Voyant is a textual analysis tool that allows users to upload academic documents. Once uploaded Voyant creates a table with different tools that analyze the documents differently. This project uses the Cirrus tool which compiles all the documents and then creates a word cloud of the most used terms. At a quick glance, the Cirrus will show users trends within the documents and gave an idea of what the main themes are in the documents. For this project, there are two Cirrus word clouds: one that groups historic newspaper reviews and articles from white newspapers about Blacula and other Blaxploitation Horror films, and one that groups Black newspaper reviews and articles with the same contents.
The results from inputting the white newspapers into Voyant were as expected. There are terms from the films such as “Blacula, “ganja, and ”hess.” There are also general movie terms relevant to the genre of Black Horror like “acting” “film” “Hollywood” and “black” “African” and “Blacula.” But there are also a lot of general terms that have no relevance to the film like “spectacular” “fall” “coast” “parks” “daughter” “independence” and “home.” What this shows is that the articles don’t center the films but have other news included in the spread. The Cirrus also shows that race was mentioned but is buried beneath the blurb of generalness from other news.
The results from Black newspapers suggest that the critics regarded the films more in their reviews and had more thorough analysis. Every term correlates with Black Horror “Blacula” being the word most mentioned. In terms of race terms like “black” “Mamuwalde” “Marshall” “William” “African” and “slave” stood out amongst the other words. Then for film the terms “filmmakers” “film” “awards” and “ceremony” allude to Blacula receiving awards. “Vampire” “curse” “Dracula” and “powerful” speak to the genre of the films that were analyzed by critics. Overall the results show that Black newspapers were more analytical of race in regard to the film and Hollywood, while white newspapers reviewed the films but they were among many other sources of news not related to the films.