Theme and message

The main theme in “Scary Movies” by Stephen Amidon is the fear caused by racism and the segregation between the white population and African-Americans in the US in 1968. The title of the short story is also a reference to this theme, and the author’s message is that one should not fear fiction, but reality.

Fear caused by racism

As the short story shows, 1968 was a year filled with violence and news that instilled fear around the world, not only in the United States. The war in Vietnam, the anti-government protests all across the US and Europe, and the civil-rights movements brought a sense of fear everywhere. The short story focuses less on the war in Vietnam and on anti-government protests and more on the civil-rights movement (which often resulted in violence towards black people) and on the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

In the US, racism caused segregation and was deeply entrenched because of the segregation of white people and African-Americans. The latter seldom mingled with the former, and the whites’ fear of African-Americans was fueled by horrific stories involving violence:

We knew nothing about our black neighbors other than the cruel jokes our parents sometimes told and the occasional spasms of anger we’d see on the local news. To make matters worse,...