TW: rape

Let’s take Eve’s Bayou. What an incredibly Black story and setting and yet, these characters didn’t have to announce their Blackness- they just were. Taking a theme such as the rape and incest and adultification and presenting it as is was brilliant.

It took many folk several watches to realize that Cisely Baptiste was raped by her own father. But for many she seemed like a child seductress, which was the allure for so many- because she seemed so odd/strange.

Eve’s Bayou is brilliant because it let everyone and everything be.

We realize that Aunt Mozelle knew what her brother did Louis did. And even though we know that Eve did not actually kill her father, I still would not rule off conjure. Like I said- Mozelle knew.

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But in Black families, we see what we want to see and hear what we want to hear. As Black audiences, we did the same.

something tells me that either Louis death was a coincidence or Mozelle did what needed to be done. It is clear that her newest lover will live a long life. And I wonder if that was a life for a life. Who knows.

I say this to say that 'Eve's Bayou' is a period piece that did not rely on racism as the gothic... it embodied Blackness. This wasn't about "race relations," it was about Black intracommunal/natal relationality...