DPI Alum Nicole Fineman recently published her first written work in the New York Times, where she works as a staff editor for video.
In the essay, part of this week's Race/Related newsletter Nicole discusses her relationship to horror movies as a black woman.
"Growing up as a black kid in Chicago, my idea of scary was a quiet street in suburbia.
I felt this way because that is where the scariness usually begins in horror movies. Filmmakers often use a suburban landscape to exemplify “normal” American life — big houses, manicured lawns and seemingly calm streets, a milieu the audience is supposed to connect with before descending into the horror of the story. But these opening scenes are my earliest memories of feeling like an outsider, and they taught me to investigate what normal means in movies."