The Blackening's game sequence reinforces its main theme.
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There's a lot of reasons I love Tim Story's The Blackening. It's hilarious, has a killer cast, is a send-up of the slasher genre from a black American perspective, and provides solid character arcs for the majority of its characters. It also has one of the best recurring themes I've seen in a genre parody: what does it mean to be black? And nothing highlights that more than the film's "Game," where our friends have to prove their blackness through a series of trivia questions.
The Setup
Well into their Juneteenth weekend celebration, Lisa and her friends are freaked out when the power is cut and they come across a bunch of game pieces that correspond to them. Not only that, but one of their guests, Morgan, is being held hostage by a hooded figure that wants them to play a board game called "The Blackening" (with a bunch of racist imagery all over it). To try and keep and themselves alive, the group will have to play the game...and by game I mean answer a series of black culture trivia questions.
Why I Love It
Great Riff on A Horror Trope
The main reason this sequence is so good is because it reinforces the movie's main idea about Black Americans desire to "prove" their blackness to one another, which I will get into. But something I realized the more I thought about it is...this is a wonderfully silly riff on the Saw movies.
All of the Saw movies feature a series of life or death traps/games that the participant has to figure out by solving Jigsaw's riddle and usually putting themselves through an incredible level of personal agony, with the tagline "Do you want to play a game?" So putting a racist charicature on your game and presenting the same offer is pretty pointed.
And then the movie immediately undercuts the seriousness of what's going on, which is a hostage situation, by making it's big test a series of trivia questions that this half high, half drunk group is trying to piece together.
Our actors and the direction highlight this absurdity as well by doing the "sarcastic genius processing" meme when they're trying to do math related to a Nas track, trying to sing their way through the second verse of the Civil Rights anthems and in a my favorite little bit, all of them pretending that they didn't watch Friends (the correct "Black" answer is Living Single) when they clearly all know Friends.
Then things come to a head, when the game asks the participants to choose the "blackest" member of the group.
What follows is a very funny, but also semi-serious series of finger-points as each member of the group leans on what they've been teased for, presumably their entire life, that makes them "less" black. For instance, when the group claims Allison is "the blackest," Allison notes that every single person in that room has called her "half black" because of her mixed parentage and calling her the blackest now just makes them hypocrites.
All of which is paid off by the group turning on Clifton, both because they don't know him or even remember him from college and he then admits he voted for Trump twice so fuck'em.
Why This Hits So Hard
Being black in America is a powerful shared experience that can connect black folks who have never met. Just as someone who grew up queer in America can find strong connection and found family with other queer people.
However that connection can present a secondary problem: how do you fit in to your own group?
Since I'm not queer or black I'll use masculinity as my personal example. There's a lot ways that I fulfill traditional masculine characteristics. I like sports. I wear simple clothing like jeans and t-shirts 90 percent of the time. And I like things like violent video games and action movies.
But I also behave in ways that buck traditional masculinity...that can make me self-conscious depending on the company.
But I also behave in ways that buck traditional masculinity...that can make me self-conscious depending on the company.
And if you're part of a minority community in America, not fitting in to your own group can be doubling isolating, since you're already othered by American society. No minority community is a monolith.
It means that plenty of people who don't immediately relate to a lot of black culture or didn't group up around black communities can feel othered or like they don't belong. Because even the joke of "how black" someone is, is part of that culture and shared experience. Thankfully most of our heroes get it. They know they're black even if they're mixed, gay, or date someone white. This is just joking amongst friends.
They know this "game" can't prove or disprove their blackness. Knowing a trivia question doesn't mean you understand what being black in America is or feels like. Hence the unity of black rejection when Clifton says he voted for Trump twice. He doesn't get it.
Which hits extra hard when it's revealed that Clifton is behind everything.
The Villain Reveal
It wasn't surprising that Clifton was the movie's villain. He was sus from the start and acted twitchy through the whole affair. He also...acts the least stereotypically black of the group. What is a surprise is his why. Why he decided to try and kill this friend group. Why he had them play this game to prove their blackness.
And in great villain form, he's not entirely wrong. In his monologue segment Clifton reveals that he blames this group for doubting his blackness in college and making him feel insecure. Something he did not think was fair because he did not grow up around other black people and had a lot of trouble relating to this group. He was so insecure that he got irresponsibly wasted and killed a woman while drunk driving. And it ruined his life. So in his mind, this group's refusal to acknowledge his experience destroyed him.
Clifton isn't right of course. But what he encountered is real. That's something that happens to folks who don't come up feeling like they're part of a group they never chose. And if you feel rejected, it could be devastating.
Which brings us back to the game.
While he never says this much, the "Blackening" game is a metaphor for Clifton's college experience. He came trying to have fun and have a good time and probably connect with other black people for the first time in his life. And instead he felt like he failed a set of trivia questions he had no chance of answering. Doesn't justify homicide of course, but that makes sense. That sucks. Because knowing black trivia shouldn't feel like a life or death scenario when you're already Black in America.
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