Candyman, Cabrini, and Conjure:
Contextualizing the modern zonbi.
“This neighborhood’s haunted.”
Cabrini-Green. A symbol of a seemingly bygone era of rejuvenation, redlining, urban blight, and lastly gentrification. Indeed, a brief, austere, and emotionally detached labeling. Lest we forget this was a community where almost 15,000 Black people lived, worked, and survived. It’s critical that the first series of images are of Cabrini in the second official Candyman trailer. Long after the white flight of Italians that once occupied space with Black residents in the 1940s and 1950s — the location named for Saint Frances Cabrini and William Green — was now rebranded as a place welcoming and hospitable for the majority of Black residents who wished to build and maintain: community.
In the beginning, their efforts were extremely successful, due to a combined political and monetary backing from the city of Chicago. When the money and resources from the city gradually declined, so too did the necessary and vital services needed to maintain the pristine outward appearance of the buildings; as a…
