to injury. The white main character, of course, overcomes a far worse injury to make the games. Nice positive message there, guys. So, nobody dies, but the trope is sort-of there.
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Well, according to The Other Wiki, the New Age book in question is part autobiographical. If it did not really happen, or if the gymnast in question received a Race Lift...
I don't see how this trope even carries into Horror movies. Within the big four — Ft13th, Halloween, No ES, TCM — any black character isn't the first to die. Even movies outside of the those — Night of the Demons, Return of the Living Dead, any movie in the of the Dead series [Night, Dawn, Day, etc.] — any black characters aren't the first to go. Sure, they might die, but, so do a lot of white males. I don't really care for the racial "undertones" — that can be found in nearly anything — but, there is no large citation as to where this trope comes from when it deals with Horror.
So it looks like Jezebel linked to this page on the 27th. How do the page hits look?
I question whether The Order of the Stick is an example. Yes, Roy dies, but he still remains in the comic's focus as a ghost and then later is revived after a few hijinks.
After perusing several of the "Black Guys Die First" it's interesting how often the black guy dies saving a white character (often a female). So, how about a companion for Magical Negro called "Sacrificial Negro?" Specifically a black character who dies saving another character when no other character even considered the alternative.
Virus is the biggest offender I can think of, namely because the character survives on his own through a series of Mac Gyver-esque traps, even successfully building an escape ejector seat out of a propane tank and scrap metal. He takes down the monster with a rocket launcher in a Crowning Moment of Awesome, gets buried alive by collapsing debris, and instructs his hapless white co-star to use his escape route and save the day.
There are so many subversions and inversions listed here that I'm wondering if there should be a new topic for them. "Black Dude Dies Last"?
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The problem is this trope is actually a myth. I wrote a paper on this while at film school and even if you look at the list of films listed there are very few where the black guy dies first. Even in movies before the 90s it rarely happened. The actual racism is that very few black actors got cast in horror films. I believe the article needs to be corrected.
Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: Needs Help
, started by DragonQuestZ on May 26th 2012 at 6:48:34 AM
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman