The horror genre is currently experiencing an interesting slasher renaissance. Our favorite masked killers such as Leatherface, Ghostface, and Michael Myers have all seen reboots, sequels, and even requels in the last few years. However, not all slasher fans have been satisfied with these remakes and have been itching for a new take on the slasher that isn’t just a gorier remake of the original. Janine Nabers and Donald Glover’s new series Swarm is a fresh take on the classic subgenre that gives us all of the gore without the killer hiding behind a mask. Rather, our slasher is a Black person who kills whenever they must to protect their goddess, pop star Ni’Jah.
Played by Dominique Fishback, Andrea Green, “Dre,” is a part of a larger group of Ni’Jah fans called the swarm. If this group sounds familiar, you’re not mistaken as this group is meant to represent the Beyonce stans’ BeyHive. What Naber and Glover seem to be homing in on is the toxic nature of fandom, exploring how far a fan will go to meet their favorite artist. However, what I find most salient in this series is the subversion of the slasher subgenre and the exploration of what happens to a Black Queer child who is left unprotected by their community. Dre’s character tells us that when everyone and everything casts you out of society, the only place left to run to is a Ni’Jah concert.
Now, I’d be remiss to not address the elephant in the room (and the media): Donald Glover’s negativity toward dark-skinned Black women. A popular Vulture interview has been circulating since the show’s premier in which Glover refers to the character Dre as animalistic and lacking humanity “like a dog” and refusal to give Dre’s backstory to Fishback as a part of her preparation for playing the role thus denying Dre the layers that they deserve. While the aim was to create a villain who is simply an unhinged killer, no slasher is without back story or motive and simply giving us Dre’s sister’s death and her love for Ni’Jah isn’t enough. While we see hints of Dre’s backstory in episode six, “Fallin’ Through the Cracks,” where Black woman Detective Loretta Greene digs deep to learn more about Dre, it’s not enough to make clear what is the true horror of the narrative– the systems that create toxic fan culture and thus our sugar-craving slasher Dre. Although the horror genre is done well by Glover and Nabers, forcing viewers to sit with the ambiguities and grey areas between right and wrong as well as reality and hallucination throughout Dre’s story, it’s neglectful to Black women everywhere who are continuously dehumanized and treated as less-than human. Dre is no exception to this and acts on her rage instead of suppressing it, which is interesting but still needs more complexity. Being a “stan” isn’t enough for someone to kill the way Dre does.
Further, the trans* narrative in this series needs fleshing out. As it stands, Dre is clearly marked as queer from their connection to Marissa and Ni’Jah as well as their clear disdain for the opposite sex. However, there are not any clear early signs of a trans* narrative. Rather, Dre’s transition to Tony by the final episode almost codifies trans* people as criminal since Dre becomes Tony to continue killing and running from the law. Again, like many pieces of art, the creator is flawed in his perspective of dark-skinned Black women. However, this does not take away from some of the important messages the show contains and its subversion of the “traditional” slasher narrative.
Whew! Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get to the sweet stuff— what the show does well.
As it stands, Swarm is a series about a slasher. However, I’d argue that Dre is more than a slasher…She’s also a final girl.
According to Carol Clover’s Men, Women, and Chainsaws (1992), the final girl is “[T]he Girl Scout, the bookworm, the mechanic. Unlike her girlfriends (and Marion Crane) she is not sexually active.” The “Final Girl is also watchful to the point of paranoia; small signs of danger that her friends ignore, she registers. Above all she is intelligent and resourceful in a pinch” (Clover 39). Dre might not be a Girl Scout, but they are aware of themselves, their positionality, and the dangers of the world that their friends ignore. In Dre’s case, this is normally the men that their sister Marissa dates. Further, Dre seems to recognize that they have been cast off from society, and in order to survive this abject position, they take matters into their own hands to protect themselves and those that they love. Dre further fits the “Final Girl” definition in their intelligence, resourcefulness, and ability to think in a pinch. But, while she fits this definition, she’s also a clear slasher who, like most killers in slasher flicks, “[M]ay be recognizably human, but they are only marginally so, just as they are only marginally visible— to their victims and to us, the spectators” (Clover 30). Dre is human, but as a Black queer-coded woman, they have been dehumanized and are so visible in their “non-humanness” that they are an invisible human. How else do you go on a slashing rampage for two years unnoticed?
Swarm subverts the traditional slasher subgenre by not only making the slasher a Black queer-coded person, but also, simultaneously a Final Girl. Dre’s “Final Girl” status arguably comes from the trauma tied to their sister’s death as well as from being cast off from their community as a child and having to find a means to survive the trauma also inflicted by the systems that failed them and eventually turned Dre into a killer.
It isn’t until episode six, as mentioned earlier, that we finally get more of Dre’s backstory through interviews and research being conducted by Detective Loretta Greene. We learn that Dre was a foster child whom Marissa’s family had taken in and eventually discarded when they behaved violently at a slumber party. Not only was Dre discarded by Marissa’s parents, but they also lost the one protector and family member they’ve ever had when Marissa dies. It isn’t until Marissa—their sister and the only other person who seems to share the same love of Ni’Jah that Dre has—dies that Dre begins cracking the skulls of Ni’Jah haters (starting with Marissa’s cheating ex-boyfriend). Their love for the only family member they’ve ever had and the person who shares their love of Ni’Jah without judgement and takes care of them despite some of their lacking understanding of social cues is conflated with their love for Ni’Jah. Thus, when Marissa dies, they obsess over the last person who they believe has helped them through it all— Ni’Jah.
As horror often does, Swarm teaches a valuable lesson about the things we should fear. In the case of Swarm, it first seems like we should fear a Black queer person who has been neglected and has “fallen through the cracks.” However, this is problematic in its depicting of Black women as monstrous and misses the opportunity to really highlight the horror of a system that allows people, especially children, to be cast off from society the way that Dre has been. There is a desperate need for a more detailed backstory to fully flesh out Dre’s character, but one thing the show does well is remind us of the importance of community. When one is expelled from their own community, where else do they turn? For Dre, they turn to Ni’Jah and the swarm and that means doing anything to be with them – even murder.
Nicole Huff is a PhD student in the English department at Michigan State University. She received her bachelor’s from Kalamazoo College and her master’s from DePaul University. She is the co-lead for Michigan State University’s Graphic Possibilities Research Workshop and co-host of the Graphic Possibilities Podcast. This research workshop and podcast looks at comics through two intersecting lenses— critical inquiry and comics pedagogy. Nicole also works as a Graduate Assistant for the Humanities Commons. Her current research centers on Afrofuturism, gender and sexuality, pop culture with a focus on Black women in horror and fantasy, and Digital Humanities methods.
Twitter Handle: @huffythescholar
