As Mamie Till-Mobley hoped, her son’s image inspired the “Emmett Till Generation” of activists. Tales from the Hood 2 honored her by including these photos in the film. It’s out of respect for Ms. Till that I also include them at the end of this post.

Halfway through The Coffee Table I thought “Why am I doing this to myself?” Same thing during Hereditary, Midsommar, Terrifier, and just this week, The Substance. The answer was, I wanted to tough them out and let a piece of art work on me. With Tales from the Hood 2 (2018) it was a different answer. These were scenes and images that I didn’t want to see, but needed to see.

The torture and murder of 14-year old Emmett Till

In Mississippi in 1955, an African-American boy named Emmett Till was abducted, beaten, executed, and thrown in the river by a white man, Roy Bryant, for possibly whistling at (witness accounts differ) Bryant’s wife, who was also white. In “The Sacrifice,” the fourth episode of Tales from the Hood 2, we see a reenactment of the events and real newspaper photos of Till.

Images of Till inspired Rosa Parks and others of the Emmett Till Generation

These images, which were influential in the Civil Rights Movement, are used to great effect in Tales from the Hood 2 as sources of horror, both for the story and for its lingering impact.

And they are awful.

You can’t look at pictures of Till’s ruined features without a flurry of thoughts: that this bloated and misshapen face is even human. That it belonged to a child. That someone had enough hate inside of them to do this to another living being.

Tales from the Hood 2, “The Sacrifice.” It is not a wonderful life

The Sacrifice is a Christmas Carol/It’s a Wonderful Life sort of tale following Black politician Henry Bradley and his wife Emily, a white woman in present day Mississippi. Emily is expecting a child. The ghost of Emmett Till visits her in dreams to question whether she and her husband deserve the child. Meanwhile, Henry is supporting a white councilman whose platform is “taking Mississippi back to its core values” with an agenda of closing historically Black voting locations.

Bradley is visited by victims of racism and experiences a future where Till’s photo was never seen

Bradley is visited by the ghosts of Mamie Till-Mobley, church bombing victims, and civil rights leaders. He experiences an alternate future where an emboldened, paramilitary KKK is an official arm of the local government. His wife not only doesn’t recognize him, but accuses him of rape. Bradley is forced to decide how far he’s willing to go to reset history.

It’s an unjust dilemma for him to have, and one which the white characters in The Sacrifice never have to face.

Tales from the Hood 2 is a comedy, but it comes out swinging

No one except Keith David could take over the legacy of Clarence Williams III as Portify Simms, an MC of uncertain origins.

In Tales 2, Simms is hired by white private prison owner “Dumass Beach.” His assignment is to educate a new generation of crime-fighting robots by telling stories, stories to help the machines identify candidates to fill Beach’s prisons. The comedic energy quickly shifts into a nasty little tale about a white girl who callously asks the proprietor of the “Museum of Negrosity,” which gravely honors victims of institutional racism, to buy a racist golliwog doll. It doesn’t end well for her.

Keith David’s wraparound segments between episodes give the audience a few breaths before dipping back into the material, which in Tales 2, also goes into toxic masculinity. The arc leads ultimately to what could be the best line in cinematic history:

The media need to stop warning people about graphic images and instead, implore us to see them

I haven’t experienced the visceral horrors of racism, neither personally, nor in the intimate, collective generational memory of my family and community. It is grossly unjust that I should have the privilege of turning away from them. And these images activate me, whether they show violence against people who are Black, women, or most recently, real footage of acts of terror incited by Trump on January 6 which were removed by Meta moderators.

Trump 2: Tales from the Purge

Trump’s regime thrives on hiding white supremacy behind coded language. “Migrants” doesn’t mean migrants. He contrasted “shithole countries” in Africa with “places like Norway.” His “one really rough day to lower crime” is an all-out Purge.

The problem is, even the allegedly liberal media don’t make these explicit connections. They’ve been complicit not only in sanewashing his unhinged monologues, but whitewashing them, choosing to talk about “Trump’s inflammatory and racially-charged rhetoric” vs. “Trump’s nakedly racist appeals to hatred.”

Racism makes white liberals feel uncomfortable. So the news warns them beforehand about graphic images that may be upsetting or unsuitable. And this isn’t only about race. It’s about misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and religious persecution. It’s about the conflict in Gaza. It’s about school shootings.

Horror fans: experts in looking at upsetting things

For whatever reason, horror fans are made differently. Perhaps it’s a response to trauma, or maybe our DNA is especially twisty. We’ll need to exercise this uncanny power now, looking at the real things in the world no one else wants to see, just as much we look at a plastic surgeon shaving off flaps of skin, a malevolent clown rubbing salt into freshly flayed tissue, someone choking to death on a fresh eyeball, and Dennis Quaid eating shrimp.

Images of Emmett Till, his mother, and the historic photo of Emmett’s mangled features that she wanted us to see: