Black Mold and African Blood
(Spoilers for Gomorrah season 1 episode 4 follow)
In Get Out (2017) Chris, a black man, travels with his white girlfriend, Rose, to meet her parents at their country home. Rose’s parents are excited to meet Chris, especially the father. The father eagerly shows Chris around the house. They come to the basement door and the father says that they shouldn’t go down to the basement because of the “black mold”.
When I heard this comment while watching the film for the first time, it seemed like a throwaway one. It did not feel like a throwaway comment because of the wording. The father uses the words “black mold” instead of just “mold”. Black mold is indeed a type of mold so there was uncertainty in regard to whether the comment would come to mean something later. Ultimately the comment ends up being some important foreshadowing, given what happens in the basement. This is not the only time that a seemingly flippant comment has left me on edge.
Watching film and TV as a black viewer can be strange sometimes. I’ll be immersed in the fantasy until suddenly I’m wrenched out of it by a flippant comment. I use the word fantasy because I’m talking specifically about worlds that are vastly different from my real-world experiences, the onscreen worlds have little to no black people in them. For me this is not something that necessarily ruins the viewing experience, which is why I said that I’ll be immersed in the fantasy. The flippant comment that wrenches me out of the fantasy usually does not have any bearing on the story at large, it is a throwaway comment. This means that I can immerse myself in the fantasy again after some time. I know this is sounding a bit vague so let’s look at some examples.
I was watching Pusher (1996) not too long ago. The main character, Frank, is talking with his friend Tonny at a convenience store. The conversation turns to a discussion of women they would or wouldn’t have sex with. Tonny brings up a black presenter of what sounds like a gameshow and talks about how he heard that “apes” like to have sex a certain way. Frank’s incredulous expression in response to this was mine too.
Another example comes from one of my favourite films of all time, The Godfather (1972). All the big crime bosses from across the U.S. have gathered for a meeting. There is a discussion of whether or not the mafia should enter the drug trade. One boss says that if they do enter the drug business then they should keep it respectable and away from schools and children. He talks about how in his city he would keep the drug trafficking to the “dark people, the coloured” since they are “animals anyway” so them losing their souls is not a problem.
In the film One Hundred Steps (2000) Luigi Impastato has to go to America from Italy so that he can get his son, who has been really outspoken against the local mafia boss, a job there with some relatives. On his way to the airport he expresses his hope to not have a black cab driver take him to the relatives’ house. He does end up getting a black cab driver but nothing happens during the ride.
These occurrences are strange because they are aimed at absent targets and they have no bearing on the overall story. The combination of absent targets and unimportance to the story creates a sense of bewilderment in me. How can people be the targets of such ire in their absence? Especially when their absence is very much desired? It is true that because black people are absent the characters are free to talk about them in whatever way they like, but why even bring them up in the first place?
One thing to note here is that all these examples come from crime dramas. An explanation for these comments could be that organized crime groups divide themselves along ethnic lines so virulence against outgroups is to be expected. It can be pleasurable for people in the ingroups to share their dislike for people in the outgroups. This can strengthen group cohesion. The shared dislike may not work as well if the people in the outgroup appear outwardly similar to people in the ingroup, hence “the dark people, the coloured”. Danish people battle Serbians in Pusher and Italians battle Italians in the other films but perhaps in some strange way black people are also antagonists. I decided that I would write this post after watching Pusher in order to comment on the way that these films only hint at this strange antagonism. Then I watched a certain episode of Gomorrah (2014).
Gomorrah follows the lives of members of the Savastano Camorra clan who operate in Secondigliano in Naples, Italy. The episode is called “African Blood”. The leader of the Savastanos, Don Pietro, is in jail awaiting trial. The Nigerian gang who sells drugs under his jurisdiction is facing increasing trouble from crack addicts, so much so that they deliberately send one of their own, Tokunbo, to jail to negotiate giving Don Pietro a smaller percentage of their profits.
For Tokunbo even getting Don Pietro to take him seriously is a trial. When he first tries to talk to Don Pietro in the prison he is promptly brushed off. “Get out of the sun chocolate bar, you’ll melt!” someone says as the prisoners leave the yard to go back to their cells. This encounter has clearly annoyed Don Pietro because later he remarks “by now even the monkeys out there think they can sit with men”. Tokunbo continues to be an annoyance by persistently trying to talk with Don Pietro. He does this even after Don Pietro tells him about how he would take his son to the zoo to see the monkeys and about if the monkeys try to behave like humans that they would need to be put down.
The mere thought of negotiating with the Nigerians repulses the members of the Savastano clan. When the Nigerian boss brings less than half of the usual percentage and states his reason why, one of the Savastanos tells him “This is Italy, we give the orders here! You gotta do what we say and that’s it!”. “We can’t let the Africans dictate the rules to us” says Don Pietro after his wife tells him what happened.
After some skirmishes break out in the jail Don Pietro agrees in principle to take a lower percentage if Tokunbo helps him deal with the warden that has been giving him a hard time. Tokunbo agrees and Don Pietro’s plan works. The conflict does not end there, however.
Some time after Don Pietro gets the warden off his back he makes a phone call. “We gotta end it with the ‘black market’, it’s no good” he says to one of his captains. The Savastanos drive to the Nigerian neighbourhood dressed as police (!) and open fire. It is dark and they don’t seem to care about who they kill. This is confirmed when the leader of the Nigerian gang brings the full percentage to the Savastanos the next day. The Savastanos are pleased and one of them remarks how the leader is lucky that they didn’t come directly to his house. A lot of people with no connection to the gang got killed because “you blacks are all the same at night”. The leader is warned that if he does anything like this again that they will come back during the daylight.
“African Blood” is an excellent episode of television. It brings to light the antagonism I mentioned earlier, which the previous examples only hinted at. I’m not saying that Gomorrah is better than the films mentioned. I’m saying that this episode makes it hard for viewers to fully identify with the characters, especially black viewers. I cannot fall back into the fantasy. This is a good thing. Personally, I think that you probably shouldn’t identify too hard with characters that would have you and your whole family killed if you were seen as an impediment to making money or your death seen as a way to make more money.
Gomorrah does things differently from the examples mentioned above. Unlike the examples black people are a constant presence. This means that when the racist comments come they don’t feel like they are out of nowhere since there are visible targets. I did not feel the strange feeling that I felt when watching the films mentioned above. The constant racist comments mean I cannot immerse myself back into the fantasy.
The whole conflict starts because the Nigerians demand to be treated fairly. Taking 50 percent of the profits is too much considering that Don Pietro does not bother to check up on the neighbourhood, he’s only concerned with collecting the percentage. While it is true that the Savastanos simply cannot let other gangs get too big, mere competition is not the reason why they did what they did. The Nigerian gang’s defiance annoys the Savastanos because it is the defiance of human beings and not “monkeys”. It is clear that negotiating with the Africans is just not how things are done (“we cant let the Africans dictate the rules to us”, “this is Italy, we give the orders here!”).
“African Blood” is a brutal episode but it is also a reassuring one. It is reassuring because it brings to the surface what Pusher, The Godfather, and One Hundred Steps only hint at. Those moments in the three films have the same effect as the “black mold” comment in Get Out because I don’t know whether to take the comments seriously. The father is so welcoming to Chris in the beginning and in the three films black people are barely featured. I start to wonder if I’m just being oversensitive. While the director of Get Out, Jordan Peele, purposefully employs this unnerving feeling the other films do it unknowingly. “African Blood” reassures me that I’m not being oversensitive.
Black mold is not just black mold in Get Out. The contents of the basement are revealed. In terms of the crime dramas discussed it is black people that are the ultimate unconscious outgroup/antagonists. The flippant comments arethis unconscious antagonism briefly bubbling to the surface. “African Blood” brings the antagonism to full awareness. For a time, this dynamic of being absorbed in the fantasy, then pulled out of it and then reabsorbed back into it is halted. A kind of clarity results from the halting of the dynamic. This may seem strange to say but this clarity is immensely comforting.