After the success of 1992’s Candyman (directed by Bernard Rose), a sequel was inevitable. The 1995 Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh was directed by Bill Condon, who would go on to write and direct the acclaimed 1998 film, Gods and Monsters. Despite Condon’s later success, Farewell to the Flesh only makes it strikingly clear how badly we need the upcoming “spiritual sequel” to Candyman written by Jordan Peele and directed by Nia DaCosta. DaCosta’s Candyman will pick up from the 1992 original film, ignoring the sequels from 1995 and 1999—not a bad choice.
While the original Candyman has received—and deserves—much praise, it is not without its problems. In Horror Noire (2011), Robin Means Coleman has pointed out that Rose’s Candyman gives the white protagonist Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen) and, indeed, all whites a pass: “Rather, he punishes Blacks” (189). And, in the end, Helen Lyle proves herself the hero of her own story and destroys Candyman (Tony Todd), emerging herself as the powerful monster poised to move the narrative forward. Again, as Means Coleman has pointed out, “this is a movie about celebrating White womanhood.” Candyman himself, she continues, “disappears along with the history of racism he brings. It is all about Helen as she becomes monstrous” (190).
Check out the trailer for Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh:
If viewers hoped for any re-balancing of the story toward its ostensible Black male protagonist, Farewell to the Flesh dashes those hopes. Indeed, the sequel doubles down on making sure that the Candyman story is “about celebrating White womanhood.”
The film begins with Philip Purcell (Michael Culkin) reprising his role as condescending “authority” on the Candyman myth and offering what is essentially an interpretation of the first film that erases the “reality” of Candyman. First, he emphasizes that Candyman is not real but a myth—“I believe in the myth, but the flesh and blood, no”—and, second, he insists that the events in Cabrini Green were all about Helen Lyle. She “becomes so obsessed by the myth,” Purcell states, “that she takes on the persona of Candyman, killing her victims with a hook.” Purcell here utterly validates Means Coleman’s claim that Candyman “disappears,” and that the events of Candyman are “all about Helen.”
In Purcell’s presentation, Candyman’s story in Cabrini Green was actually all about Helen Lyle
After that inauspicious start, the film takes a promising turn as Purcell gets his comeuppance for denying the “flesh and blood” reality of Candyman. Indeed, Farewell to the Flesh generally sets out on an encouraging narrative trajectory. The film is set in New Orleans, where, it turns out, Daniel Robitaille (Candyman) was born a slave on a local plantation. The plantation happens to be the current home of our new white female protagonist, Annie Tarrant (Kelly Rowan), whose father was recently killed after investigating a series of murders.
The old slave quarters out back of Annie’s home
Despite being re-located to New Orleans, Robitaille’s backstory remains pretty much the same as in the 1992 film—and it is much more fully developed in Farewell to the Flesh. Furthermore, Candyman tells his own story this time—recounting to Annie, late in the film, his “transgression” in loving a white woman and the details of his awful punishment. His story is even accompanied by a flashback. Candyman’s rage, moreover, seems directed at more appropriate victims in Farewell to the Flesh: namely, white people, including Annie’s father, mother, and brother, all descendants of Robitaille’s white lover and so also, inevitably, descendants of the father who lynched his daughter’s lover.
Candyman tells his own story, then, and in more detail. And his victims are all white—many of them descendants of the man who lynched him. So far, so good.
The problem lies in the ending of the film, which works furiously to (once again) erase both Candyman and his story, as well as the history of racism to which both testify. Indeed, the film goes through some strange contortions by allowing Candyman to tell his own story, in great detail, and then making sure it all gets expunged.
Candyman tells his own story, over a flashback
Candyman is expelled, moreover, by Annie, the white woman—his descendant—who seemingly bears empathetic witness to his story and who is implicated in it. The man who lynches Daniel Robitaille, along with the woman who loves him, are both her forebears. Immediately after hearing Candyman’s story, and after he says to her not “Be my victim” (as he says to Helen Lyle) but “Be my witness. See how I became the reflection of their hatred, their evil,” Annie reaches out to him and takes his hand. But then she breaks that allegiance, refusing, in the end, to ally herself with him. She shatters the mirror that holds his story, his pain, and thus she destroys him. She refuses Candyman’s pain because she is centered on her own.
Annie sees herself in Candyman’s mirror
After Annie destroys Candyman, the final scene shows her, several years later, with her daughter Caroline—named after their white forebear and Candyman’s lover. Annie shows a photograph of Caroline Sullivan and her daughter Isobel to her own daughter, who says, “That’s great grandma Isobel and her mom Caroline,” and the girl marks the fact that she is named after Caroline. It is telling, of course, that Annie names her daughter after Caroline—the white woman—and not after her and Daniel Robitaille’s mixed-race daughter, Isobel. Annie’s daughter clearly knows that Caroline and Isobel are her family, moreover. But when she sees a photograph of Daniel Robitaille, Caroline asks, “Who’s that?” She does not know his story. Annie says, “That’s Isobel’s daddy, and when you get a little older, I will tell you a story about him.” So, in multiple layers of erasure, Candyman is gone; Annie has not told her daughter about him; she does not name her daughter after his daughter; and his history, which is also the history of racism in the US, will be transformed from history to “a story”—a story, moreover, told by a white woman. Like Candyman, Farewell to the Flesh ends up being about a white woman and, in the case of the sequel, her white daughter.
Caroline Sullivan and Isobel–two of the four white women & girls who dominate the story of Farewell to the Flesh
Jordan Peele—writer and producer of the upcoming “spiritual sequel” to Candyman—has voiced his love of Bernard Rose’s 1992 film: “‘I think the reason I love the original Candyman is, for better or worse, it broke us out of the box,’ he told Empire for the magazine’s June 2020 issue. ‘A Black monster was pretty revolutionary. If there was no Candyman, I don’t know that there would be a Get Out.’” He goes on to laud Tony Todd for creating a monster with whom Black viewers could empathize: “For this monster, Tony Todd built a character that was a force, and had a charisma, and gave me a sense of power as opposed to a feeling of otherness.”
This is certainly all true of Candyman—and perhaps even more true of Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh, which fleshes out this “Black monster” and asks us to bear witness to the systemic racism that created him.
At the same time, though, both films—and, again, much more so in the case of Farewell to the Flesh—also erase that Black monster. Indeed, the very character who most empathizes with Candyman is the one who does the expelling of his story, his truth, his reality. Farewell to the Flesh argues that we should banish and thus forget America’s racist past and the many monsters it created. I’m guessing that Jordan Peele and Nia DaCosta’s upcoming Candyman will not take such an approach.
Related: Candyman as Horror Noir and Race and Historical Memory in Candyman.
Follow Horror Homeroom on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.
