Now that American Horror Story Red Tide is wrapped up, and we all are searching for something to keep our minds off the train wreck that was Death Valley. I would like to propose an alternate for how Red Tide should have gone. As of now Red Tide Is it decent Horror Story about the dangers of the pursuit of greatness, or some contrived pretentious ******** like that. Now of course you’re reading this on Afro horror so you can probably guess but I’m about to propose some black ****, And as the great prophet OG Maco one said “***** you guessed it!”. Though I’m not just proposing make the main character black, I am asking for something a bit more interesting. Red tide should have been lowkey the Tyler Perry story.
In AHS:Red Tide we see the story of the Gardner’s, a lovely white family that is shaken to their core when the father Harry ( Finn Wittrock) is given a pill to unlock his talent but as with all American horror stories the price talent is too high for the entire family. Not to say that this wasn’t a good story but let’s be honest this is just limitless with vampires. Yes, the black version would still be limitless with vampires, but it would also have a meatier subplot due to the switch. When Harry is given the pills, he is apprehensive at first because he truly believes he doesn’t need them. The sell to a Black creator would be much more harrowing, not only would they have to consider the ultimate price of taking the pill, but they would also have to think about what that pill symbolizes for them. Right now, it just is a gateway to fame but with a Black creator it becomes a key into the White creative space. Watching a character come to terms with their humanity is cute but imagine if they were worried about their humanity and the fear of losing their culture as well.
Naturally the next storyline we look at is the wife, but since they decided to sideline her I guess we will too; moving on to the daughter then. Alma (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) is a violin prodigy who takes the pill to help with a seemingly hard piece of music, which at the moment is giving “I took Adderall to help me study” vibes. While I found Ryan to be great in the role I can’t help but wonder what it would be like to watch a young black child deciding to take the pill. Not just so they can finally play harder pieces but because they know that without that pill they might just end up another un-noticed Black musician because they don’t play societally acceptable music for a black musician. Feeling the sadness of them accepting the price of the pill because they have watched their talented father struggle in a similar way.
Finally we get to the Mother, which seems messed up but hey that’s how they decided to do her in the series. Doris (Lilly Rabe) is sadly given the chore of stumbling around confused and worried that A) Things aren’t going well for her business, and B) Things aren’t going well at home. Lily is such a great actress it’s lowkey a crime the way they played her this go around. Steamrolling past how they set her up to be a non-talented shrew whose fate is sealed because she just wanted a connection with her family. (who said all that) Anywhozzle, Now there are two ways we could go here we could keep her white and the story becomes about the White wife of a Black creator watching them lose their humanity and culture while skyrocketing to fame, or if we make her Black it’s the same but now with the added element of “will this ungrateful negro leave me for a white girl”. Just sayin we got options BABY!
Baby!
Oh no it seems that in my ranting I have forgotten all about the baby. I haven’t. Switching up the family just allows the Chemist (Angelica Ross) to move in the world easier with a black baby so there are no questions to slow her mission down. I know that was a lot to throw out there especially for a seemingly decent season of AHS but let’s face it, it could have been better. Also knowing how Ryan Murphy operates, It could have been much worse. If you have any other ideas to add, or think that I missed something important out of this drop a comment below. And please if you find yourself reading this and you start to feel a bit uncomfortable just remember :
Former Artist, Current Deviant Timothy Rush. Twitter: @timmyvendetta | Insta:@vendetta234